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. If he is caught within a
reasonable length of time, he is "it," and the former leader drops
out. This should be played until only two are left.
The refreshments carry out the daisy idea, and should be served
outdoors, either on the piazza or on the lawn. The centerpiece at
the supper-table is a big bunch of daisies, and each child has a
place-card on which is painted or drawn a daisy face, the petals
forming a cap frill. The sandwiches are bread and butter, and some
"good-to-eat" daisies can be made from hard-boiled eggs, by cutting
the whites petal-shaped, and by mixing the yellow with salad
mayonnaise to form the centers. Marguerites and little cakes frosted
in yellow and white may be served with vanilla ice cream.
A HAWAIIAN PORCH LUNCHEON
One woman entertained her club at their last meeting of the year with
a little porch luncheon. Hawaii had been one of the subjects of study,
so the Hawaiian note was dominant throughout.
Each guest was welcomed with a _lei_, the Hawaiian paper flower
garland which signifies friendship. Hung about the neck, these
decorations excited much fun.
The Hawaiian features of the refreshments were Hawaiian pineapple
salad and little imitation volcanoes which were in reality cones of
vanilla ice-cream in the center of which holes had been scooped and
then filled with hot caramel sauce, which of course overflowed the
sides in true lava fashion.
The favors were tiny dolls, each dressed in a short bright-fringed
paper skirt, orange, green, blue or pink, to match the color of the
_lei_ which each lady had already received as a souvenir.
During the luncheon the hostess played several Hawaiian musical
selections on her phonograph. If any of her friends had owned or
played a ukelele, doubtless the plaintive music would have been a
feature.
A WATERMELON FROLIC
When watermelons were ripe and plentiful, big pink posters cut oval
with a painted border of green and black lettering on the pink
startled the village with the notice of a watermelon frolic.
They read:
_Do you like watermelon?
Anyway
Be sure to come to a watermelon party
on the local fairgrounds
next Tuesday evening
Admission 25 cents
This entitles you to see the minstrel show
Proceeds for the Epworth League
of ---- Church_
Long plank tables on wooden horses were improvised for serving the
watermelons which were contributed by the members of the society. Some
of the men acted as carvers of the melons, and the girls served the
portions, which were sold for ten cents each.
The grounds were lighted with strings of electric lights in pink and
green paper lanterns.
Besides the main attraction there were several booths and side shows,
arranged country fair fashion, which drew well. One was labeled THE
WATERMELON PATCH. For this, real watermelon vines had been obtained
from somebody's garden and placed naturally on the ground. To the
vines were tied any number of artificial melons made of green paper
stuffed with cotton wadding which concealed tiny favors.
On payment of ten cents any person had the privilege of picking a
melon. The prize inside was supposed to be worth the fee.
At another booth, "watermelon cake" was served at five cents a slice.
The secret of this was that in making a plain cake the batter had been
colored with pink sugar and sprinkled with raisins. The cake was then
baked in a round tin and when sliced resembled the pink of watermelon
filled with black seeds.
As it was sweet corn season, and as corn is also typical of the South,
there was a hot corn vender, who sold steaming ears straight from
kettle to buyer.
One feature of the evening was a watermelon contest among the boys.
Volunteers were called for and lined up at a table. They were then
supplied with large wedges of melon and at the sound of the referee's
whistle the race began.
The prize was a whole watermelon.
There was also a watermelon hurdle race. The course was laid out with
big watermelons and time was kept for each hurdler.
The main attraction of the evening, however, was the minstrel show. On
a raised wooden platform sat the performers with blackened hands
and faces. They wore grotesque garb and each one fingered a guitar,
mandolin, or banjo.
First they gave a number of well-known Southern melodies such as _Old
Black Joe, Swanee Riber, Dixie, Massa's in de Cold, Cold Ground_. Some
whistling numbers were much appreciated and _My Alabama Coon_, with
its humming and strumming, proved a great success. As a special item
of their musical program they sang a parody of _Apple Blossom Time_
called _It's Watermelon Time in Dixie_.
The watermelon frolic was a great success and is recommended to any
organization in town or country at watermelon time as a fun--and
funds--producing social.
_Parody_
"When It's Watermelon Time in Dixie"[1]
After
"When It's Apple Blossom Time in
Normandie"
(_Sing with appropriate motions_)
_Repeat_:
When it's watermelon time in Dixie Land[1]
Ah wants to be
Right dher[2] you see
In dat dear old melon patch
To eat a batch!
When it's watermelon time in Dixie Land
Dat's de time of all de year
When Ah grin[3] with cheer from ear to ear
Watermelon's jes' GRAND!!!
[Footnote 1: Sway heads and bodies]
[Footnote 2: Jerk thumbs backward over shoulder]
[Footnote 3: Grin broadly--stretch hands from corners of mouth to
ears.]
A JAPANESE GARDEN PARTY
A girl who wished to entertain for a visiting school friend one
evening in midsummer sent out invitations to a Japanese Garden Party.
She wrote them on the pretty little hand-decorated place-cards which
are to be found in most shops now. The Japanese writing paper which
comes in rolls is another possibility for them.
She had a wide porch and a big lawn which she decorated for the
occasion with strings of pink, yellow and green Japanese lanterns with
electric bulbs inside. Settees and wicker chairs were scattered in
cosy groups through the shrubbery, and there was a faint odor of
burning incense.
For entertainment there was dancing on the porch to the tune of a
phonograph and a program of Japanese music, including some selections
from "Butterfly" and "The Mikado."
A clever reader gave one of the Hashimura Togo stories, and also the
hostess had arranged some artistic tableaux in Japanese fashion.
When it was refreshment time, cunning little girl friends of the
hostess appeared in Japanese kimonos, hair done high and stuck full
of tiny fans or flowers. They bore Japanese lacquer trays with tiny
sandwiches (filled with preserved ginger), cherry ice and rice wafers.
A wee Japanese flag was stuck in each portion of cherry ice.
The favors were wee Japanese doilies which the guests were bidden to
hunt for under a certain group of trees. While doing so, a sudden
surprise shower of seeming cherry blossoms covered them with pink and
white petals. These were really confetti petals obligingly scattered
by the nimble little waitresses perched in the branches above.
A COMMENCEMENT PICNIC
Instead of giving the usual banquet and reception to the seniors,
the juniors in a small school might well plan an outdoor picnic and
supper. It has the possibility of being jollier than the regulation
affair, and is certainly less expensive.
Individual invitations may be sent out to the senior class--quite
unusual and mysterious invitations--for each one may consist of a
colored feather quill with a message written on a slip of paper
wrapped about the end. This reads:
_Greetings from the Tribe of Twenteequas
To the Tribe of Nyneteenwas:
Will the Tribe of Nyneteenwas
Smoke the pipe of friendship
Round the camp-fire of the Twenteequas
On the sixteenth day of the Moon of Roses
One hour before waysawi (sunset)?
One of the Twenteequas will act as your guide_.
As soon as the two classes have gathered at the picnic ground, the
juniors, already decked in head bands of ribbon in their own class
colors, may present the seniors with similar ribbons. The boys may
have feathers stuck in theirs--if they don't object to head bands.
The chief of the Twenteequas may announce the first stunt as a Hunt
for Game, and all must hunt in pairs, matching partners by means of
selecting, blindfolded, colored beads from a basket. Pasteboard bows
and arrows are supplied, and everyone is told to return at the summons
of a beaten tom-tom.
The couples then scatter into the surrounding woods, and hunt for
animal crackers which have previously been hidden by a committee of
juniors.
The prize for the couple getting the most game might be an animal toy.
Next, volunteers to "Run the Gauntlet" may be called for. The others
form in two parallel lines facing each other, armed with pieces of
chalk. The victims must run down between the lines to a goal at the
end, while the cruel Indians on each side reach out to put a chalk
mark on them. The victim who gets the least chalk marks is permitted
to select five of his tormentors to perform a series of stunts,
previously planned by the junior entertainment committee.
Appropriate ones are these: 1. Give an Indian war whoop. 2. Do an
Indian war dance. 3. Give Indian names to five people here. 4. Make a
speech in sign language. 5. Tell an Indian story.
Supper should be eaten around a big camp-fire, and should consist of
coffee cooked over the fire, nut-bread sandwiches, cold chicken and
potato chips, and chocolate ice-cream under individual miniature
tepees of brown paper.
Paint on each tepee in black some symbol apparently mysterious but in
reality characteristic of the owner. Thus, a girl with a beautiful
voice and a talent for singing may have a quaint bird on hers; an
athlete, a pair of Indian clubs; a domestic science girl, a bowl and
spoon or a kettle, and so on.
Redskins and Palefaces complete the menu, Palefaces being cookies with
white icing and features marked in candies, and Redskins being apples.
Toasting marshmallows over the fire and singing school ditties and old
favorites will end this unique party delightfully.
A PROGRESSIVE MOTOR PARTY
A group of girls who lived in the country gave a delightful farewell
party for one of their number who was to move out of town to another
part of the world. They called it a Progressive Rainbow.
At four o'clock one Saturday afternoon they all met at one of the
homes.
The porch was decorated in a red color scheme. A row of red Japanese
lanterns hung from the roof all around. Red cushions were scattered
about in the chairs and on the steps, and a jar of crimson rambler
roses adorned the table.
Everybody sat about and gossiped for a little while, and then fruit
cocktails, to which strawberries gave the touch of red, were served.
A tray of red ribbon streamers was passed, and each girl pinned one on
her blouse, as the beginning of her rainbow badge.
The guest of honor found with her favor a package tied with red tulle,
which she was requested not to open till the end of the afternoon.
After this, two automobiles, owned by members of the group or their
families, whisked the party along two miles of fresh country road to
the home of another girl in the group.
Little tables had been set on the lawn with a bouquet of old-fashioned
marigolds in the center of each one, and a toy orange balloon tied
to the back of each chair by a long string. Here were served jellied
orange soup in cups, and saltines.
The girls received orange-colored favor ribbons to pin next to their
red ones, and the guest of honor received another prize packet, this
time tied with orange tulle.
From there they all jumped again into the waiting cars and were
transported to the home of a third girl for the third course.
This time it was served in the dining-room, which was decorated with
yellow snapdragons. A basket of them filled the center of the table,
and at each place was a scalloped shell containing deviled crab meat
garnished with lemon quarters and accompanied by tartar sauce. Cubes
of hot yellow cornbread were delicious with the crab.
Again the passing of the yellow ribbons to the girls and the
presenting of the yellow-tied package to the guest of honor were the
signals for leaving to go to the next house.
The automobiles quickly took them there, where the main course of the
dinner was to be eaten. Maidenhair ferns were lovely in a green bowl
on the table, and tiny wood ferns were scattered over the white
tablecloth.
The menu consisted of broiled chicken, fresh green peas, small boiled
potatoes with parsley, and rye rolls.
By this time the girls were getting interested in their rainbow of
ribbons, to which the green was now added, and the guest of honor
received her fourth package, green-tied.
Motoring to the salad course, the group found the dining-room lighted
by blue candles, though the guests were begged not to feel blue.
Ragged robins were arranged as a centerpiece, and fluttering blue
tissue butterflies marked the places.
The salad was prunes stuffed with peanuts in hearts of lettuce, served
with French dressing and Dutch cheese balls.
By the time the sixth stop was reached the sun had set and the moon
was coming up, so that the girls sat on the veranda in the moon-light
and sipped grape-juice ice to the music of romantic ditties. Lavender
streamers were added next to the blue ones, and their badges were
complete.
As they finally drove up to the last house, they were greeted by a
rainbow of tulle which arched the entrance to the porch.
With their fluttering rainbow ribbon badges and the armful of rainbow
packages belonging to the guest of honor, they felt very much at home
with the rainbow, and the guest of honor was not even surprised to be
asked to seek the pot of gold at the foot.
In the yellow pottery jar which she discovered were as many
gold nuggets as there were girls, and each nugget was a little
gilt-paper-wrapped joke for the trip.
The real, sure-enough farewell gifts to keep were in the packages
progressively received, and there was a jolly time opening them under
the rainbow.
BIRTHDAYS AND OTHER ANNIVERSARIES
Birthdays you particularly wish to celebrate happily and successfully.
There's your mother's birthday or your brother's or your little son's
or daughter's birthday or the birthday of the popular president of
your special club.
Then there are the various wedding anniversaries that call for
suitable recognition, especially the five, ten, and twenty-five year
ones.
Besides these there are countless other events that you want to
commemorate pleasantly in some way afterward. These various occasions
offer fascinating possibilities for the most delightful of social
affairs.
A BACHELOR SUPPER
"_When I was a bachelor I lived by myself
And all the bread and cheese I got, I put upon the shelf;
The rats and the mice, they made such a strife
I was forced to go to London to buy me a wife.
