Hedrick Madison, like too many other
people, had never thought seriously about the moon;
nor ever had he encouraged it to become his familiar;
and he underwent his first experience of its incomparable
betrayals one brilliant night during the last week
of that hot month. The preface to this romantic
evening was substantial and prosaic: four times
during dinner was he copiously replenished with hash,
which occasioned so rich a surfeit within him that,
upon the conclusion of the meal, he found himself in
no condition to retort appropriately to a solicitous
warning from Cora to keep away from the cat.
Indeed, it was half an hour later, and he was sitting to
his own consciousness too heavily upon the
back fence, when belated inspiration arrived.
But there is no sound where there is no ear to hear,
and no repartee, alas! when the wretch who said the
first part has gone, so that Cora remained unscathed
as from his alley solitude Hedrick hurled in the teeth
of the rising moon these bitter words:
“Oh, no; our cat only eats soft
meat!”
He renewed a morbid silence, and the
moon, with its customary deliberation, swung clear
of a sweeping branch of the big elm in the front yard
and shone full upon him. Nothing warned the fated
youth not to sit there; no shadow of imminent catastrophe
tinted that brightness: no angel whisper came
to him, bidding him begone and to go in
a hurry and as far as possible. No; he sat upon
the fence an inoffensive lad, and except
for still feeling his hash somewhat, and a gradually
dispersing rancour concerning the cat at
peace. It is for such lulled mortals that the
ever-lurking Furies save their most hideous surprises.
Chin on palms, he looked idly at the
moon, and the moon inscrutably returned his stare.
Plausible, bright, bland, it gave no sign that it
was at its awful work. For the bride of night
is like a card-dealer whose fingers move so swiftly
through the pack the trickery goes unseen.
This moon upon which he was placidly
gazing, because he had nothing else to do, betokened
nought to Hedrick: to him it was the moon of
any other night, the old moon; certainly no moon of
his delight. Withal, it may never be gazed upon
so fixedly and so protractedly no matter
how languidly with entire impunity.
That light breeds a bug in the brain. Who can
deny how the moon wrought this thing under the hair
of unconscious Hedrick, or doubt its responsibility
for the thing that happened?
“Little boy!”
It was a very soft, small voice, silky
and queer; and at first Hedrick had little suspicion
that it could be addressing him: the most rigid
self-analysis could have revealed to him no possibility
of his fitting so ignominious a description.
“Oh, little boy!”
He looked over his shoulder and saw,
standing in the alley behind him, a girl of about
his own age. She was daintily dressed and had
beautiful hair which was all shining in pale gold.
“Little boy!”
She was smiling up at him, and once
more she used that wantonly inaccurate vocative:
“Little boy!”
Hedrick grunted unencouragingly. “Who you
callin’ `little boy’?”
For reply she began to climb the fence.
It was high, but the young lady was astonishingly
agile, and not even to be deterred by several faint
wails from tearing and ripping fabrics casualties
which appeared to be entirely beneath her notice.
Arriving at the top rather dishevelled, and with irregular
pennons here and there flung to the breeze from
her attire, she seated herself cosily beside the dumbfounded
Hedrick.
She turned her face to him and smiled and
there was something about her smile which Hedrick
did not like. It discomforted him; nothing more.
In sunlight he would have had the better chance to
comprehend; but, unhappily, this was moonshine.
“Kiss me, little boy!” she said.
“I won’t!” exclaimed
the shocked and indignant Hedrick, edging uneasily
away from her.
“Let’s play,” she said cheerfully.
“Play what?”
“I like chickens. Did you know I like chickens?”
The rather singular lack of connection
in her remarks struck him as a misplaced effort at
humour.
“You’re having lots of fun with me, aren’t
you?” he growled.
She instantly moved close to him and lifted her face
to his.
“Kiss me, darling little boy!” she said.
There was something more than uncommonly
queer about this stranger, an unearthliness of which
he was confusedly perceptive, but she was not without
a curious kind of prettiness, and her pale gold hair
was beautiful. The doomed lad saw the moon shining
through it.
