He Comes Up Smiling

by Charles Sherman

"Why, you see that is just what I always fancied. He used to preach and have a church—but if the papers say he was a cop, he probably was."

"It's a wise child that knows his own father," said Henrietta. "Come to supper everybody."

Bartlett spread the filmy paper napkin on his knees and taking the plate Henrietta handed him, balanced it on his lap with great nicety. He was so sure that the Watermelon was William Hargrave Batchelor that it never occurred to him to doubt it. There were the cards, the monogram on the automobile and the general to vouch for it. The papers were a bit wrong.

Supper over, the general conceived the sudden inspiration of tinkering a while with the cars. Alphonse stood by to assist and the others wandered off down the road before turning in for the night.

Billy and the Watermelon soon drifted away by themselves up a tiny cow lane, fragrant with sweetbrier. They wandered up it side by side, like two children, neither saying a thing, content to be together. At the end of the lane, they leaned for a while on the pasture bars. The sultriness of the earlier part of the evening had passed. The thunder was less ominous and only sheet lightning, low on the horizon, was visible. A breeze, cool and sweet, whispered by. The fireflies danced in gay little flashes of light among the shadows.

The two stood side by side, their elbows on the top rail, their hands before them. They said nothing. There was nothing to say, just the night and they two, alone, among the sweetbriers and the fireflies.

Now and then Billy sighed, unconsciously and happily. A great silence had enwrapped Billy for the last two days, a silence in which she was content to dream and in which words seemed superfluous and uncalled for. She wondered that Henrietta could talk so much. What was there to say? Billy had never been in love. She wondered vaguely if the enfolding content, the longing for solitude and her own thoughts were forerunners of approaching death. The good die young, and Billy felt that she was content to go, to drift away into the eternal peace of the after life. She was not of an analytical disposition and she only knew that she was happy, causelessly happy, and did not ask the reason. The Watermelon stood so closely beside her that once when he turned she could smell the tobacco on his breath. She wanted to rub her head on his shoulder like a kitten, and wondered if she were growing weak-minded.

Without warning the bushes at her side parted and a cow with great gentle eyes peered out at them, so near that Billy could feel the breath, warm and sweet, upon her cheek. With a little cry, she shrank close to the Watermelon.

He felt her slender body, soft and yielding, nestling against him, smelt the fragrance of her curly hair, and suddenly a great tide of longing, of passion, of desire welled up in him and choked him. He wanted to crush her to him, to cover eyes and hair with kisses, to hold her so tightly that she would cry for release. All the ungoverned feelings of the past few years surged over him and threatened to carry both for ever out of sight of land and decency. But, blindly, not knowing what he did, he turned from her and picked up a stick to hurl at the cow. She had turned to him in her fear, and with the honor of his clerical father, he controlled himself.

Billy laughed and straightened up, as the cow, grieved and surprised, backed off in the dark. "I'm not afraid of cows, Willie," said she. "Don't you know it? She just came so suddenly I was startled."