Old-Dad. Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
there comes a night that I've got 'pep' enough to stay awake I'd rather ride somehow than fuss around with people. Sometimes I ride all night! I've got a horse named Brainstorm! And he's some devil!" In the instant's transfiguring glow he was all young god again, superb, defiant. Then as though with a spasm of pain his young mouth tightened to a single determinate line. With the air of one suddenly very tired he stopped his restless pacing and backed into the supporting angle of the bookcase.
"But on this particular night—that I was telling you about," he resumed unhappily, "I had a sort of a feeling somehow that I'd like to go to the dance. It isn't always easy, you know," he confided with unexpected ingenuousness. "After the long day's work, I mean, with your back broken and your arms sprained, to come in and round up your own hot tub and your own shaving things and your own supper and the evening clothes you haven't even seen for six months. And I forgot the supper," he smiled faintly. "We haven't any woman at the house just now. But after 13 you get to the dance you don't mind!" he brightened transiently. "It's so bright and sweet-smelling! So many lights and colors! And so many funny dresses! And the music certainly is bully! And then all of a sudden at some silly hour like eleven o'clock everything shuts down and you have to go home! Why you'd only just come! Just got into your step, I mean! Just met the girls you wanted to meet! Just begun to laugh! Just begun to fool! That's the trouble with college parties," he frowned. "They're so darn institutional! No hanging round afterwards to forage in the kitchen and help put the house to bed, no nice jolly dawdling about on the front steps to look at the moon, no funny, bumpy walk home through a plowed field with a girl in high-heeled shoes and a lace tidy over her head! Just zip! Like that! 'Eleven o'clock! Everybody get out!' All that fun and prettiness and everything snuffed out like a sour candle just because some old dame wants to go to bed! It's too—it's too abrupt!" said the boy.
"So you felt?" prodded the man.
"Felt?" cried the boy. "Why at five minutes of eleven I felt 14 so fit I could have run nine miles to help put out a fire. But at eleven I was so mad I'd have run twenty just to start one!"
"So what did you do?" said the man.
"I swore I wouldn't go home," flushed the boy, "until at least I'd had something to eat! You know what college feeds are, a cent's worth of salad and the juice of one cracker? Your daughter laughed. She thought it was funny. 'Oh, what a pity,' she said, 'that you can't have the cold roast chicken that's up in my room!' 'Where is your room?' I asked. I was laughing too. 'Oh, just round the corner in the next building,' she said. 'Trot along over with me and if nobody's round I'll scoot upstairs and toss it down to you!' It was further than I thought," said the boy. "And very nice. Just a two-minute cut across the campus, but stars, you know, and a crunch of snow, and the funny fat shapes of the orchestra instruments running for their train. And Lord but I was hungry! But when we got to the dormitory there were too many people round, it seemed, too many lights, too much passing, not a single shadow in the whole 15 world apparently that was big enough to toss a roast chicken into—let alone hide my great hulking shape. 'I just darsn't!' said your daughter. 'Somebody surely would see me, a matron or a proctor or the night watchman or some body!' And all of a sudden," flushed the boy, "it seemed to me so absolutely idiotic that a girl who'd never done any harm in her life should be shut up in a place where she couldn't even proffer food to a starving friend or finish out a dance or do any other decent normal thing just because some cranky old dame had other ideas. 'Well, there's no old dame who owns me!' I said. So if you're afraid to go get the chicken I'll come and get it myself!' 'Yes—I can—see you!' laughed your daughter. She was standing on the step as she spoke and she had on something very red and sort of cunning with a hood all black fur around her face and as she tilted up her chin to the light it looked as though even her hair was laughing at you. 'Well, I'm coming!' I laughed back. 'You darsn't!' she said. In an hour I was there! Oh, of course, I know I oughtn't to have done it!" conceded the boy. "But upon my 16 soul I swear I didn't think anything about it except that it was putting something over on some of those old dames! All this fuss about it's being a girl's room never entered my head for a moment I tell you! I've always had such an awful lot of girl cousins tumbling around. And it was all so darned easy after the moon went down! Such a nifty fire-escape and the toughest sort of an old wisteria vine and——"
"Was—she expecting you?" asked the man.
"No—that was the trouble," flushed the boy. "Maybe at first she had wondered a bit if I'd really have the nerve—I don't know. But by the time I'd got there she'd started for bed. Was in her wrapper, I mean, with her hair down. Bare feet, you know, and all that sort of thing. And when I opened the window and slipped in across the edge she started to scream. Knew who I was all at once and all that—but the scream got started first. And I knew, of course, that wouldn't do, so I jumped and caught her in my arms to try and smother it out. And the door opened—and in walked President Merriwayne herself. I don't know what she 17 was doing there in that dormitory at that time of night. It may have been just accident or somebody may have overheard us fooling out on the front steps the hour before—I don't know. It just happened—that's all," said the boy. "And there was an awful scene, of course. Things said, I mean, that I shouldn't have supposed a woman would say to a young girl. And two or three teachers or proctors came running in. And there was a faculty meeting later of course. And somebody blabbed to a chambermaid and the chambermaid blabbed to somebody else. And a reporter got hold of it and——"
"And a reporter got hold of it?" said the man.
"Yes," shivered the boy.
"Pictures?" asked the man.
"Yes," said the boy.
"Pretty horrid?" said the man.
"Very horrid," said the boy.
For an instant there seemed to be no sound at all in the room except the sound of flame sucking at the birch juices on the hearth.
Then the man looked up sharply from the birch log to the boy's 18 quivering face.
"Well—was the roast chicken good?" he asked.
"S—ir?" stammered the boy.
"And so——?" prompted the man.
From the boy's lips a long shuddering sigh escaped. "And so," said the boy, "I have ruined your daughter's life."
"And what do you propose to do about it?" asked the man.
With a quick squaring of his shoulders the boy drew his fine young body to its full height.
"I propose to do whatever you want me to do," he said.
"Such as what?" asked the man.
"Such as anything!" said the boy. Almost imperceptibly his breath quickened. "Why, when I came here just now," he cried, "I came, of course, expecting to be stormed at, to be cursed, to be insulted, to be told I was a liar, to have everything I said or did rammed down my throat again! But you?——All you've done is just to listen to me! And believe me! And laugh! It's as though I'd hurt you so much you were sorriest of all for me—and were 19 trying every darned way you knew to keep me from going mad! It's as though——" From the sudden slight sag of his shoulders he rallied again with a gesture of folded arms and finality. "I tell you I want to do whatever you want me to do," he repeated quite simply.
"Have you talked with anyone—about this?" asked the man.
"Just with my brother," said the boy.
"And what did he say?" asked the man.
"It's the brother who runs the farm with me," explained the boy. "He's a cripple and rather a bit nervous now and then, but he reads an awful lot of books. Not just farm books I mean—not just scientific books, but all sorts of——"
"By which you are intending to imply," interrupted the man, "that your brother's opinion, even though nervous, may be considered fairly sophisticated?"
"Oh, yes," said the boy. "And we went into it all very thoroughly. All the scandal and notoriety of the expulsion, I mean, and the fright and the mortification, and the silly sap-headed mothers 20 who won't let their daughters chum with your daughter