The streets were so broad and the lanes were so narrow
I was forced to bring my wife home in a wheelbarrow_."
This old Mother Goose rhyme was the keynote of a bachelor supper
which one girl gave for her brother and a few of his friends on his
birthday.
The centerpiece on the table was an arrangement of bachelors' buttons
and at every place was a tiny toy wheelbarrow filled with candies, a
wee dressed-up dolly dame perched atop of each load.
The rhyme also furnished the reason for the first course, which was
most suitably bread and cheese, only the bread was in the form of
buttered rounds of toast and the cheese was a delicious Welsh rarebit,
accompanied by coffee or gingerale.
Ice-cream in cantaloupes with a chocolate mouse nibbling at the
rind followed, to be eaten with those most delicious of all
cookies--home-made "hermits."
MOTHER'S BIRTHDAY TEA
A pleasant way for a daughter to entertain for her mother is to give a
little informal afternoon tea, asking the mother's friends and their
daughters and thus making it a kind of mother and daughter affair.
Send out the invitations on your calling card, writing your mother's
name at the top. If your mother likes surprises, arrange the party to
be one if possible, but if she is like most mothers she will prefer to
know what's going on and so be prepared.
The rooms should be decorated with flowers of the season. The country
girl will find it easy in spring, summer, or fall.
During the afternoon a little program of previously arranged "mother"
songs, lullabies and readings by some of the guests may agreeably
interrupt the chat.
Tea, sandwiches and little cakes may be served in the dining-room
from a festive birthday table. The centerpiece may be a bowl of pink
roses--to match in number the years of the guest of honor. Candles
from under rose-colored paper or silk shades may light the room, and
if desired each guest may be presented with a miniature band-box
covered with rose-sprigged paper or chintz--filled with wee pink and
white candies.
A PUSSY CAT PARTY
When Billy's mother decided to give him a birthday party, she pounced
upon the pussy cat plan, partly because pussy-willows are still
flourishing in April, but mostly because she knew that kittens and
cats are favorites with nine and ten year olds.
The invitations were folded kitty-cornered and inside of each appeared
a fat fuzzy little gray puss taken from a real pussy-willow branch.
"Puss" had pen and ink ears, whiskers and tail, and likewise a tiny
red-painted fence post upon which to sit.
The first game was a good romp at "Puss-in-the-Corner." That was
followed by the foolish but funny "Poor Pussy."
While the children were still in a circle for that, Billy's mother
explained a new game. It was called "Kitty Kitty" and was carried
out on the lines of "Spin the Platter." In every child's ear Billy
whispered the name of some sort of cat, as for instance, tiger,
"yaller," green-eyes, double-toes, maltese, Angora, black and white,
gray.
He then occupied the center of the circle and spun a tin pieplate. As
he did so he called out one of the names he had assigned and counted
rapidly out loud up to ten. Thus, "Green-eyes, one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten."
The child who had been given the name "green-eyes" was supposed to
jump up and snatch the pie tin before Billy had finished counting to
ten. If "green-eyes" failed, then he had to take Billy's place. Billy,
too, of course, had a pussy cat label.
Another circle game that was fun was called "Pussy's Prowlings." It
was on the order of stage-coach. Billy's mother told the story of a
kitty's wanderings and before she started to tell it, she whispered to
each child the name of something which was to appear in the story. For
instance, she gave out "haymow," "milk dish," "mouse hole," "catnip."
Every time she mentioned any such name in the process of telling the
story, the child who had it was expected to rise from his chair,
turn around three times and sit down again. When the words "pussy's
prowlings" were mentioned, all the players jumped up and exchanged
seats. The story teller also tried to get a seat, and if she succeeded
the child who was finally left without one had to continue the story.
PUSSY'S PROWLINGS
Once there was a PUSSYCAT named BLINKY who said to herself one day,
"I'm tired of MILK to drink and I'm oh, so hungry for MOUSE. I must go
on a MOUSE hunt."
So BLINKY stole out of the red BRICK HOUSE where she lived very
happily with the JONES FAMILY. She pattered down the back DOORSTEPS
where her MILK SAUCER was set and she scampered along the winding PATH
to the BARN.
(That's the way PUSSY'S PROWLINGS began.)
Up the LADDER to the HAYMOW she crept and through the heaps of sweet
clover HAY to a HOLE IN THE WALL. There BLINKY knew lived a MOUSE. So
she crouched close to the MOUSE HOLE, as still as still could be and
watched, and she watched and she watched and she watched.
But that MOUSE must have been away from home or else very busy down in
its HOLE, for it never once stuck its little NOSE out. And when BLINKY
had watched there in the HAYMOW for three long, long hours, she was so
hungry that she couldn't watch for that MOUSE a single minute more.
She thought of the MILK SAUCER by the back DOORSTEPS and she said to
herself, "If I can't have MOUSE, MILK won't taste so bad after all."
So BLINKY made her way back through the heaps of HAY and scrambled
down the LADDER to the HAYMOW and ran along the winding PATH to the
back DOORSTEPS. And there, sure enough, was a SAUCER full of MILK all
ready for her to drink. So BLINKY lapped it up very hungrily and was
perfectly happy!
(And that's the way PUSSY'S PROWLINGS ended.)
The next game was called "Hunt the Mouse." Billy had hidden a
chocolate mouse somewhere in the room and the children were asked to
be kitties and try to find it. Whenever anyone came very near the
hiding place, Billy miaowed loudly, or if everyone was very far from
it, Billy would mew only faintly. The "kitty" who found the mouse kept
it for a reward.
In another room the children had a chance to hunt for those mittens
which the "naughty kittens" once lost. Many tiny red paper mittens
were scattered throughout the room and were much more easily found
than the mouse.
The supper table delighted the children. In the center of it sat a
big stuffed toy cat surrounded by chocolate mice, and at each child's
place a tiny white plush cat with the child's name on a paper tied to
the neck had been placed. Such toys can usually be bought in five and
ten cent stores.
Pussy-willow sprays laid flat on the tablecloth decorated the table
gracefully. The napkins were the paper ones which feature black cats
at Hallowe'en.
Little ramekins of creamed chicken pleased the children. With the
chicken, Billy's mother served "kitty-cornered" sandwiches of brown
bread filled with cream cheese and chopped nuts. There was hot cocoa
too, and for the last course individual molds of chocolate blanc mange
with whipped cream and a candied cherry on top. Needless to say there
was a birthday cake which was brought in ablaze with candles and set
before Billy to cut.
Each guest received a souvenir chocolate mouse and was ready to
declare upon departure at six that the pussy cat party had been, oh,
so jolly!
A GIRL'S BIRTHDAY LUNCHEON
Once a mother gave a little birthday luncheon for her daughter who was
a freshman in high school. It pleased the fourteen-year-old and her
friends because of the novelty in decorations and menu.
The class colors were green and white, so that scheme was used
throughout. In the center of the table was a green bowl with a few
paper narcissi arranged in a flower holder, Japanese fashion.
Around each plate was a wreath of smilax--any small green vine would
do perfectly well--and above each plate a tiny green candle burning in
a wee holder. The place-cards were tied to the handles of the holders.
Glass dishes of lime drops and wintergreen candies added to the
general green and white effect.
The menu consisted of fruit cocktail with a sprig of mint atop of each
portion, followed by a second course of chicken à la King generously
sprinkled with capers, and accompanied by hot rolls and olives.
Then came hot chocolate with a marshmallow floating in each cup and
milestone salad, which consisted of oblongs of cream cheese into which
numerals cut out of green peppers were pressed. The milestones stood
erect on fresh lettuce leaves and were served with French dressing.
After that a birthday cake was borne in ablaze with fourteen green
tapers and set before the little hostess to cut. Great was the fun
when the fortune favors, baked in the cake, were found by the guests.
Pistachio ice-cream accompanied the cake, but vanilla ice-cream or a
green gelatine dessert would be equally fitting.
The favors were little green vanity bags made from ribbon by the
fourteen-year-old's mother.
THE WOODEN WEDDING
An informal evening party is perhaps the jolliest way to celebrate the
fifth wedding anniversary.
After everybody has arrived, try a wooden smile contest. There will
be any number of humorous attempts, but few will be wooden. The
contestant who smiles most woodenly may receive as a prize a gaily
painted wooden jumping jack or any other wooden toy.
The next amusement can be a progressive one, consisting of putting
together at tables wooden puzzles of all sorts, including jig-saw
puzzles.
Puzzles make good prizes for this contest. One of the carefully packed
wooden boxes of candy is another possibility.
Another occupation that is appropriate and fun-making is a pea and
tooth-pick contest. Wooden tooth-picks and dried peas soaked up are
provided. Each person is then assigned to construct one member of
a tooth-pick wedding party properly. The tooth-pick persons when
finished should form in a parade down the center of the library table.
A light buffet supper or simply ice-cream and coffee may be served
in the dining-room. Decorate the table with a central wooden bowl
containing some simple flowers such as daisies, honeysuckles,
snapdragons, nasturtiums, or whatever flowers are in season.
There may be wooden candlesticks with candles to match the color
scheme and small wooden plates and bowls for candies and nuts.
Serve the ice-cream on wooden plates covered with lace paper doilies,
and give as favors tiny wooden household articles such as dolls'
rolling-pins, clothespins, barrels, washtubs, spinning wheels, and the
like.
THE TIN WEDDING
The tenth wedding anniversary has many possibilities for fun. An
informal social evening or a dinner followed by some jolly stunts are
in order.
In any case, arrange for the dining table a centerpiece of a shiny tin
funnel filled with bright garden or wild flowers surrounded by a frill
of lace paper to represent an old-fashioned, formal bouquet. Use tin
candlesticks with bayberry candles for illumination and scatter tiny
new patty pans with crinkly edges over the table to hold candies and
nuts.
The salad may be served on shiny tin plates covered with lace paper
doilies, the ice-cream in individual patty pans, and the coffee or
punch in tin cups.
At each place put a tiny funnel bouquet, a miniature of the central
one or else some tiny tin toy.
Tin whistles for everybody would promote the hilarity.
The old-fashioned game of "Spin the Platter" would be good to start
the entertainment of the evening. Then may come a "tin" minute paper
and pencil contest to see who can write the most words beginning or
ending with TIN in the allotted ten minutes.
Ten "reel" years of married life may next be shown. This feature is
simply a series of movie-like pantomimes showing humorous events, real
or imaginary, in the life of the host and hostess--given, of course,
by their friends.
A tin band concert will also provide a good time. Those who are in the
band perform on instruments contrived from kitchen utensils or the tin
noise-making novelties which can be obtained in the shops.
A MOCK WEDDING
A mock wedding is a funny way to celebrate one of the numerous early
wedding anniversaries, especially if a group of young married women
friends want to join in a surprise.
The bride may be invited to a chum's house and presently the
procession may appear before her.
The bride should have a cheesecloth or mosquito netting veil with
dried orange peel to hold the folds in place, and she should carry a
bouquet of white chicken feathers tied with white tape--the shower
part can be little bows of rags.
The bridesmaids might all wear the cheapest of farmers' hats, with
huge bunches of goldenrod or asters on them or else such things as
little kitchen utensils sewed on the front in place of flowers.
Bouquets of burdock tied with colored cretonne would be attractive
for them, or possibly as a substitute for the conventional shepherds'
crooks they could carry umbrellas with big bows on the handles. A
third suggestion for the bridesmaids is that they carry grape baskets
filled with none too choice outdoor flowers and weeds.
There should be a flower girl, of course, who can wear an abbreviated
costume. Her hair should be in ringlets with a big ribbon tied around
her head, and she may carry a market basket filled with scraps of
paper, or flowers if you prefer, to scatter in front of the bride.
The ring bearer may carry a curtain ring on a sofa cushion.
At the ceremony, of course, you must omit all the really solemn parts,
but you may let someone make up some questions for the minister to
use. For instance, he may say to the mock bridegroom, "Do you promise
to obey this woman?" Instead of saying, "I will" and "I do," they may
say, "I wilt" and "I doth."
For a wedding breakfast, you might serve creamed codfish in heavy
crockery, and follow it with helpings of cream of wheat either cold or
hot, which can be served to resemble ice cream in little paper cases.
There should be a wedding cake which may be only ginger-bread, and
some kind of grotesque motto may be inscribed in the frosting.
A SILVER WEDDING SHOWER
A little group, girlhood friends of more than twenty-five years
standing, recently planned a pleasant shower for a popular friend, the
president, as it happened, of their fortnightly sewing club, on her
silver wedding anniversary.
None of the ladies was rich and the gifts were planned to cost not
over fifty cents each. Many of them were less than that.
Silver fittings for a work basket were chosen and included a silver
needle case, a silver thimble case, a silver hem gauge, a unique
tatting shuttle, a little silver ripping knife, a cunning strawberry
emery with a silver hull and a wee wax cherry with a silver stem.
