INTRODUCTION
I
OUR NATIONAL READING
Is there anyone who has not read a short story? Is there anyone who has not stopped at a news-stand to buy a short-story magazine? Is there anyone who has not drawn a volume of short stories from the library, or bought one at the book-store? Short stories are everywhere. There are bed-time stories and fairy stories for little children; athletic stories, adventure stories, and cheerful good-time stories for boys and girls; humorous stories for those who like to laugh, and serious stories for those who like to think. The World and his Wife still say, “Tell me a story,” just as they did a thousand years ago. Our printing presses have fairly roared an answer, and, at this moment, are busy printing short stories. Even the newspapers, hardly able to find room for news and for advertisements, often give space to re-printing short stories. Our people are so fond of soda water that some one has laughingly called it our national drink. Our people of every class, young and old, are so fond of short stories that, with an equal degree of truth, we may call the short story our national reading.
II
THE DEFINITION
The short story and the railroad are about equally old,—or, rather, equally new, for both were perfected in distinctly recent times. The railroad is the modern development of older ways of moving people and goods from one place to another,—of litters, carts, and wagons. The short story is the modern development of older ways of telling what actually had happened, or might happen, or what might be imagined to happen,—of tales, fables, anecdotes, and character studies. A great number of men led the way to the locomotive, but it remained for the nineteenth century, in the person of George Stephenson, to perfect it. In like manner, many authors led the way to the short story of to-day, but it remained for the nineteenth century, and particularly for Edgar Allan Poe, to perfect it, and give it definition.
Before Poe’s time the short story had sometimes been written well, and sometimes poorly. It had often been of too great length, wandering, and without point. Poe wrote stories that are different from many earlier stories in that they are all comparatively short. Another difference is that Poe’s stories do not wander, producing now one effect, and now another. Like a Roman road, every one goes straight to the point that the maker had in mind at the beginning, and produces one single effect. In the older stories the writers often turned from the principal subject to introduce other matter. Poe excluded everything,—no matter how interesting,—that did not lead directly to the effect he wished to produce. The earlier stories often ended inconclusively. The reader felt that more might be said, or that some other ending might be possible. Poe tried to write so that the story should be absolutely complete, and its ending the one necessary ending, with no other ending even to be thought of. With it all, he tried to write so that,—no matter how improbable the story really might be,—it should, at least, seem entirely probable,—as real as though it had actually happened.
In general, Poe’s definition of the short story still holds true. There are many kinds of stories to-day,—just as there are many kinds of engines,—but the great fundamental principles hold true in both. We may still define the modern short story as:
1. A narrative that is short enough to be read easily at a single sitting;
2. That is written to produce a single impression on the mind of the reader;
3. That excludes everything that does not lead to that single impression;
4. That is complete and final in itself;
5. That has every indication of reality.
III
THE FAMILY TREE OF THE SHORT STORY
Everyone knows his father and mother. Very few, except those of noble descent, know even the names of their great-great grandparents. As if of the noblest, even of royal descent, the short story knows its family tree. Its ancestry, like that of the American people, goes back to Europe; draws strength from many races, and finally loses itself somewhere in the prehistoric East,—in ancient Greece, India, or Egypt.
In the royal galleries kings look at pictures of their great ancestors, and somewhat realize remote the past. Many of the ancestors of the short story still live. They drank of the fountain of youth, and are as strong and full of life as ever. Such immortal ancestors of the short story of to-day are The Story of Polyphemus (ninth century, B.C.), The Story of Pandora and her Box (ninth century, B.C.), The Book of Esther (second century, B.C.), The City Mouse and the Country Mouse (first century, B.C.), and The Fables of Æsop (third century, A. D.). There are still existing many Egyptian short stories, some of which are of the most remote antiquity, the Tales of the Magicians going back to 4000 B.C.
All the stories just named,—and many others equally familiar, drawn from every ancient land,—affected the short story in English.
In the earliest days in England, in the fifth and in a few succeeding centuries, the priests made collections of short stories from which they could select illustrative material for the instruction of their hearers. They drew many such stories from Latin, which, in turn, had drawn them from still more ancient sources. Then, or a little later, came folk stories, romantic stories of adventure, and other stories for mere amusement.
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the Italians became very skilful in telling short stories, or “novelle.” Their “new” tales had a lasting effect on short story telling in English.
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, in the fourteenth century, although in verse, told in a most delightfully realistic way all kinds of stories from all kinds of sources, particularly from the literatures of Italy and of France. Chaucer told his stories so remarkably well, with such humor and reality, that he is one of the great forces in the history of the short story in English.
In the sixteenth century stories from France, Spain, and other lands, also gave new incentives to the development of the short story in English.
In the eighteenth century Addison’s Spectator published very short realistic narratives that often presented closely drawn character studies. These are hardly to be called short stories, but they influenced the short story form.
About the beginning of the nineteenth century, partly because of German influence, it became the fashion to write stories of mystery and horror, such as many of those by Irving, Hawthorne, and Poe. Irving softened such stories by the touch of realistic humor; Hawthorne gave them artistic form and nobility; Poe developed the full value of the short story as a literary type, and pointed out the five principles named above. The genius of these men led the way to the modern short story.
Since their time the short story has moved on in its development, including every kind of subject, tending to speak more and more realistically of persons and places, but not losing its romantic nature. Popular short stories of to-day are closely localized, and are frequently quick, incisive, and emphatic.
to-day there are all kinds of short stories,—folk-lore tales, local color stories, animal stories, humorous stories, stories of society, of satire, of science, of character, of atmosphere, and scores of other types, all virile, interesting, and profitable.
However well-dressed the modern short story may be in form and style, it is worth little, unless, like its immortal ancestors, it has the soul of goodness, truth, and beauty, and does something to reveal nobility in the life of man.
IV
A GOOD STORY
With houses and stories it is much the same. As any one may build a hut, so any one may compose a short story. In both cases the materials may be common and cheap, and the construction careless. The one may give shelter from the storm, and the other may hold attention for a moment. Neither may be worth much. Somewhat better are the ordinary house, and the ordinary story. Both are good, and fairly well constructed, but the material is frequently commonplace, and the general characteristics ordinary. To lift either a house or a story out of the ordinary there must be fine material, artistic workmanship, close and tender association with life,—something beautiful, or good, or true. For the highest beauty there is need of something other than obedience to rule in construction. Any architect can tell how to build a beautiful house, but there is a fine beauty no mere architect can give, a beauty that comes with years, or the close touch of human joys and sorrows. It is the same with stories. We can not analyze the finer quality, but we can, at least, tell some of the characteristics that make short stories good.
As Poe said, the best short story is short enough to be read at a sitting, so that it produces a single effect. It includes nothing that does not lead to that effect, and it produces the effect as inevitably as an arrow flies to its mark. The ending is necessary, the one solution to which everything has moved from the beginning. In some way the story is close to life, and is so realistically told that the reader is drawn into its magic, and half believes it real.
It has a combination of plot and characters,—the nature of the characters making the action, and the action affecting the persons involved.
Without action of some sort there would, of course, be no story, but the action,—usually built up of two opposing forces,—must be woven into plot, that is, into a combination of events that lead to a definite result, perhaps not known at first by the reader, but known from the beginning by the author. The plot is somewhat simple, for the story is too short to allow of much complexity. The action and the characters are based on some experience, imaginary or otherwise, and are honestly presented. In the best short story there is no pronounced artificiality or posing.
There is always a certain harmony of content, so that plot and characters work together naturally, every detail strictly in keeping with the nature of the story.
The best story has an underlying idea,—not necessarily a moral,—a thought or theme, very often concerned with ideals of conduct, that can be expressed in a sentence.
Closely associated with everything is an indefinable something, that rises from the story somewhat as the odor of sandalwood rises from an oriental box, a sort of fragrance, or charm, a deeply appealing characteristic that we call “atmosphere.”
Some stories may emphasize one point, and others another,—the plot, the characters, the setting, the theme, or the atmosphere. As they vary thus they reveal new lights, colors, and effects.
Still more do they vary in the charm that comes from apt choice of words, and originality or beauty of phrasing.
Altogether, the best short story is truly an artistic product. The old violins made in Cremona by Antonius Stradivarius have such perfect harmony of material and form, and were made with such loving skill, that they are vibrant with tenderly beautiful over-tones. So the best short story is perfectly harmonious in every part, is made from chosen material, is put together with sympathetic care, and is rich with the over-tones of love, and laughter, and sorrow.
V
WHAT SHALL I DO WITH THIS BOOK?
Here is a book of more than twenty excellent short stories, not one of which was written with the slightest thought that any one would ever wish to study it as part of school work. Every story was written (1) because its author had a story to tell, (2) because he had a definite aim in telling the story, (3) because he felt that by certain methods of form and style he could interest and delight his readers. The magician opens his box, and holds the ring of spectators enthralled. Here is no place for study. One must simply stand in the circle, and look, and wonder, enjoy to his utmost, and applaud the entertainer when he makes his final bow. But the spectator is always privileged to look, not only idly but also as sharply as he pleases. So the reader is entitled to notice in every case the three reasons for writing the story.
The best way, then, to study this book is not to “study” it. It is not a geography, nor a book of rules, nor any kind of book to be memorized. It is a book to be read with an appreciative mind and a sympathetic heart. Read the stories one by one in the order in which they are printed. Read with the expectation of having a good time,—that is what every author intended you to have. But keep your eyes open. Make sure you really know the story the author is telling. One way of testing your understanding is to tell the story in a very few words, either orally or in writing, so that some friend, who has not read it, may know the bare story, and know it clearly. If you find yourself confused, or if you lose yourself in details and can not tell the story briefly, you have not found the story the author has to tell.
A second test is to tell in one sentence, or in one very short paragraph, exactly what purpose the writer had in telling the story. This will be more difficult but it will need little thought if you really have understood and appreciated the story. Do not make the mistake of thinking that a purpose must be a moral. A man who makes a chair, a clown in a circus, an artist, a violinist, a boy playing a game,—all have purposes in what they do, but the purpose is not primarily moral. If you are puzzled in finding the purpose of the story you should look the story over until its purpose flashes upon you.
Thirdly, you should see if you can put into four or five unconnected sentences, either oral or written, the methods of form and style by which the author has interested you, and pleased you. These methods will include means of awakening interest, means of presenting the action, preparation for the climax, way of telling the climax, and way of ending the story. They will also include choice of words, use of language effects, and the means of producing atmosphere in the story.
If it happens that there are words that are not familiar, look them up in the dictionary. You can not hope to understand a story until you understand its language.
A good way to test your appreciation of story telling as an art,—and to help you to appreciate even more keenly,—is to write short stories of your own. Try, in every case, to imitate some method employed in a particular story by a well-known author. Do not imitate too much. Be original. Be yourself. If some of our best short story writers had done nothing but imitate they would never have succeeded. Make your short stories different from those by anyone else in your class. Write your story in such a way that no one will draw pictures, or look out of the window, or whisper to his neighbor, when it comes your turn to read. There are three ways to bring that about:
1. Write about something that you, and your class, know about, and like to hear about.
2. Think of a good, emphatic, or surprising climax, and then make a plot that will lead to the climax with absolute certainty.
3. Tell your story in a way that will be different from the way employed by any of your classmates.
In general, the stories in this book are to be read and enjoyed, worked over, and talked about, in a simple manner, as one might discuss stories at a reading club. To treat the stories in any other way would be to make displeasing work out of what should be pure pleasure.
In the back of the book is a small amount of biographical and explanatory material, such as a friendly teacher might tell to his class. There are also a few questions that will help you to appreciate and enjoy the best effects in every story. The notes have been given merely for reference, as if they were contained in a sort of handy encyclopedia. They are not for hard, systematic study.
A class studying this book should forget that it is a class in school, and resolve itself into a reading club, whose object,—written in its constitution, in capital letters,—is pure enjoyment of all that is best in short stories, and in short story telling.
VI
WHERE TO FIND SOME GOOD SHORT STORIES
| Baldwin, Charles Sears | American Short Stories |
| Cody, Sherwin | The World’s Best Short Stories |
| Dawson, W. J. and C. W. | Great English Short Story Writers |
| Esenwein, Joseph Berg | Short Story Masterpieces |
| Firkins, I. T. E. | Index to Short Stories |
| Hawthorne, Julian | Library of the World’s Best Mystery and Detective Stories |
| Jessup, Alexander | Little French Masterpieces |
| Jessup, A. and Canby, H. S. | The Book of the Short Story |
| Matthews, Brander | The Short Story |
| Patten, William | Great Short Stories |
| Patten, William | Short Story Classics |
| Charles Scribner’s Sons | Stories by American Authors |
| Charles Scribner’s Sons | Stories by English Authors |
| Charles Scribner’s Sons | Stories by Foreign Authors |
VII
SOME INTERESTING SHORT STORIES
R. H. Davis: The Bar Sinister; Washington Irving: The Rose of the Alhambra; The Legend of Sleepy Hollow; Rip Van Winkle; The Three Beautiful Princesses; Rudyard Kipling: Garm, A Hostage; The Arabian Nights: Aladdin; Ali Baba; Annie Trumbull Slosson: Butterneggs; Ruth McEnery Stuart: Sonny’s Diploma; Frederick Remington: How Order No. 6 Went Through; Mark Twain: The Jumping Frog; Henry Van Dyke: The First Christmas Tree.
H. C. Andersen: The Ugly Duckling; Grimm Brothers: Little Briar Rose; Rudyard Kipling: Mowgli’s Brothers; Toomai of the Elephants; Her Majesty’s Servants; Æsop: The Country Mouse and the City Mouse; Joel Chandler Harris: The Wonderful Tar Baby Story; How Black Snake Caught the Wolf; Brother Mud Turtle’s Trickery; A French Tar Baby; George Ade: The Preacher Who Flew His Kite.
Henry Van Dyke: The Other Wise Man; Nathaniel Hawthorne: Rapaccini’s Daughter; David Swan; The Snow Image; The Great Stone Face; Lady Eleanor’s Mantle; The Minister’s Black Veil; The Birth Mark; E. A. Poe: William Wilson; Rudyard Kipling: The Ship that Found Herself; Henry James: The Madonna of the Future; R. L. Stevenson: Will o’ the Mill; Joseph Addison: The Vision of Mirza.
Howard Pyle: The Ruby of Kishmore; Rudyard Kipling: The Man Who Would Be King; Drums of the Fore and Aft; Tiger, Tiger; Kaa’s Hunting; R. H. Davis: Gallegher; Van Bibber’s Burglar; R. L. Stevenson: The Sire de Maletroit’s Door; Joseph Conrad: Youth; E. A. Poe: The Pit and the Pendulum; F. R. Stockton: My Terminal Moraine; Jesse Lynch Williams: The Stolen Story.
Henry Van Dyke: Messengers at the Window; M. R. S. Andrews: A Messenger; Bulwer Lytton: The Haunted and the Haunters; FitzJames O’Brien: The Diamond Lens; What Was It?; M. E. Wilkins Freeman: Shadows on the Wall; R. W. Chambers: The Tree of Heaven; Marion Crawford: The Upper Berth; H. W. Jacobs: The Monkey’s Paw; Rudyard Kipling: At the End of the Passage; The Brushwood Boy; They; Prosper Merimee: The Venus of Ille.
E. A. Poe: The Gold Bug; The Purloined Letter; Conan Doyle: The Dancing Men; the Speckled Band; Henry Van Dyke: The Night Call; FitzJames O’Brien: The Golden Ingot; Anton Chekhoff: The Safety Match; R. L. Stevenson: The Pavillion on the Links; Egerton Castle: The Baron’s Quarry; Wilkie Collins: The Dream Woman; Rudyard Kipling: The Sending of Dana Da.
G. B. McCutcheon: The Day of the Dog; H. C. Bunner: The Love Letters of Smith; A Sisterly Scheme; O. Henry: The Ransom of Red Chief; While the Auto Waits; Samuel Minturn Peck: The Trouble at St. James; T. B. Aldrich: Goliath; R. M. S. Andrews: A Good Samaritan; The Grandfathers of Bob; E. P. Butler: Pigs is Pigs; Josephine Dodge Daskam: Edgar, the Choir Boy Uncelestial; T. A. Janvier: The Passing of Thomas; Myra Kelly: A Christmas Present for a Lady; Ruth McEnery Stuart: The Woman’s Exchange of Simpkinsville.
F. Hopkinson Smith: The Veiled Lady of Stamboul; Stuart Edward White: The Life of the Winds of Heaven; T. B. Aldrich: Père Antoine’s Date Palm; Booth Tarkington: Monsieur Beaucaire; R. H. Davis: The Princess Aline; Alice Brown: A Map of the Country; M. R. S. Andrews: The Bishop’s Silence; Honoré de Balzac: A Passion in the Desert; Nathaniel Hawthorne: The White Old Maid.
Irvin Cobb: Up Clay Street; M. E. Wilkins Freeman: The Revolt of Mother; A Humble Romance; Prosper Merimee: Mateo Falcone; Alphonse Daudet: The Last Class; G. W. Cable: Belles Demoiselles Plantation; Bret Harte: The Luck of Roaring Camp; Ruth McEnery Stuart: The Widder Johnsing; Owen Wister: Specimen Jones; T. A. Janvier: The Sage Brush Hen.
T. B. Aldrich: Marjory Daw; Mademoiselle Olimpe Zabriskie; Miss Mehetabel’s Son; O. Henry: The Gift of the Magi; The Cop and the Anthem; The Whirligig of Life; Guy de Maupassant: The Diamond Necklace; F. R. Stockton: The Lady or the Tiger; John Fox, Jr.: The Purple Rhododendron; R. W. Chambers: A Young Man in a Hurry; E. A. Poe: Three Sundays in a Week; Ambrose Bierce: The Man and the Snake; FitzJames O’Brien: The Bohemian; Frank Norris: A Deal in Wheat.
Mark Twain: A Dog’s Tale; W. D. Howells: Editha; E. T. Seton: The Biography of a Grizzly; Brander Matthews: The Story of a Story; Björnstjerne Björnson: The Father; Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Ambitious Guest; Jacob A. Riis: The Burgomaster’s Christmas; Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol; Henry Van Dyke: The Mansion; E. E. Hale: The Man Without a Country.
M. R. S. Andrews: The Perfect Tribute; François Coppee: The Substitute; J. B. Connolly: Sonny Boy’s People; S. O. Jewett: The Queen’s Twin; James Lane Allen: King Solomon of Kentucky; Bret Harte: Tennessee’s Partner; Jack London: The God of His Fathers; John Galsworthy: Quality.
Thomas Nelson Page: Marse Chan; Meh Lady; R. L. Stevenson: The Merry Men; E. A. Poe: The Masque of the Red Death; The Fall of the House of Usher; Irvin Cobb: White and Black; F. J. Stimson: Mrs. Knollys; John Fox, Jr.: Christmas Eve on Lonesome; H. G. Dwight: In the Pasha’s Garden; Honoré de Balzac: An Episode Under the Terror; Jack London: Thanksgiving on Slav Creek; Charles Lamb: Dream Children; H. C. Brunner: Our Aromatic Uncle.
Bret Harte: The Outcasts of Poker Flat; R. L. Stevenson: Markheim; Guy de Maupassant: A Piece of String; A Coward; E. A. Poe: The Cask of Amontillado; Edith Wharton: The Bolted Door; A Journey; Henry Van Dyke: A Lover of Music; S. R. Crockett: Elsie’s Dance for Her Life; Jack London: The White Silence.
VIII
WHAT TO READ ABOUT THE SHORT STORY
| Albright, Evelyn May | The Short Story, its Principles and Structure |
| Barrett, Charles R. | Short Story Writing |
| Buck, Gertrude, and Morris, Elizabeth Woodbridge | A Course in Narrative Writing |
| Canby, Henry Seidel | The Short Story in English |
| Cody, Sherwin | Story Writing and Journalism |
| Dye, Charity | The Story Teller’s Art |
| Esenwein, Joseph Berg | Writing the Short Story |
| Hamilton, Clayton | Materials and Methods of Fiction |
| Matthews, Brander | The Philosophy of the Short Story |
| Perry, Bliss | A Study of Prose Fiction |
| Pitkin, Walter B. | Short Story Writing |
| Wells, Carolyn | The Technique of the Mystery Story |
MODERN SHORT STORIES
THE
MODERN SHORT STORY
THE ADVENTURES OF SIMON AND SUSANNA[[1]]
By JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS
[1]. It may be of interest to those who approach Folk-Lore stories from the scientific side, to know that this story was told to one of my little boys three years ago by a negro named John Holder. I have since found a variant (or perhaps the original) in Theal’s “Kaffir Folk-Lore.”
Joel Chandler Harris, 1889.
“I got one tale on my min’,” said Uncle Remus to the little boy one night. “I got one tale on my min’ dat I ain’t ne’er tell you; I dunner how come; I speck it des kaze I git mixt up in my idees. Deze is busy times, mon, en de mo’ you does de mo’ you hatter do, en w’en dat de case, it ain’t ter be ’spected dat one ole broke-down nigger kin ’member ’bout eve’ything.”
“What is the story, Uncle Remus?” the little boy asked.
“Well, honey,” said the old man, wiping his spectacles, “hit sorter run dis away: One time dey wuz a man w’at had a mighty likely daughter.”
“Was he a white man or a black man?” the little boy asked.
“I ’clar’ ter gracious, honey!” exclaimed the old man, “you er pushin’ me mos’ too close. Fer all I kin tell you, de man mout er bin ez w’ite ez de driven snow, er he mout er bin de blackes’ Affi’kin er de whole kit en bilin’. I’m des tellin’ you de tale, en you kin take en take de man en whitewash ’im, or you kin black ’im up des ez you please. Dat’s de way I looks at it.
“Well, one time dey wuz a man, en dish yer man he had a mighty likely daughter. She wuz so purty dat she had mo’ beaus dan w’at you got fingers en toes. But de gal daddy, he got his spishuns ’bout all un um, en he won’t let um come ’roun’ de house. But dey kep’ on pesterin’ ’im so, dat bimeby he give word out dat de man w’at kin clear up six acres er lan’ en roll up de logs, en pile up de bresh in one day, dat man kin marry his daughter.
“In co’se, dis look like it unpossible, en all de beaus drap off ’ceppin’ one, en he wuz a great big strappin’ chap w’at look like he kin knock a steer down. Dis chap he wuz name Simon, en de gal, she wuz name Susanna. Simon, he love Susanna, en Susanna, she love Simon, en dar it went.
“Well, sir, Simon, he went ter de gal daddy, he did, en he say dat ef anybody kin clear up dat lan’, he de one kin do it, least’ways he say he gwine try mighty hard. De ole man, he grin en rub his han’s terge’er, he did, en tole Simon ter start in in de mornin’. Susanna, she makes out she wuz fixin’ sumpin in de cubberd, but she tuck ’n kiss ’er han’ at Simon, en nod ’er head. Dis all Simon want, en he went out er dar des ez happy ez a jay-bird atter he done robbed a sparrer-nes’.
“Now, den,” Uncle Remus continued, settling himself more comfortably in his chair, “dish yer man wuz a witch.”
“Why, I thought a witch was a woman,” said the little boy.
The old man frowned and looked into the fire.
“Well, sir,” he remarked with some emphasis, “ef you er gwine ter tu’n de man into a ’oman, den dey won’t be no tale, kaze dey’s bleege ter be a man right dar whar I put dis un. Hit’s des like I tole you ’bout de color er de man. Black ’im er whitewash ’im des ez you please, en ef you want ter put a frock on ’im ter boot, hit ain’t none er my business; but I’m gwine ter ’low he wuz a man ef it’s de las’ ac’.”
The little boy remained silent, and Uncle Remus went on:
“Now, den, dish yer man was a witch. He could cunjer folks, mo’ ’speshually dem folks w’at ain’t got no rabbit foot. He bin at his cunjerments so long, dat Susanna done learn mos’ all his tricks. So de nex’ mornin’ w’en Simon come by de house fer ter borry de ax, Susanna she run en got it fer ’im. She got it, she did, en den she sprinkles some black san’ on it, en say, ‘Ax, cut; cut, ax.’ Den she rub ’er ha’r ’cross it, en give it ter Simon. He tuck de ax, he did, en den Susanna say:
“‘Go down by de branch, git sev’n w’ite pebbles, put um in dis little cloth bag, en whenever you want the ax ter cut, shake um up.’
“Simon, he went off in de woods, en started in ter clearin’ up de six acres. Well, sir, dem pebbles en dat ax, dey done de work—dey did dat. Simon could ’a’ bin done by de time de dinner-horn blowed, but he hung back kaze he ain’t want de man fer ter know dat he doin’ it by cunjerments.
“W’en he shuck de pebbles de ax ’ud cut, en de trees ’ud fall, en de lim’s ’ud drap off, en de logs ’ud roll up terge’er, en de bresh ’ud pile itself up. Hit went on dis away twel by de time it wuz two hours b’ sun, de whole six acres wuz done cleaned up.
“’Bout dat time de man come ’roun’, he did, fer ter see how de work gittin’ on, en, mon! he wuz ’stonish’. He ain’t know w’at ter do er say. He ain’t want ter give up his daughter, en yit he ain’t know how ter git out ’n it. He walk ’roun’ en ’roun’, en study, en study, en study how he gwine rue de bargain. At las’ he walk up ter Simon, he did, en he say:
“‘Look like you sort er forehanded wid your work.’
“Simon, he ’low: ‘Yasser, w’en I starts in on a job I’m mighty restless twel I gits it done. Some er dis timber is rough en tough, but I bin had wuss jobs dan dis in my time.’
“De man say ter hisse’f: ‘W’at kind er folks is dis chap?’
Den he say out loud: ‘Well, sence you er so spry, dey’s two mo’ acres ’cross de branch dar. Ef you’ll clear dem up ’fo’ supper you kin come up ter de house en git de gal.’
“Simon sorter scratch his head, kaze he dunner whedder de pebbles gwine ter hol’ out, yit he put on a bol’ front en he tell de man dat he’ll go ’cross dar en clean up de two acres soon ez he res’ a little.
“De man he went off home, en soon’s he git out er sight, Simon went ’cross de branch en shook de pebbles at de two acres er woods, en ’t want no time skacely ’fo’ de trees wuz all cut down en pile up.
“De man, he went home, he did, en call up Susanna, en say:
“‘Daughter, dat man look like he gwine git you, sho’.’
“Susanna, she hang ’er head, en look like she fretted, en den she say she don’t keer nuthin’ fer Simon, nohow.”
“Why, I thought she wanted to marry him,” said the little boy.
“Well, honey, w’en you git growed up, en git whiskers on yo’ chin, en den atter de whiskers git gray like mine, you’ll fin’ out sump’n ’n’er ’bout de wimmin folks. Dey ain’t ne’er say ’zackly w’at dey mean, none er um, mo’ ’speshually w’en dey er gwine on ’bout gittin’ married.
“Now, dar wuz dat gal Susanna what I’m a-tellin’ you ’bout. She mighty nigh ’stracted ’bout Simon, en yit she make ’er daddy b’lieve dat she ’spize ’im. I ain’t blamin’ Susanna,” Uncle Remus went on with a judicial air, “kase she know dat ’er daddy wuz a witch en a mighty mean one in de bargain.
“Well, atter Susanna done make ’er daddy b’lieve dat she ain’t keerin’ nothin’ ’t all ’bout Simon, he ’gun ter set his traps en fix his tricks. He up ’n tell Susanna dat atter ’er en Simon git married dey mus’ go upsta’rs in de front room, en den he tell ’er dat she mus’ make Simon go ter bed fus’. Den de man went upsta’rs en tuck ’n tuck all de slats out’n de bedstid ceppin one at de head en one at de foot. Atter dat he tuck ’n put some foot-valances ’roun’ de bottom er de bed—des like dem w’at you bin see on yo’ gran’ma bed. Den he tuck ’n sawed out de floor und’ de bed, en dar wuz de trap all ready.
“Well, sir, Simon come up ter de house, en de man make like he mighty glad fer ter see ’im, but Susanna, she look like she mighty shy. No matter ’bout dat; atter supper Simon en Susanna got married. Hit ain’t in de tale wedder dey sont fer a preacher er wedder dey wuz a squire browsin’ ’roun’ in de neighborhoods, but dey had cake wid reezins in it, en some er dish yer silly-bug w’at got mo’ foam in it dan dey is dram, en dey had a mighty happy time.
Simon shakes the pebbles
“W’en bedtime come, Simon en Susanna went upsta’rs, en w’en dey got in de room, Susanna kotch ’im by de han’, en helt up her finger. Den she whisper en tell ’im dat ef dey don’t run away fum dar dey bofe gwine ter be kilt. Simon ax ’er how come, en she say dat ’er daddy want ter kill ’im kase he sech a nice man. Dis make Simon grin; yit he wuz sorter restless ’bout gittin’ ’way fum dar. But Susanna, she say wait. She say:
“‘Pick up yo’ hat en button up yo’ coat. Now, den, take dat stick er wood dar en hol’ it ’bove yo’ head.’
“W’iles he stan’in’ dar, Susanna got a hen egg out’n a basket, den she got a meal-bag, en a skillet. She ’low:
“‘Now, den, drap de wood on de bed.’
“Simon done des like she say, en time de wood struck de bed de tick en de mattruss went a-tumblin’ thoo de floor. Den Susanna tuck Simon by de han’ en dey run out de back way ez hard ez dey kin go.
“De man, he wuz down dar waitin’ fer de bed ter drap. He had a big long knife in he han’, en time de bed drapped, he lit on it, he did, en stobbed it scan’lous. He des natchully ripped de tick up, en w’en he look, bless gracious, dey ain’t no Simon dar. I lay dat man wuz mad den. He snorted ’roun’ dar twel blue smoke come out’n his nose, en his eye look red like varmint eye in de dark. Den he run upsta’rs en dey ain’t no Simon dar, en nudder wuz dey any Susanna.
“Gentermens! den he git madder. He rush out, he did, en look ’roun’, en ’way off yander he see Simon en Susanna des a-runnin’, en a-holdin’ one nudder’s han’.”
“Why, Uncle Remus,” said the little boy, “I thought you said it was night?”
“Dat w’at I said, honey, en I’ll stan’ by it. Yit, how many times dis blessed night is I got ter tell you dat de man wuz a witch? En bein’ a witch, co’se he kin see in de dark.
“Well, dish yer witch-man, he look off en he see Simon en Susanna runnin’ ez hard ez dey kin. He put out atter um, he did, wid his knife in his han’, an’ he kep’ on a gainin’ on um. Bimeby, he got so close dat Susanna say ter Simon:
“‘Fling down yo’ coat.’
“Time de coat tech de groun’, a big thick woods sprung up whar it fell. But de man, he cut his way thoo it wid de knife, en kep’ on a-pursuin’ atter um.
