A QUEER COMPACT
"Have you done?" rasped McPherson. "Have you quite done?"
"Why, what——?"
"Then listen to me. Abuse is not argument. Neither is silly mockery. I console myself with the thought that men have laughed at the theory of the earth going round, and at vaccination, and lightning rods, and magnetism, and daguerreotypes, and steamboats, and cars, and telephones, and at the theory of the circulation of the blood, and at wireless telegraphy, and at flying in the air. So your gibing is forgivable. But—I'm very, very much disappointed, Peter, that so old a friend should refuse such a simple request. I'll be wishing you a very good day."
"Hold on, Andrew! Hold on!" cried Grimm, hastily setting down his pipe and hurrying forward to intercept his angrily departing guest. "Man, man, can't you keep your temper? I didn't mean to rile you. Come back. If you take the thing so seriously, I'll—I'll make the compact with you. Here's my hand on it. I know you're an old fool. And I'm another. So we're both in bad company. Shake hands. Now then! Whichever of us does go first is to come back and try to make himself known to the other. And——"
A fit of uncontrollable laughter cut across his words. The doctor frowned pettishly and made as though to turn away. But Peter still held his hand and would not let it go.
"There, Andrew!" he said remorsefully, as he wiped the laughter tears from his eyes. "I've riled you again. I'm sorry. We'll leave the matter this way: if I go first—and if I can come back, I will come back—and I'll apologise to you for being in the wrong. There! Does that satisfy you, Andrew? I say I'll come back and apologise."
"You mean it, Peter?" asked McPherson eagerly. "You're not joking?"
"No, I mean it. If I can, I'll come back. And if I come back I'll apologise to you. It's a deal. Now let's have a nip of my plum brandy to seal the compact."
"Good!"
"I'll step down to the cellar and get a fresh bottle of it. That one on the sideboard hasn't got two man's size drinks left in it. I'll be back in a minute and then we'll drink to spooks. Especially to spooks that come back and apologise."
With a chuckle at his own odd conceit, he vanished cellarward. As the door closed behind him, Kathrien came in from the dining-room, where evidently she had been awaiting a chance for a word alone with McPherson.
"Doctor," she asked almost breathlessly, "do you really believe the dead can come back?"
"Why not?" demanded McPherson, beginning to bristle for a new argument. "Why shouldn't they?"
"But—you mean to say you could come back to this room if you were dead, and I could see you?"
"You might not see me. I don't say you could. But I could come back."
"And—and could you talk to me?"
"I think so."
"But, could I hear you?"
"That I don't know. You see, that's what we gropers after the light are trying to make possible. Hello!" he interrupted himself, in a none too pleased whisper. "Here are some people that can talk and that one can't help hearing!"
Ushered in by Willem, the Rev. Mr. Batholommey, the local Episcopal clergyman of Grimm Manor, and his placid, portly wife, swept in from the vestibule on clerical visitation bent.
"Good-morning, Doctor," sighed Mrs. Batholommey, comprising the whole sunlit room in one all-compassionate glance.
"Good-morning, Kathrien."
"Good-morning, Mrs. Batholommey," answered Kathrien, loudly enough to drown McPherson's growl of unwelcoming welcome. "Good-morning, Pastor. Oom Peter will be back directly. I'll tell him you're here."
She hurried out of the room. McPherson showed strong inclination to follow her. But Mrs. Batholommey had already singled him out for her prey and bore down upon him with a becomingly woe-begone face.
"Oh, Doctor," she panted, wiping her eyes. "Does he know it yet? Does he?"
"Does who know what?" snapped the doctor, his glance straying wrathfully toward the rotund clergyman, who all at once assumed an abjectly apologetic air and interested himself in a picture on the farther wall.
"Poor dear Mr. Grimm," pursued Mrs. Batholommey. "Does he know he's going to die?"
Willem, who was halfway out of the room by this time, halted, turned back and, unobserved, stood listening with wide eyes and open mouth.
"What in blue blazes are you talking about?" thundered McPherson, glowering down on his rector's wife in a most unadmiring manner.
"About Mr. Grimm. Does he know yet that he must die?"
"Does the whole damned town know it?" roared the doctor.
"Oh!" cried Mrs. Batholommey in prim horror at the explosive adjective.
