The Children That Cried in the Lane
The days slipped by and none of the children played circus again. Jerry thought of it often and would have liked to be the elephant just once, but he never said anything. That made him dream all the more about the real circus which was coming and wish that he could see it. He was very careful not to put his longing into words, so he wouldn't remind Mother 'Larkey of the ends that wouldn't meet and make her feel badly. One day she came across the old green wrapper elephant skin in the woodshed.
"Why don't you children play circus any more?" she asked Danny.
"El'funts don't look like that," he asserted, pointing disdainfully at the discarded costume. "Their tails are small like a rope."
"Are they now?" she asked. "And how might you be after knowing that?"
"National history says so," Danny replied in a very decisive tone.
Mrs. Mullarkey gave one of those low, fleeting laughs that always made Jerry feel so good inside and which had become so rare of late. "Yes, I guess national history would be after telling about the elephant's tail as long as it deals with elephants and eagles and donkeys and camels and all."
Jerry felt there must be something funny in what Mother 'Larkey said, because her nose went all crinkly, and he smiled in sympathy anyway, although he didn't understand.
But playing circus no longer appealed to the Mullarkey children. Darn Darner had had a blighting influence on the power of their imaginations, and Danny in the elephant costume would have been to them now only a little boy in an old green wrapper much too large for him, dragging about a stuffed blue trouser leg for a tail,—a very ridiculous spectacle. Jerry realized that there would never be a next time and that he would never play the elephant.
A few days before the circus was to come to town Jerry and the Mullarkey children were returning from the woods by the creek, where they had gone to see what the prospects were for a good yield of hazel and hickory nuts in the fall, and had just entered the edge of town when they saw Darn Darner approaching. They had not set eyes on him since the day he broke up their circus and they were doubtful as to how he would behave towards them.
"Just pretend as though nothing had never happened," Nora suggested.
"Yes, that's best," Danny agreed. "Let him speak first."
They watched Darn's nearer approach without seeming to do so. They tried to keep talking and laughing so he wouldn't think they were the least little bit afraid of him, but Jerry and Celia Jane first fell silent and then Chris and Nora, and finally Danny, so that when they met Darn they were as quiet and subdued as a funeral party.
"Hello!" said Darn, as they were in the act of passing. "Where you kids been?"
"Hullo, Darn," replied Danny. "We just been out in the woods."
"There's goin' to be lots of hazelnuts in the fall," Nora informed him, in a voice which she tried to make genial.
"And hickory nuts too," added Jerry, feeling that such good news would help keep Darn in his present state of good humor and from thinking about what had happened at their circus.
"That don't interest me much just now," Darn remarked. "I'm goin' to the circus. We're goin' to have reserved seats, a dollar and a half apiece. There ain't no better to be had."
"A dollar an' a half for one seat!" exclaimed Celia Jane. "I thought it cost only fifty cents to see the circus."
"That's just to get in and set on an ole board without any back to it," Darn informed her. "We're goin' to have reserved seats in the boxes, with chairs to sit on."
"A fifty-cent seat would suit me all right," observed Danny.
"An' me, too," echoed Chris and Nora and Celia Jane and Jerry.
"Are you kids goin' to see the circus unload?" asked Darn.
"Will they let you get close enough to see?" questioned Danny in turn.
"Of course. They can't keep you from lookin', I guess."
"No, I guess not." Danny answered his own question as though it had been asked by Chris. "Anybody knows he could look."
"Could you see the el'funt?" Jerry asked timidly.
"You could if you had eyes," replied Darn loftily.
"Where're they goin' to unload?" Danny queried.
"On the sidetrack by Smith's house, just back of the depot, at five o'clock in the morning. I'm goin' to see them unload."
"So'm I!" cried Danny.
"An' me, too!" asserted Chris.
"An' me, too!" Jerry hurried to make that statement so that Danny could not say he couldn't go because he had not chosen to go when there was a chance.
"No, you're not," Darn asserted with a sudden frown.
"I am, too!" cried Jerry. Then after a moment he asked plaintively, "Why ain't I?"
"I guess you ain't got nothin' to say about whether Jerry goes or not," Danny interposed quickly. "He can go if he wants to."
"No, he can't," contradicted Darn.
"Why can't he?" Nora asked.
"They don't let anybody in the poor farm go to the circus," was Darn's unexpected reply.
"That's not got nothin' to do with Jerry!" cried Danny hotly. "I guess he ain't in no poor farm."
"He's goin' to be, though," pursued Darn calmly, in that restrained, superior, informative manner which sometimes can be so maddening.
"I ain't either, am I, Danny?" Jerry appealed dolefully.
"No, you ain't," Danny assured him. "Darn's jest tryin' to make you cry. Don't you let him scare you."
"Jerry Elbow's goin' to the poor farm before the circus gets here," stated Darn.
"I ain't!" cried Jerry in a shaky voice. "I won't go! So there!"
