The Essential Booth Tarkington Collection. Booth Tarkington
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a nod.
"Oh, I understood my blunder," I said, quickly. "I wish I had known the subject was embarrassing or unpleasant to Mr. Dowden."
"What made you think that?"
"Surely," I said, "you saw how pointedly he cut me off."
"Yes," she returned, thoughtfully. "He rather did; it's true. At least, I see how you got that impression." 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, "It IS an interesting old place."
"And Mr. Beasley himself--" I began.
"Oh," she said, "HE isn't interesting. That's his trouble!"
"You mean his trouble not to--"
She interrupted me, speaking with sudden, surprising energy, "I mean he's a man of no imagination."
"No imagination!" I exclaimed.
"None in the world! Not one ounce of imagination! Not one grain!"
"Then who," I cried--"or what--is Simpledoria?"
"Simple--what?" she said, plainly mystified.
"Simpledoria."
"Simpledoria?" she repeated, and laughed. "What in the world is that?"
"You never heard of it before?"
"Never in my life."
"You've lived next door to Mr. Beasley a long time, haven't you?"
"All my life."
"And I suppose you must know him pretty well."
"What next?" she said, smiling.
"You said he lived there all alone," I went on, tentatively.
"Except for an old colored couple, his servants."
"Can you tell me--" I hesitated. "Has he ever been thought--well, 'queer'?"
"Never!" she answered, emphatically. "Never anything so exciting! Merely deadly and hopelessly commonplace." She picked up the saucer, now exceedingly empty, and set it upon a shelf by the lattice door. "What was it about--what was that name?--'Simpledoria'?"
"I will tell you," 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 "far away" 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.
"One explanation might be just barely possible," I said. "If it is, it is the most remarkable case of somnambulism on record. Did you ever hear of Mr. Beasley's walking in his--"
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.
"HERE we come!" it said; "me and big Bill Hammersley. I want to show Bill I can jump ANYWAYS three times as far as he can! Come on, Bill."
"Is that Mr. Beasley's voice?" I asked, under my breath.
Miss Apperthwaite nodded in affirmation.
"Could he have heard me?"
"No," she whispered. "He's just come out of the house." And then to herself, "Who under heaven is Bill Hammersley? I never heard of HIM!"
"Of course, Bill," said the voice beyond the fence, "if 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?" There ensued a moment's complete silence. "Oh, all right," the voice then continued. "You 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!"
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. "Ugh! 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!" There were indications that Mr. Beasley was picking himself up, and brushing his trousers with his hands. "Now, it's your turn, Bill. What say?" Silence again, followed by, "Yes, 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!" Another silence. "By jingo, Bill Hammersley, you've beat me! Ha, ha! That WAS a jump! What say?" Silence once more. "You 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!" Another silence. "ZING! 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--"
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.
"I don't know," said I, keeping at her elbow, "whether it's more like Alice or the interlocutor's conversation at a minstrel show."
"Hush!" 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.
"There was no one THERE!" she exclaimed. "He was all by himself! It was just the same as what you saw last night!"
"Evidently."
"Did it sound to you"--there was a little awed tremor in her voice that I found very appealing--"did it sound to you like a person who'd lost his MIND?"
"I don't know," I said. "I don't know at all what to make of it."
"He couldn't have been"--her eyes grew very wide--"intoxicated!"
"No. I'm sure it wasn't that."
"Then _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--"
"And an eleven-foot jump," I suggested.
"Why, there's no more a 'Bill Hammersley,'" she cried, with a gesture of excited emphasis, "than there is a 'Simpledoria'!"
"So it appears," I agreed.
"He's lived there all alone," she said, solemnly, "in 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," she broke off, suddenly, shook the frown from her forehead, and made me the offer of a dazzling smile, "there's no use bothering one's own head about it."