Part 8 (1/2)
”Over at Mrs. Hallowell's garage, of course.”
”You have just left it there. Richard, don't you realize what a lawless thing you have done? To take another person's car without permission-”
”I did too have permission!” Buster's red crest reared. His black eyes flamed. ”I had her opened up, and was studying the engine-gee, some peach!-and I told the doctor's chauffeur that I'd bet him a box of Gibraltars I could take that car clear to Doctor Lake's Boston office and back in two hours and not get pinched. And he said, 'I'm from Saint Joe, son. You gotta show me.' So I jumped aboard, and I'd beat it down the drive before he could say boo. And I made it in one hour and fifty-seven minutes, though I had to waste ten minutes, and a dollar besides, on the doctor's mutt of a doorman-making him understand why he must sign his name to a card saying I'd reported there at five sharp.
The big dummy, I don't believe the real reason has dawned on him yet.
But you oughter seen that chauffeur wilt when I whizzled her in, two minutes ago!”
”I feel wilted myself. When I think of the apologies I must make to Doctor Lake-”
”Apologies? What for? He ought to be delighted. It was a corking speed test for his car. Down that stem-winder cliff, let me tell you, she just naturally hung on by her eyebrows.”
”Richard, the chauffeur did not mean to give you permission. You know that.”
”W-Well. What if he didn't?”
”Richard, you are inexcusable.” Aunt Charlotte ruffled her feathers and dashed into the fray. Whereat Richard exploded.
”Gee, ain't it fierce? Ain't it, now! How's a fellow to learn about cars and engines and things if folks won't ever give him a chance to try 'em out? And I've got to find out how to do things and make things and run things; I've _got_ to know!”
His solid fists clinched; his voice skittered comically from a ba.s.s bellow to an angry treble crow. I choked. He was so exactly like a pin-feathered young Shanghai rooster, hotly contending his right to live his own life, against two glum, elderly hens. But that didn't deter me from marching him over to Madam Hallowell's later.
”Nonsense, my dear Miss Edith!” Thus Doctor Lake, just a bit too Olympian in large white waistcoat and eminent calm. ”It was my chauffeur's doing. He will answer to me. I beg you, give the matter no more thought.”
None the less, in his bland eye lurked a yearning to seize on Buster and boil him in oil. Buster saw that look.
”Grown-up folks are so darn stingy!” he mused bitterly as we went away.
He aimed a vicious kick at the box hedge. ”You'd think any man would be glad to let a fellow take his car to pieces and study it out, then test it for speed and endurance, 'specially when the fellow has never owned anything better than a measly little runabout in all his life. But no.
There he stands, all diked out like a cold boiled owl, with his eyes rolled up and his lip rolled out-'My chauffeur will answer to me.' When, all the time, he'd lick the hide off me if he just dasted. Old stuffed s.h.i.+rt!”
”You need not speak so disrespectfully-”
”I wouldn't-if folks wasn't so disrespectful to me.” His eyes began to flash again, his sullen under-lip to quiver. ”'Learn it all,' they tell you. 'Investigate every useful art.' That's what everybody pours down your throat, teachers, and relations, an' all the rest of 'em. How do they s'pose I'm going to learn about things if they lock everything up away from me? And I've got to find out about things; I've _got_ to know!”
I didn't say anything. What was the use? You might as well scold an active young dynamo for wanting to spark. But mild little Aunt Charlotte was quite sputtery, for her.
”Isabella and her Octavius have reared their child to have the tastes of a common mechanic. It is too ridiculous. Richard needs to understand problems of finance, not of cogs and axle-grease. If only American parents would adopt the German methods! _They_ teach their children what is best for them to know. They don't permit their young people to waste time and money on wild-goose flights.”
”N-no.” I s.h.i.+vered a little. For some reason, the annual percentage of school-boy suicides in Prussia flashed through my mind. When you multiplied that by a nation- ”But perhaps it's as well that we give our boys more rope.”
”To hang themselves with?” sniffed Aunt Charlotte. I subsided.
So did Buster, for some weeks-weeks so peaceful, they were all but sinister. Across the ocean, a harebrained student murdered a reigning duke and his d.u.c.h.ess. It made the newspapers very unpleasant reading for several days. Across the harbor, the yacht-club gave the most charming dinner dance of the year. Down East Gloucester way, a lank and close-mouthed youth from Salem had set up a shack of a hangar and was giving brief and gaspy flights to the summer populace at five dollars a head. Whereat Buster gravitated to East Gloucester, as the needle to the pole. He bribed Louisiana to give him his breakfast at seven; he s.n.a.t.c.hed a mouthful of lunch in the village; he seldom reached home before dusk.
”Richard, you are not spending your allowance in aeroplane rides?”
”Say, listen, Cousin Edie. Where'd I get the coin for five-dollar jitney trips? I'm overdrawn sixty dollars on my allowance now, all on account of that beanery down the harbor-”
”The beanery? You haven't eaten sixty dollars' worth of beans!”
Buster jumped. He turned a sheepish red.
”Gosh, I forgot. Why-well, you see, the boss at that joint has just put in the grandest big new oven ever-iron and cement and a steam-chamber and everything. One day last week he had to go to Boston, and I asked him to let me fire it for him. It was the most interesting thing, to watch that steam-gauge hop up, only she hopped too fast. So I shut off the drafts, but I wasn't quick enough. There were forty-eight pounds of beans in the roaster, and they burnt up, crocks and all, and-well, between us, we hadn't put enough water in the boiler. So she sort of-er-well, she blew up. I wired dad for the money, and he came across by return mail. Dad's a pretty good sport. But I'll bet he doesn't loosen up again before Labor Day.”