Chapter VI: Part 6

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures--" murmured the Watermelon laconically, instinctively turning to the Bible on every occasion. "Pity you aren't a man. Then you could chuck the whole show and hit the road with me. I'm stony broke, too."

He patted her shoulder gently and tears leaped into the woman's tired eyes. She cried a bit and he soothed her softly as one would soothe a tired child.

"Those others," said she, wiping her eyes on her coarse apron, "they are kind, but they don't understand."

"They mean well," said the Watermelon, "but you have to go through the mill yourself, to _do_ well. I know what poverty means. Its ways ain't ways of pleasantness by a dog-gone sight."

"Beggars all, beggars all," cried Henrietta, as they started up the road, in the dewy freshness of early morning.

It was still early and quite cool, with the breeze of the night following them, laden with the depressing odor of charred timbers and burning leather. The road wound around a hill, sloping now and again into the valley and rising again to the heights. The view swept fields and hills and woods, all of the deep green of mid-June, and over all bent the blue sky of a summer day.

The air was like ozone. It was a physical joy simply to walk, to breathe the odor of fields and woods and open places and to let one's eyes dwell on the beauty and the glory of the land.

"I am glad it pleases you, Henrietta," said the general tartly.

Henrietta sobered. "Father, I feel as badly as you do about the car. But I can't go into mourning for it."

"You needed another one anyway," consoled Billy, with the kindly reassurance and hopeless misunderstanding of the rich. "The last model is out now, you know."

"Billy," said Henrietta, "do you think we can buy a car every time the humor moves us? You don't understand."

"I know," said Billy humbly, crushed under repeated rebuffs from every one. "I am a perfect fool, Henrietta, but I can't help it."

If the general could have forgotten the car for a while, he would have been agreeably pleased and flattered by the Watermelon's sudden apparent infatuation for him. The young man insisted on walking with him, suiting his long, lazy strides to the general's best endeavors. Bartlett, Henrietta and Billy swung along briskly ahead. Henrietta was touched. The boy was trying to show his sympathy, she thought, and liked him more than ever.

It was nearly noon when they came in sight of their destination, a gaunt gray farm-house, perched on the top of the gentle slope overlooking the valley and the winding river to the woods on the hills beyond. They came to the bars of a cow pasture and a narrow cow path leading across the field to the house, a shorter way than by the road.

Henrietta and Billy, seeing no cows in sight, allowed the Watermelon to let down the bars and to pass through. Billy waited inside the fence, standing by the path, among the sweet fern, until all had entered and all but the Watermelon had started up the path for the house.

Quietly she watched the Watermelon as he slowly and reluctantly replaced the bars.

"Jerry," said she, when he had at last finished, "what's the matter?" She had stepped into the path in front of him and he had to stop and face her.

He flushed hotly and would not look at her. "There is nothing the matter," said he. "Why? What makes you think so?"

She drew herself up with pretty dignity. "You need not have told me what you did yesterday in the railroad cut, if it were not so," said she, quite simply.

*CHAPTER XXII*

*THE TRUTH AT LAST*

"Billy," began the Watermelon, turning aside with darkening eyes, his flushed face growing slowly white as he realized that the reckoning had come. Billy must know all now, know who her companion of the past week was, know the status of the man who had told her he loved her. Then he turned to her again with all his mad, wild, foolish, hopeless longing in his eyes and voice and held out his arms.

"Oh, kid, I love you," he whispered, as she went to him, frankly and happily. "I love you so I can't marry you."

"It's old-fashioned to love your wife, I know," chirruped Billy, "but let's be old-fashioned."

"It isn't that, Billy," said the Watermelon slowly. He held her a moment, looking down into her eyes as she looked up at him, her hands on his shoulders, her head back.

"What is it?" she asked, frankly puzzled, but refusing to be dismayed. "You can't afford a wife, you who made three--four--millions this year?"

"Yes," said the Watermelon, grim and quiet, "that's it." He let her go and thrust his hands into his pockets. "I haven't a cent, haven't ever had one. I'm not Batchelor with a few millions. I'm a tramp without a cent, stony broke. That suit-case," kicking Batchelor's suit-case which he had carried with him, "is another's and I'm going to chuck it to-night."

Billy stared, mouth slightly parted, her brows drawn together in wonder, unbelieving. "Not Batchelor?" she stammered. "William Hargrave Batchelor?"

"I am Jeroboam Martin of Nowhere and Everywhere," said the Watermelon bitterly. "That Sunday I met you, I found Batchelor in bathing down in the woods. I swiped his clothes, Billy, for the dinner I could get at the hotel. Then I saw you. I wanted the week with you and I just went on being Batchelor. See?"

"How?" asked Billy through white lips, staring at him from where she stood in the middle of the tiny cow lane, winding away up the hill among the sweet fern and the bracken.

The Watermelon raised his hand to his head and gently brushed his back hair with futile embarrassment. "Why, you know that guy we heard coughing in the bushes? Well, he put me wise to the fact that your father--er--that your father and Batchelor were enemies on the Street and I thought--maybe--er--if--why, your father asked me to go with you on the trip, you know, and I thought--er--that if Batchelor was in the city alone and your father thought he was with him--why, Batchelor could beat him on the Street and not mind the loss of the few things I had to take--er--see, I deceived the gang of you for a week's fun. See what a cheap guy I am, Billy? A bad egg."

"Yes," said Billy. "Father asked you to go. Why did he do that?"