“Kiss me, darling little boy!” she repeated.
His head whirled; for the moment she seemed divine.
George Washington used profanity at the Battle of
Monmouth.
Hedrick kissed her.
He instantly pushed her away with
strong distaste. “There!” he said
angrily. “I hope that’ll satisfy you!”
He belonged to his sex.
“Kiss me some more, darling
little boy!” she cried, and flung her arms about
him.
With a smothered shout of dismay he
tried to push her off, and they fell from the fence
together, into the yard, at the cost of further and
almost fatal injuries to the lady’s apparel.
Hedrick was first upon his feet.
“Haven’t you got any sense?”
he demanded.
She smiled unwaveringly, rose (without
assistance) and repeated: “Kiss me some
more, darling little boy!”
“No, I won’t! I wouldn’t for
a thousand dollars!”
Apparently, she did not consider this
discouraging. She began to advance endearingly,
while he retreated backward. “Kiss me some ”
“I won’t, I tell you!”
Hedrick kept stepping away, moving in a desperate
circle. He resorted to a brutal formula:
“You make me sick!”
“Kiss me some more, darling lit ”
“I won’t!” he bellowed. “And
if you say that again I’ll ”
“Kiss me some more, darling
little boy!” She flung herself at him, and with
a yell of terror he turned and ran at top-speed.
She pursued, laughing sweetly, and
calling loudly as she ran, “Kiss me some more,
darling little boy! Kiss me some more, darling
little boy!”
The stricken Hedrick knew not whither
to direct his flight: he dared not dash for the
street with this imminent tattered incubus she
was almost upon him and he frantically made
for the kitchen door, only to swerve with a gasp of
despair as his foot touched the step, for she was
at his heels, and he was sickeningly assured she would
cheerfully follow him through the house, shouting
that damning refrain for all ears. A strangling
fear took him by the throat if Cora should
come to be a spectator of this unspeakable flight,
if Cora should hear that horrid plea for love!
Then farewell peace; indeed, farewell all joy in life
forever!
Panting sobbingly, he ducked under
the amorous vampire’s arm and fled on.
He zigzagged desperately to and fro across the broad,
empty backyard, a small hand ever and anon managing
to clutch his shoulder, the awful petition in his
ears:
“Kiss me some more, darling little boy!”
“Hedrick!”
Emerging from the kitchen door, Laura
stood and gazed in wonder as the two eerie figures
sped by her, circled, ducked, dodged, flew madly on.
This commonplace purlieu was become the scene of a
witch-chase; the moonlight fell upon the ghastly flitting
face of the pursued, uplifted in agony, white, wet,
with fay eyes; also it illumined the unreal elf following
close, a breeze-blown fantasy in rags.
“Kiss me some more, darling little boy!”
Laura uttered a sharp exclamation.
“Stand still, Hedrick!” she called.
“You must!”
Hedrick made a piteous effort to increase his speed.
“It’s Lolita Martin,”
called Laura. “She must have her way or
nothing can be done with her. Stand still!”
Hedrick had never heard of Lolita
Martin, but the added information concerning her was
not ineffective: it operated as a spur; and Laura
joined the hunt.
“Stand still!” she cried
to the wretched quarry. “She’s run
away. She must be taken home. Stop, Hedrick!
You must stop!”
Hedrick had no intention of stopping,
but Laura was a runner, and, as he dodged the other,
caught and held him fast. The next instant, Lolita,
laughing happily, flung her arms round his neck from
behind.
“Lemme go!” shuddered Hedrick. “Lemme
go!”
“Kiss me again, darl ”
“I woof!” He became inarticulate.
“She isn’t quite right,”
his sister whispered hurriedly in his ear. “She
has spells when she’s weak mentally. You
must be kind to her. She only wants you to ”
“`_Only_’!” he echoed
hoarsely. “I won’t ki ”
He was unable to finish the word.
“We must get her home,”
said Laura anxiously. “Will you come with
me, Lolita, dear?”