“Bimeby, he got so close dat Susanna drap de egg on de groun’, en time it fell a big fog riz up fum de groun’, en a little mo’ en de man would a got los’. But atter so long a time fog got blowed away by de win’, en de man kep’ on a-pursuin’ atter um.
“Bimeby, he got so close dat Susanna drap de meal-sack, en a great big pon’ er water kivered de groun’ whar it fell. De man wuz in sech a big hurry dat he tried ter drink it dry, but he ain’t kin do dis, so he sot on de bank en blow’d on de water wid he hot breff, en atter so long a time de water made hits disappearance, en den he kep’ on atter um.
“Simon en Susanna wuz des a-runnin’, but run ez dey would, de man kep’ a-gainin’ on um, en he got so close dat Susanna drapped de skillet. Den a big bank er darkness fell down, en de man ain’t know which away ter go. But atter so long a time de darkness lif’ up, en de man kep’ on a-pursuin’ atter um. Mon, he made up fer los’ time, en he got so close dat Susanna say ter Simon:
“‘Drap a pebble.’
“Time Simon do dis a high hill riz up, but de man clum it en kep’ on atter um. Den Susanna say ter Simon:
“‘Drap nudder pebble.’
“Time Simon drap de pebble, a high mountain growed up, but de man crawled up it en kep’ on atter um. Den Susanna say:
“‘Drap de bigges’ pebble.’
“No sooner is he drap it dan a big rock wall riz up, en hit wuz so high dat de witch-man can’t git over. He run up en down, but he can’t find no end, en den, atter so long a time, he turn ’roun’ en go home.
“On de yuther side er dis high wall, Susanna tuck Simon by de han’, en say:
“‘Now we kin res’.’
“En I reckon,” said the old man slyly, “dat we all better res’.”
THE CROW-CHILD
By MARY MAPES DODGE
Midway between a certain blue lake and a deep forest there once stood a cottage, called by its owner “The Rookery.”
The forest shut out the sunlight and scowled upon the ground, breaking with shadows every ray that fell, until only a few little pieces lay scattered about. But the broad lake invited all the rays to come and rest upon her, so that sometimes she shone from shore to shore, and the sun winked and blinked above her, as though dazzled by his own reflection. The cottage, which was very small, had sunny windows and dark windows. Only from the roof could you see the mountains beyond, where the light crept up in the morning and down in the evening, turning all the brooks into living silver as it passed.
But something brighter than sunshine used often to look from the cottage into the forest, and something even more gloomy than shadows often glowered from its windows upon the sunny lake. One was the face of little Ruky Lynn; and the other was his sister’s when she felt angry or ill-tempered.
They were orphans, Cora and Ruky, living alone in the cottage with an old uncle. Cora—or “Cor,” as Ruky called her—was nearly sixteen years old, but her brother had seen the forest turn yellow only four times. She was, therefore, almost mother and sister in one. The little fellow was her companion night and day. Together they ate and slept, and—when Cora was not at work in the cottage—together they rambled in the wood, or floated in their little skiff upon the lake.
Ruky had bright, dark eyes, and the glossy blackness of his hair made his cheeks look even rosier than they were. He had funny ways for a boy, Cora thought. The quick, bird-like jerks of his raven-black head, his stately baby gait, and his habit of pecking at his food, as she called it, often made his sister laugh. Young as he was, the little fellow had learned to mount to the top of a low-branching tree near the cottage, though he could not always get down alone. Sometimes when, perched in the thick foliage, he would scream, “Cor! Cor! Come, help me down!” his sister would answer, as she ran out laughing, “Yes, little Crow! I’m coming.”
Perhaps it was because he reminded her of a crow that Cora called him her little bird. This was when she was good-natured and willing to let him see how much she loved him. But in her cloudy moments, as the uncle called them, Cora was another girl. Everything seemed ugly to her, or out of tune. Even Ruky was a trial; and, instead of giving him a kind word, she would scold and grumble until he would steal from the cottage door, and, jumping lightly from the door-step, seek the shelter of his tree. Once safely perched among its branches he knew she would finish her work, forget her ill-humor, and be quite ready, when he cried “Cor! Cor!” to come from the cottage with a cheery, “Yes, little Crow! I’m coming! I’m coming!”
No one could help loving Ruky, with his quick, affectionate ways; and it seemed that Ruky, in turn, could not help loving every person and thing around him. He loved his silent old uncle, the bright lake, the cool forest, and even his little china cup with red berries painted upon it. But more than all, Ruky loved his golden-haired sister, and the great dog, who would plunge into the lake at the mere pointing of his chubby little finger. In fact, that finger and the commanding baby voice were “law” to Nep at any time.
Nep and Ruky often talked together, and though one used barks and the other words, there was a perfect understanding between them. Woe to the straggler that dared to rouse Nep’s wrath, and woe to the bird or rabbit that ventured too near!—those great teeth snapped at their prey without even the warning of a growl. But Ruky could safely pull Nep’s ears or his tail, or climb his great shaggy back, or even snatch away the untasted bone. Still, as I said before, every one loved the child; so, of course, Nep was no exception.
One day Ruky’s “Cor! Cor!” had sounded oftener than usual. His rosy face had bent saucily to kiss Cora’s upturned forehead, as she raised her arms to lift him from the tree; but the sparkle in his dark eyes had seemed to kindle so much mischief in him that his sister’s patience became fairly exhausted.
“Has Cor nothing to do but to wait upon you?” she cried, “and nothing to listen to but your noise and your racket? You shall go to bed early to-day, and then I shall have some peace.”
“No, no, Cor. Please let Ruky wait till the stars come. Ruky wants to see the stars.”
“Hush! Ruky is bad. He shall have a whipping when Uncle comes back from town.”
Nep growled.
“Ha! ha!” laughed Ruky, jerking his head saucily from side to side; “Nep says ‘No!’”
Nep was shut out of the cottage for his pains, and poor Ruky was undressed, with many a hasty jerk and pull.
“You hurt, Cor!” he said, plaintively. “I’m going to take off my shoes my own self.”
“No, you’re not,” cried Cora, almost shaking him; and when he cried she called him naughty, and said if he did not stop he should have no supper. This made him cry all the more, and Cora, feeling in her angry mood that he deserved severe punishment, threw away his supper and put him to bed. Then all that could be heard were Ruky’s low sobs and the snappish clicks of Cora’s needles, as she sat knitting, with her back to him.
He could not sleep, for his eyelids were scalded with tears, and his plaintive “Cor! Cor!” had reached his sister’s ears in vain. She never once looked up from those gleaming knitting-needles, nor even gave him his good-night kiss.
It grew late. The uncle did not return. At last Cora, sulky and weary, locked the cottage door, blew out her candle, and lay down beside her brother.
The poor little fellow tried to win a forgiving word, but she was too ill-natured to grant it. In vain he whispered, “Cor, Cor!” He even touched her hand over and over again with his lips, hoping she would turn toward him, and, with a loving kiss, murmur, as usual, “Good night, little bird.”
Instead of this, she jerked her arm angrily away, saying:
“Oh, stop your pecking and go to sleep! I wish you were a crow in earnest, and then I’d have some peace.”
After this, Ruky was silent. His heart drooped within him as he wondered what this “peace” was that his sister wished for so often, and why he must go away before it could come to her.
Soon, Cora, who had rejoiced in the sudden calm, heard a strange fluttering. In an instant she saw by the starlight a dark object circle once or twice in the air above her, then dart suddenly through the open window.
Astonished that Ruky had not shouted with delight at the strange visitor, or else clung to her neck in fear, she turned to see if he had fallen asleep.
No wonder that she started up, horror-stricken,—Ruky was not there!
His empty place was still warm; perhaps he had slid softly from the bed. With trembling haste she lighted the candle, and peered into every corner. The boy was not to be found!
Then those fearful words rang in her ears:
“I wish you were a crow in earnest!”
Cora rushed to the door, and, with straining gaze, looked out into the still night.
“Ruky! Ruky!” she screamed.
There was a slight stir in the low-growing tree.
“Ruky, darling, come back!”
“Caw, caw!” answered a harsh voice from the tree. Something black seemed to spin out of it, and then, in great sweeping circles, sailed upward, until finally it settled upon one of the loftiest trees in the forest.
“Caw, caw!” it screamed, fiercely.
The girl shuddered, but, with outstretched arms, cried out:
“Oh, Ruky, if it is you, come back to poor Cor!”
“Caw, caw!” mocked hundreds of voices, as a shadow like a thunder-cloud rose in the air. It was an immense flock of crows. She could distinguish them plainly in the starlight, circling higher and higher, then lower and lower, until, with their harsh “Caw, caw!” they sailed far off into the night.
“Oh, Ruky, answer me!” she cried.
Nep growled, the forest trees whispered softly together, and the lake, twinkling with stars, sang a lullaby as it lifted its weary little waves upon the shore: there was no other sound.
It seemed that daylight never would come; but at last the trees turned slowly from black to green, and the lake put out its stars, one by one, and waited for the new day.
Cora, who had been wandering restlessly in every direction, now went weeping into the cottage. “Poor boy!” she sobbed; “he had no supper.” Then she scattered breadcrumbs near the doorway, hoping that Ruky would come for them; but only a few timid little songsters hovered about, and, while Cora wept, picked up the food daintily, as though it burned their bills. When she reached forth her hand, though there were no crows among them, and called “Ruky! Ruky!” they scattered and flew away in an instant.
Next she went to the steep-roofed barn, and, bringing out an apronful of grain, scattered it all around his favorite tree. Before long, to her great joy, a flock of crows came by. They spied the grain, and soon were busily picking it up with their short, feathered bills. One even came near the mound where she sat. Unable to restrain herself longer, she fell upon her knees with an imploring cry:
“Oh, Ruky! is this you?”
Instantly the entire flock set up an angry “caw,” and, surrounding the crow, who was hopping closer and closer to Cora, hurried him off, until they all looked like mere specks against the summer sky.
Every day, rain or shine, she scattered the grain, trembling with dread lest Nep should leap among the hungry crows, and perhaps kill her “little bird” first. But Nep knew better; he never stirred when the noisy crowd settled around the cottage, excepting once, when one of them pounced upon his back. Then he started up, wagging his tail, and barking with uproarious delight. The crow flew off in a flutter, and did not venture near him again.
Poor Cora felt sure that this could be no other than Ruky. Oh, if she only could have caught him then! Perhaps with kisses and prayers she might have won him back to Ruky’s shape; but now the chance was lost.
There was no one to help her; for the nearest neighbor dwelt miles away, and her uncle had not yet returned.
After a-while she remembered the little cup, and, filling it with grain, stood it upon a grassy mound. When the crows came, they fought and struggled for its contents with many an angry cry. One of them made no effort to seize the grain. He was content to peck at the berries painted upon its sides, as he hopped joyfully around it again and again. Nep lay very quiet. Only the tip of his tail twitched with an eager, wistful motion. But Cora sprang joyfully toward the bird.
“It is Ruky!” she cried, striving to catch it.
Alas! the cup lay shattered beneath her hand, as, with a taunting “caw, caw,” the crow joined its fellows and flew away.
Next, gunners came. They were looking for other birds; but they hated the crows, Cora knew, and she trembled for Ruky. She heard the sharp crack of fowling-pieces in the forest, and shuddered whenever Nep, pricking up his ears, darted with an angry howl in the direction of the sound. She knew, too, that her uncle had set traps for the crows, and it seemed to her that the whole world was against the poor birds, plotting their destruction.
Time flew by. The leaves seemed to flash into bright colors and fall off almost in a day. Frost and snow came. Still the uncle had not returned, or, if he had, she did not know it. Her brain was bewildered. She knew not whether she ate or slept. Only the terrible firing reached her ears, or that living black cloud came and went with its ceaseless “caw.”
At last, during a terrible night of wind and storm, Cora felt that she must go forth and seek her poor bird.
“Perhaps he is freezing—dying!” she cried, springing frantically from the bed, and casting her long cloak over her night-dress.
In a moment, she was trudging barefooted through the snow. It was so deep she could hardly walk, and the sleet was driving into her face; still she kept on, though her numbed feet seemed hardly to belong to her. All the way she was praying in her heart; promising never, never to be passionate again, if she only could find her bird—not Ruky the boy, but whatever he might be. She was willing to accept her punishment. Soon a faint cry reached her ear. With eager haste, she peered into every fold of the drifted snow. A black object caught her eye. It was a poor storm-beaten crow, lying there benumbed and stiff.
For Ruky’s sake she folded it closely to her bosom, and plodded back to the cottage. The fire cast a rosy light on its glossy wing as she entered, but the poor thing did not stir. Softly stroking and warming it, she wrapped the frozen bird in soft flannel and blew into its open mouth. Soon, to her great relief, it revived, and even swallowed a few grains of wheat.
Cold and weary, she cast herself upon the bed, still folding the bird to her heart. “It may be Ruky! It is all I ask,” she sobbed. “I dare not ask for more.”
Suddenly she felt a peculiar stirring. The crow seemed to grow larger. Then, in the dim light, she felt its feathers pressing lightly against her cheek. Next, something soft and warm wound itself tenderly about her neck, and she heard a sweet voice saying:
“Don’t cry, Cor,—I’ll be good.”
She started up. It was, indeed, her own darling! The starlight shone into the room. Lighting her candle, she looked at the clock.
It was just two hours since she had uttered those cruel words! Sobbing, she asked:
“Have I been asleep, Ruky, dear?”
“I don’t know, Cor. Do people cry when they’re asleep?”
“Sometimes, Ruky,” clasping him very close.
“Then you have been asleep. But Cor, please don’t let Uncle whip Ruky.”
“No, no, my little bird—I mean, my brother. Good night, darling!”
“Good night.”
THE SOUL OF THE GREAT BELL[[2]]
By LAFCADIO HEARN
She hath spoken, and her words still resound in his ears.
Hao-Khieou-Tchouan: c. ix.
[2]. From Some Chinese Ghosts. Copyright, 1887, by Little, Brown & Company.
The water-clock marks the hour in the Ta-chung sz’,—in the Tower of the Great Bell: now the mallet is lifted to smite the lips of the metal monster,—the vast lips inscribed with Buddhist texts from the sacred Fa-hwa-King, from the chapters of the holy Ling-yen-King! Hear the great bell responding!—how mighty her voice, though tongueless!—KO-NGAI! All the little dragons on the high-tilted eaves of the green roofs shiver to the tips of their gilded tails under that deep wave of sound; all the porcelain gargoyles tremble on their carven perches; all the hundred little bells of the pagodas quiver with desire to speak. KO-NGAI!—all the green-and-gold tiles of the temple are vibrating; the wooden goldfish above them are writhing against the sky; the uplifted finger of Fo shakes high over the heads of the worshippers through the blue fog of incense! KO-NGAI!—What a thunder tone was that! All the lacquered goblins on the palace cornices wriggle their fire-colored tongues! And after each huge shock, how wondrous the multiple echo and the great golden moan and, at last, the sudden sibilant sobbing in the ears when the immense tone faints away in broken whispers of silver,—as though a woman should whisper, “Hiai!” Even so the great bell hath sounded every day for well-nigh five hundred years,—Ko-Ngai: first with stupendous clang, then with immeasurable moan of gold, then with silver murmuring of “Hiai!” And there is not a child in all the many-colored ways of the old Chinese city who does not know the story of the great bell,—who cannot tell you why the great bell says Ko-Ngai and Hiai!
Now, this is the story of the great bell in the Ta-chung sz’, as the same is related in the Pe-Hiao-Tou-Choue, written by the learned Yu-Pao-Tchen, of the City of Kwang-tchau-fu.
Nearly five hundred years ago the Celestially August, the Son of Heaven, Yong-Lo, of the “Illustrious,” or Ming dynasty, commanded the worthy official, Kouan-Yu, that he should have a bell made of such size that the sound thereof might be heard for one hundred li. And he further ordained that the voice of the bell should be strengthened with brass, and deepened with gold, and sweetened with silver; and that the face and the great lips of it should be graven with blessed sayings from the sacred books, and that it should be suspended in the centre of the imperial capital, to sound through all the many-colored ways of the City of Pe-king.
Therefore the worthy mandarin, Kouan-Yu, assembled the master-moulders and the renowned bellsmiths of the empire, and all men of great repute and cunning in foundry work; and they measured the materials for the alloy, and treated them skilfully, and prepared the moulds, the fires, the instruments, and the monstrous melting-pot for fusing the metal. And they labored exceedingly, like giants,—neglecting only rest and sleep and the comforts of life; toiling both night and day in obedience to Kouan-Yu, and striving in all things to do the behest of the Son of Heaven.
But when the metal had been cast, and the earthen mould separated from the glowing casting, it was discovered that, despite their great labor and ceaseless care, the result was void of worth; for the metals had rebelled one against the other,—the gold had scorned alliance with the brass, the silver would not mingle with the molten iron. Therefore the moulds had to be once more prepared, and the fires rekindled, and the metal remelted, and all the work tediously and toilsomely repeated. The Son of Heaven heard, and was angry, but spake nothing.
A second time the bell was cast, and the result was even worse. Still the metals obstinately refused to blend one with the other; and there was no uniformity in the bell, and the sides of it were cracked and fissured, and the lips of it were slagged and split asunder; so that all the labor had to be repeated even a third time, to the great dismay of Kouan-Yu. And when the Son of Heaven heard these things, he was angrier than before; and sent his messenger to Kouan-Yu with a letter, written upon lemon-colored silk, and sealed with the seal of the Dragon, containing these words:—
... “From the Mighty Yong-Lo, the Sublime Tait-Sung, the Celestial and August,—whose reign is called ‘Ming,’—to Kouan-Yu the Fuh-yin: Twice thou hast betrayed the trust we have deigned graciously to place in thee; if thou fail a third time in fulfilling our command, thy head shall be severed from thy neck. Tremble, and obey!”
Now, Kouan-Yu had a daughter of dazzling loveliness, whose name—Ko-Ngai—was ever in the mouths of poets, and whose heart was even more beautiful than her face. Ko-Ngai loved her father with such love that she had refused a hundred worthy suitors rather than make his home desolate by her absence; and when she had seen the awful yellow missive, sealed with the Dragon-Seal, she fainted away with fear for her father’s sake. And when her senses and her strength returned to her, she could not rest or sleep for thinking of her parent’s danger, until she had secretly sold some of her jewels, and with the money so obtained had hastened to an astrologer, and paid him a great price to advise her by what means her father might be saved from the peril impending over him. So the astrologer made observations of the heavens, and marked the aspect of the Silver Stream (which we call the Milky Way), and examined the signs of the Zodiac,—the Hwang-tao, or Yellow Road,—and consulted the table of the Five Hin, or Principles of the Universe, and the mystical books of the alchemists. And after a long silence, he made answer to her, saying: “Gold and brass will never meet in wedlock, silver and iron never will embrace, until the flesh of a maiden be melted in the crucible; until the blood of a virgin be mixed with the metals in their fusion.” So Ko-Ngai returned home sorrowful at heart; but she kept secret all that she had heard, and told no one what she had done.
At last came the awful day when the third and last effort to cast the great bell was to be made; and Ko-Ngai, together with her waiting-woman, accompanied her father to the foundry, and they took their places upon a platform over-looking the toiling of the moulders and the lava of liquefied metal. All the workmen wrought their tasks in silence; there was no sound heard but the muttering of the fires. And the muttering deepened into a roar like the roar of typhoons approaching, and the blood-red lake of metal slowly brightened like the vermilion of a sunrise, and the vermilion was transmuted into a radiant glow of gold, and the gold whitened blindingly, like the silver face of a full moon. Then the workers ceased to feed the raving flame, and all fixed their eyes upon the eyes of Kouan-Yu; and Kouan-Yu prepared to give the signal to cast.
But ere ever he lifted his finger, a cry caused him to turn his head; and all heard the voice of Ko-Ngai sounding sharply sweet as a bird’s song above the great thunder of the fires,—“For thy sake, O my Father!” And even as she cried, she leaped into the white flood of metal; and the lava of the furnace roared to receive her, and spattered monstrous flakes of flame to the roof, and burst over the verge of the earthen crater, and cast up a whirling fountain of many-colored fires, and subsided quakingly, with lightnings and with thunders and with mutterings.
Then the father of Ko-Ngai, wild with his grief, would have leaped in after her, but that strong men held him back and kept firm grasp upon him until he had fainted away and they could bear him like one dead to his home. And the serving-woman of Ko-Ngai, dizzy and speechless for pain, stood before the furnace, still holding in her hands a shoe, a tiny, dainty shoe, with embroidery of pearls and flowers,—the shoe of her beautiful mistress that was. For she had sought to grasp Ko-Ngai by the foot as she leaped, but had only been able to clutch the shoe, and the pretty shoe came off in her hand; and she continued to stare at it like one gone mad.
But in spite of all these things, the command of the Celestial and August had to be obeyed, and the work of the moulders to be finished, hopeless as the result might be. Yet the glow of the metal seemed purer and whiter than before; and there was no sign of the beautiful body that had been entombed therein. So the ponderous casting was made; and lo! when the metal had become cool, it was found that the bell was beautiful to look upon, and perfect in form, and wonderful in color above all other bells. Nor was there any trace found of the body of Ko-Ngai; for it had been totally absorbed by the precious alloy, and blended with the well-blended brass and gold, with the intermingling of the silver and iron. And when they sounded the bell, its tones were found to be deeper and mellower and mightier than the tones of any other bell,—reaching even beyond the distance of one hundred li, like a pealing of summer thunder; and yet also like some vast voice uttering a name, a woman’s name,—the name of Ko-Ngai!
And still, between each mighty stroke there is a long low moaning heard; and ever the moaning ends with a sound of sobbing and complaining, as though a weeping woman should murmur, “Hiai!” And still, when the people hear that great golden moan they keep silence; but when the sharp, sweet shuddering comes in the air, and the sobbing of “Hiai!” then, indeed, do all the Chinese mothers in all the many-colored ways of Pe-king whisper to their little ones: “Listen! that is Ko-Ngai crying for her shoe! That is Ko-Ngai calling for her shoe!”
THE TEN TRAILS
By ERNEST THOMPSON SETON
Once there were two Indians who went out together to hunt. Hapeda was very strong and swift and a wonderful bowman. Chatun was much weaker and carried a weaker bow; but he was very patient.
As they went through the hills they came on the fresh track of a small Deer. Chatun said: “My brother, I shall follow that.”
But Hapeda said: “You may if you like, but a mighty hunter like me wants bigger game.”
So they parted.
Hapeda went on for an hour or more and found the track of ten large Elk going different ways. He took the trail of the largest and followed for a long way, but not coming up with it, he said: “That one is evidently traveling. I should have taken one of the others.”
So he went back to the place where he first found it, and took up the trail of another. After a hunt of over an hour in which he failed to get a shot, he said: “I have followed another traveler. I’ll go back and take up the trail of one that is feeding.”
But again, after a short pursuit, he gave up that one to go back and try another that seemed more promising. Thus he spent a whole day trying each of the trails for a short time, and at night came back to camp with nothing, to find that Chatun, though his inferior in all other ways, had proved wiser. He had stuck doggedly to the trail of the one little Deer, and now had its carcass safely in camp.
Moral: The Prize is always at the end of the trail.
WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD IS ALSO[[3]]
By COUNT LEO TOLSTOI
[3]. Reprinted from the Everyman Edition of Tolstoi’s Tales and Parables, by special permission of the publishers. Copyright by E. P. Dutton & Company.
In a certain town there lived a shoemaker named Martin Avdeitch. He lived in a basement room which possessed but one window. This window looked onto the street, and through it a glimpse could be caught of the passers-by. It is true that only their legs could be seen, but that did not matter, as Martin could recognize people by their boots alone. He had lived here for a long time, and so had many acquaintances. There were very few pairs of boots in the neighbourhood which had not passed through his hands at least once, if not twice. Some he had resoled, others he had fitted with side-pieces, others, again, he had resewn where they were split, or provided with new toe-caps. Yes, he often saw his handiwork through that window. He was given plenty of custom, for his work lasted well, his materials were good, his prices moderate, and his word to be depended on. If he could do a job by a given time it should be done; but if not, he would warn you beforehand rather than disappoint you. Everyone knew Avdeitch, and no one ever transferred his custom from him. He had always been an upright man, but with the approach of old age he had begun more than ever to think of his soul, and to draw nearer to God.
His wife had died while he was still an apprentice, leaving behind her a little boy of three. This was their only child, indeed, for the two elder ones had died previously. At first Martin thought of placing the little fellow with a sister of his in the country, but changed his mind, thinking: “My Kapitoshka would not like to grow up in a strange family, so I will keep him by me.” Then Avdeitch finished his apprenticeship, and went to live in lodgings with his little boy. But God had not seen fit to give Avdeitch happiness in his children. The little boy was just growing up and beginning to help his father and to be a pleasure to him, when he fell ill, was put to bed, and died after a week’s fever.
Martin buried the little fellow and was inconsolable. Indeed, he was so inconsolable that he began to murmur against God. His life seemed so empty that more than once he prayed for death and reproached the Almighty for taking away his only beloved son instead of himself, the old man. At last he ceased altogether to go to church.
Then one day there came to see him an ancient peasant-pilgrim—one who was now in the eighth year of his pilgrimage. To him Avdeitch talked, and then went on to complain of his great sorrow.
“I no longer wish to be a God-fearing man,” he said. “I only wish to die. That is all I ask of God. I am a lonely, hopeless man.”
“You should not speak like that, Martin,” replied the old pilgrim. “It is not for us to judge the acts of God. We must rely, not upon our own understanding, but upon the Divine wisdom. God saw fit that your son should die and that you should live. Therefore it must be better so. If you despair, it is because you have wished to live too much for your own pleasure.”
“For what, then, should I live?” asked Martin.
“For God alone,” replied the old man. “It is He who gave you life, and therefore it is He for whom you should live. When you come to live for Him you will cease to grieve, and your trials will become easy to bear.”
Martin was silent. Then he spoke again.
“But how am I to live for God?” he asked.
“Christ has shown us the way,” answered the old man. “Can you read? If so, buy a Testament and study it. You will learn there how to live for God. Yes, it is all shown you there.”
These words sank into Avdeitch’s soul. He went out the same day, bought a large-print copy of the New Testament, and set himself to read it.
At the beginning Avdeitch had meant only to read on festival days, but when he once began his reading he found it so comforting to the soul that he came never to let a day pass without doing so. On the second occasion he became so engrossed that all the kerosene was burnt away in the lamp before he could tear himself away from the book.
Thus he came to read it every evening, and, the more he read, the more clearly did he understand what God required of him, and in what way he could live for God; so that his heart grew ever lighter and lighter. Once upon a time, whenever he had lain down to sleep, he had been used to moan and sigh as he thought of his little Kapitoshka; but now he only said—“Glory to Thee, O Lord! Glory to Thee! Thy will be done!”
From that time onwards Avdeitch’s life became completely changed. Once he had been used to go out on festival days and drink tea in a tavern, and had not denied himself even an occasional glass of vodka. This he had done in the company of a boon companion, and, although no drunkard, would frequently leave the tavern in an excited state and talk much nonsense as he shouted and disputed with this friend of his. But now he had turned his back on all this, and his life had become quiet and joyous. Early in the morning he would sit down to his work, and labor through his appointed hours. Then he would take the lamp down from a shelf, light it, and sit down to read. And the more he read, the more he understood, and the clearer and happier he grew at heart.
It happened once that Martin had been reading late. He had been reading those verses in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke which run:
“And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also. Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.”
Then, further on, he had read those verses where the Lord says:
“And why call ye Me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? Whosoever cometh to Me and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will show you to whom he is like: He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the storm beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock. But he that heareth and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great.”
Avdeitch read these words, and felt greatly cheered in soul. He took off his spectacles, laid them on the book, leaned his elbows upon the table, and gave himself up to meditation. He set himself to measure his own life by those words, and thought to himself:
“Is my house founded upon a rock or upon sand? It is well if it be upon a rock. Yet it seems so easy to me as I sit here alone. I may so easily come to think that I have done all that the Lord has commanded me, and grow careless and—sin again. Yet I will keep on striving, for it is goodly so to do. Help Thou me, O Lord.”
Thus he kept on meditating, though conscious that it was time for bed; yet he was loathe to tear himself away from the book. He began to read the seventh chapter of St. Luke, and read on about the centurion, the widow’s son, and the answer given to John’s disciples; until in time he came to the passage where the rich Pharisee invited Jesus to his house, and the woman washed the Lord’s feet with her tears and He justified her. So he came to the forty-fourth verse and read:
“And He turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, and thou gavest Me no water for My feet: but she hath washed My feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest Me no kiss: but this woman since the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss My feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed My feet with ointment.”
He read these verses and thought:
“‘Thou gavest Me no water for My feet’ ... ‘Thou gavest Me no kiss’ ... ‘My head with oil thou didst not anoint’ ...”—and once again he took off his spectacles, laid them on the book, and became lost in meditation.
“I am even as that Pharisee,” he thought to himself. “I drink tea and think only of my own needs. Yes, I think only of having plenty to eat and drink, of being warm and clean—but never of entertaining a guest. And Simon too was mindful only of himself, although the guest who had come to visit him was—who? Why, even the Lord Himself! If, then, He should come to visit me, should I receive Him any better?”—and, leaning forward upon his elbows, he was asleep almost before he was aware of it.
“Martin!” someone seemed to breathe in his ear.
He started from his sleep.
“Who is there?” he said. He turned and looked towards the door, but could see no one. Again he bent forward over the table. Then suddenly he heard the words:
“Martin, Martin! Look thou into the street to-morrow, for I am coming to visit thee.”
Martin roused himself, got up from the chair, and rubbed his eyes. He did not know whether it was dreaming or awake that he had heard these words, but he turned out the lamp and went to bed.
The next morning Avdeitch rose before daylight and said his prayers. Then he made up the stove, got ready some cabbage soup and porridge, lighted the samovar, slung his leather apron about him, and sat down to his work in the window. He sat and worked hard, yet all the time his thoughts were centred upon last night. He was in two ideas about the vision. At one moment he would think that it must have been his fancy, while the next moment he would find himself convinced that he had really heard the voice. “Yes, it must have been so,” he concluded.
As Martin sat thus by the window he kept looking out of it as much as working. Whenever a pair of boots passed with which he was acquainted he would bend down to glance upwards through the window and see their owner’s face as well. The doorkeeper passed in new felt boots, and then a water-carrier. Next, an old soldier, a veteran of Nicholas’ army, in old, patched boots, and carrying a shovel in his hands, halted close by the window. Avdeitch knew him by his boots. His name was Stepanitch, and he was kept by a neighboring tradesman out of charity, his duties being to help the doorkeeper. He began to clear away the snow from in front of Avdeitch’s window, while the shoemaker looked at him and then resumed his work.
