Part 14

I did go back, of course. I wouldn’t have missed it for worlds—sad as it was. There wasn’t such a long interval to wait, either. I wended my way, and found the theme-box closed, and returned at about quarter past five.

When I entered, the assemblage was in full swing, and Marian Haviland, in the black afternoon toilette she had sent to New York for in honor of Hurrell Oaks’s visit, was scintillating in the midst. She had donned her pearls, and subdued her cheeks unbecomingly, and tinted her lips; and, going from one person to another, she would, in response to the indiscriminating compliments they bestowed, just tap them each gaily on the shoulder with her fan and explain that:

“Mr. Oaks was so sorry, but he couldn’t wait. Yes, he was wonderful,” she would say, “_perfectly_. We had an immemorial hour together. I shall never forget it—_never_.”

To this day I don’t blame her for lying. If she hadn’t lied she never could have stood it. And she had to stand it. What else could she do? She couldn’t hang a sign on the door and turn the guests away after all their generous sacrifices to the occasion.

George Norton, needless to say, wasn’t there. She had forgotten—I insist upon that much—to ask him. But two days later she announced her engagement to marry him, and in another month’s time the knot was actually tied.

――――

My companion stopped short there, and leaned back in her chair, expectantly staring at me.

“Like Marian Haviland Norton’s readers,” I said, “I should like some of the T’s crossed and the I’s dotted a little more plainly. Don’t spare me, either, as far as the ‘base rattle of the foreground’ is concerned. But tell me, please, literally just what you think happened.”

She showed her disappointment at that; looked almost aggrieved. Then she laughed out in spite of herself.

“Hurrell Oaks didn’t expect a party,” she declared; “he didn’t, at all events, mean to have one. He didn’t—_she_ was right about that—‘want to see many of us.’ He didn’t want to see anybody. He just wanted to do his manners. He couldn’t decently get out of that much. And, although he may have been asked to come at exactly five—nobody, of course, knows how _his_ invitation was worded—he reached Newfair earlier, perhaps unintentionally so, and came instead at four, and knocked politely for admittance. But Mrs. Edgerton’s servants, unfortunately, hadn’t arrived, and Miss Haviland was, as she herself admitted, taking a bath. She was no doubt actually _in the tub_ when Hurrell Oaks slipped his card under the door.”

IN THE OPEN CODE

_By_ BURTON KLINE From _The Stratford Journal_ _Copyright, 1918, by The Stratford Journal._ _Copyright, 1919, by Burton Kline._

The day’s work was finished and the entire job well started. I felt sure we should meet old Bankard’s wishes fully. The rare old Virginia manor and its wooded park were going to look again as the original designer meant them to appear. Gordon, I know, agreed with me—Gordon, who was to restore the house as I restored the grounds.

That evening he and I were sitting on a rusted iron bench in a corner of the park that looked off over the hills, watching the summer dusk steal up the eastern sky. I still wanted to talk of the day’s accomplishment, but Gordon seemed to have grown—I was going to say dreamy, but he was watchful instead.

Presently he drew out his watch and said, “In just about four minutes you will hear it.”

“Hear what?”

“See that notch between those two hills about a mile and a half away over there?” He pointed. “Keep your eye on that.”

“A blast?”

“Yes, a blast. But not the kind you think. Just watch.”

We smoked in silence, and my curiosity was about to break into speech again, or ebb altogether, when it happened.

An ordinary freight train passed, but the locomotive, as it emerged from the flat hillside and traversed the broad notch, let off a stream of white puffs from its whistle, and then disappeared behind the other hill, precisely like an episode on the stage.

In a moment the white puffs translated themselves from a sight in the eye to a sound in the ear. And I tell the truth when I say that they reproduced, with a mimicry that was startling, the notes of the last two bars of “Annie Laurie.”

“What do you make of that!” Gordon turned and exulted to me over his odd little discovery.

“How did you get on to it?”

“Oh, stumbled across it the first evening we were here. It goes every day at this time, as regular as clock-work.”

“Some engineer with a sense of humor amusing himself,” I conjectured.

“But regularity isn’t amusement. He blows it every day at this time. And always in the same way.”

I tried another hypothesis. “A code signal of some sort, most likely.”

“But what an odd code! What a poetic code, for a railroad!”

“Well, I’ve learned to expect a good deal of life in Virginia. It seems to be different here.”

“Yes, it’s a code.... Of course it’s a code!” Gordon amended himself. “But—I wonder if it’s a railroad code?”

“I see. A lover and his lass, eh? You’re crediting your railroad engineer with your own romantic soul, Gordon.” I patted his arm, as Jemima, our cook, rang her bell for supper. “Now there’s a code that I can understand!” And we hurried in to the table.