Apparently Lolita had no consciousness
whatever of Laura’s presence. Instead of
replying, she tightened her grasp upon Hedrick and
warmly reiterated her request.
“Shut up, you parrot!” hissed the goaded
boy.
“Perhaps she’ll go if
you let her walk with her arms round your neck,”
suggested Laura.
“If I what?”
“Let’s try it. We’ve
got to get her home; her mother must be frantic about
her. Come, let’s see if she’ll go
with us that way.”
With convincing earnestness, Hedrick
refused to make the experiment until Laura suggested
that he remain with Lolita while she summoned assistance;
then, as no alternative appeared, his spirit broke
utterly, and he consented to the trial, stipulating
with a last burst of vehemence that the progress of
the unthinkable pageant should be through the alley.
“Come, Lolita,” said Laura
coaxingly. “We’re going for a nice
walk.” At the adjective, Hedrick’s
burdened shoulders were racked with a brief spasm,
which recurred as his sister added: “Your
darling little boy will let you keep hold of him.”
Lolita seemed content. Laughing
gayly, she offered no opposition, but, maintaining
her embrace with both arms and walking somewhat sidewise,
went willingly enough; and the three slowly crossed
the yard, passed through the empty stable and out
into the alley. When they reached the cross-street
at the alley’s upper end, Hedrick balked flatly.
Laura expostulated, then entreated.
Hedrick refused with sincere loathing to be seen upon
the street occupying his present position in the group.
Laura assured him that there was no one to see; he
replied that the moon was bright and the evening early;
he would die, and readily, but he would not set foot
in the street. Unfortunately, he had selected
an unfavourable spot for argument: they were
already within a yard or two of the street; and a
strange boy, passing, stopped and observed, and whistled
discourteously.
“Ain’t he the spooner!”
remarked this unknown with hideous admiration.
“I’ll thank you,”
returned Hedrick haughtily, “to go on about your
own business.”
“Kiss me some more, darling little boy!”
said Lolita.
The strange boy squawked, wailed,
screamed with laughter, howled the loving petition
in a dozen keys of mockery, while Hedrick writhed
and Lolita clung. Enriched by a new and great
experience, the torturer trotted on, leaving viperish
cachinnations in his wake.
But the martyrdom was at an end.
A woman, hurrying past, bareheaded, was greeted by
a cry of delight from Lolita, who released Hedrick
and ran to her with outstretched arms.
“We were bringing her home,
Mrs. Martin,” said Laura, reassuringly.
“She’s all right; nothing’s the matter
except that her dress got torn. We found her
playing in our yard.”
“I thank you a thousand times,
Miss Madison,” cried Lolita’s mother,
and flutteringly plunged into a description of her
anxiety, her search for Lolita, and concluded with
renewed expressions of gratitude for the child’s
safe return, an outpouring of thankfulness and joy
wholly incomprehensible to Hedrick.
“Not at all,” said Laura
cheerfully. “Come, Hedrick. We’ll
go home by the street, I think.” She touched
his shoulder, and he went with her in stunned obedience.
He was not able to face the incredible thing that
had happened to him: he walked in a trance of
horror.
“Poor little girl!” said
Laura gently, with what seemed to her brother an indefensibly
misplaced compassion. “Usually they have
her live in an institution for people afflicted as
she is, but they brought her home for a visit last
week, I believe. Of course you didn’t understand,
but I think you should have been more thoughtful.
Really, you shouldn’t have flirted with her.”
Hedrick stopped short.
“`_Flirted_’!” His
voice was beginning to show symptoms of changing,
this year; it rose to a falsetto wail, flickered and
went out.
With the departure of Lolita in safety,
what had seemed bizarre and piteous became obscured,
and another aspect of the adventure was presented
to Laura. The sufferings of the arrogant are not
wholly depressing to the spectator; and of arrogance
Hedrick had ever been a master. She began to
shake; a convulsion took her, and suddenly she sat
upon the curbstone without dignity, and laughed as
he had never seen her.
A horrid distrust of her rose within
him: he began to realize in what plight he stood,
what terrors o’erhung.