“I think I must be getting into my dotage,” thought Avdeitch with a smile. “Just because Stepanitch begins clearing away the snow I at once jump to the conclusion that Christ is about to visit me. Yes, I am growing foolish now, old greybeard that I am.”
Yet he had hardly made a dozen stitches before he was craning his neck again to look out of the window. He could see that Stepanitch had placed his shovel against the wall, and was resting and trying to warm himself a little.
“He is evidently an old man now and broken,” thought Avdeitch to himself. “He is not strong enough to clear away snow. Would he like some tea, I wonder? That reminds me that the samovar must be ready now.”
He made fast his awl in his work and got up. Placing the samovar on the table, he brewed the tea, and then tapped with his finger on the window-pane. Stepanitch turned round and approached. Avdeitch beckoned to him, and then went to open the door.
“Come in and warm yourself,” he said. “You must be frozen.”
“Christ requite you!” answered Stepanitch. “Yes, my bones are almost cracking.”
He came in, shook the snow off himself, and, though tottering on his feet, took pains to wipe them carefully, that he might not dirty the floor.
“Nay, do not trouble about that,” said Avdeitch. “I will wipe your boots myself. It is part of my business in this trade. Come you here and sit down, and we will empty this tea-pot together.”
He poured out two tumblerfuls, and offered one to his guest; after which he emptied his own into the saucer, and blew upon it to cool it. Stepanitch drank his tumblerful, turned the glass upside down, placed his crust upon it, and thanked his host kindly. But it was plain that he wanted another one.
“You must drink some more,” said Avdeitch, and refilled his guest’s tumbler and his own. Yet, in spite of himself, he had no sooner drunk his tea than he found himself looking out into the street again.
“Are you expecting anyone?” asked his guest.
“Am—am I expecting anyone? Well, to tell the truth, yes. That is to say, I am, and I am not. The fact is that some words have got fixed in my memory. Whether it was a vision or not I cannot tell, but at all events, my old friend, I was reading in the Gospels last night about Our Little Father Christ, and how He walked this earth and suffered. You have heard of Him, have you not?”
“Yes, yes, I have heard of Him,” answered Stepanitch; “but we are ignorant folk and do not know our letters.”
“Well, I was reading of how He walked this earth, and how He went to visit a Pharisee, and yet received no welcome from him at the door. All this I read last night, my friend, and then fell to thinking about it—to thinking how some day I too might fail to pay Our Little Father Christ due honor. ‘Suppose,’ I thought to myself, ‘He came to me or to anyone like me? Should we, like the great lord Simon, not know how to receive Him and not go out to meet Him?’ Thus I thought, and fell asleep where I sat. Then as I sat sleeping there I heard someone call my name; and as I raised myself the voice went on (as though it were the voice of someone whispering in my ear): ‘Watch thou for me to-morrow, for I am coming to visit thee.’ It said that twice. And so those words have got into my head, and, foolish though I know it to be, I keep expecting Him—the Little Father—every moment.”
Stepanitch nodded and said nothing, but emptied his glass and laid it aside. Nevertheless Avdeitch took and refilled it.
“Drink it up; it will do you good,” he said. “Do you know,” he went on, “I often call to mind how when Our Little Father walked this earth, there was never a man, however humble, whom He despised, and how it was chiefly among the common people that He dwelt. It was always with them that He walked; it was from among them—from among such men as you and I—from among sinners and working folk—that He chose His disciples. ‘Whosoever,’ He said, ‘shall exalt himself, the same shall be abased; and whosoever shall abase himself, the same shall be exalted.’ ‘You,’ He said again, ‘call me Lord; yet will I wash your feet.’ ‘Whosoever,’ He said, ‘would be chief among you, let him be the servant of all. Because,’ He said, ‘blessed are the lowly, the peacemakers, the merciful, and the charitable.’”
Stepanitch had forgotten all about his tea. He was an old man, and his tears came easily. He sat and listened, with the tears rolling down his cheeks.
“Oh, but you must drink your tea,” said Avdeitch; yet Stepanitch only crossed himself and said the thanksgiving, after which he pushed his glass away and rose.
“I thank you, Martin Avdeitch,” he said. “You have taken me in, and fed both soul and body.”
“Nay, but I beg of you to come again,” replied Avdeitch. “I am only too glad of a guest.”
So Stepanitch departed, while Martin poured out the last of the tea and drank it. Then he cleaned the crockery, and sat down again to his work by the window—to the stitching of a back-piece. He stitched away, yet kept on looking through the window—looking for Christ, as it were—and ever thinking of Christ and His works. Indeed, Christ’s many sayings were never absent from Avdeitch’s mind.
Two soldiers passed the window, the one in military boots, and the other in civilian. Next, there came a neighboring householder, in polished goloshes; then a baker with a basket. All of them passed on. Presently a woman in woollen stockings and rough country shoes approached the window, and halted near the buttress outside it. Avdeitch peered up at her from under the lintel of his window, and could see that she was a plain-looking, poorly-dressed woman and had a child in her arms. It was in order to muffle the child up more closely—little though she had to do it with!—that she had stopped near the buttress and was now standing there with her back to the wind. Her clothing was ragged and fit only for summer, and even from behind his window-panes Avdeitch could hear the child crying miserably and its mother vainly trying to soothe it. Avdeitch rose, went to the door, climbed the steps, and cried out: “My good woman, my good woman!”
She heard him and turned round.
“Why need you stand there in the cold with your baby?” he went on. “Come into my room, where it is warm, and where you will be able to wrap the baby up more comfortably than you can do here. Yes, come in with you.”
The woman was surprised to see an old man in a leather apron and with spectacles upon his nose calling out to her, yet she followed him down the steps, and they entered his room. The old man led her to the bedstead.
“Sit you down here, my good woman,” he said. “You will be near the stove, and can warm yourself and feed your baby.”
“Ah,” she replied. “I have had nothing to eat this morning.” Nevertheless she put the child to her breast.
Avdeitch nodded his head approvingly, went to the table for some bread and a basin, and opened the stove door. From the stove he took and poured some soup into the basin, and drew out also a bowl of porridge. The latter, however, was not yet boiling, so he set out only the soup, after first laying the table with a cloth.
“Sit down and eat, my good woman,” he said, “while I hold your baby. I have had little ones of my own, and know how to nurse them.”
The woman crossed herself and sat down, while Avdeitch seated himself upon the bedstead with the baby. He smacked his lips at it once or twice, but made a poor show of it, for he had no teeth left. Consequently the baby went on crying. Then he bethought him of his finger, which he wriggled to and fro towards the baby’s mouth and back again—without, however, actually touching the little one’s lips, since the finger was blackened with work and sticky with shoemaker’s wax. The baby contemplated the finger and grew quiet—then actually smiled. Avdeitch was delighted. Meanwhile the woman had been eating her meal, and now she told him, unasked, who she was and whither she was going.
“I am a soldier’s wife,” she said, “but my husband was sent to a distant station eight months ago, and I have heard nothing of him since. At first I got a place as cook, but when the baby came they said they could not do with it and dismissed me. That was three months ago, and I have got nothing since, and have spent all my savings. I tried to get taken as a nurse, but no one would have me, for they said I was too thin. I have just been to see a tradesman’s wife where our grandmother is in service. She had promised to take me on, and I quite thought that she would, but when I arrived to-day she told me to come again next week. She lives a long way from here, and I am quite worn out and have tired my baby for nothing. Thank Heaven, however, my landlady is good to me, and gives me shelter for Christ’s sake. Otherwise I should not have known how to bear it all.”
Avdeitch sighed and said: “But have you nothing warm to wear?”
“Ah, sir,” replied the woman, “although it is the time for warm clothes I had to pawn my last shawl yesterday for two grivenki.”[[4]]
[4]. The grivenka = 10 copecks = about five cents.
Then the woman returned to the bedstead to take her baby, while Avdeitch rose and went to a cupboard. There he rummaged about, and presently returned with an old jacket.
“Here,” he said. “It is a poor old thing, but it will serve to cover you.”
The woman looked at the jacket, and then at the old man. Then she took the jacket and burst into tears. Avdeitch turned away, and went creeping under the bedstead, whence he extracted a box and pretended to rummage about in it for a few moments; after which he sat down again before the woman.
Then the woman said to him: “I thank you in Christ’s name, good grandfather. Surely it was He Himself who sent me to your window. Otherwise I should have seen my baby perish with the cold. When I first came out the day was warm, but now it has begun to freeze. But He, Our Little Father, had placed you in your window, that you might see me in my bitter plight and have compassion upon me.”
Avdeitch smiled and said: “He did indeed place me there: yet, my poor woman, it was for a special purpose that I was looking out.”
Then he told his guest, the soldier’s wife, of his vision, and how he had heard a voice foretelling that to-day the Lord Himself would come to visit him.
“That may very well be,” said the woman as she rose, took the jacket, and wrapped her baby in it. Then she saluted him once more and thanked him.
“Also, take this in Christ’s name,” said Avdeitch, and gave her a two-grivenka piece with which to buy herself a shawl. The woman crossed herself, and he likewise. Then he led her to the door and dismissed her.
When she had gone Avdeitch ate a little soup, washed up the crockery again, and resumed his work. All the time, though, he kept his eye upon the window, and as soon as ever a shadow fell across it he would look up to see who was passing. Acquaintances of his came past, and people whom he did not know, yet never anyone very particular.
Then suddenly he saw something. Opposite his window there had stopped an old pedlar-woman, with a basket of apples. Only a few of the apples, however, remained, so that it was clear that she was almost sold out. Over her shoulder was slung a sack of shavings, which she must have gathered near some new building as she was going home. Apparently, her shoulder had begun to ache under their weight, and she therefore wished to shift them to the other one. To do this, she balanced her basket of apples on the top of a post, lowered the sack to the pavement, and began shaking up its contents. As she was doing this, a boy in a ragged cap appeared from somewhere, seized an apple from the basket, and tried to make off. But the old woman, who had been on her guard, managed to turn and seize the boy by the sleeve, and although he struggled and tried to break away, she clung to him with both hands, snatched his cap off, and finally grasped him by the hair. Thereupon the youngster began to shout and abuse his captor. Avdeitch did not stop to make fast his awl, but threw his work down upon the floor, ran to the door, and went stumbling up the steps—losing his spectacles as he did so. Out into the street he ran, where the old woman was still clutching the boy by the hair and threatening to take him to the police, while the boy, for his part, was struggling in the endeavor to free himself.
“I never took it,” he was saying. “What are you beating me for? Let me go.”
Avdeitch tried to part them as he took the boy by the hand and said:
“Let him go, my good woman. Pardon him for Christ’s sake.”
“Yes, I will pardon him,” she retorted, “but not until he has tasted a new birch-rod. I mean to take the young rascal to the police.”
But Avdeitch still interceded for him.
“Let him go, my good woman,” he said. “He will never do it again. Let him go for Christ’s sake.”
The old woman released the boy, who was for making off at once had not Avdeitch stopped him.
“You must beg the old woman’s pardon,” he said, “and never do such a thing again. I saw you take the apple.”
The boy burst out crying, and begged the old woman’s pardon as Avdeitch commanded.
“There, there,” said Avdeitch. “Now I will give you one. Here you are,”—and he took an apple from the basket and handed it to the boy. “I will pay you for it, my good woman,” he added.
“Yes, but you spoil the young rascal by doing that,” she objected. “He ought to have received a reward that would have made him glad to stand for a week.”
“Ah, my good dame, my good dame,” exclaimed Avdeitch. “That may be our way of rewarding, but it is not God’s. If this boy ought to have been whipped for taking the apple, ought not we also to receive something for our sins?”
The old woman was silent. Then Avdeitch related to her the parable of the master who absolved his servant from the great debt which he owed him, whereupon the servant departed and took his own debtor by the throat. The old woman listened, and also the boy.
“God has commanded us to pardon one another,” went on Avdeitch, “or He will not pardon us. We ought to pardon all men, and especially the thoughtless.”
The old woman shook her head and sighed.
“Yes, that may be so,” she said, “but these young rascals are so spoilt already!”
“Then it is for us, their elders, to teach them better,” he replied.
“That is what I say myself at times,” rejoined the old woman. “I had seven of them once at home, but have only one daughter now.” And she went on to tell Avdeitch where she and her daughter lived, and how they lived, and how many grandchildren she had.
“I have only such strength as you see,” she said, “yet I work hard, for my heart goes out to my grandchildren—the bonny little things that they are! No children could run to meet me as they do. Aksintka, for instance, will go to no one else. ‘Grandmother,’ she cries, ‘dear grandmother, you are tired’”—and the old woman became thoroughly softened. “Everyone knows what boys are,” she added presently, referring to the culprit. “May God go with him!”
She was raising the sack to her shoulders again when the boy darted forward and said:
“Nay, let me carry it, grandmother. It will be all on my way home.”
The old woman nodded assent, gave up the sack to the boy, and went away with him down the street. She had quite forgotten to ask Avdeitch for the money for the apple. He stood looking after them, and observing how they were talking together as they went.
Having seen them go, he returned to his room, finding his spectacles—unbroken—on the steps as he descended them. Once more he took up his awl and fell to work, but had done little before he found it difficult to distinguish the stitches, and the lamplighter had passed on his rounds. “I too must light up,” he thought to himself. So he trimmed the lamp, hung it up, and resumed his work. He finished one boot completely, and then turned it over to look at it. It was all good work. Then he laid aside his tools, swept up the cuttings, rounded off the stitches and loose ends, and cleaned his awl. Next he lifted the lamp down, placed it on the table, and took his Testament from the shelf. He had intended opening the book at the place which he had marked last night with a strip of leather, but it opened itself at another instead. The instant it did so, his vision of last night came back to his memory, and, as instantly, he thought he heard a movement behind him as of someone moving towards him. He looked round and saw in the shadow of a dark corner what appeared to be figures—figures of persons standing there, yet could not distinguish them clearly. Then the voice whispered in his ear:
“Martin, Martin, dost thou not know me?”
“Who art Thou?” said Avdeitch.
“Even I!” whispered the voice again. “Lo, it is I!”—and there stepped from the dark corner Stepanitch. He smiled, and then, like the fading of a little cloud, was gone.
“It is I!” whispered the voice again—and there stepped from the same corner the woman with her baby. She smiled, and the baby smiled, and they were gone.
“And it is I!” whispered the voice again—and there stepped forth the old woman and the boy with the apple. They smiled, and were gone.
Joy filled the soul of Martin Avdeitch as he crossed himself, put on his spectacles, and set himself to read the Testament at the place where it had opened. At the top of the page he read:
“For I was an hungred, and ye gave Me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave Me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took Me in.”
And further down the page he read:
“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren ye have done it unto Me.”
Then Avdeitch understood that the vision had come true, and that his Saviour had in very truth visited him that day, and that he had received Him.
WOOD-LADIES[[5]]
By PERCEVAL GIBBON
[5]. By permission of the author. Copyright by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
The pine-trees of the wood joined their branches into a dome of intricate groinings over the floor of ferns where the children sat, sunk to the neck in a foam of tender green. The sunbeams that slanted in made shivering patches of gold about them. Joyce, the elder of the pair, was trying to explain why she had wished to come here from the glooms of the lesser wood beyond.
“I wasn’t ’zactly frightened,” she said. “I knew there wasn’t any lions or robbers, or anything like that. But——”
“Tramps?” suggested Joan.
“No! You know I don’t mind tramps, Joan. But as we was going along under all those dark bushes where it was so quiet, I kept feeling as if there was—something—behind me. I looked round and there wasn’t anything, but—well, it felt as if there was.”
Joyce’s small face was knit and intent with the efforts to convey her meaning. She was a slim erect child, as near seven years of age as makes no matter, with eyes that were going to be gray, but had not yet ceased to be blue. Joan, who was a bare five, a mere huge baby, was trying to root up a fern that grew between her feet.
“I know,” she said, tugging mightily. The fern gave suddenly, and Joan fell over on her back, with her stout legs sticking up stiffly. In this posture she continued the conversation undisturbed. “I know, Joy. It was wood-ladies!”
“Wood-ladies!” Joyce frowned in faint perplexity as Joan rolled right side up again. Wood-ladies were dim inhabitants of the woods, being of the order of fairies and angels and even vaguer, for there was nothing about them in the story-books. Joyce, who felt that she was getting on in years, was willing to be sceptical about them, but could not always manage it. In the nursery, with the hard clean linoleum underfoot and the barred window looking out on the lawn and the road, it was easy; she occasionally shocked Joan, and sometimes herself, by the license of her speech on such matters; but it was a different affair when one came to the gate at the end of the garden, and passed as through a dream portal from the sunshine and frank sky to the cathedral shadows and great whispering aisles of the wood. There the dimness was like the shadow of a presence; as babies they had been aware of it, and answered their own questions by inventing wood-ladies to float among the trunks and people the still green chambers. Now, neither of them could remember how they had first learned of wood-ladies.
“Wood-ladies,” repeated Joyce, and turned with a little shiver to look across the ferns to where the pines ended and the lesser wood, dense with undergrowth, broke at their edge like a wave on a steep beach. It was there, in a tunnel of a path that writhed beneath overarching bushes, that she had been troubled with the sense of unseen companions. Joan, her fat hands struggling with another fern, followed her glance.
“That’s where they are,” she said casually. “They like being in the dark.”
“Joan!” Joyce spoke earnestly. “Say truly—truly, mind!—do you think there is wood-ladies at all?”
“’Course there is,” replied Joan cheerfully. “Fairies in fields and angels in heaven and dragons in caves and wood-ladies in woods.”
“But,” objected Joyce, “nobody ever sees them.”
Joan lifted her round baby face, plump, serene, bright with innocence, and gazed across at the tangled trees beyond the ferns. She wore the countenance with which she was wont to win games, and Joyce thrilled nervously at her certainty. Her eyes, which were brown, seemed to seek expertly; then she nodded.
“There’s one now,” she said, and fell to work with her fern again.
Joyce, crouching among the broad green leaves, looked tensely, dread and curiosity—the child’s avid curiosity for the supernatural—alight in her face. In the wood a breath of wind stirred the leaves; the shadows and the fretted lights shifted and swung; all was vague movement and change. Was it a bough that bent and sprang back or a flicker of draperies, dim and green, shrouding a tenuous form that passed like a smoke-wreath? She stared with wide eyes, and it seemed to her that for an instant she saw the figure turn and the pallor of a face, with a mist of hair about it, sway toward her. There was an impression of eyes, large and tender, of an infinite grace and fragility, of a coloring that merged into the greens and browns of the wood; and as she drew her breath it was all no more. The trees, the lights and shades, the stir of branches were as before, but something was gone from them.
“Joan,” she cried, hesitating.
“Yes,” said Joan, without looking up. “What?”
The sound of words had broken a spell. Joyce was no longer sure that she had seen anything.
“I thought, just now, I could see something,” she said. “But I s’pose I didn’t.”
“I did,” remarked Joan.
Joyce crawled through the crisp ferns till she was close to Joan, sitting solid and untroubled and busy upon the ground, with broken stems and leaves all round her.
“Joan,” she begged. “Be nice. You’re trying to frighten me, aren’t you?”
“I’m not,” protested Joan. “I did see a wood-lady. Wood-ladies doesn’t hurt you; wood-ladies are nice. You’re a coward, Joyce.”
“I can’t help it,” said Joyce, sighing. “But I won’t go into the dark parts of the wood any more.”
“Coward,” repeated Joan absently, but with a certain relish.
“You wouldn’t like to go there by yourself,” cried Joyce. “If I wasn’t with you, you’d be a coward too. You know you would.”
She stopped, for Joan had swept her lap free of débris and was rising to her feet. Joan, for all her plumpness and infantile softness, had a certain deliberate dignity when she was put upon her mettle. She eyed her sister with a calm and very galling superiority.
“I’m going there now,” she answered; “all by mineself.”
“Go, then,” retorted Joyce angrily.
Without a further word, Joan turned her back and began to plough her way across the ferns toward the dark wood. Joyce, watching her, saw her go, at first with wrath, for she had been stung, and then with compunction. The plump baby was so small in the brooding solemnity of the pines, thrusting indefatigably along, buried to the waist in ferns. Her sleek brown head had a devoted look; the whole of her seemed to go with so sturdy an innocence toward those peopled and uncanny glooms. Joyce rose to her knees to call her back.
“Joan!” she cried. The baby turned. “Joan! Come back; come back an’ be friends!”
Joan, maintaining her offing, replied only with a gesture. It was a gesture they had learned from the boot-and-knife boy, and they had once been spanked for practising it on the piano-tuner. The boot-and-knife boy called it “cocking a snook,” and it consisted in raising a thumb to one’s nose and spreading the fingers out. It was defiance and insult in tabloid form. Then she turned and plodded on. The opaque wall of the wood was before her and over her, but she knew its breach. She ducked her head under a droop of branches, squirmed through, was visible still for some seconds as a gleam of blue frock, and then the ghostly shadows received her and she was gone. The wood closed behind her like a lid.
Joyce, squatting in her place, blinked a little breathlessly to shift from her senses an oppression of alarm, and settled down to wait for her. At least it was true that nothing ever happened to Joan; even when she fell into a water-butt she suffered no damage; and the wood was a place to which they came every day.
“Besides,” she considered, enumerating her resources of comfort; “besides, there can’t be such things as wood-ladies really.”
But Joan was a long time gone. The dome of pines took on an uncanny stillness; the moving patches of sun seemed furtive and unnatural; the ferns swayed without noise. In the midst of it, patient and nervous, sat Joyce, watching always that spot in the bushes where a blue overall and a brown head had disappeared. The undernote of alarm which stirred her senses died down; a child finds it hard to spin out a mood; she simply sat, half-dreaming in the peace of the morning, half-watching the wood. Time slipped by her and presently there came mother, smiling and seeking through the trees for her babies.
“Isn’t there a clock inside you that tells you when it’s lunch-time?” asked mother. “You’re ever so late. Where’s Joan?”
Joyce rose among the ferns, delicate and elfin, with a shy perplexity on her face. It was difficult to speak even to mother about wood-ladies without a pretence of scepticism.
“I forgot about lunch,” she said, taking the slim cool hand which mother held out to her. “Joan’s in there.” She nodded at the bushes.
“Is she?” said mother, and called aloud in her singing-voice, that was so clear to hear in the spaces of the wood. “Joan! Joan!”
A cheeky bird answered with a whistle and mother called again.
“She said,” explained Joyce—“she said she saw a wood-lady and then she went in there to show me she wasn’t afraid.”
“What’s a wood-lady, chick?” asked mother. “The rascal!” she said, smiling, when Joyce had explained as best she could. “We’ll have to go and look for her.”
They went hand in hand, and mother showed herself clever in parting a path among the bushes. She managed so that no bough sprang back to strike Joyce and without tearing or soiling her own soft white dress; one could guess that when she had been a little girl she, too, had had a wood to play in. They cut down by the Secret Pond, where the old rhododendrons were, and out to the edge of the fields; and when they paused mother would lift her head and call again, and her voice rang in the wood like a bell. By the pond, which was a black water with steep banks, she paused and showed a serious face; but there were no marks of shoes on its clay slopes, and she shook her head and went on. But to all the calling there was no answer, no distant cheery bellow to guide them to Joan.
“I wish she wouldn’t play these tricks,” said mother. “I don’t like them a bit.”
“I expect she’s hiding,” said Joyce. “There aren’t wood-ladies really, are there, mother?”
“There’s nothing worse in these woods than a rather naughty baby,” mother replied. “We’ll go back by the path and call her again.”
Joyce knew that the hand which held hers tightened as they went and there was still no answer to mother’s calling. She could not have told what it was that made her suddenly breathless; the wood about her turned desolate; an oppression of distress and bewilderment burdened them both. “Joan, Joan!” called mother in her strong beautiful contralto, swelling the word forth in powerful music, and when she ceased the silence was like a taunt. It was not as if Joan were there and failed to answer; it was as if there were no longer any Joan anywhere. They came at last to the space of sparse trees which bordered their garden.
“We mustn’t be silly about this,” said mother, speaking as much to herself as to Joyce. “Nothing can have happened to her. And you must have lunch, chick.”
“Without waiting for Joan?” asked Joyce.
“Yes. The gardener and the boot-boy must look for Joan,” said mother, opening the gate.
The dining-room looked very secure and home-like, with its big window and its cheerful table spread for lunch. Joyce’s place faced the window, so that she could see the lawn and the hedge bounding the kitchen garden; and when mother had served her with food, she was left alone to eat it. Presently the gardener and the boot-boy passed the window, each carrying a hedge-stake and looking warlike. There reached her a murmur of voices; the gardener was mumbling something about tramps.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” replied mother’s voice.
Mother came in presently and sat down, but did not eat anything. Joyce asked her why.
“Oh, I shall have some lunch when Joan comes,” answered mother. “I sha’n’t be hungry till then. Will you have some more, my pet?”
When Joyce had finished, they went out again to the wood to meet Joan when she was brought back in custody. Mother walked quite slowly, looking all the time as if she would like to run. Joyce held her hand and sometimes glanced up at her face, so full of wonder and a sort of resentful doubt, as though circumstances were playing an unmannerly trick on her. At the gate they came across the boot-boy.
“I bin all acrost that way,” said the boot-boy, pointing with his stumpy black forefinger, “and then acrost that way, an’ Mister Jenks”—Jenks was the gardener—“’e’ve gone about in rings, ’e ’ave. And there ain’t sign nor token, mum—not a sign there ain’t.”
From beyond him sounded the voice of the gardener, thrashing among the trees. “Miss Joan!” he roared. “Hi! Miss Jo-an! You’re a-frightin’ your ma proper. Where are ye, then?”
“She must be hiding,” said mother. “You must go on looking, Walter. You must go on looking till you find her.”
“Yes, ’m,” said Walter. “If she’s in there, us’ll find her, soon or late.”
He ran off, and presently his voice was joined to Jenks’s, calling Joan—calling, calling, and getting no answer.
Mother took Joyce’s hand again.
“Come,” she said. “We’ll walk round by the path, and you must tell me again how it all happened. Did you really see something when Joan told you to look?”
“I expect I didn’t,” replied Joyce dolefully. “But Joan’s always saying there’s a fairy or something in the shadows and I always think I see them for a moment.”
“It couldn’t have been a live woman—or a man—that you saw?”
“Oh, no!” Joyce was positive of that. Mother’s hand tightened on hers understandingly and they went on in silence till they met Jenks.
Jenks was an oldish man with bushy gray whiskers, who never wore a coat, and now he was wet to the loins with mud and water.
“That there ol’ pond,” he explained. “I’ve been an’ took a look at her. Tromped through her proper, I did, an’ I’ll go bail there ain’t so much as a dead cat in all the mud of her. Thish yer’s a mistry, mum, an’ no mistake.”
Mother stared at him. “I can’t bear this,” she said suddenly. “You must go on searching, Jenks, and Walter must go on his bicycle to the police-station at once. Call him, please!”
“Walter!” roared Jenks obediently.
“Coming!” answered the boot-boy and burst forth from the bushes. In swift, clear words, which no stupidity could mistake or forget, mother gave him his orders, spoken in a tone that meant urgency. Walter went flying to execute them.
“Oh, mother, where do you think Joan can be?” begged Joyce when Jenks had gone off to resume his search.
“I don’t know,” said mother. “It’s all so absurd.”
“If there was wood-ladies, they wouldn’t hurt a baby like Joan,” suggested Joyce.
“Oh, who could hurt her!” cried mother, and fell to calling again. Her voice, of which each accent was music, alternated with the harsh roars of Jenks.
Walter on his bicycle must have hurried, in spite of his permanently punctured front tire, for it was a very short time before bells rang in the steep lane from the road and Superintendent Farrow himself wheeled his machine in at the gate, massive and self-possessed, a blue-clad minister of comfort. He heard mother’s tale, which embodied that of Joyce, with a half-smile lurking in his mustache and his big chin creased back against his collar. Then he nodded, exactly as if he saw through the whole business and could find Joan in a minute or two, and propped his bicycle against the fence.
“I understand then,” he said, “that the little girl’s been missing for rather more than an hour. In that case, she can’t have got far. I sent a couple o’ constables round the roads be’ind the wood before I started, an’ now I’ll just ’ave a look through the wood myself.”
“Thank you,” said mother. “I don’t know why I’m so nervous, but——”
“Very natural, ma’am,” said the big superintendent comfortingly, and went with them to the wood.
It was rather thrilling to go with him and watch him. Joyce and mother had to show him the place from which Joan had started and the spot at which she had disappeared. He looked at them hard, frowning a little and nodding to himself, and went stalking mightily among the ferns. “It was ’ere she went?” he inquired, as he reached the dark path, and being assured that it was, he thrust in and commenced his search. The pond seemed to give him ideas, which old Jenks disposed of, and he marched on till he came out to the edge of the fields, where the hay was yet uncut. Joan could not have crossed them without leaving a track in the tall grass as clear as a cart-rut.
“We ’ave to consider the possibilities of the matter,” said the superintendent. “Assumin’ that the wood ’as been thoroughly searched, where did she get out of it?”
“Searched!” growled old Jenks. “There ain’t a inch as I ’aven’t searched an’ seen—not a inch.”
“The kidnappin’ the’ry,” went on the superintendent, ignoring him and turning to mother, “I don’t incline to. ’Owever, we must go to work in order, an’ I’ll ’ave my men up ’ere and make sure of the wood. All gypsies an’ tramps will be stopped and interrogated. I don’t think there’s no cause for you to feel anxious, ma’am. I ’ope to ’ave some news for you in the course of the afternoon.”
They watched him free-wheel down the lane and shoot round the corner.
“Oh, dear,” said mother then; “why doesn’t the baby come? I wish daddy weren’t away.”
Now that the police had entered the affair, Joyce felt that there remained nothing to be done. Uniformed authority was in charge of events; it could not fail to find Joan. She had a vision of the police at work, stopping straggling families of tramps on distant by-roads, looking into the contents of their dreadful bundles, flashing the official bull’s-eye lantern into the mysterious interior of gypsy caravans, and making ragged men and slatternly women give an account of their wanderings. No limits to which they would not go; how could they fail? She wished their success seemed as inevitable to her mother as it did to her.
“They’re sure to bring her back, mother,” she repeated.
“Oh, chick,” said mother, “I keep telling myself so. But I wish—I wish——”
“What, mother?”
“I wish,” said mother, in a sudden burst of speech, as if she were confessing something that troubled her—“I wish you hadn’t seen that wood-lady.”
