Barry Locke, half-back
There was a somewhat decrepit picket fence in front, and a gate which
obligingly swung inward or outward, but creaked complainingly either
way. A short brick walk between narrow beds of salvia and geraniums and
flaming nasturtiums led to the open doorway. It also led to a boy who
sat on the edge of the low porch and, clasping a knee in a pair of
very brown hands, unwinkingly observed their approach. However, when
they had traversed half the walk he spoke.
“Hello, Allen,” he said.
“Hello,” answered Clyde; and then, as Barry dropped his suit-case and
reached for his handkerchief, he added perfunctorily: “This is Mr.
Locke, Mr. Jones. You fellows might as well get acquainted. Didn’t know
you hung out here, though, Jones.”
The boy on the porch arose and shook hands with Barry. He had hair that
was neither brown nor red but some shade between, a lean, deeply tanned
face, two very blue eyes, and a smile that Barry liked immensely. But
the smile vanished when the youth dropped again to his seat and replied
to Clyde:
“That’s strange, I’ve been here some time.”
“Oh,” said Clyde, in the tone of one dismissing an unimportant topic.
“Well, we’d better find Mrs. Lyle, Barry.”
“She’s gone to town,” said Jones. “Locke’s room is in front, on this
side.” He pointed a thumb over his left shoulder. “You can’t miss it.”
“I’ll go up with you,” said Clyde. “Oh, by the way, what about your
trunk? Did you give your check to the man at the station?”
Barry shook his head ruefully:
“I didn’t think a thing about it!”
“You’re a wonder!” jeered Clyde. “Guess it’s a good thing you’ve got me
here to look after you, kid.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Jones, somewhat surprisingly.
“I was speaking to Locke,” answered Clyde, shortly. Barry saw the scowl
that accompanied the words, and wondered. Jones nodded imperturbably.
“My error,” he murmured. His gaze returned to the road.
Clyde led the way inside, along a narrow hall, and up a stairway. He
was muttering to himself, but Barry caught fragments. “Fresh bounder”
was one of them. Evidently Clyde and the brown-skinned youth downstairs
were not very friendly. Clyde seemed to have regained his equanimity,
however, by the time they reached the second floor. There were four
doors in sight, one at the head of the stairs, one, that of the
bath-room, half-way along the hall, and two more after the stair-well
had been passed. That to the right was barely ajar, the other stood
wide. Clyde, in advance, paused impressively on the threshold and waved
a hand.
“Here you are,” he proclaimed congratulatingly. “How’s this, old top?”
Barry looked past him over a shoulder. There was a protracted moment of
silence. Then, rather haltingly, rather faintly, Barry replied:
“Why, it――it’s very nice, isn’t it?”
* * * * *
“You’d better get the expressman on the ’phone pretty soon,” advised
Clyde, from across the front gate a few minutes later, “and have him
call for your check. He will probably ask you seventy-five cents, but
don’t pay more than fifty. That’s the regular price. Well, glad you
like the room, Barry. Come over a little before six and I’ll take you
around to Bates. Wish I could stay longer, but I promised to see a
fellow at five.”
“That’s all right,” said Barry. “Thanks for getting me fixed up.”
Clyde nodded and went briskly off in the direction of school, a rather
large, fairly tall lad, well set up, very carefully and a trifle
expensively dressed. He was bareheaded, and his dark hair glistened in
the sunlight, every lock carefully plastered into place. Clyde Allen
was a good-looking fellow, and he wasn’t entirely unconscious of the
fact. Barry thought him extremely handsome and didn’t blame him in the
least for being――well, just a bit vain. He watched until Clyde passed
from view, and then went back to the porch.
Jones had disappeared during their visit to the room. Barry wasn’t
sorry, for he had already concluded that he wasn’t going to like Jones
very well. Barry found it difficult actually to dislike any one, but
there were degrees of liking. He took Jones’s place on the edge of the
porch and, stretching his knickered legs before him, thrust his hands
into his pockets and surveyed the world and the future.
The world was quite all right, a warm, scented, sunlit world. Wessex
lay in a hollow formed by two ranges of hills, disputing the little
valley with the East Fork River. Directly in front of Barry, across
the road, stood a white house very like the one behind him. From an
upstairs window of it came faint, tentative sounds as of a bow being
drawn lightly across the strings of a violin. They were not unpleasant.
Beyond the opposite dwelling the land ran levelly to a marsh streaked
in the lengthening rays of the sun with russet and pinkish brown. Half
a mile away the hills began, climbing steeply to a dome-shaped mountain
on the north and waving southward in a series of lesser elevations.
Cows were grazing below the knoll that held the shaded farm buildings,
and a bell tinkled at intervals. Yes, the world was a perfectly good
world, and Barry approvingly dismissed it from his thoughts and
reverted to that second subject, the future.
Somehow Broadmoor School had disappointed him. Or, since save for a
hasty glance from a window of his room he had not yet seen the school,
the circumstances attending his arrival had disappointed him. First
there had been Clyde’s failure to meet him punctually. Then there had
been his introduction to that upstairs room. It had been five days
since he learned that he was not to share Number 42 Dawson with his
friend, and so that disappointment was no longer fresh, but――well, the
substitute for the dormitory room was rather awful. Barry had assured
Clyde that it was quite satisfactory, but that was just because he
hadn’t wanted to hurt Clyde’s feelings.
