He Comes Up Smiling

by Charles Sherman

It was very early. The freshness of night still clung to fields and wood. The air was full of the clamor of birds and from the valley below came the stentorian crow of a rooster. Little wisps of white clouds drifted by in the deep blue of the sky and a breeze played gently with the girls' long auto veils.

So in the freshness of the early morning they dipped down the hill into the valley, passed farm-houses and corn lands. They stopped about nine at a farm-house and partook of a breakfast of coffee, bacon and eggs. Alphonse filled the cars at a village store and they went on. The glory of the day, the close proximity of Henrietta, who sat beside him, dainty, merry, feminine, the success so far of his plan, which in his saner moments he still cherished, raised Bartlett's spirits higher and higher and they went faster and faster. They swept over the boundary line into Maine with a rush, taking the hills at high speed and skimming into the valleys, now entering a stretch of cool dark wood, now tearing into the sunshine again, past corn-fields, hay-fields, and rocky pastures. Cows whisked their tails at the cars' approach and dashed awkwardly away from the fence rails. Chickens squawked and tore madly to safety with flapping wings. Farmhouses appeared and disappeared in a cloud of dust. Lakes were seen one moment and gone the next. They swept around a bend in the road and into a man trap, a pile of wood across the road and three farmers waiting grimly with loaded guns.

The Watermelon in the tonneau of the general's car, with Billy, straightened up with a sickening fear of being arrested in her presence. The fun and excitement of the adventure had disappeared. In their stead stalked the grim reality of the fear of exposure, of the surprise, scorn, perhaps anger, maybe pity, he would see in Billy's eyes. When they parted and the Bartletts returned to the city, they would learn how they had been deceived, and Billy would be angry, scornful and a bit amused, for Billy enjoyed a joke even against herself and her ideas of humor were young and of the same style, more or less, as those of the Watermelon. But if he could he would drop out of her sight, first, the good-natured, successful young financier, not slink away, the shiftless, beaten tramp.

The general for a moment considered it merely another means taken by the conspiracy to rob him of his car and contemplated stern defiance of the law's command to stop.

"It's not highway robbery, Charlie," laughed Bartlett. "We've been going a bit fast and have to pay up, that's all."

Haled before the justice of the peace in the village store, Bartlett paid his fine with casual indifference, the general with the haughty disapproval of a judge presiding at the bar of justice, while Henrietta, with gentle condescension, bought some highly-scented soap, "to help them out," she explained, meaning the owners of the store, and the Watermelon, to all outward appearances, frankly bored by the proceedings, presented Billy with a choice assortment of gaily tinted, dusty candy.

They put up for the night at a small town in Maine. It consisted of four or five scattered houses, a school, a store, and a barrel factory. They found rooms in one of the houses and after supper, Henrietta, Bartlett and the general sat on the stoop, while the men smoked and the stars came out one by one, the frogs croaked dismally and the whippoorwills called and called.

The Watermelon asked Billy to take a walk with him and she consented. She must never know, thought the Watermelon, with boyish self-loathing, that he had dared to insult her by thinking of love, but it would not hurt any one but himself to walk with her. There was only a day or two more at the most before they parted, she to go to Newport and Bar Harbor, and he to drift out on the tide again, one with James and Mike.

They walked up the road in the soft beauty of the summer night. Billy was tired and thoughtful, her girlish eyes catching a far off vision of womanhood and what it meant. Unconsciously to both, a man's soul had spoken and her woman's soul had stirred in answer, stirred, but would it fully waken?

The Watermelon rolled a cigarette and puffed moodily, too busy himself with thoughts to talk, and the Watermelon did not like to think. He was not used to it.