A Midwinter Madness

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Title:     A Midwinter Madness
Author: Charles Kellogg Field [More Titles by Field]

Genius has been defined as a capacity for taking pains.

When a college man's good fairy makes her first call at his cradle, she may bestow upon him the football instinct, with muscles to match; no fairy could do more. But if she bumps up against Heredity, and is powerless to give him the supreme gift, she may compensate for it in a degree by leaving the kind of larynx and tympanum used in the Glee Club. Failing this, she may render next best service by throwing a mandolin in his way and bewitching his parents into paying for lessons. Some twenty years later, behind the enchanted scenes of a specially hired theater, or on the polished floor of society's inner temple, he may think of the fairy kindly.

Doubtless, all theatrical life means drudgery, but the Christmas tour of the Glee and Mandolin clubs is drudgery amidst bowers of roses. The hard-working professional would call it play; yet, even in this gilded stage-life, there is the common affliction of being forced to appear at every concert, and in places you don't care about--unless, of course, you happen to be seriously ill.

The Clubs had just done an abbreviated stunt for the Los Angeles High School the afternoon before Christmas. The occasion was a big ad., but they ripped matters through in a hurry, because the social event of the trip came that afternoon--Lillian Arnold's reception at her home on Figuerroa Street.

At Hacienda Arnold there is running water along the garden copings, and the grounds are large. It was bud-time, and the heavy fragrance of the orange blossoms mingled with the bitter-almond smell of oleanders. Miss Arnold served her refreshments on the lawn, and the girls looked peachy in plume-laden hats and filmy organdies. The day was rather warm for December. To this out-door reception came the prettiest girl in Los Angeles, Dolores Payson; her full name, she confided to Cecil Van Dyke that evening with a slight but captivating roll of her Andalusian eyes and r's, was Dolores Ynez Teresa Payson. Van Dyke was the only man on the trip who had thought to bring his summer togs, and he looked very swell. Van played first mandolin and was notoriously susceptible. It is down in the Club annals that she caught his game at first sight.

Had she been given to genealogical investigation, the name Van Dyke might have recalled to this descendant of many hidalgos that foggy battle-field in the Netherlands on which her ancestor and his took pot-shots at each other with the primitive cross-bow. Motley records that on that day far-gone Holland laid low the Spaniard. The present historian is forced to chronicle the final triumph of Spain. The only bow used in this last encounter was in the hands of a mythological person whose existence is doubted only by scoffers.

They tried a dance or two in the crowded rooms, they strolled out into the gardens, they ate ices under the roses in a secluded arbor. The place, the time, the air had their influence on Van Dyke. He was from Montana, where the magnolias do not shed their waxen petals at Christmas, and the gold-of-Ophir roses sternly refuse to leaf until the Fourth of July.

Perhaps he might have withstood all the seductive charms of the hour if he had not escorted Dolores home and essayed to bid her good-bye. There was a great clump of flaming poinsettia at the Payson gate. Dolores was dark, with a rich southern complexion; her dress was white. So she stood against the poinsettia. That is why there is more to this story.

Van Dyke meditated as he went into town. She was the finest girl he had ever met. It was a hard graft, this playing one day in a live town where one could meet charming people, and being forced to take the train next morning for some uninteresting country place where they would have to lounge around a cheap hotel until concert time. Why couldn't the manager get up a schedule that would give them a day or so longer in a place like Los Angeles? This making a college trip with the sole idea of money-getting was degrading. He, for one, was willing enough to pay his share of the extra expense.

On his way he stopped at a florist's. It was a habit he had acquired under similar circumstances. He was puzzled to know just what to send in a land where the highways and hedges run riot with flowers, but he finally selected some wonderful orchids of delicate lavender and mauve. Purposely, he put no card with them, feeling that she would guess the sender.

He got into his dress clothes in rather an ungracious humor. Pomona was the next place, a fruit town further south. Oh, it was too bad! Well, at least he would see her again at the concert that night. He was grateful for this much. Her seat was on an aisle, she told him; he would be able to speak to her during the intermission; more than this, she had said, in her best convent manner, that he might ride home with her papa and mamma afterwards.