By next evening the whole gang had heard of the curious signal from the freight locomotive and assembled at the opening of the trees to hear it. Precisely at the moment due the obedient freight train crossed the notch in the distant hills, and as precisely as before the engine let off its string of puffs that in a moment became in our ears those last two bars of the song.

There were as many theories to account for it as there were men to hear it. In the end the congress bore down Gordon and pronounced it a simple railroad code, with the longs and shorts accidentally resembling the tune, or made so by a whimsical engineer.

Nevertheless the phenomenon was interesting enough to compel a bit of discussion about the fire in the great hall after we had despatched our supper. The talk drifted away into the curious tricks that artisans come to play with their implements—carpenters able to toss up edged tools and catch them deftly, and the like. But Gordon was not to be weaned from the subject of that whistle.

“There’s nothing to prevent that engineer from playing ‘Yankee Doodle’ on his whistle if he wants to. Haven’t you often lain awake at night listening to the blasts of the locomotives? You can tell when an engineer is ruffled, when he starts behind time out of the yard, and knows he must be extra alert that night. His toot is sharp and impatient. Or you can tell an engineer coming home from his run. His whistle fairly sighs his own contentment.”

“La, Gordon,” some one yawned, “you’re a poetic soul!”

“Well, I believe in that engineer,” he defended. “Next time I go down to the village I’m going to find out who blows that thing and why he does it.”

He did go down to the village and he did learn the secret of the whistle. It made a neat little story. The whistle was a code signal, of a surety, and of precisely the sort that Gordon figured it was. He knew his Virginia.

A fellow named George Roberts was the engineer of that freight, and his imitation of “Annie Laurie” was truly a signal—to a sweetheart of his. Rough devil at one time, this man Roberts, a tearing drinker and fighter, he was fast on the way to ruin and discharge, when he fell in love with this girl and braced up. Now every time he passed the little house where she lived he tooted his whistle like that in salutation.

“To let her know he’s safe,” Gordon finished.

Of course we charged him with making it up, but in the end we came to believe him. Every day for four weeks that whistle blew, always in the same way, always in the same place, and always on the dot. And somehow it had a sobering and softening effect upon the crowd of woodsmen that we were. The men quarreled less frequently, I noticed, were more considerate and helpful to each other. I swear we all felt the influence of that engineer. I’ll wager every man jack of us meant on going home to be a bit the more thoughtful to the wife. It cheered us all, that little touch of honest romance. The world seemed a bit the better for it. We even took to timing our supper not by Jemima’s bell but by George Roberts’ whistle.

Then another strange thing happened. The signal ceased.

The first time we missed it we could scarcely believe our ears. But on the second day it was silent, and the next. At the right time the train crossed the notch, but no puffs came from the engine, no sound from the whistle.

It gave us a drop. The world was as drab as ever. The cynics, of course, spoke up at once.

“Guess your friend the engineer is no better than the rest of us,” one of them jeered at Gordon. “He couldn’t keep it up.”

“Drunk again, probably,” jeered another.

“Maybe it’s only a little lovers’ tiff,” I argued in Gordon’s support.

“I’m going to find out,” Gordon finished the discussion.

And he did. Made a special errand to the village to find out. And returned with a smile.

“They’re married,” he reported. “Off on their honeymoon. They’ll be back in a week. Watch for the signal then.”

He was right. In a week the signal was resumed, but in another place.

“How’s that?” one of the men still girded at Gordon. “Guess he’s learned to respect his wife’s throwing arm. He pipes up now from a more respectful distance.”

“That’s easy,” Gordon let the caviller down gently. “He’s set her up in a little house farther along the line. Naturally that’s where he would whistle now.”

For three weeks more we heard the faithful signal, at its new place. A little more faintly, but always punctual, always the same. And again the men began to whistle at their work.

By then the job was nearly finished. In two or three weeks more we should be leaving, and the whole crowd began to allege a touch of regret. They protested it was because the old place was so beautiful, but privately I think George Roberts and his tooting had something to do with the homesickness. To whatever new place we might go, however pleasant it might be, there was going to be a trifle that was lacking.

Then again a strange thing happened. Again the whistle stopped. For four days it was silent.

“Family jar already!” came the usual good-natured jeer.

“She’s flung a plate and crippled his whistle arm.”

“Guess you’d better find out what’s the matter, Gordon,” a third man recommended.

“I will,” said Gordon.

That evening he returned from the village without the smile. Nevertheless, as he was still plodding up the long driveway, his head down, his step slow, we actually heard the whistle as we sat waiting for Gordon under the portico. There was no mistaking it. And yet its note seemed different; there was a new tone to it, something like Gordon’s air. And it seemed to come from still farther away.

