ALTHOUGH Whilomville
was in no sense a summer resort, the advent of the warm season meant much to
it, for then came visitors from the city--people of considerable
confidence--alighting upon their country cousins. Moreover, many citizens who
could afford to do so escaped at this time to the sea-side. The town, with the
commercial life quite taken out of it, drawled and drowsed through long months,
during which nothing was worse than the white dust which arose behind every
vehicle at blinding noon, and nothing was finer than the cool sheen of the hose
sprays over the cropped lawns under the many maples in the twilight.
One summer the
Trescotts had a visitation. Mrs. Trescott owned a cousin who was a painter of
high degree. I had almost said that he was of national reputation, but, come to
think of it, it is better to say that almost everybody in the United States who
knew about art and its travail knew about him. He had picked out a wife, and
naturally, looking at him, one wondered how he had done it. She was quick,
beautiful, imperious, while he was quiet, slow, and misty. She was a veritable
queen of health, while he, apparently, was of a most brittle constitution. When
he played tennis, particularly, he looked every minute as if he were going to
break.
They lived in New York,
in awesome apartments wherein Japan and Persia, and indeed all the world,
confounded the observer. At the end was a cathedral-like studio. They had one
child. Perhaps it would be better to say that they had one CHILD. It was a
girl. When she came to Whilomville with her parents, it was patent that she had
an inexhaustible store of white frocks, and that her voice was high and
commanding. These things the town knew quickly. Other things it was doomed to
discover by a process.
Her effect upon the
children of the Trescott neighborhood was singular. They at first feared, then
admired, then embraced. In two days she was a Begum. All day long her voice
could be heard directing, drilling, and compelling those free-born children;
and to say that they felt oppression would be wrong, for they really fought for
records of loyal obedience.
All went well until one
day was her birthday.
On the morning of this
day she walked out into the Trescott garden and said to her father,
confidently, "Papa, give me some money, because this is my birthday."
He looked dreamily up
from his easel. "Your birthday?" he murmured. Her envisioned father
was never energetic enough to be irritable unless some one broke through into
that place where he lived with the desires of his life. But neither wife nor
child ever heeded or even understood the temperamental values, and so some part
of him had grown hardened to their inroads. "Money?" he said.
"Here." He handed her a five-dollar bill. It was that he did not at
all understand the nature of a five-dollar bill. He was deaf to it. He had it;
he gave it; that was all.
She sallied forth to a
waiting people--Jimmie Trescott, Dan Earl, Ella Earl, the Margate twins, the
three Phelps children, and others. "I've got some pennies now," she
cried, waving the bill, "and I am going to buy some candy." They were
deeply stirred by this announcement. Most children are penniless three hundred
days in the year, and to another possessing five pennies they pay deference. To
little Cora waving a bright green note these children paid heathenish homage.
In some disorder they thronged after her to a small shop on Bridge Street hill.
First of all came ice-cream. Seated in the comic little back parlor, they
clamored shrilly over plates of various flavors, and the shopkeeper marvelled
that cream could vanish so quickly down throats that seemed wide open, always,
for the making of excited screams. These children represented the families of
most excellent people. They were all born in whatever purple there was to be
had in the vicinity of Whilomville. The Margate twins, for example, were out-
and-out prize-winners. With their long golden curls and their countenances of
similar vacuity, they shone upon the front bench of all Sunday-school
functions, hand in hand, while their uplifted mother felt about her the envy of
a hundred other parents, and less heavenly children scoffed from near the door.
Then there was little
Dan Earl, probably the nicest boy in the world, gentle, fine grained, obedient
to the point where he obeyed anybody. Jimmie Trescott himself was, indeed, the
only child who was at all versed in villany, but in these particular days he
was on his very good behavior. As a matter of fact, he was in love. The beauty
of his regal little cousin had stolen his manly heart.
Yes, they were all most
excellent children, but, loosened upon this candy-shop with five dollars, they
resembled, in a tiny way, drunken revelling soldiers within the walls of a
stormed city. Upon the heels of ice-cream and cake came chocolate mice,
butter-scotch, "everlastings," chocolate cigars, taffy-on-a-stick,
taffy-on-a-slate-pencil, and many semi- transparent devices resembling lions,
tigers, elephants, horses, cats, dogs, cows, sheep, tables, chairs, engines
(both railway and for the fighting of fire), soldiers, fine ladies, odd-looking
men, clocks, watches, revolvers, rabbits, and bedsteads. A cent was the price
of a single wonder.
Some of the children,
going quite daft, soon had thought to make fight over the spoils, but their
queen ruled with an iron grip. Her first inspiration was to satisfy her own
fancies, but as soon as that was done she mingled prodigality with a fine
justice, dividing, balancing, bestowing, and sometimes taking away from
somebody even that which he had.
It was an orgy. In
thirty-five minutes those respectable children looked as if they had been
dragged at the tail of a chariot. The sacred Margate twins, blinking and
grunting, wished to take seat upon the floor, and even the most durable Jimmie
Trescott found occasion to lean against the counter, wearing at the time a
solemn and abstracted air, as if he expected something to happen to him
shortly.
Of course their belief
had been in an unlimited capacity, but they found there was an end. The
shopkeeper handed the queen her change.
