II
It was a pleasant July afternoon, after we had moved to the Center, that the head of the House of Gridley hitched his sleek black mare to a neat piano-box buggy and drove twenty miles eastward to call upon the House of Forge. It was not a social call. The head of the House of Gridley left all such nonsense to his Duchess. John Forge owed old Caleb three lapsed payments for harness leather and old Caleb intended “to get his money or bust hell wide open.”
When he drove forth from the Gridley gates to “bust hell wide open” that afternoon beside him was the Dresden doll. She was ironed and starched and curled and furbelowed—as usual—and she kept the sun from her peach-bloom complexion by a tiny, beribboned parasol. They had not ridden a block before old Caleb referred to this parasol. He said, “Keep that trick umbrella away from my hat or I’ll smash it!” Old Caleb was not at all aristocratic like his Duchess.
The Gridleys reached Foxboro Center. John Forge was at home, “getting in” his hay. Arrived there, old Caleb descended, backed the mare around and unhooked her check-rein. He trusted her to remain without hitching, so long as her nose was in the clover growing outside the Forge front fence. Thereupon Caleb went down into the fragrant hayfields in search of Johnathan. The mare spread her front legs and began to enjoy herself.
Little Bernice-Theresa’s first maneuver was to unwind the reins from the whip. Holding them in one hand and the foolish little parasol in the other, she greatly hoped sundry persons would appear and remark upon what a marvelous child was this, who could assume jurisdiction of an untied mare while her elders were flagrantly absent.
It may be recorded that some one did appear; Nathan Forge “materialized” beside the picket fence and the drama, old as the hills eternal, was commenced.
Nathan Forge, living in Foxboro Center, was naturally of the earth, earthy. He was likewise of the soil, soily, very much soiled in comparison with the starched and beribboned daintiness of little Bernice-Theresa. His hair needed cutting; his eyes were vague. His face had grown a few odd-thousand additional freckles with the summer vacation and one great toe was wrapped in a horribly unsanitary rag.
This product of the disgustingly prolific lower classes beheld the smart rig halted before the house and was seized with an exasperating interest.
Now every one who has been a boy, or who owns a boy, appreciates that while sisters are, generally speaking, of no earthly consequence or account whatsoever, there are girls and girls! This is better explained by studying the behavior of such a boy in propinquity with a feminine stranger who had first been properly starched and ironed and curled and furbelowed, though not conventionally introduced.
The boy does not place his feet upon the surface of the world in a methodical, orderly manner, maintaining himself in a status of physical poise and bodily rectitude. He demonstrates the difference between girls and girls by the knots in which he proceeds to tie his spine. No boy ties his spine into knots for his sister. So Nat made his first concessions to The Sex by starting to wind himself in and out through the holes where pickets were missing in his father’s fence.
I forego a record of the twistings and turnings, the writhings and contortions, which ensued to attract the attention of the Fayre Ladye and bind her to his chariot forever. He did not neglect to rub his backbone on the gatepost four times, whirl about without upsetting himself three, hit the trunk of an adjacent tree with stones twice, and balance a stick on his nose once. Then he climbed the gate and swung head downward in horrible danger of dashing out his brains.
“Lo!” he greeted. And he grinned.
The crass effrontery, the lèse-majesté, of daring to address Her Royal Highness was bad enough. But that grin!
Bernice-Theresa Gridley sat stunned. She could conjure up no phase of etiquette for meeting the situation but a posture of frigid silence and staring stiffly ahead. He was less than the dust beneath her carriage wheel. True, he wasn’t yet beneath her carriage wheel but he might land there in a moment if he didn’t stop trying to twist himself into a human interrogation point. Why didn’t her father come? Oh, the mortification of it!
“Say, what’s yer name?” persisted this awful progeny of the lower classes.
A numbing silence.
Then, though embarrassed with his daring, Nathan announced:
“That ain’t the way to drive a horse. Girls don’t know nothin’ bout animals, anyhow. I know how to drive a horse better’n that! I’ll climb up there and show yer!”
Bernice-Theresa jumped.
“You horrid boy!” she shrieked. “If you as much as touch one of these buggy wheels, I’ll have my father put you in jail where the rats will run right over your face!” It was the most hideous fate that Bernice-Theresa’s nine years could conceive.
“Huh! I ain’t afraid o’ rats! We caught a big one in our trap last night. You stay here and I’ll fetch him! You could take him home and stuff him and trim up a room with him.”
Acting on this generous impulse, Nathan quitted the gate and ran to get the rigor-mortis exhibit. And in the ensuing moments, confronted by the horror of his return, little Bernice-Theresa suffered all the tortures of the damned. A filthy, intimate boy from the disgustingly productive lower classes had gone to bring her a rat! Dead! He would handle it. He might even drop it in the buggy. She must fly while flying was possible.
But she could not climb down from the vehicle and fly with legs. That would be common and crude; beside, where in the vicinity would she fly? No, it was far more consistent for the daughter of a Duchess to fly with a horse and buggy. Therefore, ere the unspeakable vulgarian could return, Bernice-Theresa got into action.
She shut her parasol and separated the reins. She nearly pulled herself from the slippery seat, straining to raise the mare’s unwilling head from the clover. The animal’s flank was slapped sharply. When Nathan returned to the gate, the road in front of the house was empty.
Nathan headed for the lower mowing. He approached old Caleb without introduction.
“You gotta walk home, mister!” was his way of announcing the news. “Or else you better chase your buggy. Yer horse has runned off with it hitched behind him!”
Old Caleb came up through the Forge yard in four-foot jumps. He stopped for a speechless instant at the gate.
“If you’re goin’ right home, you might tell her I didn’t mean to scare her,” explained Nathan. “We caught this rat yesterday and I was going to let her have it——”
“You little blatherskite! Scared her, did you? So she took the lines and drove off home!” Caleb shook his knotty fist under John Forge’s nose. “If my girl’s hurt, I’ll sue you for this! I’ll sue you anyhow, for the leather.”
Thereupon old Caleb started after the rig in ludicrous hops.
Hours later he reached Paris. His paving-block jaw was still adamant but he had discovered no traces of buggy, daughter or wreckage en route. By a miracle Bernice-Theresa had reached home without mishap. The tragedy was this: Finding at length that she had arrived at her destination in safety, all parental solicitude vanished. Caleb Gridley took the progeny of a Duchess across his knee and spanked her!
As a result of that spanking, his wife made his life so miserable that he sued Johnathan Forge at law. He had to vent his spleen somewhere. And a week later, being served with papers by the sheriff, Johnathan Forge also had to vent his spleen somewhere and went in search of a freckled-faced little boy.
Without explanation, simply desiring something weak on which to wreak his temper, stifling his conscience with the argument that the boy’s misbehavior had frightened the Dresden doll and precipitated the whole calamity, “Brother” Forge of the local church belabored a contorting little body with a harness tug until screams and howls brought his mother.
Nat left his father and his mother “having it out.” He limped painfully, still sobbing, up the road to my house. We climbed to our haymow together and Nathan finished his weeping down beside me in the hay.