"You see, Doctor," put in the rector with urbane haste, before his spouse could recover breath to rebuke the blasphemer or return to the attack. "You see, it's this way: You consulted Mr. Grimm's lawyer. And his wife told my wife."
"Gabbed, did he?" snorted McPherson. "To perdition with the professional man who gabs to his wife!"
"Oh, Doctor!" expostulated Mrs. Batholommey. "How can——?"
"I am inexpressibly grieved," said her husband, "to learn that Mr. Grimm has an incurable malady. And is it true that the nature of it is——?"
"The nature of the whole affair is this," returned McPherson. "He isn't to be told. Understand that, please. He must not know. I didn't say he had to die at once. He may outlive us all. He probably will. And, in any event, no one must speak to him about it."
"I should think," said Mrs. Batholommey in lofty rebuke, "that a man's rector might be allowed to talk to him on such a theme. It seems to me, Dr. McPherson, if you can't do any more, it's his turn. From the way you doctors assume control of everything, it's a wonder to me you don't want to baptise the babies, too."
"Rose!" murmured the doctor in mild reproof.
"At the last moment," Mrs. Batholommey insisted, ignoring her husband, "Mr. Grimm will want to make a will. And you know he hasn't. He'll want to remember the Episcopal Church of Grimm Manor, and his charities—and his—friends. If he doesn't, the rector will be blamed as usual. You're not doing right, Doctor, in keeping——"
"Rose! My dear!" interjected her husband. "These private matters——"
"But——"
"I'll trouble you, Mrs. Batholommey," shouted McPherson, "to attend to your own affairs, and——"
"Doctor!" bleated the rector.
"Oh, let him talk, Henry!" sniffed Mrs. Batholommey in semi-tearful exaltation. "I can bear it. Besides," coming to earth level, "no one in town pays any attention to what he says since he has taken up with spiritualism."
"Oh, Rose! My dear!"
"Shut up!" whispered McPherson wrathfully. "Here he comes. Remember what I——"
Peter Grimm put an end to the warning by reappearing from the cellar with a small demijohn in his hand. His face brightened into a smile of pleasant greeting as he saw his two new guests.
"Why," he exclaimed, "this is the jolliest sort of a surprise. I hope I haven't kept you waiting long?"
The rector and his wife glanced at each other in embarrassment. Mrs. Batholommey turned toward Peter with a lachrymose grimace, intended doubtless for a consoling smile, and seemed about to break into a torrent of speech. But the rector, after a timid look at McPherson, nervously forestalled her by coming hurriedly to the front.
"Good-morning, dear friend," said he. "This is just a little impromptu visit of gratitude. We wish to thank you for the lovely flowers that Willem brought us a few minutes ago, and for the noble check you sent yesterday."
"Why," laughed Peter uncomfortably, "please don't even think of thanking me. I——"
"And," nervously pursued the rector, sparring for time, "I want to let you know how much we are still enjoying the delicious vegetables you so generously provided. I did relish that squash. If I were obliged to say offhand what my favourite vegetable is, I——"
"Pardon me," interposed Peter, his glance straying past the rector and resting with swift concern upon Mrs. Batholommey's quivering expanse of face, "but is anything distressing you, Mrs. Ba——?"
"No, no!" interjected the rector with break-neck haste.
"No, no!" responded Mrs. Batholommey in the same breath.
A half inaudible growl from Dr. McPherson completed the triple chord of negation. A chord so explosive, so crassly out of keeping with the simple question that evoked it that Grimm stared amazed from one of the trio to another.
Willem, strolling from his retreat, crossed to the table, picked up a picture book, and in leisurely fashion mounted with it to the gallery landing that overlooked the room. There he threw himself on a settee between the bedroom doors and opened the book at random.
His lower lip quivered ever so little and his blue eyes were big with a troubled wonder. From time to time his glance would stray from the gaudy pages of the picture book down to Grimm in the room below. And each time the wonder in his eyes became tinged with a new sorrow.
Meantime, Peter Grimm's look of questioning, perplexed sympathy toward her tumult ridden self was becoming far too much for Mrs. Batholommey's jellylike self-control. The jelly began to quake—quite visibly.
