Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team BEASLEY'S CHRISTMAS PARTY By Booth Tarkington Illustrated By Ruth Sypherd Clements October, 1909. TO JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY I The maple-bordered street was as still as a country Sunday; so quiet that there seemed an echo to my footsteps. It was four o'clock in the morning; clear October moonlight misted through the thinning foliage to the shadowy sidewalk and lay like a transparent silver fog upon the house of my admiration, as I strode along, returning from my first night's work on the âWainwright Morning Despatch.â I had already marked that house as the finest (to my taste) in Wainwright, though hitherto, on my excursions to this metropolis, the state capital, I was not without a certain native jealousy that Spencerville, the county-seat where I lived, had nothing so good. Now, however, I approached its purlieus with a pleasure in it quite unalloyed, for I was at last myself a resident (albeit of only one day's standing) of Wainwright, and the house--though I had not even an idea who lived there--part of my possessions as a citizen. Moreover, I might enjoy the warmer pride of a next-door-neighbor, for Mrs. Apperthwaite's, where I had taken a room, was just beyond. This was the quietest part of Wainwright; business stopped short of it, and the âfashionable residence sectionâ had overleaped this âforgotten backwater,â leaving it undisturbed and unchanging, with that look about it which is the quality of few urban quarters, and eventually of none, as a town grows to be a city--the look of still being a neighborhood. This friendliness of appearance was largely the emanation of the homely and beautiful house which so greatly pleased my fancy. It might be difficult to say why I thought it the âfinestâ house in Wainwright, for a simpler structure would be hard to imagine; it was merely a big, old-fashioned brick house, painted brown and very plain, set well away from the street among some splendid forest trees, with a fair spread of flat lawn. But it gave back a great deal for your glance, just as some people do. It was a large house, as I say, yet it looked not like a mansion but like a home; and made you wish that you lived in it. Or, driving by, of an evening, you would have liked to hitch your horse and go in; it spoke so surely of hearty, old-fashioned people living there, who would welcome you merrily. It looked like a house where there were a grandfather and a grandmother; where holidays were warmly kept; where there were boisterous family reunions to which uncles and aunts, who had been born there, would return from no matter what distances; a house where big turkeys would be on the table often; where one called âthe hired manâ (and named either Abner or Ole) would crack walnuts upon a flat-iron clutched between his knees on the back porch; it looked like a house where they played charades; where there would be long streamers of evergreen and dozens of wreaths of holly at Christmas-time; where there were tearful, happy weddings and great throwings of rice after little brides, from the broad front steps: in a word, it was the sort of a house to make the hearts of spinsters and bachelors very lonely and wistful--and that is about as near as I can come to my reason for thinking it the finest house in Wainwright. The moon hung kindly above its level roof in the silence of that October morning, as I checked my gait to loiter along the picket fence; but suddenly the house showed a light of its own. The spurt of a match took my eye to one of the upper windows, then a steadier glow of orange told me that a lamp was lighted. The window was opened, and a man looked out and whistled loudly. I stopped, thinking that he meant to attract my attention; that something might be wrong; that perhaps some one was needed to go for a doctor. My mistake was immediately evident, however; I stood in the shadow of the trees bordering the sidewalk, and the man at the window had not seen me. âBoy! Boy!â he called, softly. âWhere are you, Simpledoria?â He leaned from the window, looking downward. âWhy, THERE you are!â he exclaimed, and turned to address some invisible person within the room. âHe's right there, underneath the window. I'll bring him up.â He leaned out again. âWait there, Simpledoria!â he called. âI'll be down in a jiffy and let you in.â Puzzled, I stared at the vacant lawn before me. The clear moonlight revealed it brightly, and it was empty of any living presence; there were no bushes nor shrubberies--nor even shadows--that could have been mistaken for a boy, if âSimpledoriaâ WAS a boy. There was no dog in sight; there was no cat; there was nothing beneath the window except thick, close-cropped grass. A light shone in the hallway behind the broad front doors; one of these was opened, and revealed in silhouette the tall, thin figure of a man in a long, old-fashioned dressing-gown. âSimpledoria,â he said, addressing the night air with considerable severity, âI don't know what to make of you. You might have caught your death of cold, roving out at such an hour. But there,â he continued, more indulgently; âwipe your feet on the mat and come in. You're safe NOW!â He closed the door, and I heard him call to some one up-stairs, as he rearranged the fastenings: âSimpledoria is all right--only a little chilled. I'll bring him up to your fire.