The Watermelon flushed. "Why--er--"

"Father knew you were an enemy. He told me that you, Batchelor, I mean, had made him lose a lot of money last week and would probably make him lose more next week. Maybe father thought as you did, that if you were out of the city--" she knitted her brows and gazed off across the valley. "Father telegraphed just before we went to that place behind the bam, right after dinner. I know, for I saw him go to the office. Why don't you tell me the truth, Jerry?"

"God, Billy, ain't I giving you the straight goods?"

"Not about father," replied Bartlett's daughter gravely.

"Why--er--he may have telegraphed--"

"Certainly, he did," said Billy. "This whole trip was father's idea." She brushed the subject aside as one to be returned to later. "Tell me, Jerry, isn't your father a minister?"

"Yes, that's straight. He was poor, darned poor. We were all poor. He used to say that a man with more children than brains had no place in the ministry."

"I should think that possibly your father had brains," suggested Billy.

"Yes," admitted the Watermelon. "But they didn't keep pace with the children."

"What happened to you all? Why--er--why couldn't you have worked at something?"

She was gazing at him bewildered, trying to get a grasp on the new state of affairs.

"Aw, we went from bad to worse," muttered the Watermelon sullenly. "Father left the ministry. He used to say that you could appreciate the glory of the Almighty much better in a dollar bill than in the Bible."

"Maybe he had--er--no leanings toward the ministry," murmured Billy, endeavoring to express as politely as possible her growing conviction that the Reverend Mr. Martin was not a godly man.

"Maybe not," agreed the Watermelon. "But when a man's down, every one's down on him. Nothing father did went right. Ma died and the home broke up--I don't know what's become of all the others--working, I suppose, day after day, like slaves in a galley, you know. I tried it, and every night I drank to drown the damnable monotony and stupidity of it all. So, you see what I am, a bum--a tramp."

"And yourself, my love, my Jerry."

Billy held out her hands and he caught them and held them tightly in both his own for a moment, then dropping them, turned away with half a sob.

"Don't, Billy. Don't make it so hard for me, dear. We can't marry. I'm filth and you're sweetness and purity."

"But other men have married. You aren't the only one who isn't clean."

"I know, but I love you. See? When you love a person, you don't make them suffer for it. You can't understand, Billy, for you have never known life. You don't begin to know what it means. I will probably marry a girl from the streets, or one with no brains and no soul. But, you see, I love you."

Billy's eyes blazed. "You will never marry any one else with me alive," said she.

"How could I marry you, dear? I have nothing--absolutely nothing. We couldn't have a home anywhere."

"We can make a home," pleaded Billy. She leaned toward him and laid her hand on his arm, smiling into his moody face with all the charm, the daring, the tenderness of a woman who loves and is fighting for her happiness with every weapon at her command.

"You can't make a home with nothing to make it on," said the Watermelon.

"Ah, but we have something to make it on," cried Billy. "We have you and me."

"But no money."

"Why, Jerry, I have money; hundreds, thousands, dear."

But the Watermelon shook his head. "Money wouldn't be any good when I'm rotten," said he.

"Dear," crooned Billy, and kissed him on the chin, for she could reach no higher.

"Billy," he groaned.

"Tell me you love me, Jerry."

"Tell you I love you? Ah, sweetheart."

"Tell it to me, Jerry."

"Billy, I love you so, that if there is a God, I will thank Him all my life for this week and the thought of you."

"You may not," said Billy, "when we have been married a year."

"We can't marry, dear. Don't you understand? I am a tramp."

"And so am I."

"Your father will kick me out when he knows--"

"It's none of my father's business," said Billy with a saucy tilt of her small chin. "He's marrying whom he pleases and I shall do the same."

"Wait until I speak to him--"

"No," said Billy promptly. "I will speak, Jerry. Promise me that you won't say a thing until we get to the town where we can telegraph. Oh, Jerry, my love, promise me."

"I promise, Billy, kid."

"Promise you won't say a thing until I speak."

"I won't say a thing until I can't help it, but what good will that do?"

"Let's be happy while we can," returned Billy, with a pretty evasion. "We have one more day."

"Oh, Billy," whispered the Watermelon.

Billy turned and led the way up the path to the house while the Watermelon picked up the two suit-cases and followed her.

At the house they found the general with his usual inability to conceal a thing, explaining that they had no money, but wished to have a two-seated team and a driver to take them to the nearest town.

The farmer did not hail the proposition with unalloyed joy. He looked thoughtfully from one to the other while Bartlett explained earnestly who he was, who the general was, who they all were, in a vain attempt to undo the general's commendable, if mistaken, frankness. Upon promising to let the driver keep his watch as a guaranty of good faith, to be returned when the money they were to telegraph for arrived, Bartlett persuaded the man to give in and go to the barn for the horses.

Billy drew her father aside, while the general, Henrietta and the Watermelon retired discreetly to the well for a drink.

"Father," said Billy, coming directly to the point and evading it with a skill that befitted her father's daughter. "Jerry wants to marry me. Oh, father, I love him so. I love him as much as you do Henrietta."

Bartlett flushed and dismissed Henrietta from the conversation. "My dear Billy, you have only known him a week."

"I know, father," agreed Billy, "but a week is long enough to fall in love in. Truly, it is, father. And we both care so much, so very much."

Bartlett was secretly elated at the idea. He and Batchelor, with their differences reconciled, fighting together, instead of each other, would become rulers of the Street, could attain to any height. Batchelor was young, clever, lovable. There seemed nothing to object to. But he felt that he should. Conventionality, Henrietta, Mrs. Grundy, one or all would clearly see that there was something wrong, would counsel delay, waiting. He had never given a daughter away in marriage and was not sure what to do. He hemmed and hawed and wished that he could consult Henrietta.