"I was afraid," Peter went on kindly, "that something unpleasant might have happened. And I hoped perhaps I might be able——"
"Oh, no! No, no, no!" denied the utterly flustered woman. "I—I hope you are feeling well, Mr. Grimm. No—no—I don't mean that. I—I don't mean that I hope you are well. Of course not. I—that is——"
"Of course she hopes it," boomed her husband, coming to the rescue with heavy and uncertain cheeriness that rang as false as the ring of a leaden dollar. "And of course all of us hope it, dear Mr. Grimm. With all our hearts. And we wish you many, many years of life and——"
"Oh, indeed we do," chimed in Mrs. Batholommey. "And, as Dr. McPherson just said, there may perhaps be no reason,—with proper care—why you shouldn't——"
"A blundering rector must be put up with because of his cloth. But when it comes to a blundering rectorette, there ought to be a line drawn!"
It was McPherson who said it. He addressed no one, but seemed to be confining his heretical sentiments to the window seat. Also he spoke in a gruff undertone—that filled the room like far off thunder.
Peter Grimm flung himself into the breach, even before the wave of outraged red could gush to Mrs. Batholommey's shaking visage.
"Will you—will you have a glass of plum brandy?" he asked her, and then caught himself with the scared grin of a very guilty schoolboy.
"I thank you," she retorted, safe for the moment in the full majesty of Temperance. "I do not take such things. Perhaps you forget I am the President of our local W. C. T. U. and the——"
"The Little Brothers of the Artesian Well," added Grimm, "or whatever they call it. I remember. And I'm sorry. I wouldn't tempt you from your principles for the world. Forgive me. How about you, Pastor? A little drop of plum brandy, for—for—let's see, what is it St. Paul says about——?"
"Thank you, no," declined the rector, with an apprehensive gesture towards his wife.
"Oh, come, come!" urged Peter hospitably. "Why, the other evening when you dropped over here after the vespers, sir, you——"
"I only use it when absolutely needful for medicinal purposes," insisted the rector hurriedly. "Not to-day, I thank you."
"I believe," said Peter irrelevantly, "that St. Paul was a single man, was he not, Pastor?"
"I believe," said Peter irrelevantly, "that St. Paul was a single man, was he not, Pastor?"
"I—I believe so. It is not definitely known. But why?"
"I was only wondering," mused Peter, "how he would have accounted to St. Pauline, or whatever his wife's name would have been, for what he wrote in favour of 'a little wine for—'"
"Oh," explained Mrs. Batholommey, still safe, and ever feeling safer, now that temperance was again the theme, "St. Paul referred to unfermented wine, you know. Every one ought to understand that. It is so hard to make people see the difference."
"One bottle would convince them," said Peter very gravely.
"No," Mrs. Batholommey corrected him with serene loftiness. "You do not quite get my point, dear Mr. Grimm. For instance, when the poets,—even good men like the late Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Whittier—speak of 'wine,' they use the word of course in its poetical sense. They use it merely to typify——"
"Booze," growled McPherson.
"Good cheer," amended Mrs. Batholommey, withering him with a single frown. "And yet it is terribly misleading. I remember when we had the Walter Scott Tableaux and Recitations at the church last fall, and old Mr. Bertholf from Pompton was going to recite 'Lochinvar,' I had to suggest a change in the poem, lest the ignorant people in the village might get a wrong impression of dear Sir Walter Scott's principles. You remember the couplet occurs:
"'And now I have come with this lost love of mine
To tread one last measure, drink one cup of wine.'
"So I asked Mr. Bertholf to alter the words into something like this:
"'And now I have come with this beautiful maid
To tread one last measure,—drink one lemonade.'
"It left the poetry just as beautiful and it took away the dangerous reference to wine. Mr. Bertholf didn't like it very much, I'm afraid. But I insisted, and at last——"
"And at last," snarled McPherson, to whom the thought of any mutilation of his fellow Scotchman's verse was as sacrilege, "and at last, poor Bertholf got so mixed up that he clean forgot the silly rot you'd taught him. And when he came to that part of the poem, he stammered for a second and then blurted out:
"'And now I have come with my lovely lost mate
To tread one last measure, drink one whiskey straight.'"
"Yes," blazed Mrs. Batholommey, "and I have always believed you put him up to it."
"Well," shrugged the noncommittal McPherson, "if I had, it would at least be more in keeping with what Sir Walter intended than your straining an immortal poem through a lemon-squeezer."