Gordon paused as he heard it, and stood still, with his hat in his hand, till it died away. Then he came up the steps and sat down. We all leaned toward him.

“She fell ill,” he said. “They left her in the little cemetery down the line. She’d always been delicate. And I suppose that’s where he’s whistling now. To—to let her know he’s safe.”

THE WILLOW WALK

_By_ SINCLAIR LEWIS From _The Saturday Evening Post_ _Copyright, 1918, by The Curtis Publishing Company._ _Copyright, 1919, by Sinclair Lewis._

I

From the drawer of his table desk Jasper Holt took a pane of window glass. He laid a sheet of paper on the glass and wrote, “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.” He studied his round business-college script, and rewrote the sentence in a small finicky hand, that of a studious old man. Ten times he copied the words in that false pinched writing. He tore up the paper, burned the fragments in his large ash tray and washed the delicate ashes down his stationary washbowl. He replaced the pane of glass in the drawer, tapping it with satisfaction. A glass underlay does not retain an impression.

Jasper Holt was as nearly respectable as his room, which, with its frilled chairs and pansy-painted pincushion, was the best in the aristocratic boarding house of Mrs. Lyons. He was a wiry, slightly bald, black-haired man of thirty-eight, wearing an easy gray flannel suit and a white carnation. His hands were peculiarly compact and nimble. He gave the appearance of being a youngish lawyer or bond salesman. Actually he was senior paying teller in the Lumber National Bank in the city of Vernon.

He looked at a thin expensive gold watch. It was six-thirty, on Wednesday—toward dusk of a tranquil spring day. He picked up his hooked walking stick and his gray silk gloves and trudged downstairs. He met his landlady in the lower hall and inclined his head. She effusively commented on the weather.

“I shall not be here for dinner,” he said amiably.

“Very well, Mr. Holt. My, but aren’t you always going out with your swell friends, though! I read in the _Herald_ that you were going to be star in another of those society plays at the Community Theater. I guess you’d be an actor if you wasn’t a banker, Mr. Holt.”

“No, I’m afraid I haven’t much temperament.” His voice was cordial, but his smile was a mere mechanical sidewise twist of the lip muscles. “You’re the one that’s got the stage presence. Bet you’d be a regular Ethel Barrymore if you didn’t have to look out for us.”

“My, but you’re such a flatterer!”

He bowed his way out and walked sedately down the street to a public garage. Nodding to the night attendant, but saying nothing, he started his roadster and drove out of the garage, away from the center of Vernon, toward the suburb of Rosebank. He did not go directly to Rosebank. He went seven blocks out of his way, and halted on Fandall Avenue—one of those petty main thoroughfares which, with their motion-picture palaces, their groceries, laundries, undertakers’ establishments and lunch rooms, serve as local centers for districts of mean residences. He got out of the car and pretended to look at the tires, kicking them to see how much air they had. While he did so he covertly looked up and down the street. He saw no one whom he knew. He went into the Parthenon Confectionery Store.

The Parthenon Store makes a specialty of those ingenious candy boxes that resemble bound books. The back of the box is of imitation leather, with a stamping simulating the title of a novel. The edges are apparently the edges of a number of pages of paper. But these pages are hollowed out, and the inside is to be filled with candy.

Jasper gazed at the collection of book boxes and chose the two whose titles had the nearest approach to dignity—Sweets to the Sweet and The Ladies’ Delight. He asked the Greek clerk to fill these with the less expensive grade of mixed chocolates, and to wrap them.

From the candy shop he went to a drug store that carried an assortment of reprinted novels, and from these picked out two of the same sentimental type as the titles on the booklike boxes. These also he had wrapped. He strolled out of the drug store, slipped into a lunch room, got a lettuce sandwich, doughnuts and a cup of coffee at the greasy marble counter, took them to a chair with a tablet arm in the dim rear of the lunch room and hastily devoured them. As he came out and returned to his car he again glanced along the street.

He fancied that he knew a man who was approaching. He could not be sure. From the breast up the man seemed familiar, as did the customers of the bank whom he viewed through the wicket of the teller’s window. When he saw them in the street he could never be sure about them. It seemed extraordinary to find that these persons, who to him were nothing but faces with attached arms that held out checks and received money, could walk about, had legs and a gait and a manner of their own.

He walked to the curb and stared up at the cornice of one of the stores, puckering his lips, giving an impersonation of a man inspecting a building. With the corner of an eye he followed the approaching man. The man ducked his head as he neared, and greeted him, “Hello, Brother Teller.” Jasper seemed startled; gave the “Oh! Oh, how are you!” of sudden recognition; and mumbled, “Looking after a little bank property.”