"We don't want the others to know," went on Billy guilefully. "Wait until we get to the town before you say anything, won't you, father?"

"But, Billy, a week."

"Now, father," advised Billy, "just forget it. And I will forget about you and Henrietta."

"About me and Henrietta?" snapped Bartlett.

"Yes," said Billy, "and last night on the porch when you thought we had all gone in."

"That will do, Billy. We did nothing at all but say good night. I have no objection to Batchelor as a son-in-law from what I know of him; but only a week--"

"It was only an hour," said Billy. "I loved him that very first day. And please, father, you won't say anything, will you, even to him, about it? Just be nice to him, you know. And then I won't say anything."

"Certainly I won't say a thing if you don't want me to, Billy--but there is nothing whatever that you could say."

"No," said Billy, "only what I heard."

The carriage drove up at that moment, which was well.

*CHAPTER XXIII*

*BACK TO THE ROAD*

Bartlett took the telegram the clerk handed him in an elation it was hard to conceal from Batchelor, who leaned against the counter of the store and telegraph office combined, and watched him moodily.

"Realizes that it was a piece of foolishness, his taking that trip," thought Bartlett with the sympathy of the victor for the beaten. "Has probably forgotten Billy for the time. Poor Billy!"

He tore open the telegram quickly and read it eagerly and then slowly and still again more slowly, while his florid face grew first red and then white.

"Come back, for God's sake. B. here all the time. Where have you been?" signed by his broker's name.

After the third reading, Bartlett raised his eyes and glanced dully at the Watermelon, leaning against the counter, among the gay rolls of calico and boxes of rubber overshoes and stockings, watching him with thoughtful wary eyes, and Bartlett wondered if he were going mad.

It was late in the afternoon. The general and the girls, having telegraphed for money, had gone to the hotel to wait for the answers, while Bartlett and the Watermelon had remained in the store, Bartlett eager to receive the answer to the joyful congratulations he had sent his broker on the success of his plan, and the Watermelon because he scorned to run away like a whipped cur, preferring Bartlett to know who he was.

"To ask me for Billy," Bartlett had at first decided, but changed his mind as the youth's gloom became apparently impenetrable.

Bartlett's jaw was set squarely, sternly, his eyes gleamed angrily and a small pulse beat in his cheek. He handed the Watermelon the telegram and watched him as he read it.

"Who are you?" he demanded hoarsely, when the Watermelon had finished reading the message and returned it.

"Jeroboam Martin," said the Watermelon slowly, a grim amusement in his half-shut eyes.

"Jero--what?"

"Jeroboam Martin."

"But Batchelor," stammered Bartlett, confused. The power of suggestion had been so strong that, though he occasionally thought the youth a bit eccentric for a stock-broker, it had never entered his head to question his identity.

"Batchelor is in New York," returned the Watermelon. "I just telegraphed him, C.O.D., where he could find his blooming car. Don't suppose the police had sense enough to look for it at the hotel."

"A low dirty trick," sputtered Bartlett.

The Watermelon agreed. "Typical of the Street," he sneered. "Yah, it fairly reeks with the filth of money, your plan and mine."

"My plan?" Bartlett flushed and looked away. "Stung," said he humbly, and crumpled the telegram in his hand as he gazed moodily through the open door to the village street, impotent to refute the words of the Watermelon.

The Watermelon nodded without any undue elation, in fact, not thinking at all about Bartlett, he was too entirely absorbed in his own troubles.

"I suppose you are his partner--friend?" questioned Bartlett, after a moment's painful readjusting of ideas.

"No, I am a stranger. We met by chance, as you might say. I am a tramp."

"A tramp!" Bartlett's business chagrin vanished before the rush of his paternal alarm and surprise. "But, by heavens, man, I told Billy she could marry you."

The horror in his tones angered the Watermelon. The hot blood leaped into his face and his hands clenched.

"Well, why not?" he demanded. "I am a man if I am a tramp."

"Bah," sneered Bartlett. "A man? A cow, rather, an animal too lazy to work. I suppose you stole your clothes."

Both talked in low voices that the clerk, who only restrained himself from approaching by the exertion of tremendous will power, might not hear them. The Watermelon's face was very white, and he spoke slowly, carefully, as he retold the episode of the swimming-hole and the stolen car, still leaning against the varied assortment of dress goods. "I borrowed these clothes," he concluded, "to keep you away from New York for a week. That object may not sound original to you, and it wasn't. You were the one who suggested it to me through the telegraph clerk last Sunday."

"That boy would take candy from the baby," swore Bartlett gently.

"You were stung, that's all. I love Billy and she loves me. I hate work, but for Billy I will work and am going to work. I love her."

"Does she know you are a tramp?"

"Yes."

"You haven't a cent, I suppose."

"No, but I can earn some."

"How?"

"Working."

"At what?"

"Something."

"What?"

"Anything. Damn it, I ain't incapable of anything but sleep!"

"I've lost thousands through that dirty trick of yours--"

"Yours. You originated it, you know."

Bartlett leaned against the counter beside the Watermelon and glared at the floor. Neither thought to leave the store, and even forgot the clerk, who gazed at them dubiously from a discreet distance and wondered how many more telegrams they wanted.

Bartlett knew Billy. Billy said that she was going to marry this man and so she would marry him--unless something more effective than verbal opposition were used. He had never exerted any authority over Billy and knew that it would be too late to begin now. Billy would only laugh at him. But after all, he was Billy's father, he loved the girl and had some right to object to her marriage with a tramp.