The tall young constables and the plump fatherly sergeant annoyed old Jenks by searching the wood as though he had done nothing. It was a real search this time. Each of them took a part of the ground and went over it as though he were looking for a needle which had been lost, and no less than three of them trod every inch of the bottom of the Secret Pond. They took shovels and opened up an old fox’s earth; and a sad-looking man in shabby plain clothes arrived and walked about smoking a pipe—a detective! Up from the village, too, came the big young curate and the squire’s two sons, civil and sympathetic and eager to be helpful; they all thought it natural that mother should be anxious, but refused to credit for an instant that anything could have happened to Joan.
“That baby!” urged the curate. “Why, my dear lady, Joan is better known hereabouts than King George himself. No one could take her a mile without having to answer questions. I don’t know what’s keeping her, but you may be sure she’s all right.”
“’Course she is,” chorused the others, swinging their sticks light-heartedly. “’Course she’s all right.”
“Get her for me, then,” said mother. “I don’t want to be silly and you’re awfully good. But I must have her; I must have her. I—I want her.”
The squire’s sons turned as if on an order and went toward the wood. The curate lingered a moment. He was a huge youth, an athlete and a gentleman, and his hard, clean-shaven face could be kind and serious.
“We’re sure to get her,” he said, in lower tones. “And you must help us with your faith and courage. Can you?”
Mother’s hand tightened on that of Joyce.
“We are doing our best,” she said, and smiled—she smiled! The curate nodded and went his way to the wood.
A little later in the afternoon came Colonel Warden, the lord and master of all the police in the county, a gay, trim soldier whom the children knew and liked. With him, in his big automobile, were more policemen and a pair of queer liver-colored dogs, all baggy skin and bleary eyes—blood-hounds! Joyce felt that this really must settle it. Actual living blood-hounds would be more than a match for Joan. Colonel Warden was sure of it too.
“Saves time,” he was telling mother, in his high snappy voice. “Shows us which way she’s gone, you know. Best hounds in the country, these two; never known ’em fail yet.”
The dogs were limp and quiet as he led them through the wood, strange ungainly mechanisms which a whiff of a scent could set in motion. A pinafore which Joan had worn at breakfast was served to them for an indication of the work they had to do; they snuffed at it languidly for some seconds. Then the colonel unleashed them.
They smelled round and about like any other dogs for a while, till one of them lifted his great head and uttered a long moaning cry. Then, noses down, the men running behind them, they set off across the ferns. Mother, still holding Joyce’s hand, followed. The hounds made a straight line for the wood at the point at which Joan had entered it, slid in like frogs into water, while the men dodged and crashed after them. Joyce and mother came up with them at a place where the bushes stood back, enclosing a little quiet space of turf that lay open to the sky. The hounds were here, one lying down and scratching himself, the other nosing casually and clearly without interest about him.
“Dash it all,” the colonel was saying; “she can’t—she simply can’t have been kidnapped in a balloon.”
They tried the hounds again and again, always with the same result. They ran their line to the same spot unhesitatingly, and then gave up as though the scent went no further. Nothing could induce them to hunt beyond it.
“I can’t understand this,” said Colonel Warden, dragging at his mustache. “This is queer.” He stood glancing around him as though the shrubs and trees had suddenly become enemies.
The search was still going on when the time came for Joyce to go to bed. It had spread from the wood across the fields, reinforced by scores of sturdy volunteers, and automobiles had puffed away to thread the mesh of little lanes that covered the country-side. Joyce found it all terribly exciting. Fear for Joan she felt not at all.
“I know inside myself,” she told mother, “right down deep in the middle of me, that Joan’s all right.”
“Bless you, my chick,” said poor mother. “I wish I could feel like that. Go to bed now, like a good girl.”
There was discomfort in the sight of Joan’s railed cot standing empty in the night nursery, but Joyce was tired and had scarcely begun to be touched by it before she was asleep. She had a notion that during the night mother came in more than once, and she had a vague dream, too, all about Joan and wood-ladies, of which she could not remember much when she woke up. Joan was always dressed first in the morning, being the younger of the pair, but now there was no Joan and nurse was very gentle with Joyce and looked tired and as if she had been crying.
Mother was not to be seen that morning; she had been up all night, “till she broke down, poor thing,” said nurse, and Joyce was bidden to amuse herself quietly in the nursery. But mother was about again at lunch-time when Joyce went down to the dining-room. She was very pale and her eyes looked black and deep, and somehow she seemed suddenly smaller and younger, more nearly Joyce’s age, than ever before. They kissed each other and the child would have tried to comfort.
“No,” said mother, shaking her head. “No, dear. Don’t let’s be sorry for each other yet. It would be like giving up hope. And we haven’t done that, have we?”
“I haven’t,” said Joyce. “I know it’s all right.”
After lunch—again mother said she wouldn’t be hungry till Joan came home—they went out together. There were no searches now in the wood and the garden was empty; the police had left no inch unscanned and they were away, combing the country-side and spreading terror among the tramps. The sun was strong upon the lawn and the smell of the roses was heavy on the air; across the hedge the land rolled away to clear perspectives of peace and beauty.
“Let’s walk up and down,” suggested mother. “Anything’s better than sitting still. And don’t talk, chick—not just now.”
They paced the length of the lawn, from the cedar to the gate which led to the wood, perhaps a dozen times, hand in hand and in silence. It was while their backs were turned to the wood that they heard the gate click, and faced about to see who was coming. A blue-sleeved arm thrust the gate open and there advanced into the sunlight, coming forth from the shadow as from a doorway—Joan! Her round baby face, with the sleek brown hair over it, the massive infantile body, the sturdy bare legs, confronted them serenely. Mother uttered a deep sigh—it sounded like that—and in a moment she was kneeling on the ground with her arms round the baby.
“Joan, Joan,” she said, over and over again. “My little, little baby!”
Joan struggled in her embrace till she got an arm free and then rubbed her eyes drowsily.
“Hallo!” she said.
“But where have you been?” cried mother. “Baby-girl, where have you been all this time?”
Joan made a motion of her head and her free arm toward the wood, the wood which had been searched a dozen times over like a pocket. “In there,” she answered carelessly. “Wiv the wood-ladies. I’m hungry!”
“My darling!” said mother, and picked her up and carried her into the house.
In the dining-room, with mother at her side and Joyce opposite to her, Joan fell to her food in her customary workman-like fashion, and between helpings answered questions in a fashion which only served to darken the mystery of her absence.
“But there aren’t any wood-ladies really, darling,” remonstrated mother.
“There is,” said Joan. “There’s lots. They wanted to keep me but I wouldn’t stay. So I comed home, ’cause I was hungry.”
“But,” began mother, “where did they take you to?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Joan. “The one what I went to speak to gave me her hand and tooked me to where there was more of them. It was a place in the wood wiv grass to sit on and bushes all round, and they gave me dead flowers to play wiv. Howwid old dead flowers!”
“Yes?” said mother. “What else?”
“There was anuvver little girl there,” went on Joan. “Not a wood-lady, but a girl like me, what they’d tooked from somewhere. She was wearing a greeny sort of dress like they was, and they wanted me to put one on too. But I wouldn’t.”
“Why wouldn’t you?” asked Joyce.
“’Cause I didn’t want to be a wood-lady,” replied Joan.
“Listen to me, darling,” said mother. “Didn’t these people whom you call wood-ladies take you away out of the wood? We searched the whole wood, you know, and you weren’t there at all.”
“I was,” said Joan. “I was there all the time an’ I heard Walter an’ Jenks calling. I cocked a snook at them an’ the wood-ladies laughed like leaves rustling.”
“But where did you sleep last night?”
“I didn’t sleep,” said Joan, grasping her spoon anew. “I’se very sleepy now.”
She was asleep as soon as they laid her in bed, and mother and Joyce looked at each other across her cot, above her rosy and unconscious face.
“God help us,” said mother, in a whisper. “What is the truth of this?”
There was never any answer, any hint of a solution, save Joan’s. And she, as soon as she discovered that her experiences amounted to an adventure, began to embroider them, and now she does not even know herself. She has reached the age of seven, and it is long since she has believed in anything so childish as wood-ladies.
ON THE FEVER SHIP[[6]]
By RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
[6]. From The Lion and the Unicorn. Copyright, 1899, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
There were four rails around the ship’s sides, the three lower ones of iron and the one on top of wood, and as he looked between them from the canvas cot he recognized them as the prison-bars which held him in. Outside his prison lay a stretch of blinding blue water which ended in a line of breakers and a yellow coast with ragged palms. Beyond that again rose a range of mountain-peaks, and, stuck upon the loftiest peak of all, a tiny block-house. It rested on the brow of the mountain against the naked sky as impudently as a cracker-box set upon the dome of a great cathedral.
As the transport rode on her anchor-chains, the iron bars around her sides rose and sank and divided the landscape with parallel lines. From his cot the officer followed this phenomenon with severe, painstaking interest. Sometimes the wooden rail swept up to the very block-house itself, and for a second of time blotted it from sight. And again it sank to the level of the line of breakers, and wiped them out of the picture as though they were a line of chalk.
The soldier on the cot promised himself that the next swell of the sea would send the lowest rail climbing to the very top of the palm-trees or, even higher, to the base of the mountains; and when it failed to reach even the palm-trees he felt a distinct sense of ill use, of having been wronged by some one. There was no other reason for submitting to this existence save these tricks upon the wearisome, glaring landscape; and now, whoever it was who was working them did not seem to be making this effort to entertain him with any heartiness.
It was most cruel. Indeed, he decided hotly, it was not to be endured; he would bear it no longer, he would make his escape. But he knew that this move, which could be conceived in a moment’s desperation, could only be carried to success with great strategy, secrecy, and careful cunning. So he fell back upon his pillow and closed his eyes, as though he were asleep, and then opening them again, turned cautiously, and spied upon his keeper. As usual, his keeper sat at the foot of the cot turning the pages of a huge paper filled with pictures of the war printed in daubs of tawdry colors. His keeper was a hard-faced boy without human pity or consideration, a very devil of obstinacy and fiendish cruelty. To make it worse, the fiend was a person without a collar, in a suit of soiled khaki, with a curious red cross bound by a safety-pin to his left arm. He was intent upon the paper in his hands; he was holding it between his eyes and his prisoner. His vigilance had relaxed, and the moment seemed propitious. With a sudden plunge of arms and legs, the prisoner swept the bed-sheet from him, and sprang at the wooden rail and grasped the iron stanchion beside it. He had his knee pressed against the top bar and his bare toes on the iron rail beneath it. Below him the blue water waited for him. It was cool and dark and gentle and deep. It would certainly put out the fire in his bones, he thought; it might even shut out the glare of the sun which scorched his eyeballs.
But as he balanced for the leap, a swift weakness and nausea swept over him, a weight seized upon his body and limbs. He could not lift the lower foot from the iron rail, and he swayed dizzily and trembled. He trembled. He who had raced his men and beaten them up the hot hill to the trenches of San Juan. But now he was a baby in the hands of a giant, who caught him by the wrist and with an iron arm clasped him around his waist and pulled him down, and shouted, brutally, “Help, some of youse, quick! he’s at it again. I can’t hold him.”
More giants grasped him by the arms and by the legs. One of them took the hand that clung to the stanchion in both of his, and pulled back the fingers one by one, saying, “Easy now, Lieutenant—easy.”
The ragged palms and the sea and block-house were swallowed up in a black fog, and his body touched the canvas cot again with a sense of home-coming and relief and rest. He wondered how he could have cared to escape from it. He found it so good to be back again that for a long time he wept quite happily, until the fiery pillow was moist and cool.
The world outside of the iron bars was like a scene in a theater set for some great event, but the actors were never ready. He remembered confusedly a play he had once witnessed before that same scene. Indeed, he believed he had played some small part in it; but he remembered it dimly, and all trace of the men who had appeared with him in it was gone. He had reasoned it out that they were up there behind the range of mountains, because great heavy wagons and ambulances and cannon were emptied from the ships at the wharf above and were drawn away in long lines behind the ragged palms, moving always toward the passes between the peaks. At times he was disturbed by the thought that he should be up and after them, that some tradition of duty made his presence with them imperative. There was much to be done back of the mountains. Some event of momentous import was being carried forward there, in which he held a part; but the doubt soon passed from him, and he was content to lie and watch the iron bars rising and falling between the block-house and the white surf.
If they had been only humanely kind, his lot would have been bearable, but they starved him and held him down when he wished to rise; and they would not put out the fire in the pillow, which they might easily have done by the simple expedient of throwing it over the ship’s side into the sea. He himself had done this twice, but the keeper had immediately brought a fresh pillow already heated for the torture and forced it under his head.
His pleasures were very simple, and so few he could not understand why they robbed him of them so jealously. One was to watch a green cluster of bananas that hung above him from the awning, twirling on a string. He could count as many of them as five before the bunch turned and swung lazily back again, when he could count as high as twelve; sometimes when the ship rolled heavily he could count to twenty. It was a most fascinating game, and contented him for many hours. But when they found this out they sent for the cook to come and cut them down, and the cook carried them away to his galley.
Then, one day, a man came out from the shore, swimming through the blue water with great splashes. He was a most charming man, who spluttered and dove and twisted and lay on his back and kicked his legs in an excess of content and delight. It was a real pleasure to watch him; not for days had anything so amusing appeared on the other side of the prison-bars. But as soon as the keeper saw that the man in the water was amusing his prisoner, he leaned over the ship’s side and shouted, “Sa-ay, you, don’t you know there’s sharks in there?”
And the swimming man raced back to the shore like a porpoise with great lashing of the water, and ran up the beach half-way to the palms before he was satisfied to stop. Then the prisoner wept again. It was so disappointing. Life was robbed of everything now. He remembered that in a previous existence soldiers who cried were laughed at and mocked. But that was so far away and it was such an absurd superstition that he had no patience with it. For what could be more comforting to a man when he is treated cruelly than to cry. It was so obvious an exercise, and when one is so feeble that one cannot vault a four-railed barrier it is something to feel that at least one is strong enough to cry.
He escaped occasionally, traversing space with marvellous rapidity and to great distances, but never to any successful purpose; and his flight inevitably ended in ignominious recapture and a sudden awakening in bed. At these moments the familiar and hated palms, the peaks, and the block-house were more hideous in their reality than the most terrifying of his nightmares.
These excursions afield were always predatory; he went forth always to seek food. With all the beautiful world from which to elect and choose, he sought out only those places where eating was studied and elevated to an art. These visits were much more vivid in their detail than any he had ever before made to these same resorts. They invariably began in a carriage, which carried him swiftly over smooth asphalt. One route brought him across a great and beautiful square, radiating with rows and rows of flickering lights; two fountains splashed in the center of the square, and six women of stone guarded its approaches. One of the women was hung with wreaths of mourning. Ahead of him the late twilight darkened behind a great arch, which seemed to rise on the horizon of the world, a great window into the heavens beyond. At either side strings of white and colored globes hung among the trees, and the sound of music came joyfully from theaters in the open air. He knew the restaurant under the trees to which he was now hastening, and the fountain beside it, and the very sparrows balancing on the fountain’s edge; he knew every waiter at each of the tables, he felt again the gravel crunching under his feet, he saw the maître d’hôtel coming forward smiling to receive his command, and the waiter in the green apron bowing at his elbow, deferential and important, presenting the list of wines. But his adventure never passed that point, for he was captured again and once more bound to his cot with a close burning sheet.
Or else, he drove more sedately through the London streets in the late evening twilight, leaning expectantly across the doors of the hansom and pulling carefully at his white gloves. Other hansoms flashed past him, the occupant of each with his mind fixed on one idea—dinner. He was one of a million of people who were about to dine, or who had dined, or who were deep in dining. He was so famished, so weak for food of any quality, that the galloping horse in the hansom seemed to crawl. The lights of the Embankment passed like the lamps of a railroad station as seen from the window of an express; and while his mind was still torn between the choice of a thin or thick soup or an immediate attack upon cold beef, he was at the door, and the chasseur touched his cap, and the little chasseur put the wicker guard over the hansom’s wheel. As he jumped out he said, “Give him half-a-crown,” and the driver called after him, “Thank you, sir.”
It was a beautiful world, this world outside of the iron bars. Everyone in it contributed to his pleasure and to his comfort. In this world he was not starved nor man-handled. He thought of this joyfully as he leaped up the stairs, where young men with grave faces and with their hands held negligently behind their backs bowed to him in polite surprise at his speed. But they had not been starved on condensed milk. He threw his coat and hat at one of them, and came down the hall fearfully and quite weak with dread lest it should not be real. His voice was shaking when he asked Ellis if he had reserved a table. The place was all so real, it must be true this time. The way Ellis turned and ran his finger down the list showed it was real, because Ellis always did that, even when he knew there would not be an empty table for an hour. The room was crowded with beautiful women; under the light of the red shades they looked kind and approachable, and there was food on every table, and iced drinks in silver buckets. It was with the joy of great relief that he heard Ellis say to his underling, “Numéro cinq, sur la terrace, un couvert.” It was real at last. Outside, the Thames lay a great gray shadow. The lights of the Embankment flashed and twinkled across it, the tower of the House of Commons rose against the sky, and here, inside, the waiter was hurrying toward him carrying a smoking plate of rich soup with a pungent, intoxicating odor.
And then the ragged palms, the glaring sun, the immovable peaks, and the white surf stood again before him. The iron rails swept up and sank again, the fever sucked at his bones, and the pillow scorched his cheek.
One morning for a brief moment he came back to real life again and lay quite still, seeing everything about him with clear eyes and for the first time, as though he had but just that instant been lifted over the ship’s side. His keeper, glancing up, found the prisoner’s eyes considering him curiously, and recognized the change. The instinct of discipline brought him to his feet with his fingers at his sides.
“Is the Lieutenant feeling better?”
The Lieutenant surveyed him gravely.
“You are one of our hospital stewards.”
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
“Why aren’t you with the regiment?”
“I was wounded, too, sir. I got it same time you did, Lieutenant.”
“Am I wounded? Of course, I remember. Is this a hospital ship?”
The steward shrugged his shoulders. “She’s one of the transports. They have turned her over to the fever cases.”
The Lieutenant opened his lips to ask another question; but his own body answered that one, and for a moment he lay silent.
“Do they know up North that I—that I’m all right?”
“Oh, yes, the papers had it in—there were pictures of the Lieutenant in some of them.”
“Then I’ve been ill some time?”
“Oh, about eight days.”
The soldier moved uneasily, and the nurse in him became uppermost.
“I guess the Lieutenant hadn’t better talk any more,” he said. It was his voice now which held authority.
The Lieutenant looked out at the palms and the silent gloomy mountains and the empty coastline, where the same wave was rising and falling with weary persistence.
“Eight days,” he said. His eyes shut quickly, as though with a sudden touch of pain. He turned his head and sought for the figure at the foot of the cot. Already the figure had grown faint and was receding and swaying.
“Has anyone written or cabled?” the Lieutenant spoke, hurriedly. He was fearful lest the figure should disappear altogether before he could obtain his answer. “Has anyone come?”
“Why, they couldn’t get here, Lieutenant, not yet.”
The voice came very faintly. “You go to sleep now, and I’ll run and fetch some letters and telegrams. When you wake up, maybe I’ll have a lot for you.”
But the Lieutenant caught the nurse by the wrist, and crushed his hand in his own thin fingers. They were hot, and left the steward’s skin wet with perspiration. The Lieutenant laughed gayly.
“You see, Doctor,” he said, briskly, “that you can’t kill me. I can’t die. I’ve got to live, you understand. Because, sir, she said she would come. She said if I was wounded, or if I was ill, she would come to me. She didn’t care what people thought. She would come anyway and nurse me—well, she will come.”
“So, Doctor—old man—” He plucked at the steward’s sleeve, and stroked his hand eagerly, “old man—” he began again, beseechingly, “you’ll not let me die until she comes, will you? What? No, I know I won’t die. Nothing made by man can kill me. No, not until she comes. Then, after that—eight days, she’ll be here soon, any moment? What? You think so, too? Don’t you? Surely, yes, any moment. Yes, I’ll go to sleep now, and when you see her rowing out from shore you wake me. You’ll know her; you can’t make a mistake. She is like—no, there is no one like her—but you can’t make a mistake.”
That day strange figures began to mount the sides of the ship, and to occupy its every turn and angle of space. Some of them fell on their knees and slapped the bare deck with their hands, and laughed and cried out, “Thank God, I’ll see God’s country again!” Some of them were regulars, bound in bandages; some were volunteers, dirty and hollow-eyed, with long beards on boys’ faces. Some came on crutches; others with their arms around the shoulders of their comrades, staring ahead of them with a fixed smile, their lips drawn back and their teeth protruding. At every second step they stumbled, and the face of each was swept by swift ripples of pain.
They lay on cots so close together that the nurses could not walk between them. They lay on the wet decks, in the scuppers and along the transoms and hatches. They were like shipwrecked mariners clinging to a raft, and they asked nothing more than that the ship’s bow be turned toward home. Once satisfied as to that, they relaxed into a state of self-pity and miserable oblivion to their environment, from which hunger nor nausea nor aching bones could shake them.
The hospital steward touched the Lieutenant lightly on the shoulder.
“We are going North, sir,” he said. “The transport’s ordered North to New York, with these volunteers and the sick and the wounded. Do you hear me, sir?”
The Lieutenant opened his eyes. “Has she come?” he asked.
“Gee!” exclaimed the hospital steward. He glanced impatiently at the blue mountains and the yellow coast, from which the transport was rapidly drawing away.
“Well, I can’t see her coming just now,” he said. “But she will,” he added.
“You let me know at once when she comes.”
“Why, cert’nly, of course,” said the steward.
Three trained nurses came over the side just before the transport started North. One was a large, motherly looking woman, with a German accent. She had been a trained nurse, first in Berlin, and later in the London Hospital in Whitechapel, and at Bellevue. The nurse was dressed in white, and wore a little silver medal at her throat; and she was strong enough to lift a volunteer out of his cot and hold him easily in her arms, while one of the convalescents pulled his cot out of the rain. Some of the men called her “nurse”; others, who wore scapulars around their necks, called her “Sister”; and the officers of the medical staff addressed her as Miss Bergen.
Miss Bergen halted beside the cot of the Lieutenant and asked, “Is this the fever case you spoke about, Doctor—the one you want moved to the officers’ ward?” She slipped her hand up under his sleeve and felt his wrist.
“His pulse is very high,” she said to the steward. “When did you take his temperature?” She drew a little morocco case from her pocket and from that took a clinical thermometer, which she shook up and down, eying the patient meanwhile with a calm, impersonal scrutiny. The Lieutenant raised his head and stared up at the white figure beside his cot. His eyes opened and then shut quickly, with a startled look, in which doubt struggled with wonderful happiness. His hand stole out fearfully and warily until it touched her apron, and then, finding it was real, he clutched it desperately, and twisting his face and body toward her, pulled her down, clasping her hands in both of his, and pressing them close to his face and eyes and lips. He put them from him for an instant, and looked at her through his tears.
“Sweetheart,” he whispered, “sweetheart, I knew you’d come.”
As the nurse knelt on the deck beside him, her thermometer slipped from her fingers and broke, and she gave an exclamation of annoyance. The young Doctor picked up the pieces and tossed them overboard. Neither of them spoke, but they smiled appreciatively. The Lieutenant was looking at the nurse with the wonder and hope and hunger of soul in his eyes with which a dying man looks at the cross the priest holds up before him. What he saw where the German nurse was kneeling was a tall, fair girl with great bands and masses of hair, with a head rising like a lily from a firm, white throat, set on broad shoulders above a straight back and sloping breast—a tall, beautiful creature, half-girl, half-woman, who looked back at him shyly, but steadily.
“Listen,” he said.
The voice of the sick man was so sure and so sane that the young Doctor started, and moved nearer to the head of the cot. “Listen, dearest,” the Lieutenant whispered. “I wanted to tell you before I came South. But I did not dare; and then I was afraid something might happen to me, and I could never tell you, and you would never know. So I wrote it to you in the will I made at Baiquiri, the night before the landing. If you hadn’t come now, you would have learned it in that way. You would have read there that there never was anyone but you; the rest were all dream people, foolish, silly—mad. There is no one else in the world but you; you have been the only thing in life that has counted. I thought I might do something down here that would make you care. But I got shot going up a hill, and after that I wasn’t able to do anything. It was very hot, and the hills were on fire; and they took me prisoner, and kept me tied down here, burning on these coals. I can’t live much longer, but now that I’ve told you I can have peace. They tried to kill me before you came; but they didn’t know I loved you, they didn’t know that men who love you can’t die. They tried to starve my love for you, to burn it out of me; they tried to reach it with their knives. But my love for you is my soul, and they can’t kill a man’s soul. Dear heart, I have lived because you lived. Now that you know—now that you understand—what does it matter?”
Miss Bergen shook her head with great vigor. “Nonsense,” she said, cheerfully. “You are not going to die. As soon as we move you out of this rain, and some food cook——”
“Good God!” cried the young Doctor, savagely. “Do you want to kill him?”
When she spoke, the patient had thrown his arms heavily across his face, and had fallen back, lying rigid on the pillow.
The Doctor led the way across the prostrate bodies, apologizing as he went. “I am sorry I spoke so quickly,” he said, “but he thought you were real. I mean he thought you were some one he really knew——”
“He was just delirious,” said the German nurse, calmly. The Doctor mixed himself a Scotch and soda and drank it with a single gesture.
“Ugh!” he said to the ward-room. “I feel as though I’d been opening another man’s letters.”
The transport drove through the empty seas with heavy, clumsy upheavals, rolling like a buoy. Having been originally intended for the freight-carrying trade, she had no sympathy with hearts that beat for a sight of their native land, or for lives that counted their remaining minutes by the throbbing of her engines. Occasionally, without apparent reason, she was thrown violently from her course; but it was invariably the case that when her stern went to starboard, something splashed in the water on her port side and drifted past her, until, when it had cleared the blades of her propeller, a voice cried out, and she was swung back on her home-bound track again.
The Lieutenant missed the familiar palms and the tiny block-house; and seeing nothing beyond the iron rails but great wastes of gray water, he decided he was on board a prison-ship, or that he had been strapped to a raft and cast adrift. People came for hours at a time and stood at the foot of his cot, and talked with him and he to them—people he had loved and people he had long forgotten, some of whom he had thought were dead. One of them he could have sworn he had seen buried in a deep trench, and covered with branches of palmetto. He had heard the bugler, with tears choking him, sound “taps”; and with his own hand he had placed the dead man’s campaign hat on the mound of fresh earth above the grave. Yet here he was still alive, and he came with other men of his troop to speak to him; but when he reached out to them they were gone—the real and the unreal, the dead and the living—and even She disappeared whenever he tried to take her hand, and sometimes the hospital steward drove her away.
“Did that young lady say when she was coming back again?” he asked the steward.
“The young lady! What young lady?” asked the steward, wearily.
“The one who has been sitting there,” he answered. He pointed with his gaunt hand at the man in the next cot.
“Oh, that young lady. Yes, she’s coming back. She’s just gone below to fetch you some hard-tack.”
The young volunteer in the next cot whined grievously.
“That crazy man gives me the creeps,” he groaned. “He’s always waking me up, and looking at me as though he was going to eat me.”
“Shut your head,” said the steward. “He’s a better man crazy than you’ll ever be with the little sense you’ve got. And he has two Mauser holes in him. Crazy, eh? It’s a good thing for you that there was about four thousand of us regulars just as crazy as him, or you’d never seen the top of the hill.”
One morning there was a great commotion on deck, and all the convalescents balanced themselves on the rail, shivering in their pajamas, and pointed one way. The transport was moving swiftly and smoothly through water as flat as a lake, and making a great noise with her steam-whistle. The noise was echoed by many more steam-whistles; and the ghosts of out-bound ships and tugs and excursion steamers ran past her out of the mist and disappeared, saluting joyously. All of the excursion steamers had a heavy list to the side nearest the transport, and the ghosts on them crowded to that rail and waved handkerchiefs and cheered. The fog lifted suddenly, and between the iron rails the Lieutenant saw high green hills on either side of a great harbor. Houses and trees and thousands of masts swept past like a panorama; and beyond was a mirage of three cities, with curling smoke-wreaths, and sky-reaching buildings, and a great swinging bridge, and a giant statue of woman waving a welcome home.
The Lieutenant surveyed the spectacle with cynical disbelief. He was far too wise and far too cunning to be bewitched by it. In his heart he pitied the men about him, who laughed wildly, and shouted, and climbed recklessly to the rails and ratlines. He had been deceived too often not to know that it was not real. He knew from cruel experience that in a few moments the tall buildings would crumble away, the thousands of columns of white smoke that flashed like snow in the sun, the busy, shrieking tug-boats, and the great statue would vanish into the sea, leaving it gray and bare. He closed his eyes and shut the vision out. It was so beautiful that it tempted him: but he would not be mocked, and he buried his face in his hands. They were carrying the farce too far, he thought. It was really too absurd; for now they were at a wharf which was so real that, had he not known by previous suffering, he would have been utterly deceived by it. And there were great crowds of smiling, cheering people, and a waiting guard of honor in fresh uniforms, and rows of police pushing the people this way and that; and these men about him were taking it all quite seriously and making ready to disembark, carrying their blanket-rolls and rifles with them.
A band was playing joyously, and the man in the next cot, who was being lifted to a stretcher, said, “There’s the Governor and his staff; that’s him in the high hat.” It was really very well done. The Custom-house and the Elevated Railroad and Castle Garden were as like to life as a photograph, and the crowd was as well handled as a mob in a play. His heart ached for it so that he could not bear the pain, and he turned his back on it. It was cruel to keep it up so long. His keeper lifted him in his arms, and pulled him into a dirty uniform which had belonged, apparently, to a much larger man—a man who had been killed probably, for there were dark-brown marks of blood on the tunic and breeches. When he tried to stand on his feet, Castle Garden and the Battery disappeared in a black cloud of night, just as he knew they would; but when he opened his eyes from the stretcher, they had returned again. It was a most remarkably vivid vision. They kept it up so well. Now the young Doctor and the hospital steward were pretending to carry him down a gangplank and into an open space; and he saw quite close to him a long line of policemen, and behind them thousands of faces, some of them women’s faces—women who pointed at him and then shook their heads and cried, and pressed their hands to their cheeks, still looking at him. He wondered why they cried. He did not know them, nor did they know him. No one knew him; these people were only ghosts.
There was a quick parting in the crowd. A man he had once known shoved two of the policemen to one side, and he heard a girl’s voice speaking his name, like a sob; and She came running out across the open space and fell on her knees beside the stretcher, and bent down over him, and he was clasped in two young, firm arms.
“Of course it is not real, of course it is not She,” he assured himself. “Because She would not do such a thing. Before all these people She would not do it.”
But he trembled and his heart throbbed so cruelly that he could not bear the pain.