â I went on my way in a condition of astonishment that engendered, almost, a doubt of my eyes; for if my sight was unimpaired and myself not subject to optical or mental delusion, neither boy nor dog nor bird nor cat, nor any other object of this visible world, had entered that opened door. Was my âfinestâ house, then, a place of call for wandering ghosts, who came home to roost at four in the morning? It was only a step to Mrs. Apperthwaite's; I let myself in with the key that good lady had given me, stole up to my room, went to my window, and stared across the yard at the house next door. The front window in the second story, I decided, necessarily belonged to that room in which the lamp had been lighted; but all was dark there now. I went to bed, and dreamed that I was out at sea in a fog, having embarked on a transparent vessel whose preposterous name, inscribed upon glass life-belts, depending here and there from an invisible rail, was SIMPLEDORIA. II Mrs. Apperthwaite's was a commodious old house, the greater part of it of about the same age, I judged, as its neighbor; but the late Mr. Apperthwaite had caught the Mansard fever of the late 'Seventies, and the building-disease, once fastened upon him, had never known a convalescence, but, rather, a series of relapses, the tokens of which, in the nature of a cupola and a couple of frame turrets, were terrifyingly apparent. These romantic misplacements seemed to me not inharmonious with the library, a cheerful and pleasantly shabby apartment down-stairs, where I found (over a substratum of history, encyclopaedia, and family Bible) some worn old volumes of Godey's Lady's Book, an early edition of Cooper's works; Scott, Bulwer, Macaulay, Byron, and Tennyson, complete; some odd volumes of Victor Hugo, of the elder Dumas, of Flaubert, of Gautier, and of Balzac; Clarissa, Lalla Rookh, The Alhambra, Beulah, Uarda, Lucile, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Ben-Hur, Trilby, She, Little Lord Fauntleroy; and of a later decade, there were novels about those delicately tangled emotions experienced by the supreme few; and stories of adventurous royalty; tales of âclean-limbed young American manhood;â and some thin volumes of rather precious verse. 'Twas amid these romantic scenes that I awaited the sound of the lunch-bell (which for me was the announcement of breakfast), when I arose from my first night's slumbers under Mrs. Apperthwaite's roof; and I wondered if the books were a fair mirror of Miss Apperthwaite's mind (I had been told that Mrs. Apperthwaite had a daughter). Mrs. Apperthwaite herself, in her youth, might have sat to an illustrator of Scott or Bulwer. Even now you could see she had come as near being romantically beautiful as was consistently proper for such a timid, gentle little gentlewoman as she was. Reduced, by her husband's insolvency (coincident with his demise) to âkeeping boarders,â she did it gracefully, as if the urgency thereto were only a spirit of quiet hospitality. It should be added in haste that she set an excellent table. Moreover, the guests who gathered at her board were of a very attractive description, as I decided the instant my eye fell upon the lady who sat opposite me at lunch. I knew at once that she was Miss Apperthwaite, she âwent so,â as they say, with her mother; nothing could have been more suitable. Mrs. Apperthwaite was the kind of woman whom you would expect to have a beautiful daughter, and Miss Apperthwaite more than fulfilled her mother's promise. I guessed her to be more than Juliet Capulet's age, indeed, yet still between that and the perfect age of woman. She was of a larger, fuller, more striking type than Mrs. Apperthwaite, a bolder type, one might put it--though she might have been a great deal bolder than Mrs. Apperthwaite without being bold. Certainly she was handsome enough to make it difficult for a young fellow to keep from staring at her. She had an abundance of very soft, dark hair, worn almost severely, as if its profusion necessitated repression; and I am compelled to admit that her fine eyes expressed a distant contemplation--obviously of habit not of mood--so pronounced that one of her enemies (if she had any) might have described them as âdreamy.â Only one other of my own sex was present at the lunch-table, a Mr. Dowden, an elderly lawyer and politician of whom I had heard, and to whom Mrs. Apperthwaite, coming in after the rest of us were seated, introduced me. She made the presentation general; and I had the experience of receiving a nod and a slow glance, in which there was a sort of dusky, estimating brilliance, from the beautiful lady opposite me. It might have been better mannered for me to address myself to Mr. Dowden, or one of the very nice elderly women, who were my fellow-guests, than to open a conversation with Miss Apperthwaite; but I did not stop to think of that. âYou have a splendid old house next door to you here, Miss Apperthwaite,â I said. âIt's a privilege to find it in view from my window.â There was a faint stir as of some consternation in the little company. The elderly ladies stopped talking abruptly and exchanged glances, though this was not of my observation at the moment, I think, but recurred to my consciousness later, when I had perceived my blunder. âMay I ask who lives there?â I pursued. Miss Apperthwaite allowed her noticeable lashes to cover her eyes for an instant, then looked up again. âA Mr. Beasley,â she said. âNot the Honorable David Beasley!â I exclaimed. âYes,â she returned, with a certain gravity which I afterward wished had checked me. âDo you know him?â âNot in person,â I explained. âYou see, I've written a good deal about him. I was with the âSpencerville Journalâ until a few days ago, and even in the country we know who's who in politics over the state. Beasley's the man that went to Congress and never made a speech--never made even a motion to adjourn--but got everything his district wanted. There's talk of him now for Governor.â âIndeed?â âAnd so it's the Honorable David Beasley who lives in that splendid place. How curious that is!â âWhy?â asked Miss Apperthwaite. âIt seems too big for one man,â I answered; âand I've always had the impression Mr. Beasley was a bachelor.