He glanced at the thin clever face beside him and admitted that the man had brains and apparently was not besotted or brutalized, merely indifferent, lazy and wholly unambitious; besides, very young, impatient of restraint and the dull grind of a poor man's life.

"Who are your people?" asked Bartlett to gain time. He must make a plan to separate Billy from this impecunious suitor. Authority was useless. He must use tact, finesse.

"My father was a minister," returned the Watermelon. "Yours was a grocer. Billy told me. Families don't count in America."

Bartlett nodded agreement. "Why did you become a tramp?"

"Through inclination, not the whisky bottle. Not that I am above getting full once in a while, 'cause I ain't. Just, I'm not a drunkard. See? I didn't keep on losing jobs through drink and finally had to take to the road because I was a bum. I took to tramping because I hate to work. It takes too much of your time. An office is like a prison to me. A man loses his soul when he stays all day bent over a desk. He isn't a man. He's a sort of up-to-date pianola to a desk, that's all. There's a lot of things to think about that you can't in an office. I wanted to think and so I took to tramping. Besides, I don't like work."

"Lazy--"

"Yes," snapped the Watermelon, "but a man. I love your Billy--my Billy, and I can work for her."

Bartlett nodded indifferently, hardly hearing what the other said. He frowned thoughtfully at the floor as he pondered the situation. If he objected to the youth in Billy's presence, she would stand up for him, all her love would be aroused to arms and she would see no wrong in her hero. If the fellow snapped his fingers, she would run away with him. What did Billy, tender, gently-guarded Billy, know of tramps, of the rough, unhappy side of existence? Nothing. But if she caught a glimpse of it with her own eyes, saw this lover of hers in his true light, dirty, drunk, disreputable, the shock would kill her love utterly and Bartlett would not have to use that authority of his which was no authority, which Billy would refuse to obey. She had been free too long for any one to govern her now. The only person who could effectually break the unfortunate tangle was the Watermelon himself. Bartlett glanced at the gloomy face beside him and read it as he had grown used to reading men and events.

The Watermelon was young, hardly older than Billy; he was desperately in love, with a love that was pure and true and generous. He was thinking of Billy and not of himself. His opposition to Bartlett was merely the anger aroused by Bartlett's sneers. He was in reality filled with humility and repentence to a degree that he would do anything to kill the love Billy bore for him, knowing with his man's knowledge that he was not worthy of her, and longing with his youth and love to sacrifice himself for her best good, seeing through young, unhappy eyes, only the past, his own shame and profession. Forgetting the possibilities of the future, he had gone to the extreme of self-loathing. The one thing he saw was his past, that past that was wholly unfit for Billy. It blocked the entire view, crushed him with the weight of inexorable facts. To the young there are but two colors, black and white, and the Watermelon was very young. Bartlett looked at him keenly and decided that his plan would work, that he would not have to take a last desperate and ineffectual stand against Billy.

"See here. In August we are going to our place in Westhaven. It's a small town in this state, up the coast away north of Portland. Come to her there at the end of August, come as you are, a tramp, dirty, shabby, drunk--"

"I don't drink, not as the others do."

"Come drunk. Let her understand what being a tramp means, what your life has been. If she still wants you, I hardly see how I can stop her. That's only fair, for what does she know about you and your life? You know all about her, what she has done and been and is going to do. Leave her now, this evening. Go on being a tramp and then come to her, at the last of August. Come as a tramp, mind. Don't let her think that it is a test she is being put to or she will only laugh at it and us and go on wanting you just the same, scorning to be tested, to think that her love could fail. Give her some other excuse for your going. You must see that it is only fair to the little girl to let her see what she is up against."

"Yes, I see. I tried to tell her," agreed the Watermelon gloomily.

"If she loves you through it all, she can have you, and I suppose I will have to consent. I can afford a penniless son-in-law and I guess an American tramp is preferable to a European noble."

"I won't be penniless," said the Watermelon. "I could work like a nigger for a month and own forty dollars, thirty of which I would owe for board."

"That's just it," declared Bartlett promptly. "You can't support Billy in the way she is used to being supported, can't give her the things that have become necessities to her."

"I can support her in my own way," said the Watermelon, trying to reason down his own benumbing repentence and humiliation as well as to convince Bartlett of that which he himself knew to be all wrong.

"But that isn't Billy's way. You couldn't give her a servant, for instance, and servants to Billy are like chairs to some people, absolutely necessary."

"We love each other," said the Watermelon simply.

"That's all right. But you can't always be sure your love is like elastic and stretchable. Come as a tramp and I will give my consent." Bartlett grew bold, positively convinced that Billy could no longer care when she had once seen the drunken sot, promised as he had grown used to doing on the Street, to do that which he knew he would not have to do. "I will give my consent, if Billy still can care. I know that Billy would be a lot happier with my consent, too, than without it. For, though the modern child has no respect for her parent's authority, she likes to have her wedding peaceful and conventional."

"Can I say good-by to her?"

"Yes, but I trust you not to let her know that she is to be put to a test. If you love her, you can see that I am right."

"Yes," said the Watermelon, "I love her and will not let her know."

He straightened up and pushed his hat farther back, with the slow, inbred languor of the thoroughly lazy man. "I love Billy, and that is why I consent. I tried to make her understand what I am, have been, but I couldn't." He took a handful of beans from a near-by barrel and let them run slowly through his fingers. "I suppose she will give me the double cross."