The gifts were wrapped in white tissue paper, tied with silver cord
with a tiny shining bell inserted in the center of each knot. They
were presented in a lovely sweet grass sewing basket, which in turn
was wrapped and tied with silver ribbon.
This was not given, however, till the close of the afternoon's
sewing, which had gone on as usual, though there was an atmosphere of
ill-concealed expectation.
Simple refreshments were brought in and served in buffet style.
Home-made ice-cream was passed in little ice cups which had as
decorations around the rim a circlet of glittering silvery tinsel.
"Silver Cake" and bonbons in silver wrappings accompanied the ice
cream.
Last of all, the "shower" was borne in on a silver tray and set before
the surprised guest of honor. A little rhyme explained this turn of
events to the delightfully mystified recipient:
_Because of many a happy hour
With you, well spent, we give this shower,
Just to remember in a way
With love, your silver wedding day_.
As an amusing little contest each lady was asked to write down ten
things she had learned in the last twenty-five years. The replies made
good reading and furnished plenty of conversation till home-going
time.
A CAPE COD LUNCHEON
In remembrance of a happy two weeks spent in a little bungalow on Cape
Cod, one of the girls of the "bunch" gave a quaint luncheon for the
others during the year following.
The invitations bore a tiny spray of bayberry sketched in one corner
and read like this:
_May the bayberry dip and the odor of pine
At this little reunion luncheon of mine,
Bring back all our fun in the house by the sea,
Where we were as jolly as jolly could be_.
On the luncheon table homespun runners were used, crossed in the
center where a brown wicker basket filled with the gray green of
bayberry branches, brightened by the orange of bittersweet, stood on a
mat of fragrant pine.
Green bayberry dips in the simplest of low tin candlesticks lighted
the table and at each cover the place-card was a little outline map of
Cape Cod with the situation of the summer camp conspicuously marked.
The menu consisted of clam cocktails, codfish cakes and tiny pots
of baked beans, hot steamed brown bread cut in small round slices,
blueberry tarts, and coffee.
The favors were wee bayberry "waxes" for the sewing basket, each with
a bit of a bayberry twig peeping from its top.
ANNOUNCEMENTS AND SHOWERS
"How shall I announce my engagement?" The engaged girl we have always
with us, and the next step after the engagement is the announcement
of it. Most girls like to have some kind of little social function to
break the news to their special circle of friends. Usually a mother or
a sister or a chum does the entertaining, though a girl herself may
perfectly well plan and carry out such a party.
There are several sorts of affairs which may serve as a setting for
an announcement. A favorite kind is a luncheon for a group of girl
friends. Even less work is an afternoon tea and to that a girl's men
friends may be asked also, though it's really easier to have girls
only. Another kind of announcement party is the evening affair
to which both men and girl friends are invited and at which the
announcement should be "sprung" as a total surprise as in all other
announcement affairs.
After the engagement is known, immediately the friends of the
bride-to-be begin to think of showers for her. One friend or a group
of friends or her club may be hostesses and give such an affair.
There are different ways of planning them. For instance, they may be
appropriate to the month, like a Christmas Tree Shower in December or
an Indian Summer Shower in November or a Rainy Day Shower in April. Or
they may take as keynotes the engaged girl's special likes, as in the
case of an apple shower, a kitty shower or an old rose shower. And
then again, they may be just plain, ordinary, handkerchief showers, or
linen showers, or kitchen showers, with an original touch somewhere.
"A LITTLE BIRD TOLD ME" LUNCHEON
At a recent engagement luncheon the announcement was made in a unique
way.
A large wooden embroidery hoop was hung from the ceiling over the
table and in the ring perched a gaily painted wooden parrot, the kind
that rocks back and forth when touched.
From the parrot streamers of colored baby ribbon led to the different
places, and tied to the ends of the ribbons were tiny notes in
envelopes. These on being opened showed the names of the engaged
couple and a short rhyme reading thus:
_A little bird told me
A very nice thing,
That Randolph gave Sally
A diamond ring_.
The refreshments followed somewhat the parrot color scheme, with
halves of grapefruit garnished with cherries, chicken à la King,
pimento, walnut and cream cheese salad, orange ice, and little cakes
with colored frosting.
Small celluloid parrots perched on the rims of the glasses were
appropriate souvenirs.
A HAPPINESS TEA
_Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full o' rye,
Four and twenty bluebirds
Baked in a pie;
When the pie was opened
The birds began to sing,
About a certain couple here
Who have some news to spring_.
Thus did one girl announce her engagement in the month of May.
|
.
He himself rarely did anything against the rules and was a good deal of
a model for the other boys.
“I don’t believe that new tavern is a very good place, either,” said
Jack. “Last week they arrested three men there, for getting into a
quarrel over a game of cards. They said the men were drinking heavily
and gambling. That kind of a resort is no place for any students to
visit.”
“Roy Bock is sore on us,” was Andy’s comment. “Every time I meet him he
glares at me as if he’d like to chew me up.”
“I know he is down on us,” answered Pepper.
“That’s because Pepper is sweet on those Ford girls,” said Bart Conners.
“Say, Imp, which are you going to choose when you grow up?”
“Pep has got to stand aside for Jack and Andy,” put in Dale. “Ever
since——”
“Oh, change the subject!” cried Andy, growing red in the face.
“That’s what I say,” added Pepper. “By the way,” he continued. “Somebody
said there was to be a surprise to-night.”
“Exactly—at ten-thirty,” answered Henry Lee.
“What is it?” questioned several.
“Well, if you must know, my cousin from Boston was in town to-day, and
just for the fun of it he had the Cedarville baker make two big
strawberry shortcakes for me. He told me to treat my friends. The baker
is to leave them in a box at the apple-tree on the corner of the campus.
He had a party to cater to, and he said he would leave the cakes at just
ten o’clock.”
“Hurrah for the shortberry strawcakes!” cried Pepper. “Hen, your cousin
is a fellow after my own heart.”
“I wanted to keep it a little quiet,” continued Henry Lee. “For I didn’t
want to invite too many to the spread. I don’t really know how big the
cakes will be—although I know my cousin Dick doesn’t do things by
halves.”
“It is half-past nine now,” said Jack, consulting the time-piece he
carried.
“I’d like one of you to go out with me, after the cakes,” said Henry.
“Each may be in a separate box, you know.”
All volunteered at once, for all loved strawberry shortcake. At last it
was decided that Pepper should go with Henry.
“What’s the matter with making some lemonade to go with the cake?”
ventured Andy. “I know there is a basket of lemons in the storeroom
downstairs, and there is plenty of sugar there, too—and water costs
nothing.”
This plan met with instant approval, and Andy and Dale were appointed a
committee of two to provide the lemonade. By this time the monitor was
coming around, and they had to put out lights. The Hall became very
quiet, for all the cadets were supposed to be in bed.
The four boys slipped downstairs by a back way, and while Andy and Dale
tiptoed to the store-room, Pepper and Henry slipped out of a side-door.
Once outside, the latter put on their shoes, which they had carried in
their hands, and hurried across the broad campus in the direction of the
apple-tree where the baker was to leave the cakes.
“Perhaps he hasn’t arrived yet,” said Pepper. “If not, I suppose all we
can do is to wait.”
When they got to the tree no boxes were there, and they sat down on a
small grassy bank to wait. Beside the bank grew a clump of bushes, which
screened them from the Hall. It was a fairly clear night, with bright
stars shining in the heavens overhead.
“That baker is certainly late,” mused Henry, after a good ten minutes
had passed.
“Getting hungry?” asked Pepper, good-naturedly. “He may have been
delayed on account of the party.”
“I hope he doesn’t forget about the cakes. Perhaps—what’s that?”
The two cadets became silent, as they heard a door close rather sharply.
Looking through the clump of bushes, they saw two figures stealing from
the school building towards them.
“Some of the other fellows are coming,” cried Pepper.
“Why should they bother, Pep?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure. But I think—Well, I never! It is Gus Coulter
and Reff Ritter! What can they be doing out here to-night?”
“Let us get out of sight and find out,” answered Henry, and dragged his
chum to a clump of bushes still farther back from the campus. He had
hardly done this when Gus Coulter and Reff Ritter came up.
“Anybody here yet?” asked Coulter.
“I don’t see anybody,” answered Ritter.
“Good enough! I was afraid they’d get here before us. Where do you
suppose the baker put the cakes?”
“Mumps heard Lee say under this apple-tree.”
“I don’t see them.”
After that the two cadets became silent as they moved around in the
vicinity of the apple-tree. In the meantime Pepper pinched Henry’s arm.
“They are after your strawberry shortcakes,” he whispered. “What a
nerve!”
“Yes, and Mumps, the sneak, told them,” murmured Henry.
“Did you tell Mumps you were to have the cakes?”
“Tell Mumps? Not much! I have no use for that sneak! I suppose he must
have been listening at the door of your dormitory—it’s just like him. If
I ever get the chance, I’ll——”
“Hush! They are coming this way!” interrupted Pepper. “Crouch low, or
they’ll see us!”
The two cadets got down in the deepest shadows they could find. Coulter
and Ritter came quite close, but did not discover the pair. The two
bullies looked up and down the road.
“That baker must have left the cakes and they must have got ’em,” said
Coulter. “Mumps didn’t tell us soon enough. Too bad! I thought sure we’d
be able to spoil their little feast!”
“Maybe we can spoil it yet,” answered Reff Ritter. “Let us go in again
and see what can be done,” and then he and his crony moved once again
toward Putnam Hall and were lost to sight in the darkness.
“That shows what sort of fellows Coulter and Ritter are,” said Pepper,
when they were gone. “And it shows what a sneak Mumps is, too.” As my
old readers know, he, of course, referred to John Fenwick, who had, on
more than one occasion, proved himself to be a sneak of the first water.
Fenwick was a great toady to Dan Baxter, but during that individual’s
absence from the Hall had attached himself to Coulter and Ritter, and
was willing to do almost anything to curry favor with them.
“I am certainly mighty glad they didn’t get the cakes,” was Henry’s
comment. “Wouldn’t they have had the laugh on us!”
“They’ll have the laugh on us, anyway, if we don’t get the cakes. But I
think I hear a wagon coming now.”
Pepper was right—a wagon was coming along the main road at a good rate
of speed. It was the baker’s turnout, and soon he came to a halt near
the apple-tree and leaped out with two flat pasteboard boxes in his
hands.
“Sorry I am late, but that party delayed me,” he said. “There you
are—and you’ll find them the best strawberry shortcakes you ever ate.”
And having delivered the delicacies he hopped into his wagon again and
drove off.
“Well, we’ve got the goods, anyway,” said Pepper, with a sigh of relief.
“Now to get back into the Hall without being discovered.”
“Let us send the cakes up by way of the window,” suggested Henry. “It
won’t do to be caught with them in our possession—if Coulter and Ritter
have squealed.”
The boys ran across the campus, stooping at the roadway to pick up some
pebbles. These they threw up to the window of one of the dormitories. It
was a well-known signal, and the sash was immediately raised and Jack’s
head appeared, followed by the head of Dale.
“What’s wrong?”
“Lower a line and haul up these two boxes,” answered Henry.
“Coulter and Ritter are onto our game,” said Pepper. “Mumps gave us
away.”
No more was said just then. A strong fishing line was let down from
above, and one pasteboard box after another was raised up. Then the two
cadets on the campus ran around to the side door of the Hall.
“As I suspected, they locked it,” said Pepper, rather bitterly.
“Well, we’ve got to get in somehow. Wonder if they can’t let down a rope
of some kind?”
“They might let down the rope in the bath-room,” answered Pepper. He
referred to a rope which was tied to a ring in the bath-room floor. This
had been placed there in case of fire, even though the school was
provided with regular fire escapes.
Once more they summoned Jack and the others, and Jack ran to the
bath-room and let the rope down. Then those below came up hand over
hand, bracing their feet against the wall of the building as they did
so.
As the boys came from the bath-room they heard light footsteps on the
back stairs. Andy and Dale were coming up, each with a big pitcher of
lemonade. Both were snickering.
“Where does the fun come in?” asked Jack, as all hurried to his
dormitory.
“A joke on Coulter and Ritter,” cried Andy, merrily. “We caught them
nosing around downstairs and I called them into the store-room in the
dark. Then I slipped past them and locked them in. They can’t get out
excepting by the window, and then they’ll have to get back into the
Hall.”
“It serves ’em right,” answered Pepper, and then told of what had been
heard by himself and Henry down by the apple-tree. “We ought to pay
Mumps back for spying on us, too,” he added.
It was voted to dispose of the strawberry shortcake and the lemonade at
once. The cakes were cut up and passed around, and voted “the best
ever.” The lemonade was also good, and the cadets drank their fill of
it.