â âYes,â she said, rather slowly, âhe is.â âBut of course he doesn't live there all alone,â I supposed, aloud, âprobably he has--â âNo. There's no one else--except a couple of colored servants.â âWhat a crime!â I exclaimed. âIf there ever was a house meant for a large family, that one is. Can't you almost hear it crying out for heaps and heaps of romping children? I should think--â I was interrupted by a loud cough from Mr. Dowden, so abrupt and artificial that his intention to check the flow of my innocent prattle was embarrassingly obvious--even to me! âCan you tell me,â he said, leaning forward and following up the interruption as hastily as possible, âwhat the farmers were getting for their wheat when you left Spencerville?â âNinety-four cents,â I answered, and felt my ears growing red with mortification. Too late, I remembered that the new-comer in a community should guard his tongue among the natives until he has unravelled the skein of their relationships, alliances, feuds, and private wars--a precept not unlike the classic injunction: âYes, my darling daughter. Hang your clothes on a hickory limb, But don't go near the water.â However, in my confusion I warmly regretted my failure to follow it, and resolved not to blunder again. Mr. Dowden thanked me for the information for which he had no real desire, and, the elderly ladies again taking up (with all too evident relief) their various mild debates, he inquired if I played bridge. âBut I forget,â he added. âOf course you'll be at the 'Despatch' office in the evenings, and can't be here.â After which he immediately began to question me about my work, making his determination to give me no opportunity again to mention the Honorable David Beasley unnecessarily conspicuous, as I thought. I could only conclude that some unpleasantness had arisen between himself and Beasley, probably of political origin, since they were both in politics, and of personal (and consequently bitter) development; and that Mr. Dowden found the mention of Beasley not only unpleasant to himself but a possible embarrassment to the ladies (who, I supposed, were aware of the quarrel) on his account. After lunch, not having to report at the office immediately, I took unto myself the solace of a cigar, which kept me company during a stroll about Mrs. Apperthwaite's capacious yard. In the rear I found an old-fashioned rose-garden--the bushes long since bloomless and now brown with autumn--and I paced its gravelled paths up and down, at the same time favoring Mr. Beasley's house with a covert study that would have done credit to a porch-climber, for the sting of my blunder at the table was quiescent, or at least neutralized, under the itch of a curiosity far from satisfied concerning the interesting premises next door. The gentleman in the dressing-gown, I was sure, could have been no other than the Honorable David Beasley himself. He came not in eyeshot now, neither he nor any other; there was no sign of life about the place. That portion of his yard which lay behind the house was not within my vision, it is true, his property being here separated from Mrs. Apperthwaite's by a board fence higher than a tall man could reach; but there was no sound from the other side of this partition, save that caused by the quiet movement of rusty leaves in the breeze. My cigar was at half-length when the green lattice door of Mrs. Apperthwaite's back porch was opened and Miss Apperthwaite, bearing a saucer of milk, issued therefrom, followed, hastily, by a very white, fat cat, with a pink ribbon round its neck, a vibrant nose, and fixed, voracious eyes uplifted to the saucer. The lady and her cat offered to view a group as pretty as a popular painting; it was even improved when, stooping, Miss Apperthwaite set the saucer upon the ground, and, continuing in that posture, stroked the cat. To bend so far is a test of a woman's grace, I have observed. She turned her face toward me and smiled. âI'm almost at the age, you see.â âWhat age?â I asked, stupidly enough. âWhen we take to cats,â she said, rising. âSpinsterhoodâ we like to call it. 'Single-blessedness!'â âThat is your kind heart. You decline to make one of us happy to the despair of all the rest.â She laughed at this, though with no very genuine mirth, I marked, and let my 1830 attempt at gallantry pass without other retort. âYou seemed interested in the old place yonder.â She indicated Mr. Beasley's house with a nod. âOh, I understood my blunder,â I said, quickly. âI wish I had known the subject was embarrassing or unpleasant to Mr. Dowden.â âWhat made you think that?â âSurely,â I said, âyou saw how pointedly he cut me off.â âYes,â she returned, thoughtfully. âHe rather did; it's true. At least, I see how you got that impression.â She seemed to muse upon this, letting her eyes fall; then, raising them, allowed her far-away gaze to rest upon the house beyond the fence, and said, âIt IS an interesting old place.â âAnd Mr. Beasley himself--â I began. âOh,â she said, âHE isn't interesting. That's his trouble!â âYou mean his trouble not to--â She interrupted me, speaking with sudden, surprising energy, âI mean he's a man of no imagination.â âNo imagination!â I exclaimed. âNone in the world! Not one ounce of imagination! Not one grain!â âThen who,â I cried--âor what--is Simpledoria?â âSimple--what?â she said, plainly mystified. âSimpledoria.â âSimpledoria?â she repeated, and laughed. âWhat in the world is that?â âYou never heard of it before?â âNever in my life.â âYou've lived next door to Mr. Beasley a long time, haven't you?â âAll my life.â âAnd I suppose you must know him pretty well.â âWhat next?â she said, smiling. âYou said he lived there all alone,â I went on, tentatively. âExcept for an old colored couple, his servants.â âCan you tell me--â I hesitated. âHas he ever been thought--well, 'queer'?