"They'll take you," Darn informed him, "and you won't have anything to say about it."
"Mother 'Larkey won't let them take me, will she, Danny?" asked Jerry in a voice that was becoming shrill and high from fear.
"No, she won't," asserted Danny. "Darn Darner, you jest let Jerry be. You ain't got no right to scare a orfum boy like that."
"We won't let them take you," comforted Celia Jane, suddenly affectionate, and put her arm about Jerry's neck.
Darn stepped directly in front of Jerry and stared coolly down at him until Jerry was so uncomfortable that he couldn't raise his eyes from the ground.
"You're goin' to the poor farm Wednesday morning," he said calmly, "because Mrs. Mullarkey's too poor to keep you any longer. She can't make enough to keep her own kids."
Jerry felt suddenly very little and all alone in a big cold world. Fear had entered his heart. He felt that Mrs. Mullarkey not only hadn't been able to make both ends meet but that she was never going to be able to do it. He some way knew that Darn Darner was telling the truth and that soon he would be torn away from the only home he could remember. His lips twisted and he felt the hot tears filling his eyes. Yet he denied Darn's statement with all his soul.
"They won't! They shan't take me! I'll run away first!"
"Much good that would do you," commented Darn unsympathetically. "It'd be easy enough to find you."
"How do you know they're goin' to take Jerry away?" asked Chris.
"He don't know it!" cried Nora. "He's jest tryin' to scare us."
"No, I ain't," denied Darn. "My father's overseer of the poor in this county and I guess I heard him tell mamma last night that he was goin' to take Jerry to the poor farm Wednesday morning. He said Mrs. Mullarkey had agreed as to how she'd hafta let him take Jerry because her insurance money from Mr. Mullarkey was all gone and she couldn't make enough to support her own kids."
"It ain't so!" blustered Jerry, but all the time terribly frightened. He tried to think of something to say that would show he was not afraid of Darn Darner, who was always picking on little boys.
"You shan't go!" Celia Jane cried, tears running down her cheeks. She flung both arms around Jerry's neck and squeezed him passionately.
"What will Kathleen do without Jerry?" asked Nora in a choked voice.
Jerry looked up and saw that she was quietly weeping, too. They believed it! Believed that Mother 'Larkey would let them take him away! He had been somewhat comforted by their stout assertions that Darn's words were false, but now—!
He was stunned. Then his lips twisted and twitched and the tears that had been forming in his eyes spilled silently over.
"Don't get scared, Jerry," Danny tried to comfort him. Then he turned to the tormentor. "Darn you, Darn, why can't you let him be!"
There it was! Just what Jerry wanted to show Darn he couldn't scare him. His oozing courage flamed up in a final flare of desperation. Through his tears and the choke in his throat he cried:
"Darn Darn Darner! Darn! Darn! Darn! Darn Darn Darner!"
"That's about enough from you, Jerry Elbow!" shouted Darn. He gave Jerry a resounding slap in the face. "No kid like you can call me that without takin' the biggest lickin' he ever got."
"No, you don't!" cried Danny and quick as a flash he rushed at Darn and began pounding him over the head and shoulders with his fists. Chris and Nora went to Danny's aid and the three pairs of fists caused Darn to duck and run a short distance.
Jerry slumped down into the dust of the road, weeping bitterly, and Celia Jane flopped down by him, hugging him tight and mingling her tears with his.
Danny and Chris and even the usually gentle Nora, but for once with all her gentleness vanished, gave vent to their feelings against Darn by making a chant out of his name.
"Darn Darn Darner! Darn! Darn! Darn! Darn Darn Darner! Darn! Darn! Darn!"
Into that chant boiled over all their pent-up dislike for him which had been simmering under cover for so long. Darn started back towards them, angry through and through, but stopped as they rushed to meet him, fists doubled up ready for battle. He had fought many boys bigger than himself, but he fled before the numerical strength of the present enemy, flinging back over his shoulder from a safe distance, "Blue-eyed beauty! Ole Danny dumb-head! Blue-eyed beauty! Ole Danny dumb-head! Yah! You'll hafta go to the poor farm if you want to see Jerry Elbow after Wednesday."
Upon hearing Darn's words Jerry stretched out at full length in the road and his voice rose in a quavering wail of anguish. Celia Jane emitted a thinner, shriller wail. Nora came back to comfort them and was caught by the contagion so that she too plumped down in the road and wept.
Danny and Chris, being boys, were ashamed to give vent to their emotions in a similar way and stood looking down at the huddled forms in the road. Chris, after a time, found himself weeping in sympathy and openly rubbed away the tears with his shirt sleeve. Even Danny swallowed hard and dabbed at his eyes.
"Well, I'll be horn-swoggled!" exclaimed a startled, mystified voice back of the children.
Jerry opened his eyes on a blurred picture of Danny and Chris turning suddenly about and of Nora springing to her feet. A man was just getting out of a two-seated buggy. All sound of his approach had been drowned out by the vociferous lamentations of Jerry and Celia Jane, which still continued.