"I hope so," answered Bartlett. "I'm not very particular, but a tramp--"

"A gentleman pedestrian," suggested the Watermelon, with a faint flicker of his usual sublime arrogance.

Bartlett laughed and held out his hand. "Well, good-by. I've enjoyed the week immensely, for all this rotten ending. That scurvy trick of yours--"

"Of yours," corrected the Watermelon.

"Yes, yes, I suppose so. I hope that Henrietta won't ever know. Do you think Billy does?"

"Billy isn't as simple as you think," returned the Watermelon.

"What did she say?"

"'Father suggested the trip and he telegraphed after dinner,' or something like that."

"You didn't tell her it was my plan?" begged Bartlett. "I have to go on living with her."

"No, I didn't tell her, but she's next to the fact."

"I will speak to her," said Bartlett hastily. "I wouldn't like Henrietta to find out about it. Billy has wanted a motor boat for some time. I may give her one."

They walked slowly toward the door and once more shook hands.

"I would gladly have given the thousands I have lost to have you Batchelor, boy," said Bartlett gently.

"Aw, thanks," said the Watermelon.

"Tell the others I will be around when I have sent another telegram."

The Watermelon found Billy sitting on the steps of the only hotel in town. It was a big, square, uncompromising affair, blank and unattractive, and Billy, alone on the top step, looked somehow small and forlorn and child-like. The Watermelon sat down beside her.

"Where's Henrietta?" he asked, ignoring her eyes and the question they asked.

"Up-stairs," said Billy, "fixing up." She raised her hands to her own soft hair and bit her lip to get up courage to voice the question her eyes had already asked.

"Where's the general?" asked the Watermelon.

Billy nodded backward. "In the office, trying to convert the landlord. The landlord's a democrat, you know."

"Come and walk down the road with me a bit?" asked the Watermelon. He rose and held out his hand to help her up.

Billy rose with a trembling laugh that failed miserably in its manifest attempt to be brave.

It was late afternoon, sweet and cool as they left the village behind. The deep quiet of the last of the day was over fields and woods and road, the heat and strenuous business of the morning done. Cows were slowly meandering across the pastures to the familiar bars, empty teams rattled by on the way home, the driver humped contentedly over the reins, thinking of the day's bargains and of the supper waiting for him. The shadows were lengthening, long and graceful across the village green.

Neither Billy nor the Watermelon spoke until they had left the village some little way behind and had come to four cross-roads with the usual small dingy school-house, door locked, dirty windows closed for the summer and shabby, faded blinds drawn.

Billy knew from the Watermelon's face that the interview with her father had been far from satisfactory. She feared that the Watermelon had not "stood up" for himself, that her speaking to her father that morning had not helped matters as she had hoped it would. She tried to think of something to say that would influence the boy, something she could do to show him how she cared, so he would not think of leaving her. The Watermelon was silent, for, now that the hour of parting had come, he did not know what to say, could not bring himself to leave her, gay, foolish, light-hearted Billy.

He, however, was the first to speak. The school-house recalled miserable days of long dull confinement, and he nodded toward it, pausing in the grass by the wayside. "A standing monument," said he, "to buried freedom."

"I never went to school," said Billy. "It must be awful."

"Awful," the Watermelon shrugged. "It's taken ten years from my life. Schools should be abolished."

They sat down on the tiny, weather-stained step, side by side, in the gathering dusk.

"Billy," began the Watermelon earnestly, and then stopped.

Poor little Billy's heart fluttered and she put her hand to her hair in her nervousness. "You know," she said firmly, irrelevantly, "I love you, Jerry."

"I know, dear," replied the Watermelon. "And I love you. No matter where I am, Billy, no matter what happens, you are the best in me and I will keep you best. I'm shiftless, lazy, no 'count, but Billy, kid, I'll always love you."

"And we will get married and live happily ever after," crooned Billy.

"I'm going away to-night, Billy, back to the road."

"Oh, Jerry, please, clear. If father knew how much I care--"

"No, Billy, your father's right. He said to give you time; for me to go away for a while and maybe you would get--over it."

"And if I did," demanded Billy, "if I loved another, wouldn't you be jealous? Wouldn't you kill that other, Jeroboam Martin?" She clenched her small fist and pounded him on the knee to emphasize the passion in her voice.

"If he were a decent chap--" stammered the Watermelon, "it would be better for you."

"It's terrible," interrupted Billy, "when the girl has to do all the loving." She pushed the hair out of her hot face and stared angrily before her, across the road.

"You only love me, but I love you. See the difference?" asked the Watermelon. "It's simply impossible for your love to be as great as mine for that reason. Your father said I could come to you the last of August at Westhaven, and I'm coming, Billy."

"And then we can marry, did father say that?" asked Billy, turning to him.

"If you care still," muttered the Watermelon.

"Care," Billy laughed the contrary to merry scorn. "Care? Why, Jeroboam Martin, when will I not care?"

The Watermelon flushed and rose as the wisest course under the circumstances. "I'm off. Say good-by to the others for me, will you, Billy?"

"You will be my knight," whispered Billy. "And I will be your lady, and no knight ever went back on his lady, yet, Jeroboam."

"You've got a darned poor knight," grunted the Watermelon. Suddenly he turned and caught her in his arms, dragging her to him and forcing back her head to see into her eyes. "Billy, Billy," he cried, "will you be true to me, for ever and for ever, no matter what happens, no matter what I do? Could you, will you love me always?"

"Always, always," whispered Billy.

"Dirty, drunk?"