â âNever!â she answered, emphatically. âNever anything so exciting! Merely deadly and hopelessly commonplace.â She picked up the saucer, now exceedingly empty, and set it upon a shelf by the lattice door. âWhat was it about--what was that name?--'Simpledoria'?â âI will tell you,â I said. And I related in detail the singular performance of which I had been a witness in the late moonlight before that morning's dawn. As I talked, we half unconsciously moved across the lawn together, finally seating ourselves upon a bench beyond the rose-beds and near the high fence. The interest my companion exhibited in the narration might have surprised me had my nocturnal experience itself been less surprising. She interrupted me now and then with little, half-checked ejaculations of acute wonder, but sat for the most part with her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand, her face turned eagerly to mine and her lips parted in half-breathless attention. There was nothing âfar awayâ about her eyes now; they were widely and intently alert. When I finished, she shook her head slowly, as if quite dumfounded, and altered her position, leaning against the back of the bench and gazing straight before her without speaking. It was plain that her neighbor's extraordinary behavior had revealed a phase of his character novel enough to be startling. âOne explanation might be just barely possible,â I said. âIf it is, it is the most remarkable case of somnambulism on record. Did you ever hear of Mr. Beasley's walking in his--â She touched me lightly but peremptorily on the arm in warning, and I stopped. On the other side of the board fence a door opened creakily, and there sounded a loud and cheerful voice--that of the gentleman in the dressing-gown. âHERE we come!â it said; âme and big Bill Hammersley. I want to show Bill I can jump ANYWAYS three times as far as he can! Come on, Bill.â âIs that Mr. Beasley's voice?â I asked, under my breath. Miss Apperthwaite nodded in affirmation. âCould he have heard me?â âNo,â she whispered. âHe's just come out of the house.â And then to herself, âWho under heaven is Bill Hammersley? I never heard of HIM!â âOf course, Bill,â said the voice beyond the fence, âif you're afraid I'll beat you TOO badly, you've still got time to back out. I did understand you to kind of hint that you were considerable of a jumper, but if--What? What'd you say, Bill?â There ensued a moment's complete silence. âOh, all right,â the voice then continued. âYou say you're in this to win, do you? Well, so'm I, Bill Hammersley; so'm I. Who'll go first? Me? All right--from the edge of the walk here. Now then! One--two--three! HA!â A sound came to our ears of some one landing heavily--and at full length, it seemed--on the turf, followed by a slight, rusty groan in the same voice. âUgh! Don't you laugh, Bill Hammersley! I haven't jumped as much as I OUGHT to, these last twenty years; I reckon I've kind of lost the hang of it. Aha!â There were indications that Mr. Beasley was picking himself up, and brushing his trousers with his hands. âNow, it's your turn, Bill. What say?â Silence again, followed by, âYes, I'll make Simpledoria get out of the way. Come here, Simpledoria. Now, Bill, put your heels together on the edge of the walk. That's right. All ready? Now then! One for the money--two for the show--three to make ready--and four for to GO!â Another silence. âBy jingo, Bill Hammersley, you've beat me! Ha, ha! That WAS a jump! What say?â Silence once more. âYou say you can do even better than that? Now, Bill, don't brag. Oh! you say you've often jumped farther? Oh! you say that was up in Scotland, where you had a spring-board? Oho! All right; let's see how far you can jump when you really try. There! Heels on the walk again. That's right; swing your arms. One--two--three! THERE you go!â Another silence. âZING! Well, sir, I'll be e-tarnally snitched to flinders if you didn't do it THAT time, Bill Hammersley! I see I never really saw any jumping before in all my born days. It's eleven feet if it's an inch. What? You say you--â I heard no more, for Miss Apperthwaite, her face flushed and her eyes shining, beckoned me imperiously to follow her, and departed so hurriedly that it might be said she ran. âI don't know,â said I, keeping at her elbow, âwhether it's more like Alice or the interlocutor's conversation at a minstrel show.â âHush!â she warned me, though we were already at a safe distance, and did not speak again until we had reached the front walk. There she paused, and I noted that she was trembling--and, no doubt correctly, judged her emotion to be that of consternation. âThere was no one THERE!â she exclaimed. âHe was all by himself! It was just the same as what you saw last night!â âEvidently.â âDid it sound to youâ--there was a little awed tremor in her voice that I found very appealing--âdid it sound to you like a person who'd lost his MIND?â âI don't know,â I said. âI don't know at all what to make of it.â âHe couldn't have beenâ--her eyes grew very wide--âintoxicated!â âNo. I'm sure it wasn't that.â âThen _I_ don't know what to make of it, either. All that wild talk about 'Bill Hammersley' and 'Simpledoria' and spring-boards in Scotland and--â âAnd an eleven-foot jump,â I suggested. âWhy, there's no more a 'Bill Hammersley,'â she cried, with a gesture of excited emphasis, âthan there is a 'Simpledoria'!â âSo it appears,â I agreed. âHe's lived there all alone,â she said, solemnly, âin that big house, so long, just sitting there evening after evening all by himself, never going out, never reading anything, not even thinking; but just sitting and sitting and sitting and SITTING--Well,â she broke off, suddenly, shook the frown from her forehead, and made me the offer of a dazzling smile, âthere's no use bothering one's own head about it.