“What are you going to do with the two pitchers?” asked Joe Nelson.
“Sure an’ I have an idea, so I have,” came from Emerald. “Phy not leave
’em in Mumps’s room?”
“That’s the talk,” cried Pepper. “And we’ll leave this chunk of ice,
too,” and he rattled the piece in the pitcher as he spoke.
Taking the two pitchers, the Irish student and Pepper approached the
dormitory in which John Fenwick slept, along with Ritter, Coulter, Nick
Paxton and Dan Baxter. They found the door unlocked and pushed it open.
To their astonishment they met Mumps face to face. He was waiting for
the return of Ritter and Coulter.
“Say, what do you want?” he began, but got no further, for without
ceremony both boys thrust the empty pitchers into his arms. Then Pepper
rammed the piece of ice down Mumps’s neck, and he and Emerald ran off
swiftly and silently.
CHAPTER V
THE INTERVIEW IN THE OFFICE
“Hi, you—er—you let me alone!” sputtered Mumps. “Oh, my back! What did
you want to put ice down my back for? Oh, dear, I’ll be all froze up!”
And he danced around and let the two pitchers fall to the floor with a
crash.
“That’s the time we paid him back for his sneaking tricks,” whispered
Pepper, as he sped for his dormitory.
“Sure, he’s makin’ noise enough to wake the dead, so he is!” was Hogan’s
comment. “If that don’t wake Captain Putnam up he must be slapin’ wid
cotton in his ears an’ ear mufflers on!”
“The best thing we can do is to get in bed and lose no time about it,”
answered the Imp, and began to undress before his bedroom was gained.
The others were speedily acquainted with the turn of affairs, and in
less than three minutes every cadet was undressed and in bed. The
pasteboard boxes had been thrown out of a window and all the crumbs of
the little feast swept up.
Hogan was right, the noise soon awakened Captain Putnam, and the master
of the Hall arose, donned a dressing gown, and sallied forth to see what
was the matter. Then from an upper bed-chamber Mrs. Green, the matron of
the school, appeared. She was a good-natured woman, but any alarm at
night scared her.
“What is the trouble, Captain Putnam?” she asked, in a trembling voice.
“Have burglars gotten into the school?”
“If they have they are making a big noise about it,” answered Captain
Putnam. “I rather think some of the cadets are up to pranks.”
“Perhaps the school is on fire?”
“Is the school on fire?” demanded a student, who just then stuck his
head out of a dormitory doorway.
“If the school is on fire I’m going to get out!” exclaimed another
cadet.
“No! no! There is no fire!” cried the master of the Hall, hastily. “I
believe it is nothing but some boys cutting-up. Listen!”
The sound in Mumps’s dormitory had ceased, but now came another sound
from downstairs—the overturning of a chair, followed by the crash of
glassware.
“That is in the dining-room, or the store-room!” shrieked Mrs. Green.
“Oh, they must be burglars, sir! The boys would not make such a dreadful
noise.”
“I’ll soon get at the bottom of this,” said Captain Putnam, sternly, and
ran down the back stairs as rapidly as his dressing gown would permit.
In the meantime many boys came out into the corridors, and George
Strong, the assistant teacher, appeared.
When Captain Putnam reached the store-room he found the door locked. But
the key was in the lock, and he speedily turned it and let himself in.
It was almost totally dark in the room, and he had not taken two steps
before he felt some broken glass under his feet. The window was open and
he darted to it, to behold two students on the campus outside.
“Stop!” he called out. But instead of obeying the command the students
kept on running, and disappeared from sight around an angle of the
building.
“I will get at the bottom of this—I must get at the bottom of it,” the
master of the Hall told himself, and lost no time in lighting up. A
glance around showed him that a small stand containing some
water-glasses had been tipped over and several glasses were broken.
“That stand was in the way in the dining-room, so we had it removed to
here,” explained Mrs. Green. “Oh, what a mess! Be careful, sir, or
you’ll cut your feet.”
“Mr. Strong, two students just leaped from this window and are outside,”
said the captain, as his assistant appeared at the store-room door.
“Find out who they are and bring them to my office.”
“Yes, sir,” answered George Strong, and ran for a door opening onto the
campus. Once outside he saw Coulter and Ritter in the act of sneaking
off towards the barns and ran after them.
“It will do you no good to run away,” he cried, as he came up and caught
each by the arm. “Ah, so it is you, Coulter, and you, Ritter. You will
report at once at Captain Putnam’s office.”
“We weren’t doing anything,” growled Gus Coulter.
“You can tell the captain your story.”
Meekly Ritter and Coulter marched into the Hall and to the office. They
knew not what to say. They had not dreamed of being locked in the
store-room, and the table with the glassware had been knocked over by
Ritter in an endeavor to get the window open in the dark.
“Well, young men, what have you to say for yourselves?” demanded Captain
Putnam, sternly, as he confronted the pair.
“We broke the glassware by mistake, sir,” answered Reff Ritter. “I will
pay for the damage done.”
“But what were you doing in the store-room at this time of night?”
“We—er—we came down to get—er—to get some lemons,” faltered Coulter.
“I—er—I had a pain in the stomach, and I thought sucking on a lemon
would cure it.”
“Humph! Did you have a pain, too?” and the master of the Hall turned to
Ritter.
“No, sir, but—er—Gus was so sick I thought I had best come down with
him,” answered Ritter.
“Are you still sick, Coulter?”
“Why—er—the pain seems better now, sir. I guess I scared it away!” And
the guilty cadet smiled faintly.
“Indeed! Well, why did you leave the store-room by way of the window?”
“Because while we were inside somebody came and locked the door on us.”
“Oh! Some other students, I presume.”
“Yes, sir. It was too dark for us to see who they were.”
“And you went down for nothing but lemons, eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, you go straight to bed, and after this, if you want any lemons
you call one of the servants or teachers; do you hear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Wait just a moment. What was that noise upstairs?”
“Where?”
“In the neighborhood of your dormitory.”
“I don’t know,” said Coulter.
“Maybe it was made by the boys who locked us in,” was Reff Ritter’s
comment.
“I see. Well, go to bed. If I hear any more noise, or learn of any more
prowling around in the dark, I’ll make an example of somebody,” added
Captain Putnam, and with that the two cadets were dismissed, and they
lost no time in making for their dormitory. There they learned from
Mumps how the sneak had been treated by Pepper and Hogan.
“That chunk of ice was as cold as—as Greenland!” said the sneak,
dismally. “It melted right on my backbone, so how could I help but make
a noise. There are the two pitchers. I wish I could fire them at
somebody’s head!”
“Put them out in the hall—away from our door,” ordered Ritter. “If they
are found here they will make more trouble—and we’ve had enough for one
night.”
“Jack Ruddy’s crowd put this up our back,” was Coulter’s comment. “Oh,
how I wish I could get square with them!”
“I am glad I didn’t go downstairs,” came from Nick Paxton.
“Then you didn’t get hold of the strawberry shortcakes at all,” said
Mumps.
“No, and we don’t know if they got ’em, either,” answered Coulter.
“Maybe you were mistaken, Mumpsy.”
“No, I wasn’t mistaken.”
“Well, we made a fizzle of getting the cakes anyway,” growled Ritter. “I
am going to bed,” and in a thoroughly bad humor he turned in, and his
cronies followed his example.
The joke on Coulter, Ritter, and Mumps could not be kept, and by the
next day many students were laughing at the two bullies and the sneak.
This made the three very angry, but they did not dare to say anything in
public, for fear of getting into trouble with Captain Putnam.
The contest between Coulter and Andy Snow was to come off in the
gymnasium that afternoon after school and, as a consequence, quite a
number of students assembled to witness what was to take place. A large
number thought Andy would win out, yet Gus Coulter had quite a few
supporters, for he was known to be not only large but strong.
When Andy came in Coulter had not yet arrived. At once Andy began to
practice. As soon as he did this Nick Paxton came up to him.
“Do you want to swing against me?” demanded Paxton.
“No, I have a contest with Coulter to-day,” answered Andy shortly. He
had no use for Paxton, and was not above letting the latter know it.
“Afraid, eh?” sneered the other cadet.
“No, I am not afraid of you, Paxton, and you know it,” answered Andy,
promptly.
“Yes, you are afraid,” growled the other boy, and moved off. In a
minute, however, he came back, and seizing hold of a long rope suspended
from the gymnasium ceiling, commenced to swing upon it.
Jack and Pepper came in, and they stood talking to Andy as Paxton
continued to swing back and forth, close at hand. Then Paxton changed
his course, so that his feet struck Jack on the arm.
“Stop that, Paxton!” cried the young major, but before he could say more
the cadet on the rope launched himself forward again, with feet
extended, and caught Andy in the left wrist. The blow was so strong that
the acrobatic youth was bowled over on the polished floor.
“Ouch, my wrist!” cried Andy, as he scrambled up. Then he gazed sharply
at Paxton. “What did you do that for?” he demanded.
“Excuse me, I didn’t mean to touch you,” was the short answer, and
Paxton dropped from the rope and started for the other end of the
gymnasium.
“Hold on there!” cried Pepper, and ran after Paxton.
“What do you want, Pep Ditmore?”
“You struck Andy on purpose!”
“I did not!”
“And I say you did! It was a mean thing to do.”
“Oh, you make me tired,” grunted Nick Paxton, but his tone betrayed his
uneasiness.
“I believe you struck Andy so as to injure him,” said Jack. To this
Paxton made no answer. Instead he moved on, and soon lost himself in a
crowd of boys in another part of the gymnasium.
“Andy, does your wrist hurt much?” questioned Pepper, turning to his
acrobatic chum.
“Yes, it does,” was the answer. “See, he scraped part of the skin off.”
“He ought to be hammered for it,” was Pepper’s emphatic declaration.
Andy walked over to a sink and there allowed the water to run over his
wrist. Soon there was a small swelling, which pained considerably. Jack
helped to tie a handkerchief around the bruised member.
“Well, Snow, are you ready for the contest?” demanded Gus Coulter,
walking up. He had just passed Nick Paxton, and the latter had winked at
him suggestively.
“Andy has been hurt,” explained Jack. “Paxton kicked him in the wrist.”
“Huh! Is this a trick to get out of meeting me?” grumbled Gus Coulter.
“No, it is no trick!” exclaimed Andy.
“Andy, you can’t meet him with your wrist in such bad shape,”
expostulated Pepper.
“Postpone it until to-morrow,” suggested Dale, who was present.
“If he is to meet me at all it must be to-day,” said Coulter, flatly.
“That bruise doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. I’ve got a hurt myself,”
and he showed the back of his left hand, which had been slightly
scratched by a playful kitten several days before.
“That is nothing to Andy’s bruise,” said Pepper. “See, his wrist is
quite swelled.”
“Never mind, I’ll meet him, anyway—and beat him, too,” declared Andy.
“Come on—I am ready if you are!”
CHAPTER VI
ANDY SNOW’S VICTORY
The crowd surrounding Andy were both pleased and astonished by his show
of grit. It was easy to see that his wrist was in bad shape.
“Andy, you can’t do it to-day,” pleaded Pepper. “Make him meet you some
other time.”
“It is to-day or never,” said Gus Coulter, bluntly.
In a few minutes the necessary space was cleared and the contest
commenced. It had been agreed that the trial was to consist of the
following: Each boy was to walk the length of the gymnasium on his hands
and then rise up and “chin the bar,” that is, draw himself up to his
chin on a turning bar. The contestant to “chin the bar” the greatest
number of times was to be the winner.
Harry Blossom had been chosen umpire of the contest, and at a word of
command from him the two students fell upon their hands and started
across the floor. At once Nick Paxton and Reff Ritter began to crowd
Andy.
“You keep back there!” cried Jack, and shoved Paxton out of the way.
Then he and Pepper elbowed their way to Reff Ritter. “Give Andy a show,”
both said.
“Oh, don’t bother me,” growled Ritter, giving Jack a black look.
“Then get out of Andy’s way,” answered the young major.
“That’s right—keep the course clear, or I’ll call the contest off,”
called out Harry Blossom, and Ritter and Paxton had to fall back. Mumps
was also present and wanted to hinder Andy, but he had not the courage
to do anything.
Andy’s wrist pained him greatly, and long before he reached the end of
the gymnasium he felt like giving up the contest. But he kept on, and
finished walking on his hands as quickly as did Coulter. Then he pulled
himself up on one bar while his opponent did the same on another.
“Three for Andy Snow!”
“Four for Gus Coulter!”
“Four for Andy!”
“Five for Gus! Stick to it, Gus, and you’ll win!”
“Andy should not have tried it with that sore wrist!”