She was pretending to cry.
“They wired us you had started for Tampa on the hospital ship,” She was saying, “and Aunt and I went all the way there before we heard you had been sent North. We have been on the cars a week. That is why I missed you. Do you understand? It was not my fault. I tried to come. Indeed, I tried to come.”
She turned her head and looked up fearfully at the young Doctor.
“Tell me, why does he look at me like that?” she asked. “He doesn’t know me. Is he very ill? Tell me the truth.” She drew in her breath quickly. “Of course you will tell me the truth.”
When she asked the question he felt her arms draw tight about his shoulders. It was as though she was holding him to herself, and from someone who had reached out for him. In his trouble he turned to his old friend and keeper. His voice was hoarse and very low.
“Is this the same young lady who was on the transport—the one you used to drive away?”
In his embarrassment, the hospital steward blushed under his tan, and stammered.
“Of course it’s the same young lady,” the Doctor answered, briskly. “And I won’t let them drive her away.” He turned to her, smiling gravely. “I think his condition has ceased to be dangerous, Madam,” he said.
People who, in a former existence, had been his friends, and Her brother, gathered about his stretcher and bore him through the crowd and lifted him into a carriage filled with cushions, among which he sank lower and lower. Then She sat beside him, and he heard Her brother say to the coachman, “Home, and drive slowly and keep on the asphalt.”
The carriage moved forward, and She put her arm about him, and his head fell on her shoulder, and neither of them spoke. The vision had lasted so long now that he was torn with the joy that after all it might be real. But he could not bear the awakening if it were not, so he raised his head fearfully and looked up into the beautiful eyes above him. His brows were knit, and he struggled with a great doubt and an awful joy.
“Dearest,” he said, “is it real?”
“Is it real?” she repeated.
Even as a dream, it was so wonderfully beautiful that he was satisfied if it could only continue so, if but for a little while.
“Do you think,” he begged again, trembling, “that it is going to last much longer?”
She smiled, and bending her head slowly, kissed him.
“It is going to last—always,” she said.
A SOURCE OF IRRITATION
By STACY AUMONIER
To look at old Sam Gates you would never suspect him of having nerves. His sixty-nine years of close application to the needs of the soil had given him a certain earthy stolidity. To observe him hoeing, or thinning out a broad field of turnips, hardly attracted one’s attention, he seemed so much part and parcel of the whole scheme. He blended into the soil like a glorified swede. Nevertheless, the half-dozen people who claimed his acquaintance knew him to be a man who suffered from little moods of irritability.
And on this glorious morning a little incident annoyed him unreasonably. It concerned his niece, Aggie. She was a plump girl with clear, blue eyes, and a face as round and inexpressive as the dumplings for which the county was famous. She came slowly across the long sweep of the downland and, putting down the bundle wrapped in a red handkerchief which contained his breakfast and dinner, she said:
“Well, Uncle, is there any noos?”
Now, this may not appear to the casual reader to be a remark likely to cause irritation, but it affected old Sam Gates as a very silly and unnecessary question. It was, moreover, the constant repetition of it which was beginning to anger him. He met his niece twice a day. In the morning she brought his bundle of food at seven, and when he passed his sister’s cottage on the way home to tea at five she was invariably hanging about the gate, and she always said in the same voice:
“Well, Uncle, is there any noos?”
Noos! What noos should there be? For sixty-nine years he had never lived farther than five miles from Halvesham. For nearly sixty of those years he had bent his back above the soil. There were, indeed, historic occasions. Once, for instance, when he had married Annie Hachet. And there was the birth of his daughter. There was also a famous occasion when he had visited London. Once he had been to a flower-show at Market Roughborough. He either went or didn’t go to church on Sundays. He had had many interesting chats with Mr. James at the Cowman, and three years ago had sold a pig to Mrs. Way. But he couldn’t always have interesting noos of this sort up his sleeve. Didn’t the silly zany know that for the last three weeks he had been hoeing and thinning out turnips for Mr. Hodge on this very same field? What noos could there be?
He blinked at his niece, and didn’t answer. She undid the parcel and said:
“Mrs. Goping’s fowl got out again last night.”
“Ah,” he replied in a non-committal manner and began to munch his bread and bacon. His niece picked up the handkerchief and, humming to herself, walked back across the field.
It was a glorious morning, and a white sea mist added to the promise of a hot day. He sat there munching, thinking of nothing in particular, but gradually subsiding into a mood of placid content. He noticed the back of Aggie disappear in the distance. It was a mile to the cottage and a mile and a half to Halvesham. Silly things, girls. They were all alike. One had to make allowances. He dismissed her from his thoughts, and took a long swig of tea out of a bottle. Insects buzzed lazily. He tapped his pocket to assure himself that his pouch of shag was there, and then he continued munching. When he had finished, he lighted his pipe and stretched himself comfortably. He looked along the line of turnips he had thinned and then across the adjoining field of swedes. Silver streaks appeared on the sea below the mist. In some dim way he felt happy in his solitude amidst this sweeping immensity of earth and sea and sky.
And then something else came to irritate him: it was one of “these dratted airyplanes.” “Airyplanes” were his pet aversion. He could find nothing to be said in their favor. Nasty, noisy, disfiguring things that seared the heavens and made the earth dangerous. And every day there seemed to be more and more of them. Of course “this old war” was responsible for a lot of them, he knew. The war was a “plaguy noosance.” They were short-handed on the farm, beer and tobacco were dear, and Mrs. Steven’s nephew had been and got wounded in the foot.
He turned his attention once more to the turnips; but an “airyplane” has an annoying genius for gripping one’s attention. When it appears on the scene, however much we dislike it, it has a way of taking the stage-center. We cannot help constantly looking at it. And so it was with old Sam Gates. He spat on his hands and blinked up at the sky. And suddenly the aëroplane behaved in a very extraordinary manner. It was well over the sea when it seemed to lurch drunkenly and skimmed the water. Then it shot up at a dangerous angle and zigzagged. It started to go farther out, and then turned and made for the land. The engines were making a curious grating noise. It rose once more, and then suddenly dived downward, and came plump down right in the middle of Mr. Hodge’s field of swedes.
And then, as if not content with this desecration, it ran along the ground, ripping and tearing up twenty-five yards of good swedes, and then came to a stop.
Old Sam Gates was in a terrible state. The aëroplane was more than a hundred yards away, but he waved his arms and called out:
“Hi, you there, you mustn’t land in they swedes! They’re Mister Hodge’s.”
The instant the aëroplane stopped, a man leaped out and gazed quickly round. He glanced at Sam Gates, and seemed uncertain whether to address him or whether to concentrate his attention on the flying-machine. The latter arrangement appeared to be his ultimate decision. He dived under the engine and became frantically busy. Sam had never seen any one work with such furious energy; but all the same it was not to be tolerated. It was disgraceful. Sam started out across the field, almost hurrying in his indignation. When he appeared within earshot of the aviator he cried out again:
“Hi! you mustn’t rest your old airyplane here! You’ve kicked up all Mr. Hodge’s swedes. A noice thing you’ve done!”
He was within five yards when suddenly the aviator turned and covered him with a revolver! And speaking in a sharp, staccato voice, he said:
“Old Grandfather, you must sit down. I am very much occupied. If you interfere or attempt to go away, I shoot you. So!”
Sam gazed at the horrid, glittering little barrel and gasped. Well, he never! To be threatened with murder when you’re doing your duty in your employer’s private property! But, still, perhaps the man was mad. A man must be more or less mad to go up in one of those crazy things. And life was very sweet on that summer morning despite sixty-nine years. He sat down among the swedes.
The aviator was so busy with his cranks and machinery that he hardly deigned to pay him any attention except to keep the revolver handy. He worked feverishly, and Sam sat watching him. At the end of ten minutes he appeared to have solved his troubles with the machine, but he still seemed very scared. He kept on glancing round and out to sea. When his repairs were complete he straightened his back and wiped the perspiration from his brow. He was apparently on the point of springing back into the machine and going off when a sudden mood of facetiousness, caused by relief from the strain he had endured, came to him. He turned to old Sam and smiled, at the same time remarking:
“Well, old Grandfather, and now we shall be all right, isn’t it?”
He came close up to Sam, and then suddenly started back.
“Gott!” he cried, “Paul Jouperts!”
Bewildered, Sam gazed at him, and the madman started talking to him in some foreign tongue. Sam shook his head.
“You no roight,” he remarked, “to come bargin’ through they swedes of Mr. Hodge’s.”
And then the aviator behaved in a most peculiar manner. He came up and examined Sam’s face very closely, and gave a sudden tug at his beard and hair, as if to see whether they were real or false.
“What is your name, old man?” he said.
“Sam Gates.”
The aviator muttered some words that sounded something like “mare vudish,” and then turned to his machine. He appeared to be dazed and in a great state of doubt. He fumbled with some cranks, but kept glancing at old Sam. At last he got into the car and strapped himself in. Then he stopped, and sat there deep in thought. At last he suddenly unstrapped himself and sprang out again and, approaching Sam, said very deliberately:
“Old Grandfather, I shall require you to accompany me.”
Sam gasped.
“Eh?” he said. “What be talkin’ about? ’Company? I got these ’ere loines o’ turnips—I be already behoind—”
The disgusting little revolver once more flashed before his eyes.
“There must be no discussion,” came the voice. “It is necessary that you mount the seat of the car without delay. Otherwise I shoot you like the dog you are. So!”
Old Sam was hale and hearty. He had no desire to die so ignominiously. The pleasant smell of the Norfolk downland was in his nostrils; his foot was on his native heath. He mounted the seat of the car, contenting himself with a mutter:
“Well, that be a noice thing, I must say! Flyin’ about the country with all they turnips on’y half thinned!”
He found himself strapped in. The aviator was in a fever of anxiety to get away. The engines made a ghastly splutter and noise. The thing started running along the ground. Suddenly it shot upward, giving the swedes a last contemptuous kick. At twenty minutes to eight that morning old Sam found himself being borne right up above his fields and out to sea! His breath came quickly. He was a little frightened.
“God forgive me!” he murmured.
The thing was so fantastic and sudden that his mind could not grasp it. He only felt in some vague way that he was going to die, and he struggled to attune his mind to the change. He offered up a mild prayer to God, Who, he felt, must be very near, somewhere up in these clouds. Automatically he thought of the vicar at Halvesham, and a certain sense of comfort came to him at the reflection that on the previous day he had taken a “cooking of runner beans” to God’s representative in that village. He felt calmer after that, but the horrid machine seemed to go higher and higher. He could not turn in his seat and he could see nothing but sea and sky. Of course the man was mad, mad as a March hare. Of what earthly use could he be to any one? Besides, he had talked pure gibberish, and called him Paul something, when he had already told him that his name was Sam. The thing would fall down into the sea soon, and they would both be drowned. Well, well, he had almost reached three-score years and ten. He was protected by a screen, but it seemed very cold. What on earth would Mr. Hodge say? There was no one left to work the land but a fool of a boy named Billy Whitehead at Dene’s Cross. On, on, on they went at a furious pace. His thoughts danced disconnectedly from incidents of his youth, conversations with the vicar, hearty meals in the open, a frock his sister wore on the day of the postman’s wedding, the drone of a psalm, the illness of some ewes belonging to Mr. Hodge. Everything seemed to be moving very rapidly, upsetting his sense of time. He felt outraged, and yet at moments there was something entrancing in the wild experience. He seemed to be living at an incredible pace. Perhaps he was really dead and on his way to the kingdom of God. Perhaps this was the way they took people.
After some indefinite period he suddenly caught sight of a long strip of land. Was this a foreign country, or were they returning? He had by this time lost all feeling of fear. He became interested and almost disappointed. The “airyplane” was not such a fool as it looked. It was very wonderful to be right up in the sky like this. His dreams were suddenly disturbed by a fearful noise. He thought the machine was blown to pieces. It dived and ducked through the air, and things were bursting all round it and making an awful din, and then it went up higher and higher. After a while these noises ceased, and he felt the machine gliding downward. They were really right above solid land—trees, fields, streams, and white villages. Down, down, down they glided. This was a foreign country. There were straight avenues of poplars and canals. This was not Halvesham. He felt the thing glide gently and bump into a field. Some men ran forward and approached them, and the mad aviator called out to them. They were mostly fat men in gray uniforms, and they all spoke this foreign gibberish. Some one came and unstrapped him. He was very stiff and could hardly move. An exceptionally gross-looking man punched him in the ribs and roared with laughter. They all stood round and laughed at him, while the mad aviator talked to them and kept pointing at him. Then he said:
“Old Grandfather, you must come with me.”
He was led to an iron-roofed building and shut in a little room. There were guards outside with fixed bayonets. After a while the mad aviator appeared again, accompanied by two soldiers. He beckoned him to follow. They marched through a quadrangle and entered another building. They went straight into an office where a very important-looking man, covered with medals, sat in an easy-chair. There was a lot of saluting and clicking of heels. The aviator pointed at Sam and said something, and the man with the medals started at sight of him, and then came up and spoke to him in English.
“What is your name? Where do you come from? Your age? The name and birthplace of your parents?”
He seemed intensely interested, and also pulled his hair and beard to see if they came off. So well and naturally did he and the aviator speak English that after a voluble examination they drew apart, and continued the conversation in that language. And the extraordinary conversation was of this nature:
“It is a most remarkable resemblance,” said the man with medals. “Unglaublich! But what do you want me to do with him, Hausemann?”
“The idea came to me suddenly, Excellency,” replied the aviator, “and you may consider it worthless. It is just this. The resemblance is so amazing. Paul Jouperts has given us more valuable information than any one at present in our service, and the English know that. There is an award of five thousand francs on his head. Twice they have captured him, and each time he escaped. All the company commanders and their staff have his photograph. He is a serious thorn in their flesh.”
“Well?” replied the man with the medals.
The aviator whispered confidentially:
“Suppose, your Excellency, that they found the dead body of Paul Jouperts?”
“Well?” replied the big man.
“My suggestion is this. To-morrow, as you know, the English are attacking Hill 701, which for tactical reasons we have decided to evacuate. If after the attack they find the dead body of Paul Jouperts in, say, the second lines, they will take no further trouble in the matter. You know their lack of thoroughness. Pardon me, I was two years at Oxford University. And consequently Paul Jouperts will be able to prosecute his labors undisturbed.”
The man with the medals twirled his mustache and looked thoughtfully at his colleague.
“Where is Paul at the moment?” he asked.
“He is acting as a gardener at the Convent of St. Eloise, at Mailleton-en-haut, which, as you know, is one hundred meters from the headquarters of the British central army staff.”
The man with the medals took two or three rapid turns up and down the room, then he said:
“Your plan is excellent, Hausemann. The only point of difficulty is that the attack started this morning.”
“This morning?” exclaimed the other.
“Yes; the English attacked unexpectedly at dawn. We have already evacuated the first line. We shall evacuate the second line at eleven-fifty. It is now ten-fifteen. There may be just time.”
He looked suddenly at old Sam in the way that a butcher might look at a prize heifer at an agricultural show and remarked casually:
“Yes, it is a remarkable resemblance. It seems a pity not to—do something with it.”
Then, speaking in German, he added:
“It is worth trying. And if it succeeds, the higher authorities shall hear of your lucky accident and inspiration, Herr Hausemann. Instruct Ober-lieutenant Schultz to send the old fool by two orderlies to the east extremity of Trench 38. Keep him there till the order of evacuation is given, then shoot him, but don’t disfigure him, and lay him out face upward.”
The aviator saluted and withdrew, accompanied by his victim. Old Sam had not understood the latter part of the conversation, and he did not catch quite all that was said in English; but he felt that somehow things were not becoming too promising, and it was time to assert himself. So he remarked when they got outside:
“Now, look ’ee ’ere, Mister, when am I goin’ to get back to my turnips?”
And the aviator replied, with a pleasant smile:
“Do not be disturbed, old Grandfather. You shall get back to the soil quite soon.”
In a few moments he found himself in a large gray car, accompanied by four soldiers. The aviator left him. The country was barren and horrible, full of great pits and rents, and he could hear the roar of artillery and the shriek of shells. Overhead, aëroplanes were buzzing angrily. He seemed to be suddenly transported from the kingdom of God to the pit of darkness. He wondered whether the vicar had enjoyed the runner beans. He could not imagine runner beans growing here; runner beans, aye, or anything else. If this was a foreign country, give him dear old England!
Gr-r-r! bang! Something exploded just at the rear of the car. The soldiers ducked, and one of them pushed him in the stomach and swore.
“An ugly-looking lout,” he thought. “If I wor twenty years younger, I’d give him a punch in the eye that ’u’d make him sit up.”
The car came to a halt by a broken wall. The party hurried out and dived behind a mound. He was pulled down a kind of shaft, and found himself in a room buried right underground, where three officers were drinking and smoking. The soldiers saluted and handed them a type-written dispatch. The officers looked at him drunkenly, and one came up and pulled his beard and spat in his face and called him “an old English swine.” He then shouted out some instructions to the soldiers, and they led him out into the narrow trench. One walked behind him, and occasionally prodded him with the butt-end of a gun. The trenches were half full of water and reeked of gases, powder, and decaying matter. Shells were constantly bursting overhead, and in places the trenches had crumbled and were nearly blocked up. They stumbled on, sometimes falling, sometimes dodging moving masses, and occasionally crawling over the dead bodies of men. At last they reached a deserted-looking trench, and one of the soldiers pushed him into the corner of it and growled something, and then disappeared round the angle. Old Sam was exhausted. He leaned panting against the mud wall, expecting every minute to be blown to pieces by one of those infernal things that seemed to be getting more and more insistent. The din went on for nearly twenty minutes, and he was alone in the trench. He fancied he heard a whistle amidst the din. Suddenly one of the soldiers who had accompanied him came stealthily round the corner, and there was a look in his eye old Sam did not like. When he was within five yards the soldier raised his rifle and pointed it at Sam’s body. Some instinct impelled the old man at that instant to throw himself forward on his face. As he did so he was aware of a terrible explosion, and he had just time to observe the soldier falling in a heap near him, and then he lost consciousness.
His consciousness appeared to return to him with a snap. He was lying on a plank in a building, and he heard some one say:
“I believe the old boy’s English.”
He looked round. There were a lot of men lying there, and others in khaki and white overalls were busy among them. He sat up, rubbed his head, and said:
“Hi, Mister, where be I now?”
Some one laughed, and a young man came up and said: “Well, old man, you were very nearly in hell. Who are you?”
Some one came up, and two of them were discussing him. One of them said:
“He’s quite all right. He was only knocked out. Better take him in to the colonel. He may be a spy.”
The other came up, touched his shoulder, and remarked:
“Can you walk, Uncle?”
He replied:
“Aye, I can walk all roight.”
“That’s an old sport!”
The young man took his arm and helped him out of the room into a courtyard. They entered another room, where an elderly, kind-faced officer was seated at a desk. The officer looked up and exclaimed:
“Good God! Bradshaw, do you know who you’ve got there?”
The younger one said:
“No. Who, sir?”
“It’s Paul Jouperts!” exclaimed the colonel.
“Paul Jouperts! Great Scott!”
The older officer addressed himself to Sam. He said:
“Well, we’ve got you once more, Paul. We shall have to be a little more careful this time.”
The young officer said:
“Shall I detail a squad, sir?”
“We can’t shoot him without a court-martial,” replied the kind-faced senior.
Then Sam interpolated:
“Look ’ee ’ere, sir, I’m fair’ sick of all this. My name bean’t Paul. My name’s Sam. I was a-thinnin’ a loine o’ turnips—”
Both officers burst out laughing, and the younger one said:
“Good! Good! Isn’t it amazing, sir, the way they not only learn the language, but even take the trouble to learn a dialect!”
The older man busied himself with some papers.
“Well, Sam,” he remarked, “you shall be given a chance to prove your identity. Our methods are less drastic than those of your Boche masters. What part of England are you supposed to come from? Let’s see how much you can bluff us with your topographical knowledge.”
“I was a-thinnin’ a loine o’ turnips this mornin’ at ’alf-past seven on Mr. Hodge’s farm at Halvesham when one o’ these ’ere airyplanes come down among the swedes. I tells ’e to get clear o’ that, when the feller what gets out o’ the car ’e drahs a revowlver and ’e says, ‘You must ’company I—’”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted the senior officer; “that’s all very good. Now tell me—where is Halvesham? What is the name of the local vicar? I’m sure you’d know that.”
Old Sam rubbed his chin.
“I sits under the Reverend David Pryce, Mister, and a good, God-fearin’ man he be. I took him a cookin’ o’ runner beans on’y yesterday. I works for Mr. Hodge, what owns Greenway Manor and ’as a stud-farm at Newmarket, they say.”
“Charles Hodge?” asked the young officer.
“Aye, Charlie Hodge. You write and ask un if he knows old Sam Gates.”
The two officers looked at each other, and the older one looked at Sam more closely.
“It’s very extraordinary,” he remarked.
“Everybody knows Charlie Hodge,” added the young officer.
It was at that moment that a wave of genius swept over old Sam. He put his hand to his head, and suddenly jerked out:
“What’s more, I can tell ’ee where this yere Paul is. He’s actin’ a gardener in a convent at—” He puckered up his brows, fumbled with his hat, and then got out, “Mighteno.”
The older officer gasped.
“Mailleton-en-haut! Good God! what makes you say that, old man?”
Sam tried to give an account of his experience and the things he had heard said by the German officers; but he was getting tired, and he broke off in the middle to say:
“Ye haven’t a bite o’ somethin’ to eat, I suppose, Mister; or a glass o’ beer? I usually ’as my dinner at twelve o’clock.”
Both the officers laughed, and the older said:
“Get him some food, Bradshaw, and a bottle of beer from the mess. We’ll keep this old man here. He interests me.”
While the younger man was doing this, the chief pressed a button and summoned another junior officer.
“Gateshead,” he remarked, “ring up the G.H.Q. and instruct them to arrest the gardener in that convent at the top of the hill and then to report.”
The officer saluted and went out, and in a few minutes a tray of hot food and a large bottle of beer were brought to the old man, and he was left alone in the corner of the room to negotiate this welcome compensation. And in the execution he did himself and his county credit. In the meanwhile the officers were very busy. People were coming and going and examining maps, and telephone bells were ringing furiously. They did not disturb old Sam’s gastric operations. He cleaned up the mess tins and finished the last drop of beer. The senior officer found time to offer him a cigarette, but he replied:
“Thank ’ee kindly, sir, but I’d rather smoke my pipe.”
The colonel smiled and said:
“Oh, all right; smoke away.”
He lighted up, and the fumes of the shag permeated the room. Some one opened another window, and the young officer who had addressed him at first suddenly looked at him and exclaimed:
“Innocent! You couldn’t get shag like that anywhere but in Norfolk.”
It must have been an hour later when another officer entered and saluted.
“Message from the G.H.Q., sir,” he said.
“Well?”
“They have arrested the gardener at the convent of St. Eloise, and they have every reason to believe that he is the notorious Paul Jouperts.”
The colonel stood up, and his eyes beamed. He came over to old Sam and shook his hand.
“Mr. Gates,” he said, “you are an old brick. You will probably hear more of this. You have probably been the means of delivering something very useful into our hands. Your own honor is vindicated. A loving Government will probably award you five shillings or a Victoria Cross or something of that sort. In the meantime, what can I do for you?”
Old Sam scratched his chin.
“I want to get back ’ome,” he said.
“Well, even that might be arranged.”
“I want to get back ’ome in toime for tea.”
“What time do you have tea?”
“Foive o’clock or thereabouts.”
“I see.”
A kindly smile came into the eyes of the colonel. He turned to another officer standing by the table and said:
“Raikes, is any one going across this afternoon with dispatches?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the other officer. “Commander Jennings is leaving at three o’clock.”
“You might ask him if he could see me.”
Within ten minutes a young man in a flight-commander’s uniform entered.
“Ah, Jennings,” said the colonel, “here is a little affair which concerns the honor of the British army. My friend here, Sam Gates, has come over from Halvesham, in Norfolk, in order to give us valuable information. I have promised him that he shall get home to tea at five o’clock. Can you take a passenger?”
The young man threw back his head and laughed.
“Lord!” he exclaimed, “what an old sport! Yes, I expect I can manage it. Where is the forsaken place?”
A large ordnance-map of Norfolk (which had been captured from a German officer) was produced, and the young man studied it closely.
At three o’clock precisely old Sam, finding himself something of a hero and quite glad to escape from the embarrassment which this position entailed upon him, once more sped skyward in a “dratted airyplane.”
At twenty minutes to five he landed once more among Mr. Hodge’s swedes. The breezy young airman shook hands with him and departed inland. Old Sam sat down and surveyed the familiar field of turnips.
“A noice thing, I must say!” he muttered to himself as he looked along the lines of unthinned turnips. He still had twenty minutes, and so he went slowly along and completed a line which he had begun in the morning. He then deliberately packed up his dinner-things and his tools and started out for home.
As he came round the corner of Stillway’s meadow and the cottage came in view, his niece stepped out of the copse with a basket on her arm.
“Well, Uncle,” she said, “is there any noos?”
It was then that old Sam really lost his temper.
“Noos!” he said. “Noos! Drat the girl! What noos should there be? Sixty-nine year’ I live in these ’ere parts, hoein’ and weedin’ and thinnin’, and mindin’ Charlie Hodge’s sheep. Am I one o’ these ’ere story-book folk havin’ noos ’appen to me all the time? Ain’t it enough, ye silly, dab-faced zany, to earn enough to buy a bite o’ some’at to eat and a glass o’ beer and a place to rest a’s head o’night without always wantin’ noos, noos, noos! I tell ’ee it’s this that leads ’ee to ’alf the troubles in the world. Devil take the noos!”
And turning his back on her, he went fuming up the hill.
MOTI GUJ—MUTINEER
By RUDYARD KIPLING
Once upon a time there was a coffee-planter in India who wished to clear some forest land for coffee-planting. When he had cut down all the trees and burned the underwood the stumps still remained. Dynamite is expensive and slow fire slow. The happy medium for stump-clearing is the lord of all beasts, who is the elephant. He will either push the stump out of the ground with his tusks, if he has any, or drag it out with ropes. The planter, therefore, hired elephants by ones and twos and threes, and fell to work. The very best of all the elephants belonged to the very worst of all the drivers or mahouts; and the superior beast’s name was Moti Guj. He was the absolute property of his mahout, which would never have been the case under native rule: for Moti Guj was a creature to be desired by kings; and his name, being translated, meant the Pearl Elephant. Because the British government was in the land, Deesa, the mahout, enjoyed his property undisturbed. He was dissipated. When he had made much money through the strength of his elephant, he would get extremely drunk and give Moti Guj a beating with a tent-peg over the tender nails of the forefeet. Moti Guj never trampled the life out of Deesa on these occasions, for he knew that after the beating was over, Deesa would embrace his trunk and weep and call him his love and his life and the liver of his soul, and give him some liquor. Moti Guj was very fond or liquor—arrack for choice, though he would drink palm-tree toddy if nothing better offered. Then Deesa would go to sleep between Moti Guj’s forefeet, and as Deesa generally chose the middle of the public road, and as Moti Guj mounted guard over him and would not permit horse, foot, or cart to pass by, traffic was congested till Deesa saw fit to wake up.
There was no sleeping in the daytime on the planter’s clearing: the wages were too high to risk. Deesa sat on Moti Guj’s neck and gave him orders, while Moti Guj rooted up the stumps—for he owned a magnificent pair of tusks; or pulled at the end of a rope—for he had a magnificent pair of shoulders, while Deesa kicked him behind the ears and said he was the king of elephants. At evening time Moti Guj would wash down his three hundred pounds’ weight of green food with a quart of arrack, and Deesa would take a share and sing songs between Moti Guj’s legs till it was time to go to bed. Once a week Deesa led Moti Guj down to the river, and Moti Guj lay on his side luxuriously in the shallows, while Deesa went over him with a coir swab and a brick. Moti Guj never mistook the pounding blow of the latter for the smack of the former that warned him to get up and turn over on the other side. Then Deesa would look at his feet, examine his eyes, and turn up the fringes of his mighty ears in case of sores or budding ophthalmia. After inspection, the two would “come up with a song from the sea,” Moti Guj all black and shining, waving a torn tree branch twelve feet long in his trunk, and Deesa knotting up his own long wet hair.
It was a peaceful, well-paid life till Deesa felt the return of the desire to drink deep. He wished for an orgy. The little draughts that led nowhere were taking the manhood out of him.
He went to the planter, and “My mother’s dead,” said he, weeping.
“She died on the last plantation two months ago, and she died once before that when you were working for me last year,” said the planter, who knew something of the ways of nativedom.
“Then it’s my aunt, and she was just the same as a mother to me,” said Deesa, weeping more than ever. “She has left eighteen small children entirely without bread, and it is I who must fill their little stomachs,” said Deesa, beating his head on the floor.
“Who brought you the news?” said the planter.
“The post,” said Deesa.
“There hasn’t been a post here for the past week. Get back to your lines!”
“A devastating sickness has fallen on my village, and all my wives are dying,” yelled Deesa, really in tears this time.
“Call Chihun, who comes from Deesa’s village,” said the planter. “Chihun, has this man got a wife?”
“He!” said Chihun. “No. Not a woman of our village would look at him. They’d sooner marry the elephant.”
Chihun snorted. Deesa wept and bellowed.
“You will get into a difficulty in a minute,” said the planter. “Go back to your work!”
“Now I will speak Heaven’s truth,” gulped Deesa, with an inspiration. “I haven’t been drunk for two months. I desire to depart in order to get properly drunk afar off and distant from this heavenly plantation. Thus I shall cause no trouble.”
A flickering smile crossed the planter’s face. “Deesa,” said he, “you’ve spoken the truth, and I’d give you leave on the spot if anything could be done with Moti Guj while you’re away. You know that he will only obey your orders.”
“May the light of the heavens live forty thousand years. I shall be absent but ten little days. After that, upon my faith and honor and soul, I return. As to the inconsiderable interval, have I the gracious permission of the heaven-born to call up Moti Guj?”
Permission was granted, and in answer to Deesa’s shrill yell, the mighty tusker swung out of the shade of a clump of trees where he had been squirting dust over himself till his master should return.
“Light of my heart, protector of the drunken, mountain of might, give ear!” said Deesa, standing in front of him.
Moti Guj gave ear, and saluted with his trunk. “I am going away,” said Deesa.
Moti Guj’s eyes twinkled. He liked jaunts as well as his master. One could snatch all manner of nice things from the roadside then.
“But you, you fussy old pig, must stay behind and work.”
The twinkle died out as Moti Guj tried to look delighted. He hated stump-hauling on the plantation. It hurt his teeth.