"Andrew and I," announced Peter, hastening to pour oil on the troubled waters of conversation, by filling two glasses and handing one of them to McPherson, "are going to drink a toast to spooks."
"What?" squealed Mrs. Batholommey, in the accents of a rabbit that has been stepped on.
"To spooks—we——"
"Oh, how can you?" she gasped. "How can you? To spooks! You of all men! The very idea!"
"Mrs. Batholommey!" exclaimed Peter in real alarm, setting down his glass and moving toward her. "Something has happened! You are quite——"
"No, no!" she wailed helplessly.
"It is nothing, Mr. Grimm," soothed the rector. "Nothing at all, I assure you. My wife is a trifle overwrought this morning. Nothing of any consequence. I mean—that is, of course—we must all keep our spirits up, Mr. Grimm."
"Good Lord, deliver us!" intoned McPherson in mingled fervour and disgust.
"I know what it is," declared Peter with sudden enlightenment. "You've just come from a wedding! That's it! I know. Women love weddings better than anything on earth. They'll talk about it for months beforehand. They'll walk miles to attend one.—And they'll weep all the rest of the day. I don't know why. But they do it. I should be grateful, I suppose, that no women were ever called upon to shed tears at my wedding. But I hope, before so very long——"
Mrs. Batholommey had not in the very least caught the drift of the laughing speech whereby he had sought to put the poor woman at her ease. And now all at once, the last sagging vestige of self-control went from her.
"Oh, Mr. Grimm!" she moaned, breaking in upon his words. "You were always so kind to us. There never was a better, kinder, gentler man in all this world than you were."
"Than I was?" asked Peter bewildered. "Is my character changing or——?"
"No, no!" she corrected herself flounderingly. "I don't mean that. I mean—I meant——"
Her gaze fluttered helplessly about the big room and chanced at last to fall upon the reading boy, asprawl on the gallery bench above them.
"I meant," she plunged along, "what would become of poor little Willem if you——?"
This time her glance was caught and transfixed by McPherson's furious glare, much as a great flopping beetle might be pierced by the sting of a wasp. Mrs. Batholommey prided herself upon her tact. That glare nerved her to another effort.
"You see," she shrilled, wildly and awkwardly clambering out of the slough, "it's fearful he had such a 'M.'"
"Such a 'M'?" queried Peter. "What does that mean?"
With a warning glance toward the absorbed boy she shaped her lips noiselessly into the word "Mother."
"Oh!" said Peter. "I understand. But——"
"She ought to have told Mr. Batholommey or me," went on Mrs. Batholommey, climbing still higher on to solid ground, "who the 'F' was."
"'F'? What does that mean?"
And again the rabbit-like lips shaped themselves into a soundless word, this time 'Father.'
"Oh," grunted Peter, "the word you want isn't 'Father,' but 'Scoundrel!' Whoever he is——"
Willem flung aside his book and leaped to his feet as though his little body were galvanised. The others looked at him in guilty dread, fearing he had heard and had somehow understood their awkwardly veiled allusions to his parentage. But they were mistaken. A sound, far more potent to every normal child's ear than the fiercest thunders of morality, had reached his keen senses as he lounged up there. And a moment later they all heard it.
It was the braying of a distant but steadily approaching brass band. With it came a confused but ever louder medley of shouts, handclapping, raucous voices, and the higher tones of delighted children. As Kathrien came running in at one door, followed by Marta, and Frederik sauntered in from the office, Willem rushed down the stairway and into the window seat, where he sprang upon a chair and craned his neck to see the stretch of village street beyond. Nearer and louder came the music and the attendant vocal Babel.
"It's the circus parade!" shouted Willem. "The one they tell about in the advertisements and pictures on the fences. I didn't know the parade would start so early. There come some of them now. Oh, look! Oom Peter! Look! It's a clown! See! He's coming right toward us!"
The band in full brazen force was discoursing a "Dutch Ditties" waltz as it turned the corner above. And now, the voices of the barkers were heard in the land.
"Ladies and Gentlemen," came the leathern tones of one unseen announcer, "one hour before the big show begins in the main tent we will give a grand free balloon ascension!"
"Remember," adjured a second Unseen, "one price admits you to all parts of the big show!"
"Lemo—lemo—ice cold lemonade—five cents a glass!" shouted a youthful vender.
"You ought to quaff one beaker of it to Sir Walter Scott's memory, Mrs. Batholommey," observed McPherson.