Amid encouraging cries and various criticisms, the “chinning” went on
until Gus Coulter had pulled himself up twelve times. Andy had gone up
ten times. Gus was trying his best to get up the thirteenth time, but
seemed unable to make it.
Andy’s wrist felt as if it was on fire, and he had to grit his teeth to
keep from crying out with pain. But he clung to the bar and slowly but
surely went up the eleventh time, and then the twelfth. Then he went up
the thirteenth—just as Coulter did likewise.
“A tie!” was the cry.
Again the two boys tried to rise. But Gus Coulter’s total strength was
gone, and all he could do was to raise himself a few inches. He hung
from the bar and glared at Andy.
“Want to call it a tie?” he gasped.
“No!” answered Andy, shortly, and then went up again. Gus could do no
more, and he dropped to the floor. Then with a quick movement Andy
raised himself up once again, and again, and then a third time—and then
let go.
“Hurrah! Andy Snow wins!”
“He went up seventeen times to Coulter’s thirteen.”
“I can tell you, Andy Snow is a wonder! And he did it with that hurt
wrist, too!”
So the cries ran on, while Gus Coulter sneaked away and out of sight.
Pepper, Jack, and the others surrounded Andy. They saw he was very pale.
“It was too much for you, Andy,” said the young major. “Come on out in
the fresh air,” and he led the way. On the campus he ran into Reff
Ritter once more.
“Ritter, what do you mean by bumping into me,” he said, sharply.
“I wasn’t bumping into you,” was the sharp reply. “Say, maybe you’d like
to meet me in the gym. some day,” went on the bully.
“At chinning?” asked Jack.
“No, on the bars, or the flying-rings.”
“I am not afraid to meet you on the flying-rings,” answered Jack, for
that form of gymnastics appealed to him.
“All right, when do you want to meet me?”
“Any time you say.”
“Done.” And then and there, with the aid of several outsiders, the
contest on the flying-rings was arranged.
“Jack, I am afraid you’ll get the worst of it,” said Pepper, for he
remembered that Reff Ritter had travelled a good deal and had had
several high-class instructors give him lessons in gymnastics.
“Perhaps,” returned the young major. “But I wasn’t going to show the
white feather when he called on me to meet him.”
Further discussion of the subject was cut short by the unexpected
ringing of the school bell. At first the cadets thought this must be
some joke, but soon learned otherwise. They were requested to meet in
the assembly room, and were there addressed by Captain Putnam.
“I have an announcement of considerable importance to make,” said the
master of the Hall. “To-morrow afternoon this school will be visited by
two of my old army friends, General Wallack and Major Darrowburg.
General Wallack has been on duty on the Pacific coast and Major
Darrowburg is one of the instructors at West Point. I shall ask these
two old army friends of mine to inspect the school battalion and witness
a drill. It is perhaps needless for me to say that I wish you all to
appear at your best. I want every uniform carefully brushed, every shoe
polished, and every gun and sword in the pink of condition. These
gentlemen are deeply interested in our school, and I want them to see
for themselves that we are close to the standard set by our government
at West Point. To-morrow we will have dinner an hour earlier than usual,
and that will give all ample time in which to make themselves
presentable. I trust that every officer and every private will take a
proper pride in this exhibition. And I wish to add, that any neglect on
the part of an officer or a private to turn out in a fitting manner will
be severely punished. Now you can go, and I trust you will, every one of
you, add to the honor of Putnam Hall.”
The cadets filed out of the assembly room and scattered in various
directions. The announcement made by Captain Putnam created a keen
interest.
“It will certainly be great to be inspected by two regular United States
Army officers,” observed Pepper. “Gosh! but we’ll have to shine up for
keeps! Guess I’ll begin on my brass buttons right away!” And he said
this so drolly all who heard him laughed.
“I’ve got to clean my gun,” said Stuffer. “I meant to clean it last
week, but it slipped my mind.”
“Sure, an’ it’s meself must have a new braid on me coat,” put in
Emerald. “I’ll go an’ see about it to wanct!” And he hurried off.
“I don’t believe you’ve got much to do, Jack,” said Pepper. “You always
look as if you had stepped out of a bandbox. I don’t see how you manage
it.”
“Well, you know I have to set the rest of the battalion an example,
being major,” was the reply. “If the major isn’t up to the scratch how
can he expect his men to be?”
“Yes, I know that’s the way to look at it, but I really don’t see how
you keep your sword looking so fine, and your scabbard.”
“I polish it pretty often—then it doesn’t come hard, Pep. The whole
secret is in not letting things slip too long. When I find a button
getting loose I don’t wait for it to fall off—I tighten it up right
away.”
While Jack and his chums were talking matters over on the campus
Coulter, Ritter, and Paxton had walked off toward the boat-house. They
took but little interest in the inspection, until an idea regarding it
entered Ritter’s head.
“I did what I could to lame Snow,” said Paxton to Coulter. “I kicked his
wrist as hard as I could.”
“I was not in condition—my stomach has been weak for two days,” was
Coulter’s explanation. “Another time I’ll beat him all to pieces.”
“Say, Reff, you had a run-in with Jack Ruddy, didn’t you?” asked Paxton,
turning to Ritter.
“Yes.” Ritter was clicking his teeth together—something he was in the
habit of doing when out of sorts. “Say, I wonder——” He stopped short.
“What do you wonder?” asked Coulter.
“I was thinking of that exhibition drill.”
“Oh, pshaw! I am not going to worry about that. Why, if we make a fine
showing who will get the credit? Captain Putnam, Jack Ruddy, and the
other officers.”
“I am not going to make a good showing for Jack Ruddy’s benefit,”
growled Paxton.
“I was thinking of something,” resumed Reff Ritter, slowly. “I wonder if
we could manage it.”
“Manage what?” asked the two others.
“Manage to make a whole lot of trouble for Jack Ruddy and his crowd. It
falls in with the first idea I had.”
“I’d like to do it!” declared Paxton.
“Same here,” added Coulter. “Only show us a safe and sure way.”
“You know how Ruddy keeps himself in the very best of condition all the
time.”
“We couldn’t help but know that.”
“Well, supposing we spoilt that condition for him? Supposing we made his
sword and its scabbard look rusty, his buttons dull, and his uniform
full of spots? How would that strike those officers and Captain Putnam
when that inspection came off?”
“I know one thing—Captain Putnam would be as mad as hops,” said Paxton.
“More than likely he would reduce Ruddy to the ranks.”
“Yes, but you can’t work such a scheme,” said Coulter.
“Why not—if we can get hold of his things between now and to-morrow
noon?”
“Because if he finds anything is mussed up he’ll do his best to clean up
before he goes on the parade ground.”
“Yes, but what if he doesn’t find anything mussed up?” queried Reff
Ritter.
“Yes, but—I don’t understand,” said Paxton. “He has eyes—he can readily
see if anything is wrong.”
“Maybe not—if we fix him up in the right kind of a way.”
“Well, how are you going to do it?” demanded Coulter.
“I can do it easily enough, provided I can get down to the Cedarville
drug store to-night.”
“What do you want from the drug store?”
“I want several chemicals. Can I trust you to keep this a secret?” And
Reff Ritter looked around the boat-house to see if any outsiders were in
sight. No one seemed to be around.
“Yes,” said both Coulter and Paxton, promptly.
“Well, my plan is simply this: From the druggist I will get certain
chemicals to be mixed with water. Then, on the sly, we’ll get hold of
Ruddy’s outfit. All we’ll have to do is to apply the chemicals to his
sword, scabbard, buttons, and clothing. We can dilute the chemicals so
that they will act in two, three or four hours, just as we please. At
first the chemicals will not show at all, but after the proper length of
time they will turn everything they are on a sickly green. I know the
action of the chemicals well, for I have used them in photography.”
“That’s a great idea!” cried Coulter. “Let us try it by all means. And
we’ll put some on Andy Snow’s outfit, too!”
“Yes, and on Pepper Ditmore’s things,” broke in Paxton. “What’s the
matter with doing up the whole Ruddy crowd while we are at it?”
“We will,” answered Reff Ritter. “We’ll make that inspection drill the
worst looking affair that ever took place at Putnam Hall!”
“Yes, and bring seven kinds of trouble to Jack Ruddy and his crowd,”
finished Coulter.
CHAPTER VII
AT THE DRUG STORE
Andy wanted his gun cleaned and oiled, and as his wrist was in no
condition for use, Pepper volunteered to do the work. In the meantime
Jack went around to several students whom he knew were usually careless
in their appearance and told them they must brush up.
“I want every cadet to appear in first-class form,” said the young
major. “Captain Putnam is depending upon me to have everything perfect.”
“I’m going to make everything shine like a looking-glass,” said Dale,
“even if I have to work all night to do it.”
“Sure, and I want to look foine meself,” put in Hogan. “Mebbe, some day,
I’ll be afther joining the regular army, I dunno.”
“West Point would just suit me,” added Henry Lee.
Having made a tour of the school and set many cadets to work cleaning
up, the young major looked over his own things. A button on his coat
wanted fastening and that was all. His sword and scabbard were as bright
as a new silver dollar, and it must be confessed that he looked at them
with satisfaction.
“Perhaps Captain Putnam will introduce me to those regular army
officers,” he thought, “and if he does I want to look my very best.”
Some time later, having placed his outfit in the closet where it
belonged, Jack joined Pepper and Andy. The former had finished cleaning
the acrobatic cadet
|
come home to Ellerton. My dear Ellie,” she turned to the girl,
“you have no idea how delighted James is at being here once more. He has
given the farmer notice, and insists that he is going to cultivate his
own acres. He was up this morning at six; fancy, after France and
his late _déjeuner._ And Eliza adores it; she spends the day with a
gardener, planning flowerbeds.”
Anthony slipped into an easy posture on the thick, damp sod. Although
he had not seen Mrs. James Dreen since his childhood, when she had
accompanied her husband abroad to a consular post, he still retained
a pleasant memory of her magnetic and precise charm, the memory of her
harmonious personality, the beauty of her apparel and rings.
“How is Eliza?” he asked politely, and with no inward interest; “she
must be a regular beauty by now.”
“No,” Mrs. Dreen returned crisply, “she is not particularly goodlooking,
but she has always told me the truth. Eliza is a dear.” Anthony lit a
cigarette, and flipped the match in a minute gold arc, extinguished in
the night.
“I am decidedly uneasy about Eliza though,” she continued to Ellie; “to
tell the truth, I am not sure how she will take over here. She is a
serious child; I would say temperamental, but that's such an impossible
word. She is absolutely and transparently honest and outspoken--it's
_ghastly_ at times. The most unworldly person alive; with her thought
and action are one, and often as not her thoughts are appalling. All
that, you know, doesn't spell wisdom for a girl.”
“Yet James and I couldn't bear to... make her harder. A great deal of
care... If she is my daughter, Ellie, she is exquisite--so sensitive,
sympathetic...”
Anthony, absorbed in the misfortune that had overtaken the machine shop,
the impending, inevitable interview with his father, so justly rigorous,
hardly gathered the sense of Mrs. Dreen's discourse. Occasional phrases,
familiar and unfamiliar terms, pierced his abstraction.--“Colombin's.”
“James' siatica.” “Camille Marchais.” Then her words, centering about a
statement that had captured his attention, became coherent, significant.
“Only a small affair,” Mrs. Dreen explained; “to introduce Eliza to
Ellerton. Nothing on a large scale until winter.... Dancing, or rather
what goes down for dancing to-day. I am asking our old intimates, and
have written a few informal cards.”
An automobile drew up smoothly before the Balls; its rear light winked
like an angry red eye through the iron fence. Mrs. Dreen rose. In the
gloom her face was girlish; there was a blur of lace at her throat, a
glimmer of emeralds. “Mind you come,” she commanded Ellie. “And you too,
without fail,” to Anthony. “Now that Hydrangea House is open again we
must have our friends about us. Heavens! Howard Ball's children and
mine grown up!” She moved gracefully across to a garden gate. Anthony
assisted her into the motorcar; the door closed with a snap.
Ellie had sunk back into her chair, and was idly twisting her fingers
in the grass at her side. At her back the ivied wall of the house beyond
stirred faintly with sparrows. A misshapen moon swung apparently up from
and through the building frame opposite, and faint shadows unfolded on
the grass. Anthony flung himself moodily by his sister.
“Sam's taken his car from us,” he informed her; “that will about shut up
the shop.”
“Then perhaps you will bring back the screwdrivers.”
“To-morrow.”
“What are you going to do, Tony?”
“Tell me.”
“A big strong fellow... there mast be something.”
“Mother won't let me play ball in the leagues.”
“Perhaps she will; we'll talk to her; it's better than nothing.”
“I broke a box of rotten perfume at the drugstore, and owe the Doctor
four seventy.”