“Look here,” he said miserably,
“are you you aren’t you
don’t have to go and and talk
about this, do you?”
“No, Hedrick,” she responded,
rising and controlling herself somewhat. “Not
so long as you’re good.”
This was no reassuring answer.
“And politer to Cora,” she added.
Seemingly he heard the lash of a slave-whip
crack in the air. The future grew dark.
“I know you’ll try” she
said; and the unhappy lad felt that her assurance
was justified; but she had not concluded the sentence “darling
little boy,” she capped it, choking slightly.
“No other little girl ever fell
in love with you, did there, Hedrick?” she asked,
and, receiving an incoherent but furious reply, she
was again overcome, so that she must lean against the
fence to recover. “It seems so so
curious,” she explained, gasping, “that
the first one the the only one should
be an a an ”
She was unable to continue.
Hedrick’s distrust became painfully
increased: he began to feel that he disliked
Laura.
She was still wiping her eyes and
subject to recurrent outbursts when they reached their
own abode; and as he bitterly flung himself into a
chair upon the vacant front porch, he heard her stifling
an attack as she mounted the stairs to her own room.
He swung the chair about, with its back to the street,
and sat facing the wall. He saw nothing.
There are profundities in the abyss which reveal no
glimpse of the sky.
Presently he heard his father coughing
near by; and the sound was hateful, because it seemed
secure and unshamed. It was a cough of moral
superiority; and just then the son would have liked
to believe that his parent’s boyhood had been
one of degradation as complete as his own; but no
one with this comfortable cough could ever have plumbed
such depths: his imagination refused the picture
he was bitterly certain that Mr. Madison had never
kissed an idiot.
Hedrick had a dread that his father
might speak to him; he was in no condition for light
conversation. But Mr. Madison was unaware of
his son’s near presence, and continued upon his
purposeless way. He was smoking his one nightly
cigar and enjoying the moonlight. He drifted
out toward the sidewalk and was accosted by a passing
acquaintance, a comfortable burgess of sixty, leading
a child of six or seven, by the hand.
“Out taking the air, are you,
Mr. Madison?” said the pedestrian, pausing.
“Yes; just trying to cool off,”
returned the other. “How are you, Pryor,
anyway? I haven’t seen you for a long time.”
“Not since last summer,”
said Pryor. “I only get here once or twice
a year, to see my married daughter. I always try
to spend August with her if I can. She’s
still living in that little house, over on the next
street, I bought for her through your real-estate
company. I suppose you’re still in the same
business?”
“Yes. Pretty slack, these days.”
“I suppose so, I suppose so,”
responded Mr. Pryor, nodding. “Summer,
I suppose it usually is. Well, I don’t know
when I’ll be going out on the road again myself.
Business is pretty slack all over the country this
year.”
“Let’s see I’ve
forgotten,” said Madison ruminatively. “You
travel, don’t you?”
“For a New York house,”
affirmed Mr. Pryor. He did not, however, mention
his “line.” “Yes-sir,”
he added, merely as a decoration, and then said briskly:
“I see you have a fine family, Mr. Madison;
yes-sir, a fine family; I’ve passed here several
times lately and I’ve noticed ’em:
fine family. Let’s see, you’ve got
four, haven’t you?”
“Three,” said Madison. “Two
girls and a boy.”
“Well, sir, that’s mighty
nice,” observed Mr. Pryor; “mighty
nice! I only have my one daughter, and of course
me living in New York when I’m at home, and
her here, why, I don’t get to see much of her.
You got both your daughters living with you, haven’t
you?”
“Yes, right here at home.”
“Let’s see: neither of ’em’s
married, I believe?”
“No; not yet.”
“Seems to me now,” said
Pryor, taking off his glasses and wiping them, “seems
to me I did hear somebody say one of ’em was
going to be married engaged, maybe.”
“No,” said Madison. “Not that
I know of.”
“Well, I suppose you’d
be the first to know! Yes-sir.” And
both men laughed their appreciation of this folly.