But the din of the oncoming parade drowned his voice. The whole roomful, from Marta down to Willem, were thronging into the bay window. They were all children again. A touch of circus had renewed their youth as by the wave of a magic wand. Willem broke into a cry of utter joy and pointed ecstatically at the open window.
The next moment a clown, white and vermilion of face, clad in the traditional white, black, and scarlet motley of his tribe, had leaped cat-like upon the window sill and swept the room with his painted grin. In his hands he held a great bunch of variegated circus bills. Tossing a half-dozen of these at the feet of the all-absorbed spectators, he cried in high cracked falsetto:
"Well, well, WELL! Here we are again, good people! Billy Miller's Big Show! Larger—greater—grander than ever. Everything new! Come and see the wild animals! Hear the lions roar!"
Wheeling suddenly towards Mrs. Batholommey he pointed a whitened forefinger at her and broke into a truly frightful roar. The good lady jumped at least six inches from the ground.
"Steady, ma'am!" exhorted the clown. "I won't let him bite you! Come one, come all! Come see the diving deer! The human fly, Mademoiselle Zarella!" he added, addressing the rector. "She walks suspended from the ceiling! One ring and no confusion!" he confided to the delightedly smiling Peter. "And all for the price of admission! Remember the grand free exhibition one hour before the big show!"
He paused, catching sight of Willem for the first time. Now, it is a well-grounded tradition in one-ring circus life that no clown stays long in the business or scores a hit in it unless he is genuinely fond of children. Noting the all-absorbing bliss and adoration in Willem's wide eyes, the clown grinned at the boy in right brotherly fashion.
"Howdy!" said he cordially. "Shake!"
Marvelling, overcome with rapture, feeling as though the proffered honour was one far too wonderful to be real, Willem shyly extended his hand and met the friendly grasp of the flour-dusted fingers. The clown, striking an attitude, began in shrill, exaggerated diction, to chant the antiquated "Frog Opera" song:
"Uncle Rat has gone to town,—Ha-H'm!
Uncle Rat has gone to town,"
he sang on, addressing Willem,
"To buy his niece a wedding gown."
"Ha-H'm!" intoned Willem, delightedly; laughing aloud as he realised he was actually singing with a real live clown.
"What shall the wedding breakfast be?"
continued the clown, interrogating the equally youthful and delighted Peter Grimm. And this time more voices than Peter's and Willem's caught up the refrain:
"Ha-H'm!
Hard-boiled eggs and a cup of tea,"
sang the clown. And again from Willem and the rest came the answering:
"Ha-H'm!"
"Billy Miller's Big Show!" yelled the clown. "Come one, come all! So long, Sonny!"
He was gone. The others came back to earth. But Willem was still in the wonder clouds. It had been to him an experience to rehearse a thousand times, to dream over, to remember forever. Peter Grimm, reading the boy's thoughts as could only a heart that must ever be boyish, beckoned Willem to him, as Kathrien and Marta departed to their interrupted work in the dining-room and the rest looked half ashamed at their momentary excitement over so garish and trivial a thing.
"Willem!" called Grimm.
"Ja, Mynheer," answered the boy, coming slowly, his face still alight with his tremendous adventure of a moment ago.
"Willem," repeated Grimm, "you wouldn't care to go to that circus, would you? Wouldn't it be pretty stupid?"
"Stupid!" gasped the boy. "Oh!"
"Well," said Peter, "suppose you go, then?"
"Go? Really, Mynheer Grimm?"
"Go get the seats," ordered Grimm. "Here's the money. Get two front seats. Two. We'll both go. We'll make a night of it, you and I. We'll stay out till—till ten o'clock!"
The vision of this bliss was too much for Willem's English.
"Ekar, ekar na hat circus!" he babbled dazedly.
Then he rushed up impulsively to Peter and seized the big, kindly hand in both his own.
"Oh, Mynheer Grimm!" he squealed in ecstasy. "There ain't any one else like you in the world. And—and—when the other fellows laugh at your funny hat, I don't."
"What?" asked Grimm, perplexed. "Is my hat funny?"
The boy was vibrant with laughter, drunk with anticipation. But, momentarily straightening his glowing face with a cast of semi-gravity, he said:
"And—and—Mynheer Grimm—it's too bad you've got to die!"