“It's too bad--father is never free from little worries; you are
always getting into difficulties. You are different from other boys,
Anthony--there don't seem to be any place in life for you; or you don't
make a place, I can't tell which. You have no constructive sense, and no
feeling of responsibility. What do you want to do with yourself?”
“I don't know, Ellie, honestly,” he confessed. “I try like the devil,
make a thousand resolutions, and then--I go off fishing. Or if I don't
things go to the rats just the same.”
“Well,” she rose, “I'm going up. Don't bother father about that money,
I'll let you have it. It's perfectly useless to tell you to return it.”
“I swear you will get it next week,” he proclaimed gratefully. “The
baseball association owes me for two games.”
“Haven't you promised it?”
“That's so!” he exclaimed ruefully. She laughed and disappeared into the
house.
V
A BLACK depression settled over him; life appeared a huge conspiracy
against his success, his happiness. The future, propounded by Ellie, was
suddenly stripped of all glamor, denuded of all optimistic dreams; he
passed through one of those dismaying periods when the world, himself,
his pretentions, were revealed in the clear and pitiless light of
reality. His friends, his circumstances, his hopes, held out no promise,
no thought of pleasure. Behind him his life lay revealed as a series
of failures, before him it was plotted without security. The plan, the
order, that others saw, or said that they saw, presented to him only a
cloudy confusion. The rewards for which others struggled, aspired, which
they found indispensable, had been ever meaningless to him--to money
he never gave a thought; a society organized into calls, dancing,
incomprehensible and petty values, never rose above his horizon.
He was happiest in the freedom of the open, the woods; in the easy
company of casual friends, black or white, kindly comment. He would
spend a day with his dogs and gun, sitting on a stump in a snowy field,
listening to the eager yelping in the distant, blue wood, shooting
a rare rabbit. Or tramping tirelessly the leafy paths of autumn. Or,
better still, swinging through the miry October swales, coonhunting
after midnight with lantern and climbers.
But now those pleasures, in anticipated retrospect, appeared bald,
unprofitable. Prolonged indefinitely, he divined, they would pall; they
did not offer adequate material, aim, for the years. For a moment he
saw, grinning hatefully at him, the spectre of what he might become; he
passed such men, collarless and unshaven, on the street comers, flinging
them a scornful salutation. He had paid for their drinks, hearkening
negligently to their stereotyped stories, secretly gibing at their
obvious goodfellowship, their eager, tremulous smiles. They had been, in
their day, great rabbit hunters... detestable.
The mood vanished, the present closed mercifully about him, leaving him
merely defiant. The townclock announced the hour in slow, jarring
notes. A light shone above from Ellie's room, and he heard his father's
deliberate footsteps in the hall, returning from the Ellerton Club,
where, as was his invariable nightly habit, he had played cooncan. The
moon, freed from the towering beams, was without color.
Anthony rose, and flung away a cold, stale cigarette; the world was just
like that--stale and cold. He proceeded toward the house, when he heard
footfalls on the pavement; in the obscurity he barely made out a man and
woman, walking so closely as to be hardly distinguishably separate. They
stopped by the fence, only a few feet from where he stood concealed in
the shadows, and the man took the woman's hands in his own, bending over
her. Then, suddenly, clasping her in his arms, he covered her upturned
face with passionate kisses. With a little, frightened gasp she clung
to his shoulders. The kisses ceased. Their strained, desperate embrace
remained unbroken.--It seemed that each was the only reality for the
other in a world of unsubstantial gloom, veiled in the shifting, silvery
mist of a cold and removed planet. The woman breathed with a deep,
sobbing inspiration; and, when she spoke, Anthony realized that he was
eavesdropping, and walked swiftly and cautiously into the house.
But the memory of that embrace; accompanied him up the stairs, into his
room. It haunted him as he lay, cool and nearly bare, on his bed.
It filled him with a profound and unreasoning melancholy, new to his
customary, unconscious animal exuberance. All at once he thought of the
redhaired girl who liked port wine; and, as he fell asleep, she stood
before him, leering slyly at the side of that other broken shape which
threatened him out of the future.
VI
THE shed that held the machine shop and garage fronted upon an informal
lane skirting the verdurous border of the town. Beyond the fence
opposite a broad pasturage dipped and rose to the blackened ruins of
a considerable brick mansion, now tenanted by a provident colony of
Italians; further hill topped green hill, the orchards drawn like
silvery scarves about their shoulders, undulating to the sky. Back of
the shed ranged the red roofs and tree-tops of the town.
When Anthony arrived at the seat of his industry the grass was flashing
with dew and the air a thrill with the buoyant piping of robins. He
found the door open, and Alfred Craik awaiting him.
“She's gone,” Alfred informed him.
“Sam told me last night; it was your infernal tinkering... you can't let
a machine alone,” Anthony dropped beside the other on the door sill.
“Could we get another car, do you think?” Alfred demanded; “I had almost
finished a humming experiment on Sam's.”
“This garage is closed,” Anthony pronounced; “it's out of existence. The
family are yelping for the screwdrivers. What do we owe?”
“Three ninety to Feedler for 'gas,' and a month's rent.”
“We're bankrupt,” the other immediately declared. He rose, and proceeded
to collect the tools that littered the floor; then he removed the sign,
“Ball and Craik. Machine Shop and Garage.”, from the door, and the shed
relapsed into its nondescript, somnolent decay.
“There's a game with Honeydale to-day,” Anthony resumed his seat; “I'm
to pitch that, and another Saturday; and, hear me, boy, I need the
money.”
Alfred gazed over the orchards, beyond the hills, into the sky, and made
no answer. It was evident that he was lost in a vision of gloriously
disrupted machinery. His silence spread to Anthony, who settled back
with a cigarette into the drowsy stillness. The minutes passed, hovering
like bees, and merged into an hour. They could hear a horse champing in
the pasture; the wail of an Italian infant came to them thinly across
the green; behind them sounded mellow the tin horn of the shad vendor.
Anthony roused himself reluctantly, recalling the debt he had to
discharge at the drugstore. Elbe's crisp five dollar bill lay in his
pocket. “Later,” he nodded, and made his way over the shady brick
pavements, through the cool perspective of maple-lined streets, where
summer dresses fluttered in spots of subdued, bright color, to Doctor
Allhop's. The Doctor was absent, and Anthony tendered the money, with a
short explanation, to the clerk. The latter smartly rang the amount on
the cash register, and placed thirty cents on the counter.
“Two packs of Dulcinas,” Anthony required, and dropped the cigarettes
into his pocket. He made his way in a leisurely fashion toward home and
the midday meal. At the table his mother's keen grey eyes regarded him
with affectionate concern. “How do you feel, Tony?” she asked. “You were
coughing last night... take such wretched care of yourself--” His father
glanced up from the half-masted sheet of the Ellerton _Bugle_. He was a
spare man, of few words, with a square-cut beard about the lower part
of an austere countenance. “What's the matter with him?” he demanded
crisply.
“Nothing,” Anthony hastily protested; “you ought to know mother.”
After lunch he extended himself smoking on the horsehair sofa in the
front room. It was a spacious chamber, with a polished floor, and
well-worn, comfortable chairs; in a corner a lacquered table bore old
blue Canton china; by the door a jar of roses dropped their pink petals;
over the fireplace a tall mirror held all in silvery replica.
“Thirty cents, please,” Ellie demanded; “I must get some stamps.”
A wave of conscious guilt, angry self condemnation, swept over him. “I'm
sorry, Ellie,” he admitted; “I haven't got it.”
She stood regarding him for a moment with cold disapproval. She was a
slender woman, past thirty, with dark, regular features and tranquil
eyes; carelessly dressed, her hair slipped over her shoulder in a cool
plait.
“I am sorry,” he repeated, “I didn't think.”
“But it wasn't yours.”
“You'll get every pretty penny of it.” He rose and in orderly discretion
sought his room, where he changed into his worn, grey playing flannels.
VII
A HIGH board fence enclosed the grounds of the Ellerton Baseball
Association; over one side rose the rude scaffolding of a grandstand,
protected from sun and rain by a covering of tarred planks; a circular
opening by a narrow entrance framed the ticket seller; while around the
base of the fence, located convenient to a small boy's eye, ran a
girdle of unnatural knotholes, highly improved cracks, through which an
occasional fleeting form might be observed, a segment of torn sod, and
the fence opposite.
A shallow flood of spectators, drawn from the various quarters of the
town, converged in a dense stream at the entrance to the Grounds;
troops of girls with brightly-hued ribbands about their vivacious arms,
boisterous or superior squads of young males, alternated with their more
sober elders--shabby and dejected men, out at elbows and work, in search
of the respite of the sun and the play; baseball enthusiasts, rotund
individuals with ruddy countenances, saturnine experts with scorecards.
Anthony observed the throng indifferently as he drew near the scene of
his repeated, past triumphs, the metal plates in his shoes grinding into
the pavement. A small procession followed him, led by a colored youth,
to whose dilapidated garments clung the unmistakable straws and aroma of
the stable, bearing aloft Anthony's glove, and “softing” it vigorously
from a natural source; a boy as round and succulent as a boiled pudding,
with Anthony's cap beneath his arm, leaving behind him a trail of peanut
shells, brought up the rear of this democratic escort.
There was little question in Anthony's mind of his ability to triumph
that afternoon over his opponents from a near-by town; their “battery,”
he told himself, was an open book to him--a slow, dropping ball here, a
speedy one across the fingers of that red-haired fielder who habitually
flinched... and yet he wished that it had not been so hot. He thought
of the game without particular pleasure; he was conscious of a lack of
energy; his thoughts, occupied with Elli's patent contempt, stung him
waspishly.
A throng of players and hangerson filled the contracted dressing
quarters beneath the grandstand, and he was instantly surrounded by
vociferous familiars. The captain of the Ellerton team drew him aside,
and tersely outlined a policy of play, awaiting his opinion. Anthony
nodded gravely: suddenly he found the other's earnestness a little
absurd--the fate of a nation appeared to color his accents, to hang upon
the result of his decision. “Sure,” he said absently, “keep the field
in; they won't hit me.”
The other regarded him with a slight frown. “Hate yourself to-day, don't
you?” he remarked. “Lay that crowd cold on the plate, though,” he added;
“there's a man here from the major league to look you over. Hinkle told
my old man.”
A quickening of interest took possession of Anthony; they had heard of
him then in the cities, they had discovered him worthy of the journey to
Ellerton, of investigation. A vision of his name acclaimed from coast to
coast, his picture in the playing garb of a famous organization filling
the Sunday sheets, occupied his mind as he turned toward the field. The
captain called mysteriously, “Don't get patted up with any purple stuff
handed you before the game.”
The opposing team, widely scattered, were warming; a pitcher, assuming
the attitudes of an agonising cramp, was indulging in a preliminary
practice; the ball sped with a dull, regular thud into the catcher's
mit. A ball was tossed to Anthony, a team mate backed against the fence,
and, raising his hands on high, he apparently overcame all the natural
laws of flight. He was conscious of Hinkle, prosperous proprietor of the
Ellerton Pool Parlor, at his back with a stranger, an ungainly man,
close lipped, keen of vision. There were intimations of approval. “A
fine wing,” the stranger said. “He's got 'em all,” Hinkle declared.
“Hundreds of lads can pitch a good game,” the other told him, “now and
again, they are amatoors. One in a thousand, in ten thousand, can play
ball all the time; they're professionals; they're worth money... I want
to see him act...” they moved away.
The players were called in from the field, the captains bent over a
tossed coin; and, first to bat, the Ellerton team ranged itself on
benches. Then, as the catcher was drawing on his mask, Hinkle and
another familiar town figure, who dedicated his days to speeding weedy
horses in red flannel anklets from a precarious wire vehicle, stepped
forward from the grandstand. “Mr. Anthony Ball!” Hinkle called. A
sudden, tense silence enveloped the spectators, the players stopped
curiously. Anthony turned with mingled reluctance and surprise.
Something shone in Hinkle's hand: he saw that it was a watch. “As a
testimonial from your Ellerton friends,” the other commenced loudly.
Anthony's confused mind lost part of the short oration which followed
“... recognition of your sportsmanship and skill... happy disposition.
The good fame of the Ellerton Baseball team... predict great future on
the national diamond.”
A storm of applause from the grandstand rippled away in opposite
directions along the line sitting by the fence; boys with their mouths
full of fingers whistled incredibly. Hinkle held out the watch, but
Anthony's eyes were fixed upon the ground. He shook the substantial mark
of Ellerton's approval, so that the ornate fob glittered in the sun,
but Anthony's arms remained motionless at his sides. “Take it, you
leatherkop,” a voice whispered fiercely in his ear. 'And with a start,
he awkwardly grasped the gift. “Thank you,” he muttered, his voice
inaudible five yards away. He wished with passionate resentment that the
fiend who was yelling “speech!” would drop dead. He glanced up, and the
sight of all those excited, kindly faces deepened his confusion until
it rose in a lump in his throat, blurred his vision, in an idiotic,
childish manner. “Ah, _call_ the game, can't you,” he urged over his
shoulder.