Still, this was an unsatisfactory way of carrying on an affair of the sort, especially when it was the first really serious one he had ever had. Clean out of Van's mind had faded the memory of a Montana cow-girl, a San Francisco actress, a senior in the Lambda Mu sorority, a----but space forbids. He mussed three ties. Freshmen are petulant things.

Perkins, who led the Mandolin Club, joshed him at dinner.

"What's the matter, my boy; didn't you have a good time this afternoon?"

"Of course he didn't," answered a guitar man. "You must have noticed his bored expression all through; that is, when you saw him at all."

"That was merely the blase look that comes with four months at the Youngest and Best," said "Cap." Smith. "The Freshman was happy on his little inside because he was so well got up. He really looked the part; now he's in ordinary clothes, like a common strolling player, and he feels cross."

"No," growled Van Dyke, "I've caught cold or something."

"Oh," said Phillips, the Glee Club leader. He took up his table fork and bit the end; holding it to his ear he gave the table a starting chord, and they hummed "Ma Onliest One," while Van grew red, and the rest of the dining-room stopped to listen.

Dolores Payson sat in an orchestra seat and smiled up at the immaculate Mr. Van Dyke, above the only bunch of orchids in the theatre. He came to chat with her during the interval between "La Czarina" and "Schneider's Band." She was doubly guarded by her father on one side and her mother on the other. It was a way they had. She introduced him demurely with an adorable little wave of her black fan. He wondered if, should he quit college right away, he could get a job which would enable him to support a wife. He looked at the placid, olive-skinned mother, not yet old enough to be very fat, and decided that he could; his glance wandered to the angular, sharp-featured American father, and he was sure he couldn't.

Van could not remember ever having seen such great, dark liquid eyes as now melted into his. It seemed hard not to behold them again for a whole week. Hard? It was impossible. It was dreadful to leave her for the little time while the mandolin club was on the stage. On his way up the aisle his freshman brain was seized and overmastered by a brilliant idea; he almost stopped to pat himself on the shoulder.

Going into one of the dressing rooms, he sank dejectedly on a chair and pressed his hand to his forehead. Perkins, gathering in his musicians for the next piece, found him there.

"Come along, Freshie."

The first mandolin rose slowly.

"What's the matter?" asked the leader.

"Oh, nothing," said the other, "I'll be all right."

After the piece he went back to the dressing-room.

"Encore!" cried Perkins, rushing in.

"I can't help it," said Van, in a contracted tone, "I can't go on."

"Why not?" demanded Perkins.

"I'm in awful pain, Ted," pleaded Van. "Something I've eaten, I guess. I can hardly stand up straight."

"Oh, rats!" answered Perkins sympathetically, and tore out again.

Van took his coat and mandolin and disappeared. Between numbers he came in and slipped down the aisle to the Paysons' seats.

"Will you excuse me, Miss Payson? I can't go home with you after the concert. I'm awfully sorry, but I feel pretty sick and I'm going back to the hotel now."

"Oh, what is it?" Dolores asked, and her mother leaned forward with polite interest.

Van smiled weakly.

"Nothing serious, probably," he said. "Don't worry, please. I won't say good-bye," he added, taking Dolores' hand, "because if I have to stay over to-morrow I shall try to see you in the morning."

"Oh, I hope you'll be better, and I shall look for you."

Then Mason came out to sing, and Van left with a hurried good-night. The streets were full of Christmas shoppers. At the first drug store he bought some Jamaica ginger; then he went to the hotel and slid into bed, leaving the lights on.

After the concert Perkins did not go to the cafe with the rest; he, too, hastened back to the hotel.

"I'll bet he's at the Payson ranch this minute," he thought, as he made for Van's room, but the sick musician was lying on his face, breathing heavily.

"Well, what's the matter, anyway?" said Perkins, his suspicions fading.