“I shall be gone for ten days, O delectable one. Hold up your near forefoot and I’ll impress the fact upon it, warty toad of a dried mud-puddle.” Deesa took a tent-peg and banged Moti Guj ten times on the nails. Moti Guj grunted and shuffled from foot to foot.
“Ten days,” said Deesa, “you will work and haul and root the trees as Chihun here shall order you. Take up Chihun and set him on your neck!” Moti Guj curled the tip of his trunk, Chihun put his foot there and was swung on to the neck. Deesa handed Chihun the heavy ankus—the iron elephant goad.
Chihun thumped Moti Guj’s bald head as a paver thumps a curbstone.
Moti Guj trumpeted.
“Be still, hog of the backwoods! Chihun’s your mahout for ten days. And now bid me good-by, beast after mine own heart. Oh, my lord, my king! Jewel of all created elephants, lily of the herd, preserve your honored health; be virtuous. Adieu!”
Moti Guj lapped his trunk round Deesa and swung him into the air twice. This was his way of bidding him good-by.
“He’ll work now,” said Deesa to the planter. “Have I leave to go?”
The planter nodded, and Deesa dived into the woods. Moti Guj went back to haul stumps.
Chihun was very kind to him, but he felt unhappy and forlorn for all that. Chihun gave him a ball of spices, and tickled him under the chin, and Chihun’s little baby cooed to him after work was over, and Chihun’s wife called him a darling; but Moti Guj was a bachelor by instinct, as Deesa was. He did not understand the domestic emotions. He wanted the light of his universe back again—the drink and the drunken slumber, the savage beatings and the savage caresses.
None the less he worked well, and the planter wondered. Deesa had wandered along the roads till he met a marriage procession of his own caste and, drinking, dancing, and tippling, had drifted with it past all knowledge of the lapse of time.
The morning of the eleventh day dawned, and there returned no Deesa. Moti Guj was loosed from his ropes for the daily stint. He swung clear, looked round, shrugged his shoulders, and began to walk away, as one having business elsewhere.
“Hi! ho! Come back, you,” shouted Chihun. “Come back and put me on your neck, misborn mountain! Return, splendor of the hillsides! Adornment of all India, heave to, or I’ll bang every toe off your fat forefoot!”
Moti Guj gurgled gently, but did not obey. Chihun ran after him with a rope and caught him up. Moti Guj put his ears forward, and Chihun knew what that meant, though he tried to carry it off with high words.
“None of your nonsense with me,” said he. “To your pickets, devil-son.”
“Hrrump!” said Moti Guj, and that was all—that and the forebent ears.
Moti Guj put his hands in his pockets, chewed a branch for a toothpick, and strolled about the clearing, making fun of the other elephants, who had just set to work.
Chihun reported the state of affairs to the planter, who came out with a dog-whip and cracked it furiously. Moti Guj paid the white man the compliment of charging him nearly a quarter of a mile across the clearing and “Hrrumping” him into his veranda. Then he stood outside the house chuckling to himself, and shaking all over with the fun of it, as an elephant will.
“We’ll thrash him,” said the planter. “He shall have the finest thrashing ever elephant received. Give Kala Nag and Nazim twelve foot of chain apiece, and tell them to lay on twenty blows.”
Kala Nag—which means Black Snake—and Nazim were two of the biggest elephants in the lines, and one of their duties was to administer the graver punishments, since no man can beat an elephant properly.
They took the whipping-chains and rattled them in their trunks as they sidled up to Moti Guj, meaning to hustle him between them. Moti Guj had never, in all his life of thirty-nine years, been whipped, and he did not intend to begin a new experience. So he waited, waving his head from right to left, and measuring the precise spot in Kala Nag’s fat hide where a blunt tusk would sink deepest. Kala Nag had no tusks; the chain was the badge of his authority; but for all that, he swung wide of Moti Guj at the last minute, and tried to appear as if he had brought the chain out for amusement. Nazim turned round and went home early. He did not feel fighting fit that morning, and so Moti Guj was left standing alone with his ears cocked.
That decided the planter to argue no more, and Moti Guj rolled back to his inspection of the clearing. An elephant who will not work, and is not tied up, is about as manageable as an eighty-one-ton gun loose in a heavy seaway. He slapped old friends on the back and asked them if the stumps were coming away easily; he talked nonsense concerning labor and the inalienable rights of elephants to a long “nooning”; and, wandering to and fro, he thoroughly demoralized the garden till sundown, when he returned to his pickets for food.
“If you won’t work, you shan’t eat,” said Chihun angrily. “You’re a wild elephant, and no educated animal at all. Go back to your jungle.”
Chihun’s little brown baby was rolling on the floor of the hut, and stretching out its fat arms to the huge shadow in the doorway. Moti Guj knew well that it was the dearest thing on earth to Chihun. He swung out his trunk with a fascinating crook at the end, and the brown baby threw itself shouting upon it. Moti Guj made fast and pulled up till the brown baby was crowing in the air twelve feet above his father’s head.
“Great Lord!” said Chihun. “Flour cakes of the best, twelve in number, two feet across, and soaked in rum, shall be yours on the instant, and two hundred pounds’ weight of fresh-cut young sugar-cane therewith. Deign only to put down safely that insignificant brat who is my heart and my life to me.”
Moti Guj tucked the brown baby comfortably between his forefeet, that could have knocked into toothpicks all Chihun’s hut, and waited for his food. He ate it, and the brown baby crawled away. Moti Guj dozed, and thought of Deesa. One of many mysteries connected with the elephant is that his huge body needs less sleep than anything else that lives. Four or five hours in the night suffice—two just before midnight, lying down on one side; two just after one o’clock, lying down on the other. The rest of the silent hours are filled with eating and fidgeting and long grumbling soliloquies.
At midnight, therefore, Moti Guj strode out of his pickets, for a thought had come to him that Deesa might be lying drunk somewhere in the dark forest with none to look after him. So all that night he chased through the undergrowth, blowing and trumpeting and shaking his ears. He went down to the river and blared across the shallows where Deesa used to wash him, and there was no answer. He could not find Deesa, but he disturbed all the other elephants in the lines, and nearly frightened to death some gypsies in the woods.
At dawn Deesa returned to the plantation. He had been very drunk indeed, and he expected to get into trouble for outstaying his leave. He drew a long breath when he saw that the bungalow and the plantation were still uninjured, for he knew something of Moti Guj’s temper, and reported himself with many lies and salaams. Moti Guj had gone to his pickets for breakfast. The night exercise had made him hungry.
“Call up your beast,” said the planter, and Deesa shouted in the mysterious elephant language, that some mahouts believe came from China at the birth of the world, when elephants and not men were masters. Moti Guj heard and came. Elephants do not gallop. They move from places at varying rates of speed. If an elephant wished to catch an express train he could not gallop, but he could catch the train. So Moti Guj was at the planter’s door almost before Chihun noticed that he had left his pickets. He fell into Deesa’s arms trumpeting with joy, and the man and beast wept and slobbered over each other, and handled each other from head to heel to see that no harm had befallen.
“Now we will get to work,” said Deesa. “Lift me up, my son and my joy.”
Moti Guj swung him up and the two went to the coffee-clearing to look for difficult stumps.
The planter was too astonished to be very angry.
GULLIVER THE GREAT
By WALTER A. DYER
It was a mild evening in early spring, and the magnolias were in bloom. We motored around the park, turned up a side street, and finally came to a throbbing standstill before the Churchwarden Club.
There was nothing about its exterior to indicate that it was a clubhouse at all, but within there was an indefinable atmosphere of early Victorian comfort. There was something about it that suggested Mr. Pickwick. Old prints of horses and ships and battles hung upon the walls, and the oak was dark and old. There seemed to be no decorative scheme or keynote, and yet the atmosphere was utterly distinctive. It was my first visit to the Churchwarden Club, of which my quaint, old-fashioned Uncle Ford had long been a member, and I was charmed.
We dined in the rathskeller, the walls of which were completely covered with long churchwarden pipes, arranged in the most intricate and marvelous patterns; and after our mutton-chop and ale and plum pudding, we filled with the choicest of tobaccos the pipes which the old major-domo brought us.
Then came Jacob R. Enderby to smoke with us.
Tall and spare he was, with long, straight, black hair, large, aquiline nose, and piercing eyes. I disgraced myself by staring at him. I didn’t know that such a man existed in New York, and yet I couldn’t decide whether his habitat should be Arizona or Cape Cod.
Enderby and Uncle Ford were deep in a discussion of the statesmanship of James G. Blaine, when a waiter summoned my uncle to the telephone.
I neglected to state that my uncle, in his prosaic hours, is a physician; and this was a call. I knew it the moment I saw the waiter approaching. I was disappointed and disgusted.
Uncle Ford saw this and laughed.
“Cheer up!” said he. “You needn’t come with me to visit the sick. I’ll be back in an hour, and meanwhile Mr. Enderby will take care of you; won’t you, Jake?”
For answer Enderby arose, and refilling his pipe took me by the arm, while my uncle got into his overcoat. As he passed us on the way out he whispered in my ear:
“Talk about dogs.”
I heard and nodded.
Enderby led me to the lounge or loafing-room, an oak-paneled apartment in the rear of the floor above, with huge leather chairs and a seat in the bay window. Save for a gray-haired old chap dozing over a copy of Simplicissimus, the room was deserted.
But no sooner had Enderby seated himself on the window-seat than there was a rush and a commotion, and a short, glad bark, and Nubbins, the steward’s bull-terrier, bounded in and landed at Enderby’s side with canine expressions of great joy.
I reached forward to pat him, but he paid absolutely no attention to me.
At last his wriggling subsided, and he settled down with his head on Enderby’s knee, the picture of content. Then I recalled my uncle’s parting injunction.
“Friend of yours?” I suggested.
Enderby smiled. “Yes,” he said, “we’re friends, I guess. And the funny part of it is that he doesn’t pay any attention to any one else except his master. They all act that way with me, dogs do.” And he pulled Nubbins’s stubby ears.
“Natural attraction, I suppose,” said I.
“Yes, it is,” he answered, with the modest frankness of a big man. “It’s a thing hard to explain, though there’s a sort of reason for it in my case.”
I pushed toward him a little tobacco-laden teak-wood stand hopefully. He refilled and lighted.
“It’s an extraordinary thing, even so,” he said, puffing. “Every dog nowadays seems to look upon me as his long-lost master, but it wasn’t always so. I hated dogs and they hated me.”
Not wishing to say “Really” or “Indeed” to this big, outdoor man, I simply grunted my surprise.
“Yes, we were born enemies. More than that, I was afraid of dogs. A little fuzzy toy dog, ambling up to me in a room full of company, with his tail wagging, gave me the shudders. I couldn’t touch the beast. And as for big dogs outdoors, I feared them like the plague. I would go blocks out of my way to avoid one.
“I don’t remember being particularly cowardly about other things, but I just couldn’t help this. It was in my blood, for some reason or other. It was the bane of my existence. I couldn’t see what the brutes were put into the world for, or how any one could have anything to do with them.
“And the dogs reciprocated. They disliked and distrusted me. The most docile old Brunos would growl and show their teeth when I came near.”
“Did the change come suddenly?” I asked.
“Quite. It was in 1901. I accepted a commission from an importing and trading company to go to the Philippines to do a little quiet exploring, and spent four months in the sickly place. Then I got the fever, and when I recovered I couldn’t get out of there too soon.
“I reached Manila just in time to see the mail steamer disappearing around the point, and I was mad. There would be another in six days, but I couldn’t wait. I was just crazy to get back home.
“I made inquiries and learned of an old tramp steamer, named the Old Squaw, making ready to leave for Honolulu on the following day with a cargo of hemp and stuff, and a bunch of Moros for some show in the States, and I booked passage on that.
“She was the worst old tub you ever saw. I didn’t learn much about her, but I verily believe her to have been a condemned excursion boat. She wouldn’t have been allowed to run to Coney Island.
“She was battered and unpainted, and she wallowed horribly. I don’t believe she could have reached Honolulu much before the next regular boat, but I couldn’t wait, and I took her.
“I made myself as comfortable as possible, bribed the cook to insure myself against starvation, and swung a hammock on the forward deck as far as possible from the worst of the vile smells.
“But we hadn’t lost sight of Manila Bay when I discovered that there was a dog aboard—and such a dog! I had never seen one that sent me into such a panic as this one, and he had free range of the ship. A Great Dane he was, named Gulliver, and he was the pride of the captain’s rum-soaked heart.
“With all my fear, I realized he was a magnificent animal, but I looked on him as a gigantic devil. Without exception, he was the biggest dog I ever saw, and as muscular as a lion. He lacked some points that show judges set store by, but he had the size and the build.
“I have seen Vohl’s Vulcan and the Wurtemburg breed, but they were fox-terriers compared with Gulliver. His tail was as big around as my arm, and the cook lived in terror of his getting into the galley and wagging it; and he had a mouth that looked to me like the crater of Mauna Loa, and a voice that shook the planking when he spoke.
“I first caught sight of him appearing from behind a huge coil of cordage in the stern. He stretched and yawned, and I nearly died of fright.
“I caught up a belaying-pin, though little good that would have done me. I think he saw me do it, and doubtless he set me down for an enemy then and there.
“We were well out of the harbor, and there was no turning back, but I would have given my right hand to be off that boat. I fully expected him to eat me up, and I slept with that belaying-pin sticking into my ribs in the hammock, and with my revolver loaded and handy.
“Fortunately, Gulliver’s dislike for me took the form of sublime contempt. He knew I was afraid of him, and he despised me for it. He was a great pet with the captain and crew, and even the Moros treated him with admiring respect when they were allowed on deck. I couldn’t understand it. I would as soon have made a pet of a hungry boa-constrictor.
“On the third day out the poor old boiler burst and the Old Squaw caught fire. She was dry and rotten inside and she burned like tinder. No attempt was made to extinguish the flames, which got into the hemp in the hold in short order.
“The smoke was stifling, and in a jiffy all hands were struggling with the boats. The Moros came tumbling up from below and added to the confusion with their terrified yells.
“The davits were old and rusty, and the men were soon fighting among themselves. One boat dropped stern foremost, filled, and sank immediately, and the Old Squaw herself was visibly settling.
“I saw there was no chance of getting away in the boats, and I recalled a life-raft on the deck forward near my hammock. It was a sort of catamaran—a double platform on a pair of hollow, water-tight, cylindrical buoys. It wasn’t twenty feet long and about half as broad, but it would have to do. I fancy it was a forgotten relic of the old excursion-boat days.
“There was no time to lose, for the Old Squaw was bound to sink presently. Besides, I was aft with the rest, and the flames were licking up the deck and running-gear in the waist of the boat.
“The galley, which was amidships near the engine-room, had received the full force of the explosion, and the cook lay moaning in the lee scuppers with a small water-cask thumping against his chest. I couldn’t stop to help the man, but I did kick the cask away.
“It seemed to be nearly full, and it occurred to me that I should need it. I glanced quickly around, and luckily found a tin of biscuits that had also been blown out of the galley. I picked this up, and rolling the cask of water ahead of me as rapidly as I could, I made my way through the hot, stifling smoke to the bow of the boat.
“I kicked at the life-raft; it seemed to be sound, and I lashed the biscuits and water to it. I also threw on a coil of rope and a piece of sail-cloth. I saw nothing else about that could possibly be of any value to me. I abandoned my trunk for fear it would only prove troublesome.
“Then I hacked the raft loose with my knife and shoved it over to the bulwark. Apparently no one had seen me, for there was no one else forward of the sheet of flame that now cut the boat in two.
“The raft was a mighty heavy affair, but I managed to raise one end to the rail. I don’t believe I would ever have been able to heave it over under any circumstances, but I didn’t have to.
“I felt a great upheaval, and the prow of the Old Squaw went up into the air. I grabbed the ropes that I had lashed the food on with and clung to the raft. The deck became almost perpendicular, and it was a miracle that the raft didn’t slide down with me into the flames. Somehow it stuck where it was.
“Then the boat sank with a great roar, and for about a thousand years, it seemed to me, I was under water. I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t think.
“I was only conscious of a tremendous weight of water and a feeling that I would burst open. Instinct alone made me cling to the raft.
“When it finally brought me to the surface I was as nearly dead as I care to be. I lay there on the thing in a half-conscious condition for an endless time. If my life had depended on my doing something, I would have been lost.
“Then gradually I came to, and began to spit out salt water and gasp for breath. I gathered my wits together and sat up. My hands were absolutely numb, and I had to loosen the grip of my fingers with the help of my toes. Odd sensation.
“Then I looked about me. My biscuits and water and rope were safe, but the sail-cloth had vanished. I remember that this annoyed me hugely at the time, though I don’t know what earthly good it would have been.
“The sea was fairly calm, and I could see all about. Not a human being was visible, only a few floating bits of wreckage. Every man on board must have gone down with the ship and drowned, except myself.
“Then I caught sight of something that made my heart stand still. The huge head of Gulliver was coming rapidly toward me through the water!
“The dog was swimming strongly, and must have leaped from the Old Squaw before she sank. My raft was the only thing afloat large enough to hold him, and he knew it.
“I drew my revolver, but it was soaking wet and useless. Then I sat down on the cracker-tin and gritted my teeth and waited. I had been alarmed, I must admit, when the boiler blew up and the panic began, but that was nothing to the terror that seized me now.
“Here I was all alone on the top of the Pacific Ocean with a horrible demon making for me as fast as he could swim. My mind was benumbed, and I could think of nothing to do. I trembled and my teeth rattled. I prayed for a shark, but no shark came.
“Soon Gulliver reached the raft and placed one of his forepaws on it and then the other. The top of it stood six or eight inches above the water, and it took a great effort for the dog to raise himself. I wanted to kick him back, but I didn’t dare to move.
“Gulliver struggled mightily. Again and again he reared his great shoulders above the sea, only to be cast back, scratching and kicking, at a lurch of the raft.
“Finally a wave favored him, and he caught the edge of the under platform with one of his hind feet. With a stupendous effort he heaved his huge bulk over the edge and lay sprawling at my feet, panting and trembling.”
Enderby paused and gazed out of the window with a big sigh, as though the recital of his story had brought back some of the horror of his remarkable experience.
Nubbins looked up inquiringly, and then snuggled closer to his friend, while Enderby smoothed the white head.
“Well,” he continued, “there we were. You can’t possibly imagine how I felt unless you, too, have been afflicted with dog-fear. It was awful. And I hated the brute so. I could have torn him limb from limb if I had had the strength. But he was vastly more powerful than I. I could only fear him.
“By and by he got up and shook himself. I cowered on my cracker-tin, but he only looked at me contemptuously, went to the other end of the raft, and lay down to wait patiently for deliverance.
“We remained this way until nightfall. The sea was comparatively calm, and we seemed to be drifting but slowly. We were in the path of ships likely to be passing one way or the other, and I would have been hopeful of the outcome if it had not been for my feared and hated companion.
“I began to feel faint, and opened the cracker-tin. The biscuits were wet with salt water, but I ate a couple, and left the cover of the tin open to dry them. Gulliver looked around, and I shut the tin hastily. But the dog never moved. He was not disposed to ask any favors. By kicking the sides of the cask and prying with my knife, I managed to get the bung out and took a drink. Then I settled myself on the raft with my back against the cask, and longed for a smoke.
“The gentle motion of the raft produced a lulling effect on my exhausted nerves, and I began to nod, only to awake with a start, with fear gripping at my heart. I dared not sleep. I don’t know what I thought Gulliver would do to me, for I did not understand dogs, but I felt that I must watch him constantly. In the starlight I could see that his eyes were open. Gulliver was watchful too.
“All night long I kept up a running fight with drowsiness. I dozed at intervals, but never for long at a time. It was a horrible night, and I cannot tell you how I longed for day and welcomed it when it came.
“I must have slept toward dawn, for I suddenly became conscious of broad daylight. I roused myself, stood up, and swung my arms and legs to stir up circulation, for the night had been chilly. Gulliver arose, too, and stood silently watching me until I ceased for fear. When he had settled down again I got my breakfast out of the cracker-tin. Gulliver was restless, and was evidently interested.
“‘He must be hungry,’ I thought, and then a new fear caught me. I had only to wait until he became very hungry and then he would surely attack me. I concluded that it would be wiser to feed him, and I tossed him a biscuit.
“I expected to see him grab it ravenously, and wondered as soon as I had thrown it if the taste of food would only serve to make him more ferocious. But at first he would not touch it. He only lay there with his great head on his paws and glowered at me. Distrust was plainly visible in his face. I had never realized before that a dog’s face could express the subtler emotions.
“His gaze fascinated me, and I could not take my eyes from his. The bulk of him was tremendous as he lay there, and I noticed the big, swelling muscles of his jaw. At last he arose, sniffed suspiciously at the biscuit, and looked up at me again.
“‘It’s all right; eat it!’ I cried.
“The sound of my own voice frightened me. I had not intended to speak to him. But in spite of my strained tone he seemed somewhat reassured.
“He took a little nibble, and then swallowed the biscuit after one or two crunches, and looked up expectantly. I threw him another and he ate that.
“‘That’s all,’ said I. ‘We must be sparing of them.’
“I was amazed to discover how perfectly he understood. He lay down again and licked his chops.
“Late in the forenoon I saw a line of smoke on the horizon, and soon a steamer hove into view. I stood up and waved my coat frantically, but to no purpose. Gulliver stood up and looked from me to the steamer, apparently much interested.
“‘Too far off,’ I said to Gulliver. ‘I hope the next one will come nearer.’
“At midday I dined, and fed Gulliver. This time he took the two biscuits quite without reserve and whacked his great tail against the raft. It seemed to me that his attitude was less hostile, and I wondered at it.
“When I took my drink from the cask, Gulliver showed signs of interest.
“‘I suppose dogs get thirsty, too,’ I said aloud.
“Gulliver rapped with his tail. I looked about for some sort of receptacle, and finally pulled off my shoe, filled it with water, and shoved it toward him with my foot. He drank gratefully.
“During the afternoon I sighted another ship, but it was too distant to notice me. However, the sea remained calm and I did not despair.
“After we had had supper, I settled back against my cask, resolved to keep awake, for still I did not trust Gulliver. The sun set suddenly and the stars came out, and I found myself strangely lonesome. It seemed as though I had been alone out there on the Pacific for weeks. The miles and miles of heaving waters, almost on a level with my eye, were beginning to get on my nerves. I longed for some one to talk to, and wished I had dragged the half-breed cook along with me for company. I sighed loudly, and Gulliver raised his head.
“‘Lonesome out here, isn’t it?’ I said, simply to hear the sound of my own voice.
“Then for the first time Gulliver spoke. He made a deep sound in his throat, but it wasn’t a growl, and with all my ignorance of dog language I knew it.
“Then I began to talk. I talked about everything—the people back home and all that—and Gulliver listened. I know more about dogs now, and I know that the best way to make friends with a dog is to talk to him. He can’t talk back, but he can understand a heap more than you think he can.
“Finally Gulliver, who had kept his distance all this time, arose and came toward me. My words died in my throat. What was he going to do? To my immense relief he did nothing but sink down at my feet with a grunt and curl his huge body into a semicircle. He had dignity, Gulliver had. He wanted to be friendly, but he would not presume. However, I had lost interest in conversation, and sat watching him and wondering.
“In spite of my firm resolution, I fell asleep at length from sheer exhaustion, and never woke until daybreak. The sky was clouded and our craft was pitching. Gulliver was standing in the middle of the raft, looking at me in evident alarm. I glanced over my shoulder, and the blackness of the horizon told me that a storm was coming, and coming soon.
“I made fast our slender provender, tied the end of a line about my own waist for safety, and waited.
“In a short time the storm struck us in all its tropical fury. The raft pitched and tossed, now high up at one end, and now at the other, and sometimes almost engulfed in the waves.
“Gulliver was having a desperate time to keep aboard. His blunt claws slipped on the wet deck of the raft, and he fell and slid about dangerously. The thought flashed across my mind that the storm might prove to be a blessing in disguise, and that I might soon be rid of the brute.
“As I clung there to the lashings, I saw him slip down to the further end of the raft, his hind quarters actually over the edge. A wave swept over him, but still he clung, panting madly. Then the raft righted itself for a moment, and as he hung there he gave me a look I shall never forget—a look of fear, of pleading, of reproach, and yet of silent courage. And with all my stupidity I read that look. Somehow it told me that I was the master, after all, and he the dog. I could not resist it. Cautiously I raised myself and loosened the spare rope I had saved. As the raft tipped the other way Gulliver regained his footing and came sliding toward me.
“Quickly I passed the rope around his body, and as the raft dived again I hung on to the rope with one hand, retaining my own hold with the other. Gulliver’s great weight nearly pulled my arm from its socket, but he helped mightily, and during the next moment of equilibrium I took another turn about his body and made the end of the rope fast.
“The storm passed as swiftly as it had come, and though it left us drenched and exhausted, we were both safe.
Again and again Gulliver gave voice, deep, full, powerful
“That evening Gulliver crept close to me as I talked, and I let him. Loneliness will make a man do strange things.
“On the fifth day, when our provisions were nearly gone, and I had begun to feel the sinking dullness of despair, I sighted a steamer apparently coming directly toward us. Instantly I felt new life in my limbs and around my heart, and while the boat was yet miles away I began to shout and to wave my coat.
“‘I believe she’s coming, old man!’ I cried to Gulliver; ‘I believe she’s coming!’
“I soon wearied of this foolishness and sat down to wait. Gulliver came close and sat beside me, and for the first time I put my hand on him. He looked up at me and rapped furiously with his tail. I patted his head—a little gingerly, I must confess.
“It was a big, smooth head, and it felt solid and strong. I passed my hand down his neck, his back, his flanks. He seemed to quiver with joy. He leaned his huge body against me. Then he bowed his head and licked my shoe.
“A feeling of intense shame and unworthiness came over me, with the realization of how completely I had misunderstood him. Why should this great, powerful creature lick my shoe? It was incredible.
“Then, somehow, everything changed. Fear and distrust left me, and a feeling of comradeship and understanding took their place. We two had been through so much together. A dog was no longer a frightful beast to me; he was a dog! I cannot think of a nobler word. And Gulliver had licked my shoe! Doubtless it was only the fineness of his perception that had prevented him from licking my hand. I might have resented that. I put my arms suddenly around Gulliver’s neck and hugged him. I loved that dog!
“Slowly, slowly, the steamer crawled along, but still she kept to her course. When she was about a mile away, however, I saw that she would not pass as near to us as I had hoped; so I began once more my waving and yelling. She came nearer, nearer, but still showed no sign of observing us.
“She was abreast of us and passing. I was in a frenzy!
“She was so near that I could make out the figure of the captain on the bridge, and other figures on the deck below. It seemed as though they must see us, though I realized how low in the water we stood, and how pitifully weak and hoarse my voice was. I had been a fool to waste it. Then an idea struck me.
“‘Speak!’ I cried to Gulliver, who stood watching beside me. ‘Speak, old man!’
“Gulliver needed no second bidding. A roar like that of all the bulls of Bashan rolled out over the blue Pacific. Again and again Gulliver gave voice, deep, full, powerful. His great sides heaved with the mighty effort, his red, cavernous mouth open, and his head raised high.
“‘Good, old man!’ I cried. ‘Good!’ And again that magnificent voice boomed forth.
“Then something happened on board the steamer. The figures came to the side. I waved my coat and danced. Then they saw us.
“I was pretty well done up when they took us aboard, and I slept for twenty-four hours straight. When I awoke there sat Gulliver by my bunk, and when I turned to look at him he lifted a great paw and put it on my arm.”
Enderby ceased, and there was silence in the room save for the light snoring of Nubbins.
“You took him home with you, I suppose?” I asked.
Enderby nodded.
“And you have him still?” I certainly wanted to have a look at that dog.
But he did not answer. I saw an expression of great sadness come into his eyes as he gazed out of the window, and I knew that Jacob Enderby had finished his story.
SONNY’S SCHOOLIN’
By RUTH McENERY STUART
A Monologue
Well, sir, we’re tryin’ to edjercate him—good ez we can. Th’ ain’t never been a edjercational advantage come in reach of us but we’ve give it to him. Of co’se he’s all we’ve got, that one boy is, an’ wife an’ me, why, we feel the same way about it.
They’s three schools in the county, an’ we send him to all three.
Sir? Oh, yas, sir; he b’longs to all three schools—to fo’, for that matter, countin’ the home school.
You see, Sonny he’s purty ticklish to handle, an’ a person has to know thess how to tackle him. Even wife an’ me, thet’s been knowin’ him f’om the beginnin’, not only knowin’ his traits, but how he come by ’em,—though some is hard to trace to their so’ces,—why, sir, even we have to study sometimes to keep in with him, an’ of co’se a teacher—why, it’s thess hit an’ miss whether he’ll take the right tack with him or not; an’ sometimes one teacher’ll strike it one day, an’ another nex’ day; so by payin’ schoolin’ for him right along in all three, why, of co’se, ef he don’t feel like goin’ to one, why, he’ll go to another.
Once-t in a while he’ll git out with the whole of ’em, an’ that was how wife come to open the home school for him. She was determined his edjercation shouldn’t be interrupted ef she could help it. She don’t encour’ge him much to go to her school, though, ’cause it interrupts her in her housekeepin’ consider’ble, an’ she’s had extry quilt-patchin’ on hand ever since he come. She’s patchin’ him a set ’ginst the time he’ll marry.
An’ then I reckon he frets her a good deal in school. Somehow, seems like he thess picks up enough in the other schools to be able to conterdic’ her ways o’ teachin’.
F’ instance, in addin’ up a colume o’ figgers, ef she comes to a aught—which some calls ’em naughts—she’ll say, “Aught’s a aught,” an’ Sonny ain’t been learned to say it that a-way; an’ so maybe when she says, “Aught’s a aught,” he’ll say, “Who said it wasn’t?” an’ that puts her out in countin’.
He’s been learned to thess pass over aughts an’ not call their names; and once-t or twice-t, when wife called ’em out that a-way, why, he got so fretted he thess gethered up his things an’ went to another school. But seem like she’s added aughts that a-way so long she can’t think to add ’em no other way.
I notice nights after she’s kept school for Sonny all day she talks consider’ble in her sleep, an’ she says, “Aught’s a aught” about ez often ez she says anything else.
Oh, yas, sir; he’s had consider’ble fusses with his teachers, one way an’ another, but they ever’ one declare they think a heap of ’im.
Sir? Oh, yas, sir; of co’se they all draw their reg’lar pay whether he’s a day in school du’in’ the month or not. That’s right enough, ’cause you see they don’t know what day he’s li’ble to drop in on ’em, an’ it’s worth the money thess a-keepin’ their nerves strung for ’im.