"Dirty and drunk and sick and always," promised Billy. "Only you won't drink, because I love you."

"Love never yet stood between a man and the whisky bottle," sneered the Watermelon. "You don't know men, kid."

He let her go and turned away with a shamed laugh. "Good-by, Billy."

"Good-by, Jerry," replied Billy, frightened at she knew not what, realizing that there were after all things in men's lives of which she knew nothing. She walked with him to the fence and watched him swing over it.

"Cross-cuts for me," he explained, holding out his hand. She placed hers in it and he crushed her small fingers until they hurt, then turning abruptly, left her there among the brambles, watching him across the bars.

*CHAPTER XXIV*

*THE POET OR THE POODLE*

The day was unusually hot for late August in Maine. The grass was brown and dry, the leaves hung limply on the trees and the dust in the roads was ankle deep. No breeze came from the sea, while the sails of the pleasure boats drooped in warm dejection. Every one had sought shelter from the sun, and wharfs, streets and houses of the small seaport town appeared deserted.

Bartlett had taken himself off to the dim seclusion of the house, where he lounged with windows opened, blinds drawn and a small table of cooling beverages near at hand. The heat, the drowsy, shrill hum of the crickets and the muffled, monotonous roar of the sea had a soothing influence and Bartlett let his book fall from his hands and slept, stretched at ease in the steamer chair. A door gently opening and softly shutting aroused him. He sat up, yawned and grunted.

"Hello," drawled a voice, slow, indifferent, familiar.

Bartlett recalled a week in June, when, with rare credulity, he had kidnapped a stranger and had discovered that he had been the one in truth to be kidnapped. He turned his head and saw the Watermelon crossing the room. He knew that it was the boy by the size of the shoulders and the grace of the long limbs, but the thin, good-natured face was covered with a month's growth of light hair, the brown suit with the pale green and red stripe was a suit no longer, merely a bundle of rags. The shirt was opened at the throat, without a tie or button, while the panama was shapeless and colorless, but worn with the familiar jaunty ease.

"Ah," said Bartlett. "Jeroboam Martin."

He smiled as one who meets an old and congenial friend, for Jeroboam Martin had shown a fine capability for getting out of a tight place and carrying through a desired project with success and nerve, and Bartlett had grown to like the lad.

"Am I bum enough?" asked the Watermelon, with no answering smile. When one has come to test love, life is too grim for smiles.

"You are fairly dirty and shabby," agreed Bartlett. "You look thin."

"I have had hard luck," said the Watermelon. "How's Billy?"

"Pretty well, thanks."

"Expecting me?" asked the Watermelon, taking off his hat and gently patting his back hair as he had a way of doing.

Bartlett nodded. "Yes, but not exactly as you are."

"It's tough on the little girl," muttered the Watermelon. He sank into a chair and stretched out his long legs with the weather-stained trousers and dirty, broken shoes. "Oh, mama, I'm tired. Been hoofing it since sun-up yesterday with hardly a stop, I wanted to see the kid so."

"Well, go and get drunk," returned Bartlett. "And then you can see her."

The Watermelon frowned. "See here, I don't drink, necessarily. I'm not a brand to be plucked from the burning, a sheep strayed from the fold. The whisky bottle wasn't my undoing and didn't make me take to the highway. I'm not fallen. I was always down, I guess. I hate work; I hate worry and trouble, slaving like a Swede all day for just enough money to be an everlasting cheap guy. I like leisure and time to develop my own soul." He waved his hand in airy imitation of James.

"That's all right," said Bartlett. "But get drunk. If she can stand you soused, she can stand you sober. She has got to know what she's getting, if she decides to take you after all."

The Watermelon's tired face grew a bit whiter under the tan and beard. He shrugged hopelessly and rose. "All right, if you say so. I hope to hell it will kill her love on the spot and she won't suffer for it afterward. I suppose it will." He started for the door and paused, one hand on the knob. "Shall I have it on you?" he asked with a smile. "I'm broke."

Bartlett tossed him a bill. "Is that enough?"

"Yes," said the Watermelon and slipped it into his pocket.

"Have one with me before you go," said Bartlett, pushing a glass and the bottle across the table.

The Watermelon filled his glass and raised it. "To Billy," said he.

"To Billy's happiness," amended Bartlett.

Maine is a prohibition state, but the Watermelon had been there before and knew just where and how to obtain what he was looking for. With the bottle in his pocket, he sought the beach and made his way up it to some secluded place where he could drink in peace and out of the heat of the sun. A sea-gull flew wheeling gracefully by to the distant cliffs, the waves, long, purring, foam-flecked, ran indolently up the gleaming sands, broke with a gurgling splash of seaweed and tumbled stones and ran back to meet the next one. The ocean stretched limitless before him and behind rose the rocks, hiding him completely from the sight of land. With a grunt of dissatisfaction, he sat down and drew the cork of the whisky bottle.

As the day advanced, the sun crept around the headland until it streamed unchecked upon the Watermelon, sprawled, drunk and warm and dirty in the lee of the rocks. The combined heat of the sun and the poison he had in him, called by courtesy whisky, grew unbearable, and he rose in drunken majesty to find some cooler place. The sun would soon have thrown long shadows on the beach, but the Watermelon could not wait for that. He must get cool at once, and in the waves splashing, gurgling, laughing, breaking at his very feet, he found a suggestion. Where could one get cool if not in the sea itself? A steam yacht far away like a streak of white, was seen creeping slowly landward, but the Watermelon did not trouble about such a thing. He began to undress, solemnly, stubbornly, with the one thought to get cool.