"I don't know," groaned Van. "It came on all of a sudden at the theatre. The pain is here on my right side. Gee whiz, it knocks me out!"

"Shan't I get a doctor?" asked the leader. "What do you think it is?"

"Of course," moaned the sufferer, "it may be appendicitis,--I don't think that could hurt more,--but it can hardly be anything like that. I've taken the ginger, and it will set me up, probably."

"You ought to have a doctor look at you, though. It's dangerous to put it off," urged Perkins.

"No," said Van. "I'll stick it out to-night, and if I'm not better to-morrow, why, you may get one. Never mind me, Ted. Where is the gang?"

"They're all down in the Grotto."

"Go on and join them; don't stay here, it isn't necessary. I'll be all right, I say, and I can ring if I'm not. Come in in the morning, won't you?"

"Sure. The train goes at ten-fifteen, you know. We can't get along without you very well."

"Oh, I'll be fit in the morning. So long, old man."

"Good-night," and Perkins shut the door.

The Freshman lay still awhile, then got up and, smiling broadly, turned out the lights and tumbled back to sleep.

Meanwhile Perkins joined the men at the restaurant.

"Van Dyke is sick," he said. "I've just been up in his room."

"What's the matter?"

"We don't know. He's afraid it's appendicitis."

"I'll tell you what it is," said Mason, the baritone; "it's heart trouble. I wouldn't believe that man Van under a triple oath, if there were a skirt in the case."

"You won't have to search far in this case," laughed a deep bass voice behind a cool stein.

"Oh, I don't think so," protested Perkins; "he looked bad, bad. I think it's square enough."

"Don't you believe him a minute. I'll bet it's a fake, pure and simple."

"He couldn't expect to work one on us."

"Why not? The time the Mandolin Club went North with the Berkeley Glee somebody played the same blooming game. It worked all right then and they joshed the life out of the leader, too. I heard Shirlock tell about it."

The Freshman should never have allowed himself to go to sleep so easily. By the time Perkins and Mason tiptoed up to his room, he was sprawled out on his back, snoring with a healthfulness that was positively vulgar. Mason gave the leader a significant punch and drew him down the hall to his room.

"See here, Perk," he said, "if he keeps up that gag to-morrow I have a scheme that is a pipe."

The invalid wore a woe-begone expression when the two fellows went in before breakfast.

"Are you any better?" asked Perkins.

"No," said Van, miserably. "The pain is just as bad. I guess I'll have to see a doctor after all."

"How did you sleep?" inquired Perkins.

"Bum. My fever was high all night," moaned the sufferer. "I heard you fellows come up, and I hoped someone might drop in. I suppose you were all too sleepy."

"Yes," said Mason, with a side look at Perkins, "everybody went right to sleep."

"Well," said the leader, "we'll go down to breakfast now, and then we will get a doctor to see you before we have to go."

Neither of them stopped to eat. They hurried first to the Polyclinic. There Perkins asked for the name of one or two physicians who were known to have little practice, and who could afford to take charge of a man who would require constant attention for a week, a middle-aged person preferred.

The man in charge gave them three names and addresses. They went first to a Doctor Mead, who displayed his shingle in a quiet street. He was a big, slow-spoken man, somewhat shabbily dressed.

Jimmy Mason approached him with such hesitation in his voice as befitted the part he was playing. They wanted the doctor on a delicate matter, he explained; it was a private affair which lay very near to them, Perkins added.

"You see," said Jimmy, "we're all cut up. Poor little devil----" and his voice broke artistically, while Perkins forebore to grin.

"Perhaps the case is not so grave as it seems," said the doctor, with professional calm.

"I don't see how it could be any worse." Jimmy controlled his emotion with an effort. "If it were just common sickness, but--but he's lost some of his buttons--bughouse, crazy you know,--" his giggle turned into a sob again, and Perkins, bearing up under his trouble, took the thread of the story.

"You see, Doctor, we are musicians from Stanford, travelling through here; something has happened to one of our party; I don't know what's the matter: some hallucination."