â âI'm glad to have a fellow-witness,â I said. âIt's so eerie I might have concluded there was something the matter with ME.â âYou're going to your work?â she asked, as I turned toward the gate. âI'm very glad I don't have to go to mine.â âYours?â I inquired, rather blankly. âI teach algebra and plain geometry at the High School,â said this surprising young woman. âThank Heaven, it's Saturday! I'm reading Les Miserables for the seventh time, and I'm going to have a real ORGY over Gervaise and the barricade this afternoon!â III I do not know why it should have astonished me to find that Miss Apperthwaite was a teacher of mathematics except that (to my inexperienced eye) she didn't look it. She looked more like Charlotte Corday! I had the pleasure of seeing her opposite me at lunch the next day (when Mr. Dowden kept me occupied with Spencerville politics, obviously from fear that I would break out again), but no stroll in the yard with her rewarded me afterward, as I dimly hoped, for she disappeared before I left the table, and I did not see her again for a fortnight. On week-days she did not return to the house for lunch, my only meal at Mrs. Apperthwaite's (I dined at a restaurant near the âDespatchâ office), and she was out of town for a little visit, her mother informed us, over the following Saturday and Sunday. She was not altogether out of my thoughts, however--indeed, she almost divided them with the Honorable David Beasley. A better view which I was afforded of this gentleman did not lessen my interest in him; increased it rather; it also served to make the extraordinary didoes of which he had been the virtuoso and I the audience more than ever profoundly inexplicable. My glimpse of him in the lighted doorway had given me the vaguest impression of his appearance, but one afternoon--a few days after my interview with Miss Apperthwaite--I was starting for the office and met him full-face-on as he was turning in at his gate. I took as careful invoice of him as I could without conspicuously glaring. There was something remarkably âtaking,â as we say, about this man--something easy and genial and quizzical and careless. He was the kind of person you LIKE to meet on the street; whose cheerful passing sends you on feeling indefinably a little gayer than you did. He was tall, thin--even gaunt, perhaps--and his face was long, rather pale, and shrewd and gentle; something in its oddity not unremindful of the late Sol Smith Russell. His hat was tilted back a little, the slightest bit to one side, and the sparse, brownish hair above his high forehead was going to be gray before long. He looked about forty. The truth is, I had expected to see a cousin german to Don Quixote; I had thought to detect signs and gleams of wildness, however slight--something a little âoff.â One glance of that kindly and humorous eye told me such expectation had been nonsense. Odd he might have been--Gadzooks! he looked it--but âqueerâ? Never. The fact that Miss Apperthwaite could picture such a man as this âsitting and sitting and sittingâ himself into any form of mania or madness whatever spoke loudly of her own imagination, indeed! The key to âSimpledoriaâ was to be sought under some other mat. ... As I began to know some of my co-laborers on the âDespatch,â and to pick up acquaintances, here and there, about town, I sometimes made Mr. Beasley the subject of inquiry. Everybody knew him. âOh yes, I know Dave BEASLEY!â would come the reply, nearly always with a chuckling sort of laugh. I gathered that he had a name for âeasy-goingâ which amounted to eccentricity. It was said that what the ward-heelers and camp-followers got out of him in campaign times made the political managers cry. He was the first and readiest prey for every fraud and swindler that came to Wainwright, I heard, and yet, in spite of this and of his hatred of âspeech-makingâ (âHe's as silent as Grant!â said one informant), he had a large practice, and was one of the most successful lawyers in the state. One story they told of him (or, as they were more apt to put it, âonâ him) was repeated so often that I saw it had become one of the town's traditions. One bitter evening in February, they related, he was approached upon the street by a ragged, whining, and shivering old reprobate, notorious for the various ingenuities by which he had worn out the patience of the charity organizations. He asked Beasley for a dime. Beasley had no money in his pockets, but gave the man his overcoat, went home without any himself, and spent six weeks in bed with a bad case of pneumonia as the direct result. His beneficiary sold the overcoat, and invested the proceeds in a five-day's spree, in the closing scenes of which a couple of brickbats were featured to high, spectacular effect. One he sent through a jeweller's show-window in an attempt to intimidate some wholly imaginary pursuers, the other he projected at a perfectly actual policeman who was endeavoring to soothe him. The victim of Beasley's charity and the officer were then borne to the hospital in company. It was due in part to recollections of this legend and others of a similar character that people laughed when they said, âOh yes, I know Dave BEASLEY!