The yacht, _Mary Gloucester_, was a gay little bark, all ivory white and shining brass work. A brightly striped awning covered the deck, there were large, comfortable chairs, with many-colored pillows and ribbons and chintz, and daintily arranged tables to assuage one's thirst and offer cooling bodily comfort on a hot day.

The _Mary Gloucester_ was named after a poem of Kipling's, and her owner was explaining this fact, ensconced gracefully, if solidly, in a many-cushioned chair, her feet a bit awkwardly on the rest before her, a fan in one hand and a small, fat, white, woolly dog on her lap, his fore feet on the railing, his mouth open and his tiny red tongue flapping moistly from between his teeth.

"Whom do you love the more," asked Bertie Van Baalen, "Kipling or this angel child?" and Bertie sought to pull one fluffy white ear near his hand. But the little dog snarled angrily and snapped sharply at the hastily withdrawn fingers.

"Ah, the duckems, naughty man shan't tease him," crooned the lady, slapping at Bertie with the fan, while the little dog turned again to the sea.

"Yes, indeed, Mrs. Armitage," said Henry Bliven solemnly. "Tell us truthfully, whom do you love the better, Kipling or the blessed duckems?"

"Do not hesitate or seek to spare either of their feelings," urged Bertie.

Mrs. Armitage laughed, fat, contented, placid. "Oh, you silly boys, comparing a poet and a dog, a blessed little doggie."

"I know it's hard on the dog," agreed Henry, gracefully launching a smoke wreath upward from his fat, red lips, moist like a baby's. "No dog would care to be compared with a thing so far beneath him as a poet, but all the same, are you a sport or an intellect?"

"An intellect?" questioned the lady, wrinkling her brows and gazing puzzled at the youth in the chair beside her.

"Are you, in other words," explained Henry, "of intellectual or sporting tendencies?"

"Think," warned Bertie, "before you answer. Kipling, a great poet, author of sentiments that will stir mankind for all ages, sentiments that will ennoble, strengthen--"

"Do you know," confessed the widow with the gleeful naivete of a child, "I like Kipling because he's so bad. He says such wicked things." She nodded and glanced audaciously from one youth to the other.

Henry reached wearily for his glass on the table beside him and Bertie Van Baalen sighed heavily. "You women! You make us bad. Don't you know you do? You want us bad, so we are--anything to please you beauteous creatures."

"I don't want you _men_ bad, just poets," explained the widow, fanning herself slowly, cheerfully.

Henry waved the digression aside. "Now, tell us frankly, truthfully, black and blue, cross your heart, do you prefer a small, dyspeptic, overfed, snapping bundle of cotton wool which is, for the sake of euphemism, called a dog, to one of the greatest minds of the day?"

"Yes," said Bertie. "Suppose we sat here now, and you had the blessed angel, mother's pet, and one volume of Kipling complete, the only book of his in the world, and the only one there could ever be, the only book in which we could hand on to our children and our children's children such sublime thoughts, the only book, mind you, and if you had to throw one or the other overboard, a piece of sticking plaster or the greatest poet of modern times, which would it be?"

"If I threw my blessed pet over, would you go after him, Bertie?" demanded the widow, to whose mind a question of grave import had just presented itself. "Henry, would you? You know how I love my dainty little kitty kit, would you save him from cruel death for me? For my sake?"

"No harm," said Henry with feeling, "shall befall the angel child while I live to protect it--her--him."

"For your sake," said Bertie, "I would die."

"Then," said the widow placidly, "I would sacrifice my own for the sake of posterity. For you would rescue him for me and you wouldn't an old book."

"Ah, no," protested Bertie, "that was not our proposition. Neither the book nor the latest thing in worsted--"

There was a splash, a gurgle and a horrified scream from the widow, as with a sudden lurch of the boat, the little dog lost his balance and fell overboard.

"Oh, my precious, my lamb," cried the widow. "Bertie, save him for me."

"Yes, yes," declared Bertie, hanging over the rail and watching the struggling dog in the water below. "Yes, yes, certainly."

"Henry," pleaded the widow. "If you love me--"

"Trust me," said Henry soothingly, hiding a gleam of satisfaction in his mild blue eyes. "I will have the boat stopped."

The widow's daughter and chaperon appeared in the companionway, flushed and sleepy. "Mama, what _is_ the matter?"

"Caroline, my precious lamb," and the widow motioned dramatically seaward. "Henry, you said--"

"I will," said Henry. "I will have the boat stopped."

"I will do that," cried the widow. "You jump overboard and save him."

Caroline yawned and raised her soft white hands to her tumbled hair. "Do save him, Bertie, I'm not equal to the task of comforting mama, just now."

Bertie looked at his immaculate yachting clothes and hesitated.

"Ah, you do not love me," cried the widow. "Oh, my baby, my own."

"I love you so," said Bertie solemnly, "I refuse to leave you in your grief even for a moment."

A long white arm shot over the crest of a tumbled wave and was followed by a man's head and long, thin body. The man swam well and quickly and was making straight for the now swimming dog.

"A rescue, a rescue," cried Henry, and added softly to himself, "Oh, poppycock!"

*CHAPTER XXV*

*AS HE SAID HE WOULD*

The widow leaned far over the side. "Oh," said she, "the man is naked."

"As truth," agreed Bertie. "You might retire, you know."

"I won't look," promised the widow, turning her back and peering over her shoulder. "But is he near my lamb now? Will he, can he save him?"

"Unfortunately, yes, mama," said Caroline.