Well, yas, sir; ’t is toler’ble expensive, lookin’ at it one way, but lookin’ at it another, it don’t cost no mo’ ’n what it would to edjercate three child’en, which many poor families have to do—an’ more—which in our united mind Sonny’s worth ’em all.
Yas, sir; ’t is confusin’ to him in some ways, goin’ to all three schools at once-t.
F’ instance, Miss Alviry Sawyer, which she’s a single-handed maiden lady ’bout wife’s age, why, of co’se, she teaches accordin’ to the old rules; an’ in learnin’ the child’en subtraction, f’ instance, she’ll tell ’em, ef they run short to borry one f’om the nex’ lef’ han’ top figur’, an’ pay it back to the feller underneath him.
Well, this didn’t suit Sonny’s sense o’ jestice no way, borryin’ from one an’ payin’ back to somebody else; so he thess up an’ argued about it—told her thet fellers thet borried nickels f’om one another couldn’t pay back that a-way; an’ of co’se she told him they was heap o’ difference ’twix’ money and ’rithmetic——which I wish’t they was more in my experience; an’ so they had it hot and heavy for a while, till at last she explained to him thet that way of doin’ subtraction fetched the answer, which, of co’se, ought to satisfy any school-boy; an’ I reckon Sonny would soon ’a’ settled into that way ’ceptin’ thet he got out o’ patience with that school in sev’al ways, an’ he left an’ went out to Sandy Crik school, and it thess happened that he struck a subtraction class there the day he got in, an’ they was workin’ it the other way—borry one from the top figur’ an’ never pay it back at all, thess count it off (that’s the way I’ve worked my lifelong subtraction, though wife does hers payin’ back), an’ of co’se Sonny was ready to dispute this way, an’ he didn’t have no mo’ tac’ than to th’ow up Miss Alviry’s way to the teacher, which of co’se he wouldn’t stand, particular ez Miss Alviry’s got the biggest school. So they broke up in a row, immejate, and Sonny went right along to Miss Kellog’s school down here at the cross-roads.
She’s a sort o’ reformed teacher, I take it; an’ she gets at her subtraction by a new route altogether—like ez ef the first feller thet had any surplus went sort o’ security for them thet was short, an’ passed the loan down the line. But I noticed he never got his money back, for when they come to him, why, they docked him. I reckon goin’ security is purty much the same in an out o’ books. She passes the borryin’ along some way till it gits to headquarters, an’ writes a new row o’ figur’s over the heads o’ the others. Well, my old brain got so addled watchin’ Sonny work it thet I didn’t seem to know one figur’ f’om another ’fo’ he got thoo; but when I see the answer come, why, I was satisfied. Ef a man can thess git his answers right all his life, why nobody ain’t a-goin’ to pester him about how he worked his figur’s.
I did try to get Sonny to stick to one school for each rule in ’rithmetic, an’ havin’ thess fo’ schools, why he could learn each o’ the fo’ rules by one settled plan. But he won’t promise nothin’. He’ll quit for lessons one week, and maybe next week somethin’ else’ll decide him. (He’s quit ever’ one of ’em in turn when they come to long division.) He went thoo a whole week o’ disagreeable lessons once-t at one school ’cause he was watchin’ a bird-nest on the way to that school. He was determined them young birds was to be allowed to leave that nest without bein’ pestered, an’ they stayed so long they purty nigh run him into long division ’fo’ they did fly. Ef he’d ’a’ missed school one day he knowed two sneaky chaps thet would ’a’ robbed that nest, either goin’ or comin’.
Of co’se Sonny goes to the exhibitions an’ picnics of all the schools. Last summer we had a time of it when it come picnic season. Two schools set the same day for theirs, which of co’se wasn’t no ways fair to Sonny. He payin’ right along in all the schools, of co’se he was entitled to all the picnics; so I put on my Sunday clo’es, an’ I went down an’ had it fixed right. They all wanted Sonny, too, come down to the truth, ’cause besides bein’ fond of him, they knowed thet Sonny always fetched a big basket.
Trouble with Sonny is thet he don’t take nothin’ on nobody’s say-so, don’t keer who it is. He even commenced to dispute Moses one Sunday when wife was readin’ the Holy Scriptures to him, tell of co’se she made him understand thet that wouldn’t do. Moses didn’t intend to be conterdicted.
An’ ez to secular lessons, he ain’t got no respec’ for ’em whatsoever. F’ instance, when the teacher learned him thet the world was round, why he up an’ told him ’t warn’t so, less’n we was on the inside an’ it was blue-lined, which of co’se teacher he insisted thet we was on the outside, walkin’ over it, all feet todes the center—a thing I’ve always thought myself was mo’ easy said than proved.
Well, sir, Sonny didn’t hesitate to deny it, an’ of co’se teacher he commenced by givin’ him a check—which is a bad mark—for conterdictin’. An’ then Sonny he ’lowed thet he didn’t conterdic’ to be a-conterdictin’, but he knowed ’t warn’t so. He had walked the whole len’th o’ the road ’twix’ the farm an’ the school-house, an’ they warn’t no bulge in it; an’ besides, he hadn’t never saw over the edges of it.
An’ with that teacher he give him another check for speakin’ out o’ turn. An’ then Sonny, says he, “Ef a man was tall enough he could see around the edges, couldn’t he?” “No,” says the teacher; “a man couldn’t grow that tall,” says he; “he’d be deformed.”
An’ Sonny, why, he spoke up again, an’ says he, “But I’m thess a-sayin’ ef,” says he. “An’ teacher,” says he, “we ain’t a-studyin’ efs; we’re studyin’ geoger’phy.” And then Sonny they say he kep’ still a minute, an’ then he says, says he, “Oh, maybe he couldn’t see over the edges, teacher, ’cause ef he was tall enough his head might reach up into the flo’ o’ heaven.” And with that teacher he give him another check, an’ told him not to dare to mix up geoger’phy an’ religion, which was a sackerlege to both studies; an’ with that Sonny gethered up his books an’ set out to another school.
I think myself it ’u’d be thess ez well ef Sonny wasn’t quite so quick to conterdic’; but it’s thess his way of holdin’ his p’int.
Why, one day he faced one o’ the teachers down thet two an’ two didn’t haf to make fo’, wh’er or no.
This seemed to tickle the teacher mightily, an’ so he laughed an’ told him he was goin’ to give him rope enough to hang hisself now, an’ then he dared him to show him any two an’ two thet didn’t make fo’, and Sonny says, says he, “Heap o’ two an’ twos don’t make four, ’cause they’re kep’ sep’rate,” says he.
“An’ then,” says he, “I don’t want my two billy-goats harnessed up with nobody else’s two billys to make fo’ billys.”
“But,” says the teacher, “suppose I was to harness up yo’ two goats with Tom Deems’s two, there’d be fo’ goats, I reckon, whether you wanted ’em there or not.”
“No they wouldn’t,” says Sonny. “They wouldn’t be but two. ’T wouldn’t take my team more ’n half a minute to butt the life out o’ Tom’s team.”
An’ with that little Tommy Deems, why, he commenced to cry, an’ ’stid o’ punishin’ him for bein’ sech a cry-baby, what did the teacher do but give Sonny another check, for castin’ slurs on Tommy’s animals, an’ gettin’ Tommy’s feelin’s hurted! Which I ain’t a-sayin’ it on account o’ Sonny bein’ my boy, but it seems to me was a mighty unfair advantage.
No boy’s feelin’s ain’t got no right to be that tender—an’ a goat is the last thing on earth thet could be injured by a word of mouth.
Sonny’s pets an’ beasts has made a heap o’ commotion in school one way an’ another, somehow. Ef ’t ain’t his goats it’s somethin’ else.
Sir? Sonny’s pets? Oh, they’re all sorts. He ain’t no ways partic’lar thess so a thing is po’ an’ miser’ble enough. That’s about all he seems to require of anything.
He don’t never go to school hardly ’thout a garter-snake or two or a lizard or a toad-frog somewheres about him. He’s got some o’ the little girls at school that nervous thet if he thess shakes his little sleeve at ’em they’ll squeal, not knowin’ what sort o’ live critter’ll jump out of it.
Most of his pets is things he’s got by their bein’ hurted some way.
One of his toad-frogs is blind of a eye. Sonny rescued him from the old red rooster one day after he had nearly pecked him to death, an’ he had him hoppin’ round the kitchen for about a week with one eye bandaged up.
When a hurted critter gits good an’ strong he gen’ally turns it loose ag’in; but ef it stays puny, why he reg’lar ’dopts it an’ names it Jones. That’s thess a little notion o’ his, namin’ his pets the family name.
The most outlandish thing he ever ’dopted, to my mind, is that old yaller cat. That was a miser’ble low-down stray cat thet hung round the place a whole season, an’ Sonny used to vow he was goin’ to kill it, ’cause it kep’ a-ketchin’ the birds.
Well, one day he happened to see him thess runnin’ off with a young mockin’-bird in his mouth, an’ he took a brickbat an’ he let him have it, an’ of co’se he dropped the bird an’ tumbled over—stunted. The bird it got well, and Sonny turned him loose after a few days; but that cat was hurted fatal. He couldn’t never no mo’ ’n drag hisself around from that day to this; an’ I reckon ef Sonny was called on to give up every pet he’s got, that cat would be ’bout the last thing he’d surrender. He named him Tommy Jones, an’ he never goes to school of a mornin’, rain or shine, till Tommy Jones is fed f’om his own plate with somethin’ he’s left for him special.
Of co’se Sonny he’s got his faults, which anybody’ll tell you; but th’ ain’t a dumb brute on the farm but’ll foller him around—an’ Dicey, why, she thinks they never was such another boy born into the world—that is, not no human child.
An’ wife an’ me—
But of co’se he’s ours.
I don’t doubt thet he ain’t constructed thess exac’ly ez the school-teachers would have him, ef they had their way. Sometimes I have thought I’d like his disposition eased up a little, myself, when he taken a stand ag’in my jedgment or wife’s.
Takin’ ’em all round, though, the teachers has been mighty patient with him.
At one school the teacher did take him out behind the school-house one day to whup him; an’ although teacher is a big strong man, Sonny’s mighty wiry an’ quick, an’ some way he slipped his holt, an’ ’fo’ teacher could ketch him ag’in he had clumb up the lightnin’-rod on to the roof thess like a cat. An’ teacher he felt purty shore of him then, ’cause he ’lowed they wasn’t no other way to git down (which they wasn’t, the school bein’ a steep-sided buildin’), an’ he’d wait for him.
So teacher he set down close-t to the lightnin’-rod to wait. He wouldn’t go back in school without him, cause he didn’t want the child’en to know he’d got away. So down he set; but he hadn’t no mo’ ’n took his seat sca’cely when he heerd the child’en in school roa’in’ out loud, laughin’ fit to kill theirselves.
He ’lowed at first thet like ez not the monitor was cuttin’ up some sort o’ didoes, the way monitors does gen’ally, so he waited a-while; but it kep’ a-gittin’ worse, so d’rectly he got up, an’ he went in to see what the excitement was about; an’ lo and beholt! Sonny had slipped down the open chimbly right in amongst ’em—come out a-grinnin’, with his face all sooted over, an’, says he, “Say, fellers,” says he, “I run up the lightnin’-rod, an’ he’s a-waitin’ for me to come down.” An’ with that he went an’ gethered up his books, deliberate, an’ fetched his hat, an’ picked up a nest o’ little chimbly-swallows he had dislodged in comin’ down (all this here it happened thess las’ June), an’ he went out an’ harnessed up his goat-wagon, an’ got in. An’ thess ez he driv’ out the school-yard into the road the teacher come in, an’ he see how things was.
Of co’se sech conduct ez that is worrisome, but I don’t see no, to say, bad principle in it. Sonny ain’t got a bad habit on earth, not a-one. They’ll ever’ one o’ the teachers tell you that. He ain’t never been knowed to lie, an’ ez for improper language, why he wouldn’t know how to select it. An’ ez to tattlin’ at home about what goes on in school, why, he never has did it. The only way we knowed about him comin’ down the school-house chimbly was wife went to fetch his dinner to him, an’ she found it out.
She knowed he had went to that school in the mornin’, an’ when she got there at twelve o’clock, why he wasn’t there, an’ of co’se she questioned the teacher, an’ he thess told her thet Sonny had been present at the mornin’ session, but thet he was now absent. An’ the rest of it she picked out o’ the child’en.
Oh, no, sir; she don’t take his dinner to him reg’lar—only some days when she happens to have somethin’ extry good, or maybe when she ’magines he didn’t eat hearty at breakfast. The school-child’en they always likes to see her come, because she gen’ally takes a extry lot o’ fried chicken thess for him to give away. He don’t keer much for nothin’ but livers an’ gizzards, so we have to kill a good many to get enough for him; an’ of co’se the fryin’ o’ the rest of it is mighty little trouble.
Sonny is a bothersome child one way: he don’t never want to take his dinner to school with him. Of co’se thess after eatin’ breakfas’ he don’t feel hungry, an’ when wife does coax him to take it, he’ll seem to git up a appetite walkin’ to school, an’ he’ll eat it up ’fo’ he gits there.
Sonny’s got a mighty noble disposition, though, take him all round.
Now, the day he slipped down that chimbly an’ run away he wasn’t a bit flustered, an’ he didn’t play hookey the balance of the day neither. He thess went down to the crik, an’ washed the soot off his face, though they say he didn’t no more ’n smear it round, an’ then he went down to Miss Phœbe’s school, an’ stayed there till it was out. An’ she took him out to the well, an’ washed his face good for him. But nex’ day he up an’ went back to Mr. Clark’s school—walked in thess ez pleasant an’ kind, an’ taken his seat an’ said his lessons—never th’owed it up to teacher at all. Now, some child’en, after playin’ off on a teacher that a-way would a’ took advantage, but he never. It was a fair fight, an’ Sonny whupped, an’ that’s all there was to it; an’ he never put on no air about it.
Wife did threaten to go herself an’ make the teacher apologize for gittin’ the little feller all sooted up an’ sp’ilin’ his clo’es; but she thought it over, an’ she decided thet she wouldn’t disturb things ez long ez they was peaceful. An’, after all, he didn’t exac’ly send him down the chimbly nohow, though he provoked him to it.
Ef Sonny had ’a’ fell an’ hurted hisself, though, in that chimbly, I’d ’a’ helt that teacher responsible, shore.
Sonny says hisself thet the only thing he feels bad about in that chimbly business is thet one o’ the little swallers’ wings was broke by the fall. Sonny’s got him yet, an’ he’s li’ble to keep him, cause he’ll never fly. Named him Swally Jones, an’ reg’lar ’dopted him soon ez he see how his wing was.
Sonny’s the only child I ever see in my life thet could take young chimbly-swallers after their fall an’ make ’em live. But he does it reg’lar. They ain’t a week passes sca’cely but he fetches in some hurted critter an’ works with it. Dicey says thet half the time she’s afeered to step around her cookstove less’n she’ll step on some critter thet’s crawled back to life where he’s put it under the stove to hatch or thaw out, which she bein’ bare-feeted, I don’t wonder at.
An’ he has did the same way at school purty much. It got so for a-while at one school thet not a child in school could be hired to put his hand in the wood-box, not knowin’ ef any piece o’ bark or old wood in it would turn out to be a young alligator or toad-frog thawin’ out. Teacher hisself picked up a chip, reckless, one day, an’ it hopped up, and knocked off his spectacles. Of co’se it wasn’t no chip. Hopper-toad frog an’ wood-bark chips, why, they favors consider’ble—lay ’em same side up.
It was on account o’ her takin’ a interest in all his little beasts an’ varmints thet he first took sech a notion to Miss Phœbe Kellog’s school. Where any other teacher would scold about sech things ez he’d fetch in, why, she’d encourage him to bring ’em to her; an’ she’d fix a place for ’em, an’ maybe git out some book tellin’ all about ’em, an’ showin’ pictures of ’em.
She’s had squir’l-books, an’ bird-books, an’ books on nearly every sort o’ wild critter you’d think too mean to put into a book, at that school, an’ give the child’en readin’-lessons on ’em an’ drawin’-lessons an’ clay-moldin’ lessons.
Why, Sonny has did his alligator so nach’l in clay thet you’d most expec’ to see it creep away. An’ you’d think mo’ of alligators forever afterward, too. An’ ez to readin’, he never did take no interest in learnin’ how to read out ’n them school-readers, which he declares don’t no more ’n git a person interested in one thing befo’ they start on another, an’ maybe start that in the middle.
The other teachers, they makes a heap o’ fun o’ Miss Phœbe’s way o’ school-teachin’, ’cause she lets the child’en ask all sorts of outlandish questions, an’ make pictures in school hours, an’ she don’t requi’ ’em to fold their arms in school, neither.
Maybe she is foolin’ their time away. I can’t say ez I exac’ly see how she’s a workin’ it to edjercate ’em that a-way. I had to set with my arms folded eight hours a day in school when I was a boy, to learn the little I know, an’ wife she got her edjercation the same way. An’ we went clean thoo f’om the a-b abs an’ e-b ebs clair to the end o’ the blue-back speller.
An’ we learned to purnounce a heap mo’ words than either one of us has ever needed to know, though there has been times, sech ez when my wife’s mother took the phthisic an’ I had the asthma, thet I was obligated to write to the doctor about it, thet I was thankful for my experience in the blue-back speller. Them was our brag-words, phthisic and asthma was. They’s a few other words I’ve always hoped to have a chance to spell in the reg’lar co’se of life, sech ez y-a-c-h-t, yacht, but I suppose, livin’ in a little inland town, which a yacht is a boat, a person couldn’t be expected to need sech a word—less’n he went travelin’.
I’ve often thought thet ef at the Jedgment the good Lord would only examine me an’ all them thet went to school in my day, in the old blue-back speller ’stid o’ tacklin’ us on the weak p’ints of our pore mortal lives, why, we’d stand about ez good a chance o’ gettin’ to heaven ez anybody else. An’ maybe He will—who knows?
But ez for book-readin’, wife an’ me ain’t never felt called on to read no book save an’ exceptin’ the Holy Scriptures—an’, of co’se, the seed catalogues.
An’ here Sonny, not quite twelve year old, has read five books thoo, an’ some of ’em twice-t an’ three times over. His Robinson Crusoe shows mo’ wear ’n tear ’n what my Testament does, I’m ashamed to say. I’ve done give Miss Phœbe free license to buy him any book she wants him to have, an’ he’s got ’em all ’ranged in a row on the end o’ the mantel-shelf.
Quick ez he’d git thoo readin’ a book, of co’se wife she’d be for dustin’ it off and puttin’ up on the top closet shelf where a book nach’ally belongs; but seem like Sonny he wants to keep ’em in sight. So wife she’s worked a little lace shelf-cover to lay under ’em, an’ we’ve hung our framed marriage-c’tificate above ’em, an’ the corner looks right purty, come to see it fixed up.
Sir? Oh, no; we ain’t took him from none o’ the other schools yet. He’s been goin’ to Miss Phœbe’s reg’lar now—all but the exhibition an’ picnic days in the other schools—for nearly five months, not countin’ off-an’-on days he went to her befo’ he settled down to it stiddy.
He says he’s a-goin’ there reg’lar from this time on, an’ I b’lieve he will; but wife an’ me we talked it over, an’ we decided we’d let things stand, an’ keep his name down on all the books till sech a time ez he come to long division with Miss Kellog.
An’ ef he stays thoo that, we’ll feel free to notify the other schools thet he’s quit.
HER FIRST HORSE SHOW
By DAVID GRAY
She folded the program carefully for preservation in her memory-book, and devoured the scene with her eyes. It was hard to believe, but unquestionably Angelica Stanton, in the flesh, was in Madison Square Garden at the horse show. The great arena was crowded; the band was playing, and a four-in-hand was swinging around the tan-bark ring.
What had been her dream since she put away her dolls and the flea-bitten pony was realized. The pony had been succeeded by Lady Washington, and with Lady Washington opened the epoch when she began to hunt with the grown-up people and to reflect upon the outside world. From what she had gathered from the men in the hunting-field, the outside world seemed to center in the great horse show, and most of what was interesting and delightful in life took place there.
Besides the obvious profit of witnessing this institution, there had arisen, later on, more serious considerations which led Angelica to take an interest in it. Since the disappearance of Lady Washington and the failure to trace her, Angelica’s hope was in the show.
One of the judges who had visited Jim had unwittingly laid the bases of this hope. “All the best performers in America are exhibited there,” he had said in the course of an interminable discussion upon the great subject. And was not Lady Washington probably the best? Clearly, therefore, soon or late Lady Washington would be found winning blue ribbons at Madison Square Garden.
To this cheering conclusion the doubting Thomas within her replied that so desirable a miracle could never be; and she cherished the doubt, though rather to provoke contrary fate into refuting it than because it embodied her convictions. She knew that some day Lady Washington must come back.
After Jim had sold Lady Washington, he had been informed by Chloe, the parlor-maid, how Angelica felt, and he repented his act. He had tried to buy the mare back, but the man to whom he had sold her had sold her to a dealer, and he had sold her to somebody who had gone abroad, and no one knew what this person had done with her. So Lady Washington had disappeared, and Angelica mourned for her. Two years passed, two years that were filled with doubt and disappointment. Each autumn Jim went North with his horses, but never suggested taking Angelica. As for Angelica, the subject was too near her heart for her to broach it. Thus it seemed that life was slipping away, harshly withholding opportunity.
That November, for reasons of his own, Jim decided to take Angelica along with him. When he told her of his intention, she gasped, but made no demonstration. On the threshold of fulfilling her hope she was afraid to exult: she knew how things are snatched away the moment one begins to count upon them; but inwardly she was happy to the point of apprehension. On the trip North she “knocked wood” scrupulously every time she was lured into a day-dream which pictured the finding of Lady Washington, and thus she gave the evil forces of destiny no opening.
The first hour of the show overwhelmed her. It was too splendid and mystifying to be comprehended immediately, or to permit a divided attention. Even Lady Washington dropped out of her thoughts, but only until the jumping classes began. The first hunter that trotted across the tan-bark brought her back to her quest.
But after two days the mystery was no more a mystery, and the splendor had faded out. The joy of it had faded out, too. For two days she had pored over the entry-lists and had studied every horse that entered the ring; but the search for Lady Washington had been a vain one. Furthermore, all the best horses by this time had appeared in some class, and the chances of Lady Washington’s turning up seemed infinitesimal. Reluctantly she gave up hope. She explained it to herself that probably there had been a moment of vainglorious pride when she had neglected to “knock wood.” She would have liked to discuss it with somebody; but Chloe and her colored mammy, who understood such matters, were at the “Pines” in Virginia, and Jim would probably laugh at her; so she maintained silence and kept her despair to herself.
It was the evening of the third day, and she was at the show again, dressed in her habit, because she was going to ride. Her brother was at the other end of the Garden, hidden by a row of horses. He was waiting to show in a class of park hacks. There was nothing in it that looked like Lady Washington, and she turned her eyes away from the ring with a heavy heart. The band had stopped playing, and there was no one to talk to but her aunt’s maid, and this maid was not companionable. She fell to watching the people in the boxes; she wished that she knew some of them. There was a box just below her which looked attractive. There were two pretty women in it, and some men who looked as if they were nice; they were laughing and seemed to be having a good time. She wished she was with them, or home, or anywhere else than where she was.
Presently the music struck up again; the hum of the innumerable voices took a higher pitch. The ceaseless current of promenaders staring and bowing at the boxes went slowly around and around. Nobody paid any attention to the horses, but all jostled and chattered and craned their necks to see the people. When her brother’s Redgauntlet took the blue ribbon in the heavy-weight green-hunter class, not a person in the whole Garden applauded except herself. She heard a man ask, “What took the blue?” And she heard his friend answer, “Southern horse, I believe; don’t know the owner.” They didn’t even know Jim! She would have left the place and gone back to her aunt’s for a comfortable cry, but she was going to ride Hilda in the ladies’ saddle class, which came toward the end of the evening.
The next thing on the program were some qualified hunters which might be expected to show some good jumping. This was something to be thankful for, and she turned her attention to the ring.
“I think I’ll go down on the floor,” she said to the maid. “I’m tired of sitting still.”
In theory Miss Angelica Stanton was at the horse show escorted by her brother; but in fact she was in the custody of Caroline, the maid of her aunt Henrietta Cushing, who lived in Washington Square. Miss Cushing was elderly, and she disapproved of the horse show because her father had been a charter member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and because to go to it in the afternoon interfered with her drive and with her tea, while to go to it in the evening interfered with her whist, and that was not to be thought of. Consequently, when Angelica arrived, the horse show devolved upon Caroline, who accepted the situation not altogether with resignation. She had done Miss Cushing’s curls for twenty years, and had absorbed her views.
Angelica would have preferred stopping at the hotel with Jim; but that, he said, was out of the question. Jim admitted that Aunt Henrietta was never intentionally entertaining, but he said that Angelica needed her womanly influence. Jim had brought up Angelica, and the problem sometimes seemed a serious one. She was now sixteen, and he was satisfied that she was going to be a horsewoman, but at times he doubted whether his training was adequate in other respects, and that was why he had brought her to the horse show and had incarcerated her at Aunt Henrietta’s.
The girl led Caroline through the crowd, and took a position at the end, between the first and last jumps. As the horses were shown, they went round the ring, came back, and finished in front of them. It was the best place from which to watch, if one wished to see the jumping.
Angelica admitted to herself that some of the men rode pretty well, but not as well as some of the men rode at their out-of-door shows at home; and the tan-bark was not as good as turf. It was a large class, and after eight or ten had been shown, a striking-looking black mare came out of the line and started plunging and rearing toward the first jump. Her rider faced her at the bars, and she minced reluctantly forward. Just before they reached the wings the man struck her. She stopped short and whirled back into the ring.
From the time the black mare appeared Angelica’s heart almost stopped beating. “I’m sure of it, I’m sure of it!” she gasped. “Three white feet and the star. Caroline,” she said, “that’s Lady Washington. He oughtn’t to strike her. He mustn’t!”
“Hush, miss,” said Caroline. “We’ll be conspicuous.”
The man was bringing the mare back toward the jump. As before, he used his whip, intending to drive her into the wings, and, as before, she stopped, reared angrily, wheeled about, and came back plunging. The man quieted her after a little, and turned her again toward the hurdle. It was his last chance. She came up sulkily, tossing her head and edging away from the bars. As he got near the wings he raised his whip again. Then the people in that part of the Garden heard a girl’s shrill, excited voice cry out: “You mustn’t hit her! Steady, Lady Washington! Drop your curb!” The black mare’s ears went forward at the sound of the voice. The young man on her back put down his uplifted whip and loosened the rein on the bit. He glanced around with an embarrassed smile, and the next instant he was over the jump, and the mare was galloping for the hurdle beyond.
Suddenly Angelica became conscious that several thousand people were staring at her with looks of wonder and amusement. Caroline clutched her arm and dragged her away from the rail. The girl colored, and shook herself free.
“I don’t care,” she said. “He shouldn’t have hit her. She can jump anything if she’s ridden right. I knew we’d find her,” she muttered excitedly. “I knew it!”
Caroline struggled desperately through the crowd with her charge.
“Whatever will Miss Cushing say!” she gasped.
Angelica forgot the crowd. “I don’t care,” she said. “If Aunt Henrietta had ever owned Lady Washington she’d have done the same thing. And if you tell her I’ll pay you back. She’ll know that you let me leave my seat, and she told you not to.” This silenced Caroline.
“There! He’s fussed her mouth again,” she went on. The black mare had refused, and was rearing at the jump next the last. The girl stood on tiptoe and watched impatiently for a moment.
“There she goes,” she murmured, with a sigh. The judges had ordered the horse out.
Angelica tagged along disconsolately through the crowd till a conversation between two men who were leaning against the rail caught her ear.
“I wonder who that little girl was,” said one. “The mare seemed to know her voice, but Reggie doesn’t call her Lady Washington.”
“No—Hermione,” said the other. “He may have changed it, though,” he added. “He gives them all names beginning with H.”
“You’ll have an easy time beating him in the five-foot-six jumps,” said the first man. “It’s a good mare, but he can’t ride her.”
Angelica wondered who they were, but they turned around just then, and she dropped her eyes and hurried after Caroline.
As they made their way through the crowd, a nudge from the maid took her thoughts from Lady Washington. She had been wondering how she would find the young man who had ridden her. She looked up and saw that a man was bowing to her. It was Mr. “Billy” Livingstone. Mr. Livingstone was nearly sixty, but he had certain qualities of permanent youth which made him “Billy” to three generations.
“Hello, Angelica!” he exclaimed. “When did you turn up? How you’ve grown!”
“I came up North with Jim,” she replied.
“You should have let me know,” he said. “You know Jim never writes any one. This is the first time I’ve been here. I’m just back from the country. Where’s your box—that is, who are you with?”
“I’m here with my maid,” said Angelica, with a somewhat conscious dignity. “Jim is with the horses.”
Livingstone looked from the slender girl to the substantial Caroline, and the corners of his mouth twitched.
“I prefer to be alone this way,” she explained. “It’s more independent.”
Mr. Livingstone thought a moment. “Of course that’s so,” he said. “But I think I’ve got a better plan; let’s hunt up Mrs. Dicky Everett.”
“Is she an old woman?” asked Angelica.
“Not so terribly old,” said Mr. Livingstone. “I suppose you’d call her middle-aged.”
“Thirty?” asked Angelica.
“Near it, I’m afraid,” he answered.
“Well, I don’t know,” said Angelica. “That’s pretty old. She won’t have anything to say to me.”
“She knows something about a horse,” said Livingstone, “though, of course, she can’t ride the way you do. If you find her stupid, I’ll take you away; but I want you to come because she will be very nice to me for bringing you.”
He turned to Caroline. “I’m a friend of Miss Stanton’s brother. Go to your seat, and I’ll bring Miss Stanton back to you.”
Then he led the way up the stairs, and Angelica followed, wondering what sort of person Mrs. “Dicky” Everett might be.
She cheered herself with the thought that she could not be any older or more depressing than Aunt Henrietta, and if she was fond of horses she might know who owned Lady Washington.
Livingstone consulted his program. “It’s down on this side,” he said. She followed him mechanically, with her eyes wandering toward the ring, till presently they stopped.
“Hello!” she heard them call to Livingstone, as he stepped in ahead of her, and the next moment she realized that she was in the very box which she had watched from her seat among the chairs.
“I want to present you to my friend Miss Stanton,” Livingstone said. He repeated the names, but they made no impression upon her, because there, standing in front of her, was the young man who had ridden Lady Washington.
“You seem to know each other,” said Livingstone. “Am I wasting my breath? Is this a joke?”
He looked at Angelica. She was speechless with mixed joy and embarrassment.