â Altogether, I should say, Beasley was about the most popular man in Wainwright. I could discover nowhere anything, however, to shed the faintest light upon the mystery of Bill Hammersley and Simpledoria. It was not until the Sunday of Miss Apperthwaite's absence that the revelation came. That afternoon I went to call upon the widow of a second-cousin of mine; she lived in a cottage not far from Mrs. Apperthwaite's, upon the same street. I found her sitting on a pleasant veranda, with boxes of flowering plants along the railing, though Indian summer was now close upon departure. She was rocking meditatively, and held a finger in a morocco volume, apparently of verse, though I suspected she had been better entertained in the observation of the people and vehicles decorously passing along the sunlit thoroughfare within her view. We exchanged inevitable questions and news of mutual relatives; I had told her how I liked my work and what I thought of Wainwright, and she was congratulating me upon having found so pleasant a place to live as Mrs. Apperthwaite's, when she interrupted herself to smile and nod a cordial greeting to two gentlemen driving by in a phaeton. They waved their hats to her gayly, then leaned back comfortably against the cushions--and if ever two men were obviously and incontestably on the best of terms with each other, THESE two were. They were David Beasley and Mr. Dowden. âI do wish,â said my cousin, resuming her rocking--âI do wish dear David Beasley would get a new trap of some kind; that old phaeton of his is a disgrace! I suppose you haven't met him? Of course, living at Mrs. Apperthwaite's, you wouldn't be apt to.â âBut what is he doing with Mr. Dowden?â I asked. She lifted her eyebrows. âWhy--taking him for a drive, I suppose.â âNo. I mean--how do they happen to be together?â âWhy shouldn't they be? They're old friends--â âThey ARE!â And, in answer to her look of surprise, I explained that I had begun to speak of Beasley at Mrs. Apperthwaite's, and described the abruptness with which Dowden had changed the subject. âI see,â my cousin nodded, comprehendingly. âThat's simple enough. George Dowden didn't want you to talk of Beasley THERE. I suppose it may have been a little embarrassing for everybody--especially if Ann Apperthwaite heard you.â âAnn? That's Miss Apperthwaite? Yes; I was speaking directly to her. Why SHOULDN'T she have heard me? She talked of him herself a little later--and at some length, too.â âShe DID!â My cousin stopped rocking, and fixed me with her glittering eye. âWell, of all!â âIs it so surprising?â The lady gave her boat to the waves again. âAnn Apperthwaite thinks about him still!â she said, with something like vindictiveness. âI've always suspected it. She thought you were new to the place and didn't know anything about it all, or anybody to mention it to. That's it!â âI'm still new to the place,â I urged, âand still don't know anything about it all.â âThey used to be engaged,â was her succinct and emphatic answer. I found it but too illuminating. âOh, oh!â I cried. âI WAS an innocent, wasn't I?â âI'm glad she DOES think of him,â said my cousin. âIt serves her right. I only hope HE won't find it out, because he's a poor, faithful creature; he'd jump at the chance to take her back--and she doesn't deserve him.â âHow long has it been,â I asked, âsince they used to be engaged?â âOh, a good while--five or six years ago, I think--maybe more; time skips along. Ann Apperthwaite's no chicken, you know.â (Such was the lady's expression.) âThey got engaged just after she came home from college, and of all the idiotically romantic girls--â âBut she's a teacher,â I interrupted, âof mathematics.â âYes.â She nodded wisely. âI always thought that explained it: the romance is a reaction from the algebra. I never knew a person connected with mathematics or astronomy or statistics, or any of those exact things, who didn't have a crazy streak in 'em SOMEwhere. They've got to blow off steam and be foolish to make up for putting in so much of their time at hard sense. But don't you think that I dislike Ann Apperthwaite. She's always been one of my best friends; that's why I feel at liberty to abuse her--and I always will abuse her when I think how she treated poor David Beasley.â âHow did she treat him?â âThrew him over out of a clear sky one night, that's all. Just sent him home and broke his heart; that is, it would have been broken if he'd had any kind of disposition except the one the Lord blessed him with--just all optimism and cheerfulness and make-the-best-of-it-ness! He's never cared for anybody else, and I guess he never will.â âWhat did she do it for?â âNOTHING!â My cousin shot the indignant word from her lips. âNothing in the wide WORLD!â âBut there must have been--â âListen to me,â she interrupted, âand tell me if you ever heard anything queerer in your life. They'd been engaged--Heaven knows how long--over two years; probably nearer three--and always she kept putting it off; wouldn't begin to get ready, wouldn't set a day for the wedding. Then Mr. Apperthwaite died, and left her and her mother stranded high and dry with nothing to live on. David had everything in the world to give her--and STILL she wouldn't! And then, one day, she came up here and told me she'd broken it off. Said she couldn't stand it to be engaged to David Beasley another minute!â âBut why?â âBecauseâ--my cousin's tone was shrill with her despair of expressing the satire she would have put into it--âbecause, she said he was a man of no imagination!â âShe still says so,â I remarked, thoughtfully. âThen it's time she got a little imagination herself!â snapped my companion. âDavid Beasley's the quietest man God has made, but everybody knows what he IS! There are some rare people in this world that aren't all TALK; there are some still rarer ones that scarcely ever talk at all--and David Beasley's one of them. I don't know whether it's because he can't talk, or if he can and hates to; I only know he doesn't. And I'm glad of it, and thank the Lord he's put a few like that into this talky world! David Beasley's smile is better than acres of other people's talk. My Providence! Wouldn't anybody, just to look at him, know that he does better than talk? He THINKS! The trouble with Ann Apperthwaite was that she was too young to see it. She was so full of novels and poetry and dreaminess and highfalutin nonsense she couldn't see ANYTHING as it really was. She'd study her mirror, and see such a heroine of romance there that she just couldn't bear to have a fiance who hadn't any chance of turning out to be the crown-prince of Kenosha in disguise! At the very least, to suit HER he'd have had to wear a 'well-trimmed Vandyke' and coo sonnets in the gloaming, or read On a Balcony to her by a red lamp. âPoor David! Outside of his law-books, I don't believe he's ever read anything but Robinson Crusoe and the Bible and Mark Twain. Oh, you should have heard her talk about it!