TWIGGS AND TUDENS
“Now who’d want a more cosier little home than me and Tude’s got here?” asked Mr. Twiggs, as his twinkling eyes swept caressingly around the cheery little room in which he, alone, stood one chill December evening as the great St. Paul’s was drawling six.
“This ain’t no princely hall with all its gorgeous paraphanaly, as the play-bills says; but it’s what I calls a’ ‘interior,’ which for meller comfort and cheerful surroundin’s ain’t to be ekalled by no other ‘flat’ on the boundless, never-endin’ stage of this existence!” And as the exuberant Mr. Twiggs rendered this observation, he felt called upon to smile and bow most graciously to an invisible audience, whose wild approval he in turn interpreted by an enthusiastic clapping of his hands and the cry of “Ongcore!” in a dozen different keys—this strange acclamation being made the more grotesque by a great green parrot perched upon the mantel, which, in a voice less musical than penetrating, chimed in with “Hooray for Twiggs and Tudens!” a very great number of times.
“Tude’s a queer girl,” said Mr. Twiggs, subsiding into a reflective calm, broken only by the puffing of his pipe, and the occasional articulation of a thought, as it loitered through his mind. “Tude’s a queer girl!—a werry queer girl!” repeated Mr. Twiggs, pausing again, with a long whiff at his pipe, and marking the graceful swoop the smoke made as it dipped and disappeared up the wide, black-throated chimney; and then, as though dropping into confidence with the great fat kettle on the coals, that steamed and bubbled with some inner paroxysm, he added, “And queer and nothink short, is the lines for Tude, eh?
“Now s’posin’,” he continued, leaning forward and speaking in a tone whose careful intonation might have suggested a more than ordinary depth of wisdom and sagacity,—“s’posin’ a pore chap like me, as ain’t no property only this-’ere ‘little crooked house,’ as Tude calls it, and some o’ the properties I ’andles at the Drury—as I was a-sayin’,—s’posin’ now a’ old rough chap like me was jest to tell her all about herself, and who she is and all, and not no kith or kin o’ mine, let alone a daughter, as she thinks—What do you reckon now ’ud be the upshot, eh?” And as Mr. Twiggs propounded this mysterious query he jabbed the poker prankishly in the short-ribs of the grate, at which the pot, as though humoring a joke it failed to comprehend wholly, set up a chuckling of such asthmatic violence that its smothered cachinnations tilted its copper lid till Mr. Twiggs was obliged to dash a cup of water in its face.
“And Tude’s a-comin’ of a’ age, too,” continued Mr. Twiggs, “when a more tenderer pertecter than a father, so to speak, wouldn’t be out o’ keepin’ with the nat’ral order o’ things, seein’ as how she’s sorto’ startin’ for herself-like now. And it’s a question in my mind, if it ain’t my bounden duty as her father—or ruther, who has been a father to her all her life—to kindo’ tell her jest how things is, and all—and how I am, and everythink,—and how I feel as though I ort’o stand by her, as I allus have, and allus have had her welfare in view, and kindo’ feel as how I allus—ort’o kindo’—ort’o kindo’”—and here Mr. Twiggs’s voice fell into silence so abruptly that the drowsy parrot started from its trance-like quiet and cried “Ortokindo! Ortokindo!” with such a strength of seeming mockery that it was brushed violently to the floor by the angry hand of Mr. Twiggs and went backing awkwardly beneath the table.
“Blow me,” said Mr. Twiggs, “if the knowin’ impidence of that-’ere bird ain’t astonishin’!” And then, after a serious controversy with the draught of his pipe, he went on with his deliberations.
“Lor! it were jest scrumptious to see Tude in ‘The Iron Chest’ last night! Now, I ain’t no actur myself,—I’ve been on, of course, a thousand times as ‘fillin’,’ ‘sogers’ and ‘peasants’ and the like, where I never had no lines, on’y in the ‘choruses’; but if I don’t know nothin’ but ‘All hail!—All hail!’ I’ve had the experience of bein’ under the baleful hinfluence of the hoppery-glass, and I’m free to say it air a ticklish position and no mistake. But Tude! w’y, bless you, she warn’t the first bit flustered, was she? ’Peared-like she jest felt perfectly at home-like—like her mother afore her! And I’m dashed if I didn’t feel the cold chills a-creepin’ and a-crawlin’ when she was a-singin’ ‘Down by the river there grows a green willer and a-weepin’ all night with the bank for her piller’; and when she come to the part about wantin’ to be buried there ’while the winds was a-blowin’ close by the stream where her tears was a-flowin’, and over her corpse to keep the green willers growin’,’ I’m d—d if I didn’t blubber right out!” And as the highly sympathetic Mr. Twiggs delivered this acknowledgment, he stroked the inner corners of his eyes, and rubbed his thumb and finger on his trousers.
“It were a tryin’ thing, though,” he went on, his mellow features settling into a look not at all in keeping with his shiny complexion—“it were a tryin’ thing, and it air a tryin’ thing to see them lovely arms o’ hern a-twinin’ so lovin’-like around that-’ere Stanley’s neck and a-kissin’ of him—as she’s obleeged to do, of course—as the ‘properties’ of the play demands; but I’m blowed if she wouldn’t do it quite so nat’ral-like I’d feel easier. Blow me!” he broke off savagely, starting up and flinging his pipe in the ashes, “I’m about a-comin’ to the conclusion I ain’t got no more courage’n a blasted school-boy! Here I am old enough to be her father—mighty nigh it—and yet I’m actually afeard to speak up and tell her jest how things is, and all, and how I feel like I—like I—ort’o—ort’o—”
“Ortokindo! Ortokindo!” shrieked the parrot, clinging in a reversed position to the under-round of a chair.—“Ortokindo! Ortokindo! Tude’s come home!—Tude’s come home!” And as though in happy proof of this latter assertion, the gentle Mr. Twiggs found his chubby neck encircled by a pair of rosy arms, and felt upon his cheek the sudden pressure of a pair of lips that thrilled his old heart to the core. And then the noisy bird dropped from its perch and marched pompously from its place of concealment, trailing its rusty wings and shrieking, “Tude’s come home!” at the top of its brazen voice.