"It struck him first at Santa Barbara," said Mason. "He thought that he was very ill one evening when he was tired; said he was sure he was coming down with appendicitis. We sent for Doctor----"

"Brown," filled in Perkins with presence of mind.

"A very able man; he stands high in the profession," said the doctor gravely.

All three being thus established on a common basis of mendacity, the head liar proceeded:

"The doctor couldn't find anything the matter, but the boy--he's only a Freshman, you see--he raised Cain that night; next day he said he was as well as ever. It's been like that ever since, Doctor. One hour he's himself and then he goes to bed and swears he's sick and wants medicines. We didn't get onto him until last night, when the poor kid got to acting loco at the concert."

Perkins played chorus at discreet intervals.

"I haven't telegraphed to his people because I wouldn't distress them till we knew. We must go on with the trip now, and we can't spare any of our men because we took no substitutes; we strike this place again in a week. You will be paid well for any services, and furnished a room at the hotel. Now, Doctor, can you arrange with your patients so that he will have your undivided time?"

("Bet you haven't any to arrange with," was the unspoken thought of both men.)

Dr. Mead pondered.

"We come to you," Jimmy put in, "because we need someone on whom we can rely, a man of skill and tact."

"It happens," said the doctor after minutes of profound deliberation, "that I have no necessary calls to make until Saturday this week. What I have to do can be managed over the telephone, and I presume patients can call upon me at the hotel as well as here. Now, what are the exact particulars of your friend's aberration?"

"Can you walk up to the hotel with us, Doctor?" asked Mason, looking at his watch. "Our train leaves at ten-fifteen; we have very little time left."

On the way the two gave to the unfortunate Freshman such peculiarities, idiosyncrasies and hallucinations as seemed good; they warned the physician that he must never be left alone, and that he ought to be humored to the top of his bent in regard to his fancied attack of appendicitis.

"Then it's understood?" said Mason, as they came down the hall toward Van Dyke's room. "Of course we can't speak of the matter before him."

"Yes," said the doctor, "I think I can manage everything. You will explain to the clerk in the office the peculiar character of your friend's illness, and I shall have no trouble, I am sure."

"All right," said Perkins, and they entered. There were several of the club in the room saying good-bye. At the entrance of the physician they filed out.

"Where have you the most pain, Mr. Van Dyke?" began Dr. Mead.

"Here," said Van, without a blush.

The physician pressed his fingers upon the afflicted region, felt Van's pulse and forehead and gravely examined his tongue; then he turned to the two men and said:

"It is probably appendicitis. The boy must stay in bed for the present."

"Hate to leave you, Van," Mason said, taking the sick man's hand gently; "but it's almost train time. Take care of yourself and do as the doctor says, and you'll be O. K."

"Good-bye, old man," said Perkins. "Have 'em telegraph right along; we shall want to know just how you are. We shall have to cut the string quartet, and that's pretty hard with Pellams out of the trip, but don't feel bad about that. You'll be nifty by the time we are on for the return concert."

"Good-bye," said the man with appendicitis, assuming the look of one who may be taking his last farewell of earthly things. "I shall come out all right, I'm sure I shall."

"Course. Good-bye. Doctor, look out for him."

"Send up some paper from the office, will you?" murmured the Freshman wearily. "I--I think I want to write to my mother."

Ten minutes later the bell-boy brought the paper and a Bible.

Dr. Mead arranged the bedclothes with a practised hand, then he sent out for medicine and chatted affably until the stuff arrived. Van submitted to a plaster on his abdomen and alternated messes for half-hour intervals. He was contented enough. Early afternoon would be a good time to find Dolores.

The doctor settled himself by the window and talked about the University and politics and climatic conditions in Montana and California; the musician joined in the conversation politely but without great enthusiasm, wondering when the man was going; there was not any too much time now for breakfast and a careful toilet. He ventured to speak.

"If you have other patients that call you, Doctor, you mustn't stay with me. I can get along, even if it is lonely in a hotel, and you'll be in again to-day, won't you?"