--'I couldn't bear it another day,' she said, 'I couldn't STAND it! In all the time I've known him I don't believe he's ever asked me a single question--except when he asked if I'd marry him. He never says ANYTHING--never speaks at ALL!' she said. 'You don't know a blessing when you see it,' I told her. 'Blessing!' she said. 'There's nothing IN the man! He has no DEPTHS! He hasn't any more imagination than the chair he sits and sits and sits in! Half the time he answers what I say to him by nodding and saying 'um-hum,' with that same old foolish, contented smile of his. I'd have gone MAD if it had lasted any longer!' I asked her if she thought married life consisted very largely of conversations between husband and wife; and she answered that even married life ought to have some POETRY in it. 'Some romance,' she said, 'some soul! And he just comes and sits,' she said, 'and sits and sits and sits and sits! And I can't bear it any longer, and I've told him so.'â âPoor Mr. Beasley,â I said. â_I_ think, 'Poor Ann Apperthwaite!'â retorted my cousin. âI'd like to know if there's anything NICER than just to sit and sit and sit and sit with as lovely a man as that--a man who understands things, and thinks and listens and smiles--instead of everlastingly talking!â âAs it happens,â I remarked, âI've heard Mr. Beasley talk.â âWhy, of course he talks,â she returned, âwhen there's any real use in it. And he talks to children; he's THAT kind of man.â âI meant a particular instance,â I began; meaning to see if she could give me any clew to Bill Hammersley and Simpledoria, but at that moment the gate clicked under the hand of another caller. My cousin rose to greet him; and presently I took my leave without having been able to get back upon the subject of Beasley. Thus, once more baffled, I returned to Mrs. Apperthwaite's--and within the hour came into full possession of the very heart of that dark and subtle mystery which overhung the house next door and so perplexed my soul. IV Finding that I had still some leisure before me, I got a book from my room and repaired to the bench in the garden. But I did not read; I had but opened the book when my attention was arrested by sounds from the other side of the high fence--low and tremulous croonings of distinctly African derivation: âAh met mah sistuh in a-mawnin', She 'uz a-waggin' up de hill SO slow! 'Sistuh, you mus' git a rastle in doo time, B'fo de hevumly do's cloze--iz!'â It was the voice of an aged negro; and the simultaneous slight creaking of a small hub and axle seemed to indicate that he was pushing or pulling a child's wagon or perambulator up and down the walk from the kitchen door to the stable. Whiles, he proffered soothing music: over and over he repeated the chant, though with variations; encountering in turn his brother, his daughter, each of his parents, his uncle, his cousin, and his second-cousin, one after the other ascending the same slope with the same perilous leisure. âLay still, honey.â He interrupted his injunctions to the second-cousin. âDes keep on a-nappin' an' a-breavin' de f'esh air. Dass wha's go' mek you good an' well agin.â Then there spoke the strangest voice that ever fell upon my ear; it was not like a child's, neither was it like a very old person's voice; it might have been a grasshopper's, it was so thin and little, and made of such tiny wavers and quavers and creakings. âI--want--â said this elfin voice, âI--want--Bill--Hammersley!â The shabby phaeton which had passed my cousin's house was drawing up to the curb near Beasley's gate. Evidently the old negro saw it. âHi dar!â he exclaimed. âLook at dat! Hain' Bill a comin' yonnah des edzacly on de dot an' to de vey spot an' instink when you 'quiah fo' 'im, honey? Dar come Mist' Dave, right on de minute, an' you kin bet yo' las hunnud dollahs he got dat Bill Hammersley wif 'im! Come along, honey-chile! Ah's go' to pull you 'roun in de side yod fo' to meet 'em.â The small wagon creaked away, the chant resuming as it went. Mr. Dowden jumped out of the phaeton with a wave of his hand to the driver, Beasley himself, who clucked to the horse and drove through his open carriage-gates and down the drive on the other side of the house, where he was lost to my view. Dowden, entering our own gate, nodded in a friendly fashion to me, and I advanced to meet him. âSome day I want to take you over next door,â he said, cordially, as I came up. âYou ought to know Beasley, especially as I hear you're doing some political reporting. Dave Beasley's going to be the next governor of this state, you know.â He laughed, offered me a cigar, and we sat down together on the front steps. âFrom all I hear,â I rejoined, âYOU ought to know who'll get it.â (It was said in town that Dowden would âcome pretty near having the nomination in his pocket.â) âI expect you thought I shifted the subject pretty briskly the other day?â He glanced at me quizzically from under the brim of his black felt hat. âI meant to tell you about that, but the opportunity didn't occur. You see--â âI understand,â I interrupted. âI've heard the story. You thought it might be embarrassing to Miss Apperthwaite.