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Jack-a-Boy
by
When the Professor came in he stopped at my door.
"Mis
s Harris, I must beg your assistance in a little matter tonight," he said.
"Why, certainly, Professor, but surely you have forgotten that I am neither a lexicon nor an authority on Greek metres," I said.
He smiled quaintly. "I am not working at prosody tonight," he replied.
I followed him to his room, and there, on a relief map of the Peloponnesus, was a creation of blue paper and ribbons and flowers.
"I have made it at night, after that chap is in bed, for I am never safe in the daytime," explained the Professor proudly, "but I got the flowers only this afternoon and I doubt if they are very well arranged. "
They certainly were not, but they were very pretty ones; yellow jonquils and big English violets.
"How did you happen to select these in particular?" I asked.
The Professor looked off at the bust of Aristotle above his desk and smiled absently over his glasses:
"Oh, they seemed to suit him. The yellow ones are gay, like him, and—and I think the violets are rather like his eyes. " This last was said rather timidly. I suppose the Professor had never said that of a woman’s eyes, so the comparison was quite fresh and unhackneyed to him.
"Now," I said encouragingly, massing the jonquils together to disguise their stiffness, "that is really a very pretty basket. "
"Oh, it must be, if it is for him," chuckled the Professor. "He has taste, the rascal! Ugly things hurt him. He knows the Narcissus story, too. Did you ever notice what a singularly fine head that boy has? And that delicate face with its big violet eyes and arching brows? I tell you, it’s a poet’s face. There is a boy picture of Keats that looks like that. He has the mind that goes with it, too; all gossamer and phantasy and melody. I want to live to see him grow up. "
The summer that year was a cruel one, and Jack-a-Boy’s parents were not able to take him out of town. Matters must have gone ill with them just then, for Jack-a-Boy’s young, blond papa looked worried and walked slowly with his shoulders bent, and wore his gray business suit on Sundays. I even fancied that Jack-a-Boy’s white duck suits were not so many or so resplendent as in the summer when he first came to Windsor Terrace. We all took turns taking him to the park and off for little boat rides on the bay. But the heat was merciless; it withered the foliage in the parks and scorched the little grass plots before our doors, which were barely kept alive by continual spraying. The sultry nights took the fibre out of us all, and left us little courage to begin another day. Jack-a-Boy grew paler and his eyes grew larger and darker under their long black lashes, until we looked at one another over his head with questioning fear.
One burning dusty day in early September I was returning to town after a week’s stay in the country, when the Professor met me in front of the Terrace to tell me that Jack-a-Boy had the scarlet fever, that he was very ill and had been asking for me. I hurried off my travel-stained garments and went over to help Jack-a-Boy’s mother in whatever way I could. The Woman Nobody Called On was there, and I helped her sponge off his little burning body. Then I knew that the Professor had been the wisest of us, and that this was not a human child, but one of the immortal children of Greek fable made flesh for a little while. Such little bodies have I seen among the marble children of the Borghese Gallery, never otherwhere. He was delirious at moments, but he knew me and said he was glad to see me, and asked if I had brought the cattails and acorns I had promised him. He had seen only pictures of them, and I had promised to bring him some real ones, and had forgotten. I have been forgetting things all my useless life, but I would have given anything in the world, anything, for a few acorns and rushes just then. It was so little that he ever wanted, and it was always such a pleasure to gratify those strange, fanciful, delicate desires of his. But where in the heart of the city could one go for acorns and cattails? As well start upon the quest of the Culprit Fay at once.