“Always on the job, eh!”

The man passed on.

Jasper got into his car and drove back to the street that would take him out to the suburb of Rosebank. As he left Fandall Avenue he peered at his watch. It was five minutes of seven.

At a quarter past seven he passed through the main street of Rosebank, and turned into a lane that was but little changed since the time when it had been a country road. A few jerry-built villas of freckled paint did shoulder upon it, but for the most part it ran through swamps spotted with willow groves, the spongy ground covered with scatterings of dry leaves and bark. Opening on this lane was a dim-rutted grassy private road, which disappeared into one of the willow groves.

Jasper sharply swung his car between the crumbly gate posts and along the bumpy private road. He made an abrupt turn, came into sight of an unpainted shed and shot the car into it without cutting down his speed, so that he almost hit the back of the shed with his front fenders. He shut off the engine, climbed out quickly and ran back toward the gate. From the shield of a bank of alder bushes he peered out. Two chattering women were going down the public road. They stared in through the gate and half halted.

“That’s where that hermit lives,” said one of them.

“Oh, you mean the one that’s writing a religious book, and never comes out till evening? Some kind of a preacher?”

“Yes, that’s the one. John Holt, I think his name is. I guess he’s kind of crazy. He lives in the old Beaudette house. But you can’t see it from here—it’s clear through the block, on the next street.”

“I heard he was crazy. But I just saw an automobile go in here.”

“Oh, that’s his cousin or brother or something—lives in the city. They say he’s rich, and such a nice fellow.”

The two women ambled on, their chatter blurring with distance. Standing behind the alders Jasper rubbed the palm of one hand with the fingers of the other. The palm was dry with nervousness. But he grinned.

He returned to the shed and entered a brick-paved walk almost a block long, walled and sheltered by overhanging willows. Once it had been a pleasant path; carved wooden benches were placed along it, and it widened to a court with a rock garden, a fountain and a stone bench. The rock garden had degenerated into a riot of creepers sprawling over the sharp stones; the paint had peeled from the fountain, leaving its iron cupids and naiads eaten with rust. The bricks of the wall were smeared with lichens and moss and were untidy with windrows of dry leaves and cakes of earth. Many of the bricks were broken; the walk was hilly in its unevenness. From willows and bricks and scuffled earth rose a damp chill.

But Jasper did not seem to note the dampness. He hastened along the walk to the house—a structure of heavy stone which, for this newish Midwestern land, was very ancient. It had been built by a French fur trader in 1839. The Chippewas had scalped a man in its very dooryard. The heavy back door was guarded by an unexpectedly expensive modern lock. Jasper opened it with a flat key and closed it behind him. It locked on a spring. He was in a crude kitchen, the shades of which were drawn. He passed through the kitchen and dining room into the living room. Dodging chairs and tables in the darkness as though he was used to them he went to each of the three windows of the living room and made sure that all the shades were down before he lighted the student’s lamp on the game-legged table. As the glow crept over the drab walls Jasper bobbed his head with satisfaction. Nothing had been touched since his last visit.

The room was musty with the smell of old green rep upholstery and leather books. It had not been dusted for months. Dust sheeted the stiff red velvet chairs, the uncomfortable settee, the chill white marble fireplace, the immense glass-fronted bookcase that filled one side of the room.

The atmosphere was unnatural to this capable business man, this Jasper Holt. But Jasper did not seem oppressed. He briskly removed the wrappers from the genuine books and from the candy-box imitations of books. One of the two wrappers he laid on the table and smoothed out. Upon this he poured the candy from the two boxes. The other wrapper and the strings he stuffed into the fireplace and immediately burned. Crossing to the

## bookcase he unlocked one section and placed both the real books and the

imitation books on the bottom shelf. There was a row of rather cheap-looking novels on this shelf, and of these at least six were actually such candy boxes as he had purchased that evening.

Only one shelf of the bookcase was given over to anything so frivolous as novels. The others were filled with black-covered, speckle-leaved, dismal books of history, theology, biography—the shabby-genteel sort of books you find on the fifteen-cent shelf at a secondhand bookshop. Over these Jasper pored for a moment as though he was memorizing their titles.

He took down “The Life of the Rev. Jeremiah Bodfish” and read aloud: “In those intimate discourses with his family that followed evening prayers I once heard Brother Bodfish observe that Philo Judæus—whose scholarly career always calls to my mind the adumbrations of Melanchthon upon the essence of rationalism—was a mere sophist—”

Jasper slammed the book shut, remarking contentedly, “That’ll do. Philo Judæus—good name to spring.”