“Come here, my dear,” said one of the two pretty women, “and sit down beside me. Miss Stanton,” she went on to Livingstone, “very kindly tried to teach Reggie how to ride Hermione, and we are glad to have the chance to thank her.”
“I don’t understand at all,” said Livingstone. “But there are so many things that I shall never understand that one more makes no difference.”
Angelica’s self-confidence began to come back.
“Why, he was riding Lady Washington with a whip,” she explained. “And I just called out to him not to. You remember Lady Washington,—she was a four-year-old when you were at the Pines,—and you know you never could touch her with a whip.”
“I remember very well,” said Livingstone. “You flattered me by offering to let me ride her, an offer which, I think, I declined. When did you sell her?”
“Two years ago,” said Angelica.
Then the other young woman spoke. “But how did you recognize the horse?” she asked. “You haven’t seen it for two years.”
“Recognize her!” exclaimed Angelica. “I guess if you had ever owned Lady Washington you would have recognized her. I broke her as a two-year-old, and schooled her myself. Jim says she’s the best mare we ever had.” Angelica looked at the woman pityingly. She was sweet-looking and had beautiful clothes, but she was evidently a goose.
“Miss Stanton won the high jump with the mare,” Livingstone remarked, “at their hunt show down in Virginia.”
“It was only six feet,” said the girl, “but she can do better than that. Jim wouldn’t let me ride her at anything bigger.”
“I should hope not,” said the lady by whose side she was sitting. Then she asked suddenly, “You are not Jimmie Stanton’s sister?”
“Yes,” said Angelica.
“I’d like to know why he hasn’t brought you to see me!”
“He’s awfully busy with the horses,” the girl replied. “He has to stop at the Waldorf and see about the show with the men, and he makes me stay with Aunt Henrietta Cushing.” She stopped abruptly. She was afraid that what she had said might sound disloyal. “I like to stop with Aunt Henrietta,” she added solemnly. “Besides, I’ve been busy looking for Lady Washington.”
The young man whom they called Reggie, together with Mr. Livingstone and the lady beside Angelica, laughed openly at this allusion to Miss Cushing.
“Do you know her?” asked Angelica.
“Oh, everybody knows your Aunt Henrietta,” said the lady.
“And loves her,” added Livingstone, solemnly.
The lady laughed a little. “You see, she’s connected with nearly everybody. She’s a sort of connection of Reggie’s and mine, so I suppose we’re sort of cousins of yours. I hope you will like us.”
“I don’t know much about my relations on my mother’s side,” Angelica observed. The distinction between connections and relatives had never been impressed upon her. She was about to add that Jim said that his New York relatives tired him, but caught herself. She paused uneasily.
“Please excuse me,” she said, “but I didn’t hear Mr. Livingstone introduce me to you.”
“Why,” said Livingstone, who overheard, “this is Mrs. Everett. I told you we were coming into her box.
“I thought she must have stepped out,” said Angelica. “You told me she was middle-aged.”
A peal of laughter followed.
“Angelica! Angelica!” Livingstone exclaimed.
“But you did,” said Angelica. “I asked you if she was an old lady, and you said, ‘Not so terribly old—middle-aged.’ And she’s not; she’s young.”
“Things can never be as they were before,” said Livingstone, mournfully, as the laughter died away.
“No,” said Mrs. Everett.
There was a pause, and one of the men turned to Reggie. “What are you going to do about the five-foot-six jumps?”
“Let it go,” said Reggie.
“It’s a pity,” said the other. “If you had met Miss Stanton earlier in the evening, I think she could have taught you to ride that mare. I wanted to see you win your bet.”
“Bet?” said Livingstone.
“Reggie’s such an idiot,” said Mrs. Everett. “He bet Tommy Post that Hermione would beat his chestnut in the five-foot-six jumps, and Reggie can’t make Hermione jump at all, so he’s lost.”
“Not yet; I’ve got a chance,” said Reggie, good-naturedly. “Perhaps I’ll go in, after all.” The other men laughed.
“I should think you had made monkey enough of yourself for one evening,” observed Palfrey, who was his best friend and could say such things.
“Five feet six would be easy for Lady Washington,” said Angelica. “I can’t get used to calling her by that new name.” She hesitated a moment with embarrassment, and then she stammered: “Why don’t you let me ride her?”
The people in the box looked aghast.
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t do,” said Reggie, seriously. “It’s awfully good of you, but, you see, it wouldn’t look well to put a lady on that horse. Suppose something should happen?”
“Good of me!” the girl exclaimed. “I’d love it! I want to ride her again so much!”
“Well,” said Reggie, “I’ll have her at the park for you tomorrow morning. You can ride her whenever you like.”
A low cry of alarm ran through the Garden, and the conversation in the box hushed. A tandem cart had tipped over, and the wheeler was kicking it to pieces.
“I don’t like that sort of thing,” said Mrs. Everett, with a shudder.
They finally righted the trap, and the driver limped off to show that he was not hurt. The great crowd seemed to draw a long breath of relief, and the even hum of voices went on again. The judges began to award the ribbons, and Angelica looked down at her program.
“Dear me!” she exclaimed. “The saddle class I’m going to ride in is next. I’m afraid I’ll be late. Good-by.”
“Good-by,” they all replied.
“Don’t you come,” she said to Livingstone. “It’s just a step.”
“I must keep my word with Caroline,” he answered, and he took her to her seat.
“She’s immense, isn’t she?” he said, as he came back. “I’m glad Reggie didn’t let her ride that brute. She will be killed one of these days.”
“She’s going to be a great beauty,” said Mrs. Everett.
“She looks like her blessed mother,” said Livingstone. “I was very fond of her mother. I think that if it hadn’t been for Stanton—”
“Stop!” interrupted Mrs. Everett. “Your heart-tragedies are too numerous. Besides, if you had married her you wouldn’t be here trying to tell us why you didn’t.” And they all laughed, and cheerfully condemned the judging of the tandem class.
The negro groom who had come up with the Stanton horses met Angelica as she was going down-stairs into the basement where the stalls were. Jim had not appeared, so Angelica and Caroline had started off alone.
“Hilda’s went lame behind, Miss Angie,” the man said. “She must have cast huhself. They ain’t no use to show huh.”
Ordinarily this calamity would have disturbed Angelica, but the discovery of Lady Washington was a joy which could not be dimmed.
“Have you told my brother?” she asked.
“Yes, Miss Angie,” said the man. “He was gwine to tell you.”
“I want to see her,” said Angelica, and they went on toward the stall. But what Angelica most wanted was to get among the horses and look for a certain black mare.
Hilda was very lame, and there was fever in the hock. Angelica patted her neck, and turned away with a side glance at Caroline, who, she feared, would rebel at being led through the horses’ quarters. She walked down the row of stalls till she came to the corner, then up through another passage till she stopped at a big box-stall over the side of which stretched a black head set on a long, thoroughbred-looking neck.
The small, fine ears, the width between the eyes, the square little muzzle, were familiar; and there was a white star on the forehead. But Angelica did not enumerate these things. Horses to her had personalities and faces, just as people had them. She recognized Lady Washington as she had recognized Mr. Livingstone. She made a little exclamation, and, standing on tiptoe, put her arms about the mare’s neck, and kissed it again and again.
“The dear! She remembers me!” the girl said, wiping her eyes. “It’s Lady Washington,” she explained to Caroline. She reached up to fondle the little muzzle, and the mare nipped playfully.
“Look out, miss,” called the stable-boy, who was sitting on a soap-box; “she’s mean.”
“She’s no such thing,” said the girl.
“Oh, ain’t she?” said the boy.
“Well, if she is, you made her so,” retorted Angelica.
The boy grinned. “I ain’t only been in the stable two weeks,” he said. “She caught me on the second day and nigh broke me leg. You see her act in the ring? Mr. Haughton says he won’t ride her no more, and she’s entered in the five-foot-six jumps.”
The girl looked thoughtfully at the boy and then at the horse. An idea had come to her. She was reflecting upon the last words Mr. Haughton had spoken before she left the box: “You can ride her whenever you like.”
“I know,” she said aloud. “I’m going to ride her in that class. I’m Miss Stanton. I used to own her, you know. My saddle is down there with Mr. Stanton’s horses, and I want you to go and get it.”
“Oh, never, Miss Angelica!” exclaimed Caroline. “Dear me, not that!”
“You hush,” said Angelica.
The stable-boy looked at her incredulously. “I ain’t had no orders, miss,” he said. “I’ll have to see William. Did Mr. Haughton say you might?”
“Of course he said I might,” she replied.
The boy said no more and went off after William.
“Of course he said I might,” she repeated half aloud. “Didn’t he say I might ride her ‘whenever I wanted to’? ‘Whenever’ is any time, and I want to now.” She fortified herself behind this sophistry, but she was all in a flutter lest Jim or Mr. Haughton should appear. The thought, however, of being on Lady Washington’s back, and showing people that she wasn’t sulky and bad-tempered, was a temptation too strong to be resisted.
The boy came back with the head groom, to whom he had explained the matter.
“Why, miss,” said William, “she’d kill you. I wouldn’t want to show her myself. Mr. Haughton, miss, must have been joking. Honest, miss, you couldn’t ride Hermione.” The man was respectful but firm.
“Think what Miss Cushing would say,” said Caroline.
“But I tell you I can,” retorted Angelica. She paid no attention to Caroline; her temper flashed up. “You don’t seem to understand. I owned that mare when she was Lady Washington, and broke her all myself, and schooled her, too. Mr. Haughton hasn’t any ‘hands,’ and he ought to know better than to raise a whip on her.”
William grinned at the unvarnished statement about his master’s “hands.”
“Are you the young lady what called out to him in the ring?” he asked.
“Yes, I am,” said Angelica. “And if he’d done what I told him to she would have won. Here’s our Emanuel,” she went on. “He’ll tell you I can ride her. Emanuel,” she demanded, as the negro approached, “haven’t I ridden Lady Washington?”
“You jest have, Miss Angie,” said Emanuel. “Why,” said he, turning to William, “this heah young lady have rode that maah ovah six feet. She done won the high jump at ouah hunt show. That’s Lady Washington all right,” he went on, looking at the head poked out over the stall. “I got huh maahk on mah ahm foh to remembah huh.”
The stable-boy grinned.
“Well, she never bit me,” said Angelica.
“The young lady,” said William, doubtfully, “wants to ride her in the five-foot-six class. She says Mr. Haughton said she might.”
“Oh, Miss Angelica,” interposed Caroline, “you’ll be kilt!”
“You’re a goose,” said Angelica. “I’ve ridden her hundreds of times.”
“I don’t know how Mistah Jim would like it,” said Emanuel; “but she could ride that maah all right, you jest bet.”
William was getting interested. He was not so concerned about Mr. Stanton’s likes as he was that his stable should take some ribbons.
“Mr. Haughton said you might ride her?” he repeated.
“Of course he did,” said Angelica; “I just left him in Mrs. Everett’s box, and I’ve got my own saddle and everything.”
“All right, miss,” said William. “Get the saddle, Tim.”
William did not believe that Mr. Haughton had given any such orders, but he had gotten into trouble not long before by refusing to give a mount to a friend of Haughton’s whom he did not know and who came armed only with verbal authority. He knew that if any harm was done he could hide behind that occurrence.
“I want a double-reined snaffle,” said Angelica. “Emanuel,” she added, “you have the bit I used to ride her with. Bring my own bridle.”
“I’m afraid you won’t be able to hold her, miss,” muttered William; “but it’s as you say. Hurry up with that saddle,” he called to the stable-boy. “We ain’t got no time to lose. They’re callin’ the class now. You’re number two, miss; I’ll get your number for you.”
“You’ll be kilt! You’ll be kilt!” said Caroline, dolefully. “Think what Miss Cushing will say!”
“Caroline,” said Angelica, “you don’t know anything about horses, so you hush.” And then she added under her breath, “If I can only get started before Jim sees me!”
In the Everett box they were waiting for the five-foot-six class to begin. They called it the five-foot-six class because there were four jumps that were five feet six inches high; the others were an even five feet. It was the “sensational event” of the evening. Thus far the show had been dull.
“Those saddle-horses were an ordinary lot,” observed Reggie.
“This isn’t opening very well, either,” said Palfrey. The first horse had started out by refusing. Then he floundered into the jump and fell.
“Let’s not wait,” said Mrs. Everett. But the words were hardly spoken when, with a quick movement, she turned her glasses on the ring. Something unusual was going on at the farther end. A ripple of applause came down the sides of the Garden, and then she saw a black horse, ridden by a girl, come cantering toward the starting-place.
“It’s that child on Hermione! You must stop it, Reggie!” she exclaimed excitedly.
Before any one could move, Angelica had turned the horse toward the first jump. It looked terribly high to Mrs. Everett. It was almost even with the head of the man who was standing on the farther side ready to replace the bars if they should be knocked down.
Tossing her head playfully, the black mare galloped steadily for the wings, took off in her stride, and swept over the jump in a long curve. She landed noiselessly on the tan-bark, and was on again. Around the great ring went the horse and the girl, steadily, not too fast, and taking each jump without a mistake. The great crowd remained breathless and expectant. Horse and rider finished in front of the Everett box, and pulled up to a trot, the mare breathing hard with excitement, but well-mannered.
Then a storm of cheers and hand-clapping burst, the like of which was never heard at a New York horse show before.
As the applause died away, Reggie rose and hurried out. “Let’s all go,” said Mrs. Everett.
Before they got through the crowd the judges had awarded the ribbons. There were only three other horses that went over all the jumps, and none of them made a clean score. There was no question about which was first. The judges ran their hands down the mare’s legs in a vain search for lumps. She was short-coupled, with a beautiful shoulder and powerful quarters. She had four crosses of thoroughbred, and showed it.
“She’s a picture mare,” said one of the judges, and he tied the blue rosette to her bridle himself. Then the great crowd cheered and clapped again, and Angelica rode down to the entrance as calmly as if she were in the habit of taking blue ribbons daily. But inside she was not calm.
“I’ve got to cry or something,” she thought.
At the gate some one came out of the crowd and took the mare by the head. Angelica looked down, and there were her brother and Reggie and Mrs. Everett’s party. The Garden began to swim.
“Oh, Jim!” she murmured, “help me down. It’s Lady Washington.” Then she threw her arms around his neck and wept.
They were at supper in the old Waldorf Palm Room before Angelica was quite certain whether actual facts had been taking place or whether she had been dreaming. It seemed rather too extraordinary and too pleasant to be true. Still, she was sure that she was there, because the people stared at her when she came in dressed in her habit, and whispered to each other about her. Furthermore, a party of judges came over and asked Mrs. Everett to present them.
There never before was quite such an evening. It was after twelve, at least, and nobody had suggested that she ought to be in bed. One pleasant thing followed another in quick succession, and there seemed no end to them. She was absorbed in an edible rapture which Mrs. Everett called a “café parfait” when she became aware that Reggie’s friend, Mr. Palfrey, had started to address the party. She only half listened, because she was wondering why every one except Mrs. Everett and herself had denied himself this delightful sweet. Grown-up people had strange tastes.
Mr. Palfrey began by saying that he thought it was time to propose a toast in honor of Miss Stanton, which might also rechristen Reggie’s mare by her first and true name, “Lady Washington.” He said that it was plain to him that the mare had resented a strange name out of Greek mythology, and in future would go kindly, particularly if Reggie never tried to ride her again.
He went on with his remarks, and from time to time the people interrupted with laughter; but it was only a meaningless sound in Angelica’s ears. The words “Reggie’s mare” had come like a blow in the face. She had forgotten about that. Her knees grew weak and a lump swelled in her throat. It was true, of course, but for the time being it had passed out of her mind. And now that Lady Washington had won the five-foot-six class and was so much admired, probably Jim could not afford to buy her back. It was doubtful if Mr. Haughton would sell her at any price.
Presently she was aroused by a remark addressed directly to her.
“I think that’s a good idea,” said Reggie. “Don’t you?”
She nodded; but she did not know what the idea was, and she did not trust her voice to ask.
“Only,” he continued, turning to Palfrey, “it isn’t my mare any more; it’s Miss Stanton’s. Put that in, Palfrey.”
Angelica’s mouth opened in wonderment and her heart stood still. She looked about the table blankly.
“It’s so,” said Reggie; “she’s yours.”
“But I can’t take her,” she said falteringly. “She’s too valuable. Can I, Jim?”
“But Jim’s bought her,” said Reggie, hurriedly.
Angelica’s eyes settled on her brother’s face; he said nothing, but began to smile; Reggie was kicking him under the table.
“Yes,” said Reggie; “when I saw you ride Lady Washington, that settled it with me. I’m too proud to stand being beaten by a girl; so I made Jim buy her back and promise to give her to you.”
“Do you mean it?” said Angelica. “Is Lady Washington really mine?”
“Yes,” he said.
She dropped her hands in her lap and sighed wearily. “It doesn’t seem possible,” she murmured. She paused and seemed to be running over the situation in her mind. Presently she spoke as if unaware that the others were listening. “I knew it would happen, though,” she said. “I knew it. I reckon I prayed enough.” She smiled as a great thrill of happiness ran through her, and glancing up, saw that all the rest were smiling, too.
“I’m so happy,” she said apologetically. Then she bethought herself, and furtively reached down and tapped the frame of her chair with her knuckles.
“Well, here’s the toast,” said Mr. Palfrey, rising. “To the lady and Lady Washington.” And they all rose and drank it standing.
MY HUSBAND’S BOOK[[7]]
By James Matthew Barrie
[7]. From Two of Them. Copyright, 1893, by the United States Book Co.
Long before I married George I knew that he was dreadfully ambitious. We were not yet engaged when he took me into his confidence about his forthcoming great book, which was to take the form of an inquiry into the Metaphysics of Ethics. “I have not begun it yet,” he always said, “but I shall be at it every night once the winter sets in.” In the daytime George is only a clerk, though a much-valued one, so that he has to give the best hours of his life to a ledger.
“If you only had more time at your disposal,” I used to say, when he told me of the book that was to make his name.
“I don’t complain,” he said, heartily, like the true hero he always is, except when he has to take medicine. “Indeed, you will find that the great books have nearly always been written by busy men. I am firmly of opinion that if a man has original stuff in him it will come out.”
He glowed with enthusiasm while he spoke in this inspiriting strain, and some of his ardor passed into me. When we met we talked of nothing but his future; at least he talked while I listened with clasped hands. It was thus that we became engaged. George was no ordinary lover. He did not waste his time telling me that I was beautiful, or saying “Beloved!” at short intervals. No, when we were alone he gave me his hand to hold, and spoke fervently of the Metaphysics of Ethics.
Our engagement was not of a very long duration, for George coaxed me into marriage thus—“I cannot settle down to my book,” he said, “until we are married.”
His heart was so set on that book that I yielded. We wandered all over London together buying the furniture. There was a settee that I particularly wanted, but George, with his usual thoughtfulness, said:
“Let us rather buy a study table. It will help me at my work, and once the book is out we shall be able to afford half a dozen settees.”
Another time he went alone to buy some pictures for the drawing-room.
“I got a study chair instead,” he told me in the evening. “I knew you would not mind, my darling, for the chair is the very thing for writing a big book in.”
He even gave thought to the ink-bottle.
“In my room,” he said, “I am constantly discovering that my ink-bottle is empty, and it puts me out of temper to write with water and soot. I therefore think we ought to buy one of those large ink-stands with two bottles.”
“We shall,” I replied, with the rapture of youth, “and mine will be the pleasant task of seeing that the bottles are kept full.”
“Dearest!” he said, fondly, for this was the sort of remark that touched him most.
“Every evening,” I continued, encouraged by his caressing tones, “you will find your manuscripts lying on the table waiting for you, and a pen with a new nib in it.”
“What a wife you will make!” he exclaimed.
“But you mustn’t write too much,” I said. “You must have fixed hours, and at a certain time, say at ten o’clock, I shall insist on your ceasing to write for the night.”
“That seems a wise arrangement. But sometimes I shall be too entranced in the work, I fancy, to leave it without an effort.”
“Ah,” I said, “I shall come behind you, and snatch the pen from your hand!”
“Every Saturday night,” he said, “I shall read to you what I have written during the week.”
No wonder I loved him.
We were married on a September day, and the honeymoon passed delightfully in talk about the book. Nothing proved to me the depth of George’s affection so much as his not beginning the great work before the honeymoon was over. So I often told him, and he smiled fondly in reply. The more, indeed, I praised him the better pleased he seemed to be. The name for this is sympathy.
Conceive us at home in our dear little house in Clapham.
“Will you begin the book at once?” I asked George the day after we arrived.
“I have been thinking that over,” he said. “I needn’t tell you that there is nothing I should like so much, but, on the whole, it might be better to wait a week.”
“Don’t make the sacrifice for my sake,” I said, anxiously.
“Of course it is for your sake,” he replied.
“But it is such a pity to waste any more time,” I said.
“There is no such hurry,” he answered, rather testily.
I looked at him in surprise.
“What I mean,” he said, “is that I can be thinking the arrangement of the book over.”
We had, of course, a good many callers at this time, and I told most of them about the book. For reasons to be seen by and by I regret this now.
When the week had become a fortnight, I insisted on leaving George alone in the study after dinner. He looked rather gloomy, but I filled the ink-bottles, and put the paper on the desk, and handed him his new pen. He took it, but did not say “thank you.”
An hour afterward I took him a cup of tea. He was still sitting by the fire, but the pen had fallen from his hands.
“You are not sleeping, George?” I asked.
“Sleeping!” he cried, as indignantly as if I had charged him with crime. “No, I’m thinking.”
“You haven’t written any yet?”
“I was just going to begin when you came in. I’ll begin as soon as I’ve drunk this tea.”
“Then I’ll leave you to your work, dear.”
I returned to the study at nine o’clock. He was still in the same attitude.
“I wish you would bring me a cup of tea,” he said.
“I brought you one hours ago.”
“Eh? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Oh, George! I talked with you about it. Why, here it is on the table, untouched.”
“I declare you never mentioned it to me. I must have been thinking so deeply that I never noticed you. You should have spoken to me.”
“But I did speak, and you answered.”
“My dear, I assure you I did nothing of the sort. This is very vexing, for it has spoiled my evening’s work.”
The next evening George said that he did not feel in the mood for writing, and I suppose I looked disappointed, for he flared up.
“I can’t be eternally writing,” he growled.
“But you haven’t done anything at all yet.”
“That is a rather ungenerous way of expressing it.”
“But you spoke as if the work would be a pleasure.”
“Have I said that it is not a pleasure? If you knew anything of literary history, you would be aware that there are occasions when the most industrious writers cannot pen a line.”
“They must make a beginning some time, though!”
“Well, I shall make a beginning to-morrow.”
Next evening he seemed in no hurry to go into the study.
“I’ll hang the bedroom pictures,” he said.
“No, no, you must get begone to your book.”
“You are in a desperate hurry to see me at that book.”
“You spoke as if you were so anxious to begin it.”
“So I am. Did I say I wasn’t?”
He marched off to the study, banging the drawing-room door. An hour or so afterward I took him his tea. He had left his study door open so that I could see him on the couch before I entered the room. When he heard the rattle of the tea-things he jumped up and strode to the study table, where, when I entered, he pretended to be busy writing.
“How are you getting on, dear?” I asked, with a sinking at the heart.
“Excellently, my love, excellently.”
I looked at him so reproachfully that he blushed.
“I think,” said he, when he had drunk the tea, “that I have done enough for one night. I mustn’t overdo it.”
“Won’t you let me hear what you have written?”
He blushed again.
“Wait till Saturday,” he said.
“Then let me put your papers away,” I said, for I was anxious to see whether he had written anything at all.
“I couldn’t think of it,” he replied, covering the paper with his elbows.
Next morning I counted the clean sheets of paper. They were just as I had put them on the table. So it went on for a fortnight or more, with this difference. He either suspected that I counted the sheets, or thought that I might take it into my head to do so. To allay my suspicions, therefore, he put away what he called his manuscript in a drawer, which he took care to lock. I discovered that one of my own keys opened this drawer, and one day I examined the manuscripts. They consisted of twenty-four pages of paper, without a word written on them. Every evening he added two more clean pages to the contents of the drawer. This discovery made me so scornful that I taxed him with the deceit. At first he tried to brazen it out, but I was merciless, and then he said:
“The fact is that I can’t write by gas-light. I fear I shall have to defer beginning the work until spring.”
“But you used to say that the winter was the best season for writing.”
“I thought so at the time, but I find I was wrong. It will be a great blow to me to give up the work for the present, but there is no help for it.”
When spring came I reminded him that now was his opportunity to begin the book.
“You are eternally talking about that book,” he snarled.
“I haven’t mentioned it for a month.”
“Well, you are always looking at me as if I should be at it.”
“Because you used to speak so enthusiastically about it.”
“I am as enthusiastic as ever, but I can’t be forever writing at the book.”
“We have now been married seven months, and you haven’t written a line yet.”
He banged the doors again, and a week afterward he said that spring was a bad time for writing a book.
“One likes to be out-of-doors,” he said, “in spring, watching the trees become green again. Wait till July, when one is glad to be indoors. Then I’ll give four hours to the work every evening.”
Summer came, and then he said:
“It is too hot to write books. Get me another bottle of iced soda-water. I’ll tackle the book in the autumn.”
We have now been married more than five years, but the book is not begun yet. As a rule, we now shun the subject, but there are times when he still talks hopefully of beginning. I wonder if there are any other husbands like mine.
WAR
By JACK LONDON
He was a young man, not more than twenty-four or five, and he might have sat his horse with the careless grace of his youth had he not been so catlike and tense. His black eyes roved everywhere, catching the movements of twigs and branches where small birds hopped, questing ever onward through the changing vistas of trees and brush, and returning always to the clumps of undergrowth on either side. And as he watched, so did he listen, though he rode on in silence, save for the boom of heavy guns from far to the west. This had been sounding monotonously in his ears for hours, and only its cessation would have aroused his notice. For he had business closer to hand. Across his saddle-bow was balanced a carbine.
So tensely was he strung, that a bunch of quail, exploding into flight from under his horse’s nose, startled him to such an extent that automatically, instantly, he had reined in and fetched the carbine half-way to his shoulder. He grinned sheepishly, recovered himself, and rode on. So tense was he, so bent upon the work he had to do, that the sweat stung his eyes unwiped, and unheeded rolled down his nose and spattered his saddle pommel. The band of his cavalryman’s hat was fresh-stained with sweat. The roan horse under him was likewise wet. It was high noon of a breathless day of heat. Even the birds and squirrels did not dare the sun, but sheltered in shady hiding places among the trees.
Man and horse were littered with leaves and dusted with yellow pollen, for the open was ventured no more than was compulsory. They kept to the brush and trees, and invariably the man halted and peered out before crossing a dry glade or naked stretch of upland pasturage. He worked always to the north, though his way was devious, and it was from the north that he seemed most to apprehend that for which he was looking. He was no coward, but his courage was only that of the average civilized man, and he was looking to live, not die.
Up a small hillside he followed a cowpath through such dense scrub that he was forced to dismount and lead his horse. But when the path swung around to the west, he abandoned it and headed to the north again along the oak-covered top of the ridge.
The ridge ended in a steep descent—so steep that he zigzagged back and forth across the face of the slope, sliding and stumbling among the dead leaves and matted vines and keeping a watchful eye on the horse above that threatened to fall down upon him. The sweat ran from him, and the pollen-dust, settling pungently in mouth and nostrils, increased his thirst. Try as he would, nevertheless the descent was noisy, and frequently he stopped, panting in the dry heat and listening for any warning from beneath.
At the bottom he came out on a flat, so densely forested that he could not make out its extent. Here the character of the woods changed, and he was able to remount. Instead of the twisted hillside oaks, tall straight trees, big-trunked and prosperous, rose from the damp fat soil. Only here and there were thickets, easily avoided, while he encountered winding, park-like glades where the cattle had pastured in the days before war had run them off.
His progress was more rapid now, as he came down into the valley, and at the end of half an hour he halted at an ancient rail fence on the edge of a clearing. He did not like the openness of it, yet his path lay across to the fringe of trees that marked the banks of the stream. It was a mere quarter of a mile across that open, but the thought of venturing out in it was repugnant. A rifle, a score of them, a thousand, might lurk in that fringe by the stream.
Twice he essayed to start, and twice he paused. He was appalled by his own loneliness. The pulse of war that beat from the west suggested the companionship of battling thousands; here was naught but silence, and himself, and possible death-dealing bullets from a myriad ambushes. And yet his task was to find what he feared to find. He must go on, and on, till somewhere, some time, he encountered another man, or other men, from the other side, scouting, as he was scouting, to make report, as he must make report, of having come in touch.
Changing his mind, he skirted inside the woods for a distance, and again peeped forth. This time, in the middle of the clearing, he saw a small farmhouse. There were no signs of life. No smoke curled from the chimney, not a barnyard fowl clucked and strutted. The kitchen door stood open, and he gazed so long and hard into the black aperture that it seemed almost that a farmer’s wife must emerge at any moment.
He licked the pollen and dust from his dry lips, stiffened himself, mind and body, and rode out into the blazing sunshine. Nothing stirred. He went on past the house, and approached the wall of trees and bushes by the river’s bank. One thought persisted maddeningly. It was of the crash into his body of a high-velocity bullet. It made him feel very fragile and defenseless, and he crouched lower in the saddle.
Tethering his horse in the edge of the wood, he continued a hundred yards on foot till he came to the stream. Twenty feet wide it was, without perceptible current, cool and inviting, and he was very thirsty. But he waited inside his screen of leafage, his eyes fixed on the screen on the opposite side. To make the wait endurable, he sat down, his carbine resting on his knees. The minutes passed, and slowly his tenseness relaxed. At last he decided there was no danger; but just as he prepared to part the bushes and bend down to the water, a movement among the opposite bushes caught his eye.
It might be a bird. But he waited. Again there was an agitation of the bushes, and then, so suddenly that it almost startled a cry from him, the bushes parted and a face peered out. It was a face covered with several weeks’ growth of ginger-colored beard. The eyes were blue and wide apart, with laughter-wrinkles in the corners that showed despite the tired and anxious expression of the whole face.
All this he could see with microscopic clearness, for the distance was no more than twenty feet. And all this he saw in such brief time, that he saw it as he lifted his carbine to his shoulder. He glanced along the sights, and knew that he was gazing upon a man who was as good as dead. It was impossible to miss at such point blank range.
But he did not shoot. Slowly he lowered the carbine and watched. A hand, clutching a water-bottle, became visible and the ginger beard bent downward to fill the bottle. He could hear the gurgle of the water. Then arm and bottle and ginger beard disappeared behind the closing bushes. A long time he waited, when, with thirst unslaked, he crept back to his horse, rode slowly across the sun-washed clearing, and passed into the shelter of the woods beyond.