"Two seventy-three
from five leaves two twenty-seven, Miss Cora," he said, looking upon her
with admiration.
She turned swiftly to
her clan. "O-oh!" she cried, in amazement. "Look how much I have
left!" They gazed at the coins in her palm. They knew then that it was not
their capacities which were endless; it was the five dollars.
The queen led the way to
the street. "We must think up some way of spending more money," she
said, frowning. They stood in silence, awaiting her further speech.
Suddenly she clapped
her hands and screamed with delight. "Come on!" she cried. "I
know what let's do." Now behold, she had discovered the red and white pole
in front of the shop of one William Neeltje, a barber by trade.
It becomes necessary to
say a few words concerning Neeltje. He was new to the town. He had come and
opened a dusty little shop on dusty Bridge Street hill, and although the
neighborhood knew from the courier winds that his diet was mainly cabbage, they
were satisfied with that meagre data. Of course Riefsnyder came to investigate
him for the local Barbers' Union, but he found in him only sweetness and light,
with a willingness to charge any price at all for a shave or a hair-cut. In
fact, the advent of Neeltje would have made barely a ripple upon the placid
bosom of Whilomville if it were not that his name was Neeltje.
At first the people
looked at his sign-board out of the eye corner, and wonder- ed lazily why any
one should bear the name of Neeltje; but as time went on, men spoke to other
men, saying, "How do you pronounce the name of that barber up there on
Bridge Street hill?" And then, before any could prevent it, the best minds
of the town were splintering their lances against William Neeltje's sign-board.
If a man had a mental superior, he guided him seductively to this name, and
watched with glee his wrecking. The clergy of the town even entered the lists.
There was one among them who had taken a collegiate prize in Syriac, as well as
in several less opaque languages, and the other clergymen-- at one of their
weekly meetings--sought to betray him into this ambush. He pronounced the name
correctly, but that mattered little, since none of them knew whether he did or
did not; and so they took triumph according to their ignorance. Under these
arduous circumstances it was certain that the town should look for a nickname,
and at this time the nickname was in process of formation. So William Neeltje
lived on with his secret, smiling foolishly toward the world.
"Come on,"
cried little Cora. "Let's all get our hair cut. That's what let's do.
Let's all get our hair cut! Come on! Come on! Come on!" The others were
carried off their feet by the fury of this assault. To get their hair cut! What
joy! Little did they know if this were fun; they only knew that their small
leader said it was fun. Chocolate-stained but confident, the band marched into
William Neeltje's barber shop.
"We wish to get
our hair cut," said little Cora, haughtily.
Neeltje, in his shirt
sleeves, stood looking at them with his half-idiot smile.
"Hurry, now!"
commanded the queen. A dray-horse toiled step by step, step by step, up Bridge
Street hill; a far woman's voice arose; there could be heard the ceaseless
hammers of shingling carpenters; all was summer peace. "Come on, now.
Who's goin' first? Come on, Ella; you go first. Gettin' our hair cut! Oh, what
fun!"
Little Ella Earl would
not, however, be first in the chair. She was drawn toward it by a singular
fascination, but at the same time she was afraid of it, and so she hung back,
saying: "No! You go first! No! You go first!" The question was
precipitated by the twins and one of the Phelps children. They made
simultaneous rush for the chair, and screamed and kicked, each pair preventing
the third child. The queen entered this melee and decided in favor of the
Phelps boy. He ascended the chair. Thereat an awed silence fell upon the band.
And always William Neeltje smiled fatuously.
He tucked a cloth in
the neck of the Phelps boy, and taking scissors, began to cut his hair. The
group of children came closer and closer. Even the queen was deeply moved.
"Does it hurt any?" she asked, in a wee voice.
"Naw," said
the Phelps boy, with dignity. "Anyhow, I've had m' hair cut afore."
When he appeared to
them looking very soldierly with his cropped little head, there was a tumult
over the chair. The Margate twins howled; Jimmie Trescott was kicking them on
the shins. It was a fight.
But the twins could not
prevail, being the smallest of all the children. The queen herself took the
chair, and ordered Neeltje as if he were a lady's-maid. To the floor there fell
proud ringlets, blazing even there in their humiliation with a full fine bronze
light. Then Jimmie Trescott, then Ella Earl (two long ash- colored plaits),
then a Phelps girl, then another Phelps girl; and so on from head to head. The
ceremony received unexpected check when the turn came to Dan Earl. This lad,
usually docile to any rein, had suddenly grown mulishly obstinate. No, he would
not, he would not. He himself did not seem to know why he refused to have his
hair cut, but, despite the shrill derision of the company, he remained
obdurate. Anyhow, the twins, long held in check, and now feverishly eager, were
already struggling for the chair.
And so to the floor at
last came the golden Margate curls, the heart treasure and glory of a mother,
three aunts, and some feminine cousins.
All having been
finished, the children, highly elate, thronged out into the street. They crowed
and cackled with pride and joy, anon turning to scorn the cowardly Dan Earl.
Ella Earl was an
exception. She had been pensive for some time, and now the shorn little maiden
began vaguely to weep. In the door of his shop William Neeltje stood watching
them, upon his face a grin of almost inhuman idiocy.