Juvenile Court Sketches: Iv. The Lover

THERE is no justice in the world. Romeo climbed a lady’s balcony to immortality; Clifford Lambert shinned up a porch pillar, to pay court at his loved one’s window, and found himself next day in Juvenile Court.

Clifford, like another Shakespearean, loved not wisely but too well. Six nights in a movie theatre had taught him the true principles of courtship as they are not, and a grandfather from Tipperary had endowed him with the bold heart that is supposed, no less fallaciously, ever to win fair lady.

As stated, Clifford loved not wisely. For it was upon Annette that he had set his heart’s affect ion. Annette wore an inverted question-mark glued to her fair forehead, and snared young hearts outside the same drug-store inside which she bought her 4 Bon Ami Rouge — 642 — for Brunettes.’ As a side line, prescribed by a state whose twenty-three counties stood solidly against illiteracy, Annette attended school — the same school at which the helpless juvenility of fourteen summers compelled Clifford’s presence.

At the feet of Annette, then, figuratively speaking, Clifford set forth his collection of vows and oaths, acquired weekly from the very best Byrons of the screen. Annette responded not. For Annette was one of those who believe in hearts for hearts’ sake. She counted her new hearts as a doctor does his appendicitis cases, or a lover of antiques his chairs. But when she once acquired a heart, — had, so to speak, entered it in her day-book, — it became historic. What she had Annette desired not. And so, having assured herself that the eyes of Clifford were upon her, she passed on ‘in maiden meditation, fancy free.’ Which may be an excellent method with the adult male, but found small success with fourteen and the grandson of a Tipperary sire. It was then that Clifford acquired a revolver.

It was a big revolver, short of snout and bristling like an English bulldog. As a weapon, offensive or defensive, it had long ceased to function. But as first aid to a threat, it was in excellent repair.

‘Unless you marry me,’ wrote Clifford, with the revolver laid conspicuously on the corner of his desk, ‘I will shoot you. Oh, my darling, do not drive me to them straights.’

‘Straights’ did not look exactly as it had been written by Owen Moore, but it was pleasantly reminiscent to Clifford of ot her dissipations. Then he walked three times past Annette’s desk, with the revolver protruding conspicuously from his back trousers’ pocket. The last time, he dropped a note, but as dignity compelled him to walk on without glancing to the right or the left, he did not see Packie Smith’s foot dart out and drag it in. Annette, seeing all, saw nothing.

Then Clifford relented. ‘If you will go to the drug store with me to-night and get some ice-cream,’ he wrote, ‘I won’t shoot you.’ And he folded up the paper and tossed it on her desk.

But the eyes of Annette were for her geography only. No lover should be goaded too far.

When his peace overtures were scorned, the disciple of Jack Dean lost all caution. He snatched a pencil and wrote furiously, dotting his i’s and crossing his t’s resoundingly. Then, negligent even of the wary eye of the teacher, ever alert for the too peripatetic, he walked straight up to Annette’s desk, and himself laid his ultimatum, unfolded, under her eye.

Annette’s red cheeks told him she had read it. But she gave no other sign.

A minute later, Annette went, to class, and Packie Smith’s quick, dirty little hand shot out and snatched the missive.

At that moment, Clifford’s love became immortal and Clifford’s hate undying. ‘I ’ll see you behind Johnson’s woodpile,’ he hissed to Packie.

And Packie thumbed his nose at him and, having added a postscript of his own, passed the lover’s letter down the aisle.

That very night it was that Romeo climbed shadowy balcony and clasped his love to yearning arms. Peering under the cornetists’ sounding brass from chewing-gum row, Clifford saw Love’s labors won. It gave him an idea. An hour later, he too climbed a balcony, and tapped at Annette’s window. But it was not the voice of the loved one that answered his summons. A strong right arm reached out in the half-darkness and, grasping Clifford by the collar, dropped him over the railing, revolver and all, like a puppy dog.

Next day lover and loved one met before the bar of justice. And since no affaire du cœur is complete nowadays without a third, at the witness table sat Packie—dirty little Packie, scoured from head to foot. On the judges’ desk lay a very smutty sheet of paper, on which, had t he Bertillon expert applied his microscope, might have been found the thumb-print of every boy in Clifford’s room.

‘ Clifford Lambert and Annette, come up here,’ said the judge.

Annette took a powder-puff from her bag; deliberately she gave a little dab to her nose, and another little dab to her chin. Then she minced to the judge’s desk.

‘Clifford,’ said the judge, ‘did you threaten to kill this girl?’

‘No,’ said Clifford. His manner was of one upon whom the eyes of a large audience are fixed.

‘Then what did you say to her?’

‘I gave her her choice of three things.’

‘What three things?’

‘Death, marriage, or spoiling.’

For the fraction of a second, in the judge’s eye there was the far suspicion of a smile, but his voice, when he spoke, was solemn. He held out the paper to the boy.

‘Clifford, suppose you read that. Read it aloud to her and to me and to Packie. Packie, come up here.’

The nobility went out of Clifford like a flattening sail, and his face turned red. But he read: ‘Darling, be mine. I cannot live without you. As God is my witness, I have tried and I cannot.’

Clifford stopped. The judge waited.

‘Well. Come, Clifford, I have not much time.’

Clifford read on. ‘Will you not flee with me to-night? What is a parent’s wish against our eternal love?’

Clifford stopped again. And again the judge waited.

‘That’s all,’ said Clifford.

The judge leaned over. ‘There at the bottom — what Packie said. Read that too.’

It was Packie who flushed now. Clifford gave him a look in which a dozen murders were concentrate. Then he read doggedly on: ‘Get onto the movie dope, kids. He thinks he’s Jack Dean. String him along; he’ll be going to a beauty doctor next. Annette’s dibs on it too; she’s promised to tell us the next time he—’ Sudden sobs interrupted Clifford’s reading.

‘This case is dismissed,’ said the judge.

It is recorded in the unwritten annals of the Jackson School that a fight was had that night behind Johnson’s woodpile such as even William Farnum, in his screeniest wrath, never dreamed of.