Bertie and Henry leaned over the rail and watched the rescue, the long, easy strokes of the swimmer and the amusement on his face as a wave carried the struggling dog within reach and he grabbed the little woolly back.

"Saved!" cried Bertie, and turned just in time to grab Mrs. Armitage, who was also turning to see over the rail, by her fat shoulders and whirl her around again. "Safe, dear lady, but look the other way. Our hero is clothed in the seafoam and his own nobility, nothing else."

Henry was already disappearing down the companionway, the yacht was stopping and the crew standing by on the lower deck to lend assistance to rescued and rescuer.

The evening was warm and sultry. What little breeze there had been during the day had gone down with the sun, while the ocean heaved and moaned in long, green swells and ran softly whispering up the beach and splashed against the rocks with hardly a flake of foam. The sun, sinking behind the hills, cast long orange and pink streaks across the waves, and turned the small white clouds overhead a dainty, rosy mass of drifting color.

Bartlett and Billy strolled down the winding street of the little seaside town, out on the pier and stood idly waiting for the evening mailboat to arrive. Henrietta and the general were coming on the evening boat to spend the autumn in a small cottage which the general was pleased to call his "shooting-box." But Bartlett's pleasure at seeing Henrietta once more was mingled with worry and uneasiness over Billy and the Watermelon. He smoked thoughtfully and watched Billy warily, tenderly. She leaned against a pile and gazed over the vast unrest of the ocean to the distant horizon, with dreaming, unfathomable eyes. Bartlett knew of whom she was thinking, whom waiting for more and more eagerly every day now as August drew to a close and still he did not come. But this evening he had come, he was in the same neighborhood, drunk and probably hungry. When they met, as they must and that shortly, would he make a scene, become loud-mouthed, foul, abusive? It would be hard on Billy, and Bartlett wished vainly that he could spare her. But it was best that she should know, should understand fully and with a sudden quick cut it would be over with, the June madness when one is young and pretty and care-free. Billy would read her folly in the bleared eyes of a shiftless fool. Yet the boy was clever in getting out of a tight place, and Bartlett admired cleverness intensely, not being slow himself when it came to a hard bargain. The boy had gentle blood in his veins, too, more's the pity. It was simply a case of a good family gone to seed. Poor little Billy and her puppy love! A most unfortunate affair, the whole mistaken, unhappy business!

"There comes the _Mary Gloucester_," said Billy, breaking into his thoughts. She nodded toward the yacht, steaming majestically around the headland, pennons gaily waving and the bright awning a splash of color in the afterglow.

"The _Mary Gloucester_," chuckled Bartlett. "That woman hasn't the sense of her ugly little poodle dog."

"I know," said Billy, "that is why I have always been so afraid of her."

"Why afraid of her?"

"For a mother," explained Billy unfortunately, but characteristically saying the wrong thing.

Bartlett flushed. "You just admitted that she was a fool. Do you think I would marry that kind of a woman?"

"Men always do," said Billy. "A fool's bad enough, but a fool and money are simply irresistible."

"You know too much for your age," said Bartlett coldly.

"I don't exactly know it," blundered Billy. "I just see it."

"Billy, have you ever seen me--"

"Yes, father. That night in the pavilion at the Ainsleys'--"

"That will do, Billy."

Billy was hurt. "I don't mean to be nasty, father; but you asked me--"

"There comes the mail boat," interrupted Bartlett firmly.

Billy looked at it and sighed. It was the last of August and Jeroboam Martin had not come. Had he forgotten her in two short months?

Bartlett laid his hand tenderly on her shoulder. "Forget him, girlie. He's not worthy of you."

"He said he would come," whispered Billy.

"If he doesn't, dear, you have me. We have stood together through everything for eighteen years and will stand, still, eh, Billy?"

Billy bent her head and rubbed her cheek against the hand on her shoulder with a half laugh and a half sob.

With the first sight of the smoke on the horizon, heralding the approach of the principal event of the day, the arrival of the evening mail, a crowd had begun to gather, the usual motley crowd of a summer resort on the coast. Townspeople hung indifferently on the outskirts, while the summer visitors, in dainty dresses and baggy trousers, sun-burnt, jovial, indefatigable, pressed to the front. The hum of talk and laughter grew as the crowd grew, good-natured, meaningless chatter. The sight of the _Mary Gloucester_, steaming gracefully into port, was greeted with a gay flutter of handkerchiefs and straw hats, and Billy and Bartlett, standing where the yacht would dock, were soon the center of the laughing, merry crowd, ready and eager to welcome home the stout widow, her unfortunate chaperon and the two "supplements," as a village wag called the fat Henry and the slim Bertie.

As the yacht drew near, the widow's corpulent form was seen by the rail, on one side a tall youth, and on the other, two, side by side and apparently in no very good humor.

"Three, by George," cried Blatts, a prosperous brewer from Milwaukee. "She left here with two and returns with three. Where did she get him, Bartlett?"

But Bartlett did not answer, did not hear. The gang-plank had been lowered and he was watching in numb fascination, the tall youth walking beside the widow, her ridiculous dog in his arms. It was Jeroboam Martin in an immaculate white suit of Bertie's. His hat was off and his hair, after the swim, gleamed soft and yellow. For the sake of the widow upon whose boat he found himself, he had shaved as well as he could with Henry's razor, and while his cheeks were smooth enough, he still wore a small yellow mustache and goatee. Both were brushed until they shone like his hair and they lent a fascinating and distinctly foreign air to his long, thin, clever face. In his arms was the little dog with its enormous bow of sky-blue ribbon.