The first half inning was soon over, without incident; and, as Anthony
walked to the pitcher's “box,” the necessity to surpass all previous
efforts was impressed upon him by the watch, by the presence of that
spectator from a major league who had come to see him “act.” He wished
again, in a passing irritation, that it had not been so hot. Behind the
batter he could see the countenance of “Kag” Lippit staring through the
wires of his mask. “Kag” executed a cabalistic signal with his left arm,
and Anthony pitched. The umpire hoarsely informed the world at large
that it had been a strike. A blast of derisive catcalls arose from the
Ellerton partisans; another strike, shriller catcalls, and the batter
retired after a third ineffectual lunge amid a tempest of banter.
The second batter hit a feeble fly negligently attached by the third
baseman, who “put it over to first” in the exuberance of his contempt.
The third Anthony disposed of with equal brevity.
He next faced the pitcher, and, succumbing to the pressure of
extraordinary events, he swung the bat with a tremendous effort, and the
flattened ball described a wide arc into the ready palms of the right
fielder. “You're _Out!_” the umpire vociferated. The uncritical portion
of the spectators voiced their pleasure in the homeric length of the
hit, but the captain was contemptuously cold as Anthony returned to the
bench. “The highschool hero,” he remarked; “little Willie the Wallop. If
you don't bat to the game,” he added in a different tone, “if you were
Eddie Plank I'd bench you.”
That inning the Ellerton team scored a run: a youth hurtling headlong
through the dust pressed his cheek affectionately upon the dingy square
of marble dignified by the title of home, while a second hammered him
violently in the groin with the ball; one chorus shrieked, “out by
a block!” another, “safe! safe!” he was “safe as safe!” the girls
declared. The umpire's voice rose authoritatively above the tumult.
“Play ball! he's safe!”
Anthony pitched that inning faultlessly; never had ball obeyed him so
absolutely; it dropped, swung to the right, to the left, revolved or
sped dead. The batters faded away like ice cream at a church supper. As
he came in from the “box” the close-lipped stranger strode forward and
grasped his shoulder. “I want to see you after the game,” he declared;
“don't sign up with no one else. I'm from--” he whispered his persuasive
source in Anthony's ear. The captain commended him pithily. “He's got
'em all,” Hinkle proclaimed to the assembled throng.
When Anthony batted next it was with calculated nicety; he drove the
ball between shortstop and second base, and, by dint of hard running,
achieved a rapturously acclaimed “two bagger.” The captain then merely
tapped the ball--breathlessly it was described as a “sacrifice”--and
Anthony moved to the third base, and a succeeding hit sent him “home.”
Another run was added to the Ellerton score, it now stood three to
nothing in their favor, before Anthony returned to the dusty depression
from which he pitched.
He was suddenly and unaccountably tired; the cursed heat was worse than
ever, he thought, wiping a wet palm on his grimy leg; above him the sky
was an unbroken, blazing expanse of blue; short, sharp shadows shifted
under the feet of the tense players; in the shade of the grandstand the
dresses, mostly white, showed here and there a vivid note of yellow
and violet, the crisp note of crimson. The throbbing song of a
thrush floated from a far hedge... it stirred him with a new unrest,
dissatisfaction... “Kag” looked like a damned fool grimacing at him
through the wire mask--exactly like a monkey in a cage. The umpire in
his inflated protector, crouching in a position of rigorous attention,
resembled a turtle. He pitched, and a spurt of dust rose a yard before
the plate. “Ball one!” That wouldn't do, he told himself, recalling the
substantially expressed confidence, esteem, of Ellerton. The captain's
sibilant “steady” was like the flick of a whip. With an effort which
taxed his every resource he marshalled his relaxed muscles into an
aching endeavor, centred his unstable thoughts upon the exigencies of
the play, and retired the batter before him. But he struck the next
upon the arm, sending him, nursing the bruise, to first base. He saw
the captain grimly wave the outfielders farther back; and, determined,
resentful, he struck out in machinelike order the remaining batters. But
he was unconscionably weary; his arm felt as though he had been pitching
for a week, a month; and he dropped limp and surly upon the sod at a
distance from the players' bench.
He batted once more, but a third “out” on the bases saved him from the
fluke which, he had been certain, must inevitably follow. As he stood
with the ball in his hand, facing the batter, he was conscious of an air
of uncertainty spreading like a contagion through the Ellerton team;
he recognized that it radiated from himself--his lack of confidence
magnified to a promised panic. The centre fielder fumbled a fly directly
in his hands; there was a shout from Ellerton's opponents, silence in
the ranks of Ellerton.
Anthony pitched with a tremendous effort, his arm felt brittle; it felt
as though it was made of glass, and would break off. He could put no
speed into the ball, his fingers seemed swollen, he was unable to grip
it properly, control its direction. The red-haired player whom he had
despised faced him, he who habitually flinched, and Anthony essayed to
drive the ball across his fingers. The bat swung with a vicious crack
upon the leather sphere, a fielder ran vainly back, back....
The runner passed first base, and, wildly urged by a small but
adequately vocal group of wellwishers, scorned second base, repudiated
third, from which another player tallied a run, and loafed magnificently
“home.”
From the fence some one called to Anthony, “what time is it?” and
achieved a huge success among the opposition. His captain besought him
desperately to “come back. Where's your pep' went? you're pitching like
a dead man!” Confusion fell upon the team in the field, and, in its
train, a series of blunders which cost five runs. After the inning
Anthony stood with a lowered, moody countenance. “You're out of this
game,” the captain shot at him; “go home and play with mother and the
girls.”
He left the field under a dropping fire of witticisms, feebly stemmed by
half-hearted applause; Hinkle frowned heavily at him; the man from the
major league had gone. Anthony proceeded directly through the gate
and over the street toward home. The taste of profound Humiliation, of
failure, was bitter in his mouth, that failure which seemed to lie at
the heart of everything he attempted, which seemed to follow him like
his shadow, like the malicious influence of a powerful spite, an enmity
personal and unrelenting. The sun centred its heat upon his bared head
with an especial fervor; the watch, thrust hastily in a pocket, swung
against his leg mockingly; the abrupt departure of that keeneyed
spectator added its hurt to his self pride.
VIII
HE maintained a surly silence throughout dinner; but later, on
discovering a dress shirt laid in readiness on his bed, and recalling
the purport of Mrs. James Dreen's call, he announced on the crest of an
overwhelming exasperation that he would go to no condemmed dance. “Ellie
can't go alone,” his mother told him from the landing below; “and do
hurry, Tony, she's almost dressed.” The flaring gas jet seemed to coat
his room with a heavy yellow dust; the night came in at the window as
thickly purple as though it had been paint squeezed from a tube. He
slowly assembled his formal clothes. An extended search failed to reveal
the whereabouts of his studs, and he pressed into service the bone
buttons inserted by the laundry. The shirt was intolerably hot and
uncomfortable, his trousers tight, a white waistcoat badly shrunken;
but a collar with a frayed and iron-like edge the crowning misery. When,
finally, he was garbed, he felt as though he had been compressed into an
iron boiler; a stream of perspiration coursed down the exact middle
of his back; his tie hung in a limp knot. Fiery epithets escaped at
frequent intervals.
On the contrary, Ellie was delightfully cool, orderly; she waved a lacy
fan in her long, delicate fingers. The public vehicle engaged to convey
them to the Dreens, a mile or more beyond the town, drew up at the door
with a clatter of hoofs. It was an aged hack, with complaining joints,
and a loose iron tire. A musty smell rose from the threadbare cushions,
the rotting leather. The horse's hoofs were now muffled in the dusty
country road; shadowy hedges were passed, dim, white farmhouses with
orange, lighted windows, the horizon outspread in a shimmering blue
circle under the swimming stars.
Anthony smoked a cigarette in acute misery; already his neck felt
scraped raw; a button flew jubilantly from his waistcoat; and his
improvised studs failed in their appointed task. “I'm having the hell of
a good time, I am,” he told Ellie satirically.
They turned between stone pillars supporting a lighted grill, advanced
over a winding driveway to Hydrangea House, where they waited for
a motor to move from the brilliantly-illuminated portal. A servant
directed Anthony to the second floor, where he found a bedchamber
temporarily in service as coat room, occupied by a number of _men_.
Most of them he knew, and nodded shortly in return to their careless
salutations. They belonged to a variety that he at once envied and
disdained: here they were thoroughly at ease, their ties irreproachable,
their shirts without a crease. Drawing on snowy gloves they discussed
women and society with fluency, gusto, emanating an atmosphere of
cocktails.
Anthony produced his gloves in a crumpled wad from the tail of his coat
and fought his way into them. He felt rather than saw the restrained
amusement of his fellows. They spoke to him gravely, punctiliously
proffered cigarettes; yet, in a vague but unmistakable manner, he was
made to feel that he was outside their interests, ignorant of their
shibboleth. In the matter of collars alone he was as a Patagonian to
them. He recalled with regret the easy familiarity, the comfort, of
Doctor Allhop's drugstore.
Then, throwing aside cigarettes, patting waistcoats into position, they
streamed down to the music. The others found partners immediately, and
swung into a onestep, but Anthony stood irresolutely in the doorway.
The girls disconcerted him with their formal smiles, their bright, ready
chatter. But Ellie rescued him, drawing him into the dance. After which
he sought the porch that, looped with rosevines, crossed the face of the
long, low house. There, with his back against a pillar, he found a cool
spot upon the tiles, and sought such comfort as he could command.
Long windows opening from the ballroom were now segments of whirling
color, now filled with gay streams, ebbing and returning. Fragmentary
conversation, glowing cigarettes, surrounded him. Behind the pillar at
his back a girl said, softly, “please don't.”
Then he saw Ellie, obviously searching for him, and he rose. At her
side was a slim figure with a cloud of light hair. “There he is!” Ellie
exclaimed; “Eliza... my brother, Anthony.”
He saw that her eyes opened widely, and that her hair was a peculiar,
bright shade. Ginger-colored, he thought. “I made Ellie find you,” she
told him; “you know, you must ask me to dance; I won't be ignored at my
own party.”
He muttered awkwardly some conventional period, annoyed at having
been found, intensely uncomfortable. In a minute more he found himself
dancing, conscious of his limp tie, his crumpled and gaping shirt. He
swung his partner heavily across the room, colliding with a couple
that he shouldered angrily aside. The animation swiftly died from Eliza
Dreen's countenance; she grew indifferent, then cold. And, when the
music ceased, she escaped with a palpable sigh of relief. He was
savagely mopping his heated face on the porch when, at his elbow, a
clear voice captured his attention. “A dreadful person,” it said, “...
like dancing with a locomotive... A regular Apache.”
He turned and saw that it was Eliza Dreen, gathering from her swift
concern both that he had been the subject of her discourse, and that she
was aware that he had overheard it. Back at his post at the pillar
he promised himself grimly that never again would he be found in such
specified company. He stripped his gloves from his wet palms, and flung
them far across the lawn, then recklessly eased his collar. There was
a sudden whisper of skirts behind him, when Eliza seated herself on the
porch's edge, at his side.
IX
I AM a loathsome person at times,” she informed him; “and to-night I
was rather worse than usual.”
“I do dance like a--locomotive,” involuntarily.
“It doesn't matter how you dance,” she proceeded, “and you mustn't
repeat it, it isn't generous.” Suddenly she laughed uncontrollably.
“You looked so uncomfortable... your collar,” it was lost in a bubbling,
silvery peal. “Forgive me,” she gasped.
“I don't mind,” he assured her. All at once he didn't; the sting had
vanished from his pride; he smiled. He saw that she wore a honey-colored
dress, with a strand of pearls about her slim throat, and that her feet,
in satin, were even smaller than Ellie's. Her hair resembled more a
crown of light than the customary adornment. “I didn't want to come,” he
confided: “I hate, well--going out, dancing.”
“It doesn't suit you,” she admitted frankly; “you are so splendidly
bronzed and strong; you need,” she paused, “lots of room.”
For this Anthony had no adequate reply. “I have this with some one,”
she declared as the music recommenced, “but I hope they don't find me;
I hate it for the moment... I'll show you a place; it's very wicked of
me.” She rose and, waving him to follow, slipped over the grass. Beyond
the house she stopped in the shadowy vista of a pergola; vines shut out
the stars, walled them in a virid, still gloom. She sank on a low stone
bench, and he found the grass at her feet. A mantle of fine romance
descended upon his shoulders, of subtile adventure, prodigious daring.