â âI expect I was pretty clumsy about it,â said Dowden, cheerfully. âWell, well--â he flicked his cigar with a smothered ejaculation that was half a sigh and half a laugh; âit's a mighty strange case. Here they keep on living next door to each other, year after year, each going on alone when they might just as well--â He left the sentence unfinished, save for a vocal click of compassion. âThey bow when they happen to meet, but they haven't exchanged a word since the night she sent him away, long ago.â He shook his head, then his countenance cleared and he chuckled. âWell, sir, Dave's got something at home to keep him busy enough, these days, I expect!â âDo you mind telling me?â I inquired. âIs its name 'Simpledoria'?â Mr. Dowden threw back his head and laughed loudly. âLord, no! What on earth made you think that?â I told him. It was my second success with this narrative; however, there was a difference: my former auditor listened with flushed and breathless excitement, whereas the present one laughed consumedly throughout. Especially he laughed with a great laughter at the picture of Beasley's coming down at four in the morning to open the door for nothing on sea or land or in the waters under the earth. I gave account, also, of the miraculous jumping contest (though I did not mention Miss Apperthwaite's having been with me), and of the elfin voice I had just now overheard demanding âBill Hammersley.â âSo I expect you must have decided,â he chuckled, when I concluded, âthat David Beasley has gone just plain, plum insane.â âNot a bit of it. Nobody could look at him and not know better than that.â âYou're right THERE!â said Dowden, heartily. âAnd now I'll tell you all there is TO it. You see, Dave grew up with a cousin of his named Hamilton Swift; they were boys together; went to the same school, and then to college. I don't believe there was ever a high word spoken between them. Nobody in this life ever got a quarrel out of Dave Beasley, and Hamilton Swift was a mighty good sort of a fellow, too. He went East to live, after they got out of college, yet they always managed to get together once a year, generally about Christmas-time; you couldn't pass them on the street without hearing their laughter ringing out louder than the sleigh-bells, maybe over some old joke between them, or some fool thing they did, perhaps, when they were boys. But finally Hamilton Swift's business took him over to the other side of the water to live; and he married an English girl, an orphan without any kin. That was about seven years ago. Well, sir, this last summer he and his wife were taking a trip down in Switzerland, and they were both drowned--tipped over out of a rowboat in Lake Lucerne--and word came that Hamilton Swift's will appointed Dave guardian of the one child they had, a little boy--Hamilton Swift, Junior's his name. He was sent across the ocean in charge of a doctor, and Dave went on to New York to meet him. He brought him home here the very day before you passed the house and saw poor Dave getting up at four in the morning to let that ghost in. And a mighty funny ghost Simpledoria is!â âI begin to understand,â I said, âand to feel pretty silly, too.â âNot at all,â he rejoined, heartily. âThat little chap's freaks would mystify anybody, especially with Dave humoring 'em the ridiculous way he does. Hamilton Swift, Junior, is the curiousest child I ever saw--and the good Lord knows He made all children powerful mysterious! This poor little cuss has a complication of infirmities that have kept him on his back most of his life, never knowing other children, never playing, or anything; and he's got ideas and ways that I never saw the beat of! He was born sick, as I understand it--his bones and nerves and insides are all wrong, somehow--but it's supposed he gets a little better from year to year. He wears a pretty elaborate set of braces, and he's subject to attacks, too--I don't know the name for 'em--and loses what little voice he has sometimes, all but a whisper. He had one, I know, the day after Beasley brought him home, and that was probably the reason you thought Dave was carrying on all to himself about that jumping-match out in the back-yard. The boy must have been lying there in the little wagon they have for him, while Dave cut up shines with 'Bill Hammersley.' Of course, most children have make-believe friends and companions, especially if they haven't any brothers or sisters, but this lonely little feller's got HIS people worked out in his mind and materialized beyond any I ever heard of. Dave got well acquainted with 'em on the train on the way home, and they certainly are giving him a lively time. Ho, ho! Getting him up at four in the morning--â Mr. Dowden's mirth overcame him for a moment; when he had mastered it, he continued: âSimpledoria--now where do you suppose he got that name?--well, anyway, Simpledoria is supposed to be Hamilton Swift, Junior's St. Bernard dog. Beasley had to BATHE him the other day, he told me! And Bill Hammersley is supposed to be a boy of Hamilton Swift, Junior's own age, but very big and strong; he has rosy cheeks, and he can do more in athletics than a whole college track-team. That's the reason he outjumped Dave so far, you see.â V Miss Apperthwaite was at home the following Saturday. I found her in the library with Les Miserables on her knee when I came down from my room a little before lunch-time; and she looked up and gave me a smile that made me feel sorry for any one she had ceased to smile upon. âI wanted to tell you,â I said, with a little awkwardness but plenty of truth, âI've found out that I'm an awful fool.â âBut that's something,â she returned, encouragingly--âat least the beginning of wisdom.â âI mean about Mr. Beasley--the mystery I was absurd enough to find in 'Simpledoria.' I want to tell you--â âOh, _I_ know,â she
{'title': "Beasley's Christmas Party by Booth Tarkington", 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}