"What's the trouble here?" asked the man in a deep, pleasant voice that carried even through the clamor into Jerry's consciousness. He raised his head and looked up through swollen and tear-drenched eyes at the man.
"They're g-goin' to take Jerry Elbow to the p-p-poor farm Wednesday morning," Danny stutteringly explained.
"Then you must be the Mullarkey children," observed the man, speaking to the group.
"I'm Danny," said Danny, and Chris identified himself.
"Then this must be Jerry Elbow," the man remarked, stooping to pick Jerry up.
Jerry flung his arms about the man's neck and clung there desperately.
"Yes, sir, he's Jerry," Nora explained, as Celia Jane got up out of the road and brushed the dust from her dress.
"My name's Tom Phillips," said their new friend. "I knew your father, Dan Mullarkey, very well. He told me once how he found you by the roadside one stormy night far from any house, Jerry Elbow."
Jerry felt comforted in the strong arms of Mr. Phillips and at the pleasant, deep quality of his voice. He stopped crying except for the long, shuddering sobs that always came at intervals after he had cried so hard.
"Who said anything about taking you to the poor farm?" he asked Jerry.
"D-D-Darn," Jerry sobbed out.
"Darn!" said Mr. Phillips, puzzled. "I say darn, too, but who was it?"
"It was Darn Darner," Danny told him.
"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Phillips. "That scalawag!"
"He said his father said so," Nora explained.
"That will have to be looked into," Mr. Phillips remarked. "Now you children climb into the buggy and I will take you home. I want to have a talk with your mother."
"She's not to home," said Chris.
"Mebbe she'll be back," observed Nora, looking at the sun. "It's gettin' on towards supper time."
"We'll see," was Mr. Phillips' only comment as he placed Jerry on the front seat and helped Celia Jane in beside him.
Danny and Chris and Nora, in the meantime, had climbed into the back seat. Mr. Phillips clucked to the horses and they trotted off into town.
Jerry felt greatly comforted to be riding home with this big, pleasant man, and the cruel edge of Darn's words began to wear off. He felt that this new friend's words, "That will have to be looked into," meant almost as much as though he had said, "I'll see that nothing of the sort happens."
His body was still shaken, at longer and longer intervals, by shuddering sobs, but when the Mullarkey home was reached, they had subsided and he was enjoying the unaccustomed buggy ride.
Mrs. Mullarkey was home, and she came running out to see why her children were being brought back in a buggy.
"Who's hurt," she asked anxiously, "that you're bringing them home in a buggy?"
"None of them is hurt, Mrs. Mullarkey," Mr. Phillips assured her quickly, and helped the children out. "I'm Tom Phillips. I knew your husband quite well. I found these children crying in the road because Mr. Darner's young scalawag of a son had told them that Jerry Elbow was to be taken to the poor farm."
"Oh, Jerry, you blessed child!" crooned Mother 'Larkey, taking Jerry in her arms. "And you to find it out from some one else when I'd been trying for this week past to get up courage enough to tell you."
"Mother!" cried Nora in a shocked voice.
"It's true, then?" asked Mr. Phillips.
"Yes," replied Mrs. Mullarkey, drawing Jerry tightly to her. "I don't want to let you go, Jerry, but Dan's insurance money is all gone and how I am to make enough to keep the bodies and souls of all you children together I don't know. I love you as though you were my own, you're that sweet and gentle."
Jerry began crying again, but softly this time, because he knew Mother 'Larkey wouldn't let him go if she could help it. She kissed him and turned to Mr. Phillips.
"Mr. Darner told me I'd sooner or later have to let some of my own children go there or be adopted out, if I didn't consent to Jerry's going. I'm at the end of my string."
"I see," observed Mr. Phillips gently. "I didn't know just how Dan Mullarkey left you fixed, but I can do something to help you. Darner can be made to listen to reason and I can bring some influence to bear upon him. I don't see why the county can't let you have as much as it would cost it to keep Jerry at the farm. I belong to the same lodge as Dan did and we'll help you some there. I'll find something for Danny to do. He can be earning a little money in the summer time and help you out that way."
"You're an angel if ever there was one in this world, Mr. Phillips," said Mrs. Mullarkey. "If the county will allow me for Jerry's keep, I'll take better care of him than he'd get at any institution and it would help me in keeping the brood together."
"I'll see what I can do," said Mr. Phillips.
"Then Jerry won't hafta go?" Celia Jane questioned.
"I hope not," he replied. "Keep a stiff upper lip, Jerry!"
"I—I'll try," Jerry promised, already feeling certain that the danger which threatened him had passed.
"I'll come back in a day or two," said Mr. Phillips, "and let you know what I have been able to do."
Jerry watched him from over Mother 'Larkey's shoulder as he drove off. He thought he had never seen a man who looked so big and strong and as though he could make people do just as he wanted them to.