"Appendicitis," said the doctor, with his heaviest air, "is not a thing to be treated lightly. Just now you are in a critical condition inasmuch as we are not sure what turn your trouble may take. You are likely to be seized suddenly with the usual symptoms: then an operation will be an immediate necessity. I have the needed instruments right here in my valise, and I can give you relief at once. If, however, I should leave you, I might not be within reach until serious complications had time to arise; for that reason I shall be obliged to watch you through to-day. Afterwards it may not be necessary."

This speech fairly paralyzed the man in bed. Had he done this artistic bit of acting for the purpose of spending his Christmas on the flat of his back talking to a prosy old doctor? He lay still, trying to think what answer could be made to this physician who told him seriously that he had appendicitis. He put out a feeler.

"That medicine of yours is the real thing. The pain is very much less now."

Dr. Mead looked at him over his glasses.

"Is it entirely gone?"

"Yes," answered Van, cheerily, "it certainly is."

"That is a dangerous symptom. The plaster should have drawn the pain to the surface, but not stopped it. That numbness is exactly what I wished to avoid."

He rose and poured out medicine from another bottle. Van nearly choked in swallowing this. It was eleven o'clock. Sounds of Christmas revelry floated even into his secluded upper room. The bells were telling to the people of the City of the Angels their message of peace on earth, good will toward men; they were dinning into the ears of the victim of a modern disease the fact that he ought at that moment to be waiting for Dolores on her pious way to Mission Los Angeles. He pictured her with some ancient missal in her slender hands, and flanked on one side by her sympathetic duenna of a mother. The certainty that her American father would be safe at home did not detract from the charm of the situation.

"The drinks seem to be on me!" thought he after his next dose. The sun of southern California was shining brightly out of doors; it must be a glorious day at Westlake Park. The bedclothes were warm and irksome, and that confounded plaster had begun to itch. If he was ever to see Dolores again he should have to make a clean breast of the whole thing.

He sat up.

"Say, Doctor, I haven't appendicitis at all; I am as well as I ever was. I just put this up as a joke on the fellows because I wanted to stay in town instead of going farther south. I've imposed on you, I'm sorry to say. I haven't any pain whatever. I was faking."

"Yes," said the doctor, soothingly, "I knew you were, but you are not well at all, my boy, and my advice to you is to stay right there in bed. You have appendicitis symptoms in spite of there being no pain, and you might do yourself no end of harm by getting up now. I wouldn't let any man go out of doors after taking that belladonna for the world. It would be suicidal."

"But, Doctor, I'm not sick, I tell you; I feel out of sight," and Van threw off the clothes and was about to spring out, plaster and all.

Dr. Mead thought it time to act.

"Get back in there," he said, quietly but firmly. He was a man of powerful physique and Van thought it best to obey until he could reason with him.

"I know what I am talking about, young man," he went on, "and you must listen to me. I want you to stay in bed."

This was too much.

"I'll be hanged if I will!" shouted the patient, preparing to rise.

"Keep covered up!" ordered the doctor. He had a big, deep voice. He stood a little way off, with his forefinger pointed at the student, sighting over it with a cold, gray eye. Something in his manner began to frighten Van. He shivered under the bedclothes. A hideous story which he had read about a maniac barber came into his mind with sickening effect. The man's whole appearance, all his actions, his eager grasping of the appendicitis theory, proclaimed insanity. He meant to operate on him, whether or no! There were the surgical instruments in that black bag on the bureau, and he was shut up in the room with the whole crazy outfit! He would have given his soul to be in Pomona with the club.

"All right, Doctor," he said weakly, sliding a little farther down into the bed, "I'll do just as you say. Only I wish you'd ring and see if any mail has come for me."

The boy who answered the doctor's call was an athletic young fellow. Van thought that between them they could manage the maniac; so he sprang out crying, "Quick! This man is crazy. Help me get him down!"

To his surprise the boy seized him and deposited him back in bed.