“They’re mighty good-looking girls, that’s
certain,” continued Mr. Pryor. “And
one of ’em’s as fine a dresser as you’ll
meet this side the Rue de la Paix.”
“You mean in Paris?” asked
Madison, slightly surprised at this allusion.
“You’ve been over there, Pryor?”
“Oh, sometimes,” was the
response. “My business takes me over, now
and then. I think it’s one of your
daughters I’ve noticed dresses so well.
Isn’t one of ’em a mighty pretty girl about
twenty-one or two, with a fine head of hair sort of
lightish brown, beautiful figure, and carries a white
parasol with a green lining sometimes?”
“Yes, that’s Cora, I guess.”
“Pretty name, too,” said
Pryor approvingly. “Yes-sir. I saw
her going into a florist’s, downtown, the other
day, with a fine-looking young fellow I
can’t think of his name. Let’s see:
my daughter was with me, and she’d heard his
name said his family used to be big people
in this town and ”
“Oh,” said Madison, “young Corliss.”
“Corliss!” exclaimed Mr.
Pryor, with satisfaction. “That’s
it, Corliss. Well, sir,” he chuckled, “from
the way he was looking at your Miss Cora it struck
me he seemed kind of anxious for her name to be Corliss,
too.”
“Well, hardly I expect,”
said the other. “They just barely know
each other: he’s only been here a few weeks;
they haven’t had time to get much acquainted,
you see.”
“I suppose not,” agreed
Mr. Pryor, with perfect readiness. “I suppose
not. I’ll bet he tries all he can
to get acquainted though; he looked pretty smart to
me. Doesn’t he come about as often as the
law allows?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,”
said Madison indifferently. “He doesn’t
know many people about here any more, and it’s
lonesome for him at the hotel. But I guess he
comes to see the whole family; I left him in the library
a little while ago, talking to my wife.”
“That’s the way!
Get around the old folks first!” Mr. Pryor chuckled
cordially; then in a mildly inquisitive tone he said:
“Seems to be a fine, square young fellow, I expect?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Pretty name, `Cora’,” said Pryor.
“What’s this little girl’s
name?” Mr. Madison indicated the child, who
had stood with heroic patience throughout the incomprehensible
dialogue.
“Lottie, for her mother. She’s a
good little girl.”
“She is so! I’ve
got a young son she ought to know,” remarked
Mr. Madison serenely, with an elderly father’s
total unconsciousness of the bridgeless gap between
seven and thirteen. “He’d like to
play with her. I’ll call him.”
“I expect we better be getting
on,” said Pryor. “It’s near
Lottie’s bedtime; we just came out for our evening
walk.”
“Well, he can come and shake
hands with her anyway,” urged Hedrick’s
father. “Then they’ll know each other,
and they can play some other time.” He
turned toward the house and called loudly:
“Hedrick!”
There was no response. Behind
the back of his chair Hedrick could not be seen.
He was still sitting immovable, his eyes torpidly
fixed upon the wall.
“Hed-rick!”
Silence.
“Oh, Hed-rick!”
shouted his father. “Come out here!
I want you to meet a little girl! Come and see
a nice little girl!”
Mr. Pryor’s grandchild was denied
the pleasure. At the ghastly words “little
girl,” Hedrick dropped from his chair flat
upon the floor, crawled to the end of the porch, wriggled
through the railing, and immersed himself in deep
shadow against the side of the house.
Here he removed his shoes, noiselessly
mounted to the sill of one of the library windows,
then reconnoitred through a slit in the blinds before
entering.
The gas burned low in the “drop-light” almost
too dimly to reveal the two people upon a sofa across
the room. It was a faint murmur from one of them
that caused Hedrick to pause and peer more sharply.
They were Cora and Corliss; he was bending close to
her; her face was lifting to his.
“Ah, kiss me! Kiss me!” she whispered.
Hedrick dropped from the sill, climbed
through a window of the kitchen, hurried up the back-stairs,
and reached his own apartment in time to be violently
ill in seclusion.