The Gate Of The Moon
A curious friendship had sprung up between old Adelbert and Bobby Thorpe. In off hours, after school, the boy hung about the ticket-taker's booth, swept now to a wonderful cleanliness and adorned within with pictures cut from the illustrated papers. The small charcoal fire was Bobby's particular care. He fed and watched it, and having heard of the baleful effects of charcoal fumes, insisted on more fresh air than old Adelbert had ever breathed before.
"You see," Bobby would say earnestly, as he brushed away at the floor beneath the burner, "you don't know that you are being asphyxiated. You just feel drowsy, and then, poof! - you're dead."
Adelbert, dozing between tickets, was liable to be roused by a vigorous shaking, to a pair of anxious eyes gazing at him, and to a draft of chill spring air from the open door.
"I but dozed," he would explain, without anger. "All my life have I breathed the fumes and nothing untoward has happened."
Outwardly he was peaceful. The daughter now received his pension in full, and wrote comforting letters. But his resentment and bitterness at the loss of his position at the Opera continued, even grew.
For while he had now even a greater wage, and could eat three meals, besides second breakfast and afternoon coffee, down deep in his heart old Adelbert felt that he had lost caste. The Opera - that was a setting! Great staircases of marble, velvet hangings, the hush before the overture, and over all the magic and dignity of music. And before his stall had passed and repassed the world - royalties, the aristocracy, the army. Hoi polloi had used another entrance by which to climb to the upper galleries. He had been, then, of the elect. Aristocrats who had forgotten their own opera-glasses had requested him to give them of his best, had through long years learned to know him there, and had nodded to him as they swept by. The flash of jewels on beautiful necks, the glittering of decorations on uniformed chests, had been his life.
And now, to what had he fallen! To selling tickets for an American catch-penny scheme, patronized by butchers, by housemaids, by the common people a noisy, uproarious crowd, that nevertheless counted their change with suspicious eyes, and brought lunches in paper boxes, which they scattered about.
"Riff-raff!" he said to himself scornfully.
There was, however, a consolation. He had ordered a new uniform. Not for twenty years had he ventured the extravagance, and even now his cautious soul quailed at the price. For the last half-dozen years he had stumped through the streets, painfully aware of shabbiness, of a shiny back, of patches, when, on the anniversary of the great battle to which he had sacrificed a leg, the veterans marched between lines of cheering people.
Now, on this approaching anniversary, he could go peacefully, nay, even proudly. The uniform was of the best cloth, and on its second fitting showed already its marvel of tailoring. The news of it had gone around the neighborhood. The tailor reported visits from those who would feel of the cloth, and figure its expensiveness. In the evening - for he worked only until seven - he had his other preparations: polishing his sword, cleaning his accouterments.
On an evening a week before the parade would occur, he got out his boots. He bought always large boots with straight soles, the right not much different from the left in shape. Thus he managed thriftily to wear, on his one leg, first one of the pair, then the other. But they were both worn now, and because of the cost of the new uniform, he could not buy others.
Armed with the better of the two he visited the cobbler's shop, and there met with bitter news.
"A patch here, and a new heel, comrade," he said. "With that and a polishing, it will do well enough for marching."
The usual group was in the shop, mostly young men, a scattering of gray heads. The advocates of strange doctrines, most of them. Old Adelbert disapproved of them, regarded them with a sort of contempt.
Now he felt that they smiled behind his back. It was his clothing, he felt. He shrugged his shoulders disdainfully. He no longer felt ashamed before them. Already, although the tailor still pressed its seams and marked upon it with chalk, he was clad in the dignity of the new uniform.
He turned and nodded to them. "A fine evening," he said. "If this weather holds, we will have -a good day for the marching." He squinted a faded eye at the sky outside.
"What marching?"
Old Adelbert turned on the speaker sharply. "Probably you have forgotten," he said scornfully, "but in a week comes an anniversary there are many who will remember. The day of a great battle. Perhaps," he added, "if you do not know of what I speak, there are some here who will tell you."
Unexpectedly the crowd laughed.
Old Adelbert flushed a dusky red and drew himself up. "Since when," he demanded, "does such a speech bring laughter? It was no laughing matter then."
"It is the way of the old to live in the past," a student said. Then, imitating old Adelbert's majestic tone: "We, we live in the future. Eh, comrades?" He turned to the old soldier: "You have not seen the bulletins?"
"Bulletins?"