"What in thunder is the matter with you people?" shouted Van. "I'm not going to stay here with that man when there's nothing the matter with me!"

"There, there," coaxed the boy, "you're all right, sir; try to go to sleep, can't you?"

Then Van turned over to the wall and wept salt Freshman tears, and the awe-struck boy gently closed the door. And Cupid, with his wings folded over his little arms, sat upon the bureau and laughed long and cynically.

It was now past twelve o'clock. Church was over, and Dolores was returning. Home-ward gently she rode with surging thoughts in her bosom, and an expression of sweet, religious calm hovering over her straight black brows. That was the Spanish of her. The moment the front door closed behind her she sprinted for the telephone. That was the American of her.

Had Papa Payson not been absorbed in the forty-eight-page Christmas edition of the Los Angeles Herald, he might have overheard the following semi-conversation:

"----"

"Main eight-double-eight."

"----"

"Yes."

"----"

"Is this the Westminster?"

"----"

"Will you--er--that is--did the Stanford Glee Club leave this morning?"

"----"

"Oh! Will you tell me, please, whether Mr. Cecil Van Dyke left with them?"

"----"

"Oh, I'm so sorry! What's the matter?"

"----"

"Appendicitis!" The receiver dropped and swung against the wall. Dolores had fled to mamma.

Perkins and Mason, treating each other at every station short of the prohibition town of Pomona, would have felt less complacent over their little joke had they seen the procession that left the Hotel Westminster at one-thirty P. M. on that balmy Christmas day. The order of march, as instituted by the American Dolores, was as follows:

1. The Payson carriage, with Mrs. and Miss Payson on the forward seat and a tenderly wrapped Freshman on the other, and the coachman instructed to drive gently.

2. Dr. Mead and the devoted bell-boy in a phaeton.

3. Small citizens on foot.

The doctor, obeying to the letter the orders of Perkins, who had commanded him not to leave his patient for one moment, smiled broadly as he gathered the lunatic into his arms and bore him past the fatal poinsettia bushes and up the broad steps where the grave major-domo was waiting to receive them. The scale upon which the Payson household was conducted just suited the ideas of that worthy practitioner.

* * * * *

On Saturday, Perkins and Mason asked at the hotel for Van Dyke and the doctor.

"They gave up their rooms last Monday, not very long after you left," said the clerk. "A lady took your friend to her house."

"Who was she?" asked Jimmy, with dark foreboding.

"A Mrs. Payson."

Perkins collapsed on his suit-case. Jimmy made for the desk and began to scan the directory.

"What are you looking for?"

"The P's. I'm going to haze that rattle-weeded Freshman and slay the doctor."

When the two defeated joshers paused inside the Payson gate, a scene of touching domesticity met their gaze. Under a jasmine-covered corner of the piazza, nestling in the depths of a great easy chair, lay Freshman Van Dyke. Senorita Dolores, in the role of ministering angel, was bending unnecessarily close. Dr. Mead, as near his patient as was consistent with delicacy, was lounging in a hammock, and smoking a good cigar. It is a tradition in Los Angeles clubdom that John Payson imports his cigars direct. In the middle-distance, Mrs. Payson was approaching with a cup of nourishing beef-tea.

Jimmy Mason, afraid to trust himself to the expression of his thoughts in the presence of ladies, was about to vanish gracefully, but Van Dyke caught sight of them.

"Hello, fellows. Hear you had a frost in San Diego," cried he.

"You must be very much better--able to be moved, I notice," with a look in Jimmy's eyes that pointed to future trouble.

"Oh," said the Freshman, "almost recovered. I've had the very best of care--and a very satisfactory nurse," and for the last time, in this story, he gazed into those Andalusian eyes.

"But not the nurse we engaged," said the aggrieved Perkins.

"No," said Van, "this young lady was engaged only last evening."

"S-sh," said Senora Payson, pointing to the open window, "Papa may hear you."

[The end]
Charles Kellogg Field's short story: Midwinter Madness

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