To be sure, the room was clean and neat, but it was also threadbare;
and the five pieces of furniture, a nondescript assemblage, looked
horribly inadequate. There were the remains――Barry couldn’t think of
a kinder word――of an ingrain art-square in the middle of the floor, a
thing of faded greens and yellows, its borders frayed and its startling
pattern relieved by many lapses of the fabric. It looked very lonely,
for it was not a large carpet and the room, whatever else might be said
of it, was spacious. Between the edges of the carpet and the walls lay
broad expanses of painted floor, expanses of awful greenish gray that
jarred Barry’s sensibilities. As though in atonement for the floor,
the plastered walls had been unevenly calcimined in pale pink. Barry
shuddered at the recollection.
He couldn’t help contrasting that upstairs chamber of horrors with his
rooms at home, and he wondered if it were possible to live contentedly
with that floor and those bare walls for eight long months. Of course
he could send home for things or buy them in the village, but what
could any one put up there that would look as though it belonged? He
wondered whether, after all, he was going to like Broadmoor. He had
taken Clyde’s word for everything. They had been chums――well, not
exactly chums, perhaps, but friends――for years, had gone to high school
together, lived within three houses of each other in Hazen, New York,
and shared acquaintances and interests.
Clyde had come to Broadmoor the year before; he was sixteen years
old to Barry’s fifteen, and a class ahead of him, and Barry had
quite naturally chosen Broadmoor too. His parents had approved
enthusiastically, for they shared Barry’s admiration for Clyde. The two
boys were to room together, of course; that had been understood right
along, until last week. Then this Stearns fellow, a Second Classman
like Clyde, had spoiled that. Barry wondered whether or not Clyde was
really disappointed. He had said he was, but somehow his tone hadn’t
carried conviction. And, after all, it was natural enough for Clyde to
prefer a fellow of his own age as room-mate. Barry could understand
that, of course, only――well, gee! look what it had done to him!
He hadn’t forgotten about his trunk, but in his present mood that
article didn’t seem very important. Nevertheless, if the matter were
to be attended to it was high time he bestirred himself, for it was
almost a quarter after five. He got up with a sigh for wasted dreams
and sought the telephone inside. He was putting the receiver back when
the doorway was darkened and a pleasant voice said:
“Is that you, Crawford? Would you mind taking this basket of grapes
before――”
“Not at all,” said Barry. “I’m not Crawford, though. I suppose you’re
Mrs. Lyle.” He rescued the grapes and drew aside, smiling.
“Why, gracious!” exclaimed the lady; “so you aren’t! You must be the
new boy. Is it Key? No, not――”
“Locke!” laughed Barry. “It’s the next thing to Key, though. Shall I
take these――”
“Oh, you mustn’t trouble!” Mrs. Lyle was plainly flustered. “If you’ll
just put them on top, I’m sure――”
“Better not, I guess,” Barry demurred. The landlady’s arms were already
laden to capacity with packages, and one, plainly labeled “Fresh Eggs,”
looked none too secure.
“Then if you’ll just bring them into the dining-room,” said Mrs. Lyle.
“I hate to take any one into it, too.” She opened a door at the end of
the hall. “Betty’s been away all day and I’ve been so busy――”
Evidently unfinished sentences were the fashion with her, Barry decided
as he followed her into a room which, while it had apparently not
been “picked up” since morning, was pleasantly homy in spite of its
shabbiness. Evidently, too, it was Mrs. Lyle’s custom to give the maid
the whole day off. He set the small basket of grapes on the bright-red
cloth of the table and rescued the eggs, now on the very verge of
demolition. Mrs. Lyle murmured relief, disencumbered herself of the
remaining packages, and smiled at Barry. And right then Barry became
her devoted subject.
She was small and slight, faded and rather tired-looking; but one knew
that not so many years before she had been a very pretty girl. When she
smiled she was still pretty. There was a quality in that smile that
imbued Barry with an instant desire to perform some service for her. He
wondered if she needed any wood chopped or――or anything. He couldn’t
remember ever having chopped any wood, but he was eager to do it!
“I hope you found everything all right in your room,” Mrs. Lyle was
saying. “I meant to be here when you arrived, but I forgot my purse and
had to come back for it, and so――”
“Oh, yes, thanks!” he declared emphatically. “Everything is fine! That
is――well, I wonder, Mrs. Lyle, if I might have a table. Of course if
you don’t happen to have one on hand I can get along perfectly.”
“A table? Why――but――goodness gracious! there _is_ a table! I mean there
_was_ a table! Are you sure――”
“It really doesn’t matter,” Barry said earnestly. Mrs. Lyle’s agitation
made him regret extremely the introduction of the subject.
“But of course it matters! I’ll go up and see what――”
Barry followed her. Mrs. Lyle looked perplexedly at Barry.
“Why, I don’t see what――where――” Then, however, perplexity vanished. “I
know where it is.” She nodded, with conviction. “You wait a minute.”
She went out and along the hall. Curious, Barry followed as far as the
door. Mrs. Lyle had stopped before the closed portal at the head of the
stairs and was knocking on it.
“Toby! Toby Nott!” she called. There were faint sounds from beyond the
door, then a slightly querulous voice answered:
“Yes’m Mrs. Lyle?”
“Open the door, Toby.”
“I can’t! I――oh, well, all right; only, I’m terribly busy, Mrs. Lyle.”
The end of the sentence was delivered through a six-inch aperture.
“I’m sorry,” said Mrs. Lyle, “but you can’t have that table, Toby.”