Immaculate men, pearl-studded, were searching for her, and she
had hidden herself from them with him. A new and pleasant sense of
importance warmed him, flattered his self-esteem. He felt strangely at
ease, and sat in silent contentment. The faint sound of violins, a burst
of distant laughter, floated to him.
“It seems as if the world were rushing on, out there, without us,” Eliza
finally broke the silence, “as if they were keeping a furious pace,
while we sat in some everlasting, quiet wood, like Fontainebleau. Don't
you adore nature?”
“I knock about a lot outside,” he admitted cautiously, “often I stay out
all night, by the Wingohocking Creek. There's a sort of cave where
you can hear the falls, and the owls hunting about. I cook things in
clay--fish, chickens,” he paused abruptly at the latter item, recalling
the questionable source of his supply. “In winter I shoot rabbits with
Bert Woods, he's a barber, and Doctor Allhop, you know--the druggist.”
“I am sure that your friends are very nice,” she promptly assured him.
“Bert's crazy about girls,” he remarked, half contemptuously.
“And you... don't care
|
from beneath
a low tree and spoke:
“Who am dat?”
“Toots,” said Frank, “is it you?”
“Bress de Lawd!” cried the colored boy. “It am Mistah Frank him
ownself! Oh, sah, I’s po’erful glad yo’ has come!”
Then he embraced Frank.
Frank knew that whatever might happen the colored boy would remain
faithful and true, and he appreciated Toots’ affection.
“How are things, Toots?”
“All done gone wrong--done gone wrong!” was the answer. “I dunno w’at’s
de mattah, sah, but I knows suffin’ hab happened.”
“Why were you out here under this tree?”
“Watchin’ fo’ yo’, sah. De p’ofessah sent a lettah to yo’, an’ I
s’pected yo’ was comin’.”
“He did not say I was coming?”
“No, sah. He’s been powerful strange, sah.”
“Strange? How?”
“He act queer, sah; an’ now he hab tooken his bed.”
“Taken his bed? Is he ill?”
“Think so, sah; but he won’t let me sen’ fo’ a doctah. Said he’d
shoot de fus’ doctah showed his haid roun’ yeah, sah, an’ he keeps de
revolvah undah his pillow.”
Frank whistled.
“I should say I have not arrived any too soon,” he muttered. “Can’t
tell what the professor might take a fancy to do if he is acting that
way.”
“I hab been berry scat ob him, sah!”
“I don’t wonder at that. Let me into the house without arousing
anybody.”
“Dar am nobody to ’rouse ’cept de p’fessah an’ de cook. Yo’ can go
right in, sah. Come on, sah.”
So Toots admitted Merry to the house, having taken the grip from him.
Frank decided to go directly to the room of the professor, and mounted
the stairs at once. The door of the chamber occupied by the professor
was standing slightly ajar, and a light was burning within.
Frank pushed open the door and entered, stepping so lightly that he was
not heard by the man.
The professor was in bed. He looked pale and careworn, and there were
great hollows in his cheeks. He was not asleep, but lay gazing steadily
up at the ceiling, his hands, which rested on the white spread,
clasping and unclasping nervously.
There was no bitterness nor resentment in Frank’s heart, only pity as
he stood there looking at the unfortunate man, for he could see that
his guardian had been terribly shaken by all he had passed through. The
lips of the man moved at times, but he spoke no words that Frank could
hear.
After a little, the professor slowly turned his head, and his eyes
rested on Frank. He did not start or show surprise.
Now Merry advanced quickly, saying:
“Professor, I have come! You are ill?”
“Yes,” said the man, in a weak voice; “I see you have come, but you are
too late.”
“Too late? Oh, no, professor. I came as soon as possible after
receiving your letter. I am so sorry to see this misfortune has
completely upset you.”
“You are making a mistake.”
“I? A mistake? How?”
“You should not call me professor.”
“Why not?”
“The professor, Horace Scotch, is a rascal. Don’t interrupt me. I
have thought it all out lying here. That man is a rascal. He should be
properly punished. Any man that uses in speculation money held in trust
by him is a rascal. It is a criminal act. Horace Scotch must receive
his just deserts.”
“My dear professor----”
The man made a weak motion with one thin hand.
“That is where you make the mistake. I am not the professor. He is
gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yes.”
“What do you mean?”
“Vanished.”
“No, professor----”
“He is a coward, or he would not have run away!” faintly but savagely
cried the man on the bed. “I did not know he had gone till I looked in
the mirror. Till that moment I was thinking myself the professor, but
when I looked in the mirror I saw I was quite another man. How he did
it--how he slipped away and left me in his place I cannot tell. But
here I am, and he is gone. He must be overtaken! He must be captured!
He must be punished! You will do it?”
“No! no! I hold no bitterness, for I am sure he did not mean to
squander my fortune. Oh, professor, you need have no fear that I will
seek to punish you!”
“I--fear? Ha! I see it now! Somehow he left me in his place, and I
am the one who is to suffer. Ha! ha! ha! Crafty rascal. Well, I know
something was holding me here--I knew there was a spell upon me, for my
strength was gone. He put a spell upon me that I might not get away,
did he? Ha! ha! ha! Crafty rascal!”
Frank looked into the eyes of the man. They were bright and burning,
as if they reflected the fires that were consuming his soul. It was
not stimulation, Frank felt certain of that. The professor’s mind was
shaken--his reason was tottering on its throne.
Instantly Frank decided to humor him and try to soothe his mind.
“Let the rascal go,” he said, softly. “No one shall be punished.
Perhaps it is better for me that he should lose my small fortune than
that he should have doubled it. If he had succeeded in making me very
rich, I might have become a worthless fellow in the world, content to
live on what I possessed. Now I shall have to become a worker, and only
workers are worthy to live.”
The professor clasped his fingers very tightly together and stared at
the ceiling for some seconds.
“You are right about that,” he said, at last; “but that does not make
him any less a criminal. Why do you suppose that pain darts through my
head when I try to think? It goes through my eyes and up into the top
of my head like a knife.”
“You should not think. What you need is rest--is sleep.”
“I cannot sleep. I have tried. No matter. He left me here to suffer in
his place. Perhaps it is right that I should not sleep.”
“No; it is wrong. Wait. I must wash off the dust. I will return in a
short time.”
Then Frank went out, found Toots and sent him in haste for the village
doctor.
The doctor came and made an examination. He talked with Scotch, asking
him many questions. The professor was rambling in his talk. The doctor
left some medicine and called Frank from the room.
“His condition is very serious,” said the physician, sagely. “He
is threatened by a complete loss of his mental faculties. He must
have perfect rest, and light, nourishing food. Give him the medicine
according to the directions I have written, and I will call early in
the morning. Good-night.”
Then he departed.
CHAPTER V.
THE MAN WHO WORKED THE WIRES.
All through the weary night Frank watched at the bedside of the
professor, scarcely closing his eyes to sleep for a moment. When the
gray light of morning came the sick man lay in a doze, for the medicine
had taken effect at last.
Then Frank was relieved by Toots, and he sought rest.
The doctor sent an experienced nurse, who arrived by nine o’clock that
forenoon. The doctor himself came shortly after, and Frank, who had
been unable to sleep long, had a talk with him after he had seen the
professor.
The doctor was very grave.
“The strain upon the man has been severe,” he said. “He may come round
all right in a day or two. I hope to avert brain fever.”
“Do everything you can for him, doctor,” Merry urged. “You shall be
well paid, for there must be still something left to pay bills with.”
The physician looked at Frank in a strange manner.
“This man has squandered your fortune?”
“No; he simply misapplied it.”
“And you hold no hard feelings against him?”
“No; I am sure he thought he was doing what was for the best. I pity
him.”
“You are a strange young man.”
“Why so?”
“Few persons in your place would care to see him live, unless it were
to punish him.”
“What good would it do me to punish him? That would not bring my
money back, and it would give me no satisfaction. I think he is being
punished now.”
“You are generous.”
“I fail to see the generosity. A person who could wish to harm that
poor, old man would be cruel.”
“They say Darius Conrad led him into the first speculations. Have you
no feelings against him?”
“Yes! He is the one who should be punished; but he is rich and
powerful, and I am poor now. How can I reach him? His money would save
him, as it has saved him from his other victims; but he will not
always triumph. The mills of the gods grind slowly, but his turn will
come!”
Frank’s eyes were flashing now, and his face showed the fire that was
burning deep within his soul. Looking at him, the doctor suddenly awoke
to the fact that there was something besides forgiveness in his nature.
Frank would not forget the real cause of his ruin.
“Be careful, young man,” he warned. “If you seek revenge on him, you
will find he is powerful, and he will crush you.”
Frank smiled grimly.
“I shall wait my time,” he said. “It will come, something tells me
that. It may not be for years, but it will come.”
“What do you intend to do now that your fortune is gone?”
“Work.”
“At what?”
“I do not know yet. At something--anything.”
“But you are not accustomed to work; you were not brought up to work.”
“The time has come for me to get accustomed to it. I have played, and
now I will work.”
“Don’t you dread it?”
“Dread it? No! I welcome it! When I leave Bloomfield it will be to go
out into the world and seek honest work of some kind.”
“But you do not expect to become a common day laborer?”
“I expect to become what I must. It is an old saying that beggars must
not be choosers.”
“But think of the disgrace of it!”
Frank drew himself up with dignity.
“The disgrace, doctor? There is no disgrace in honest toil. I shall not
fear it.”
“Your hand, young man!” cried the physician. “You will get on in the
world, I am sure of that. You have the right spirit, and you will make
a success in life.”
“Thank you, sir; I hope you are right. I shall do my best.”
“And that will be good enough. I wish you the best of luck, which you
will deserve.”
And the physician left the house thinking that the calamity that had
befallen Frank Merriwell was not nearly as severe as he had at first
imagined.
Frank ate a good breakfast, served by Toots, and then he went up and
saw the professor. Scotch awoke, but turned his face away, with a weary
sigh, and did not look at Frank again.
There was business ahead of Merry, for it was necessary to learn just
how his affairs stood. He obtained the keys to the professor’s desk,
and to the little safe, and spent the forenoon in rummaging among
private papers and examining documents, but he could find very little
to satisfy him.
After dinner he visited the lawyer who had done much of the business
for the estate. Two hours spent with the lawyer convinced Frank that
he would be fortunate to find a dollar that he could call his own when
everything was settled. Indeed, it looked as if he would be forced to
sell the old place in order to square all claims against him.
The lawyer attempted to condole with him, but Frank cut him short with
the declaration that, although he appreciated the motive, he was not in
need of sympathy. He left the office with a firm step, his head erect,
his manner betraying no despondency.
And just outside the door he met Darius Conrad.
“Ah, Mr. Merriwell,” said the rascal, with an oily smile that was
followed immediately by a look of pretended sorrow; “this is a most
unfortunate affair. I assure you that you have my heartfelt sympathy in
your misfortune.”
Frank stopped and surveyed the man from his head to his feet, and the
look on his face was crushing. Darius Conrad seemed to wither before
it, and he rubbed his hands together in a nervous manner.
“Mr. Conrad,” said Merry, very slowly, “it is unnecessary for you to
play the hypocrite with me.”
“Eh? What do you mean, sir?”
“Just what I say. I know you for just what you are, and that is an
unprincipled scoundrel!”
“Be careful! be careful!” blustered the man, growing red in the face
and making a threatening gesture. “I will not endure such insolence
from you!”
“I am glad of this opportunity to tell you just what I think of you,”
said Frank, grimly. “If I had not met you here by accident, I should
have sought you. You lured my guardian into your robber scheme, and you
fleeced him easily, as you have many other men; but the time will come
when you will overstep the bounds, and the hand of the law will reach
you.”
“You have no right to make such statements! Horace Scotch was eager to
invest money in the Golden Peaks Mining and Smelting Company. I did not
lure him into doing so, and I will not be accused of it. He did ask my
advice, and I gave it. I believed the concern solid and all right. I
was mistaken, that is all.”
“It is known that the whole business was a fake, and you were one of
the chief movers in it. The greater portion of the money you obtained
through Horace Scotch went into your own pocket. It is not the first
time you have been implicated in fraudulent concerns. Once you were
a poor man; now you are rich. You have made your money by fraud and
crime!”
“I will have you arrested for using such language. It is criminal
libel!”
“You are at liberty to have me arrested, but you will not dare, for you
know I might be able to put you in a very bad box. I do not fear you.”
“It is scandalous--scandalous! Why, I really sympathized with you. I
thought you would appreciate it.”
“Sympathy from you? Now, I shall despise you even more than I did
before!”
Dyke Conrad came up hastily at this moment.
“What is he saying to you, governor?” he asked, glaring at Frank. “Is
he using insulting language? If he is, I will slap his face!”
Frank smiled.
“I wish you would do that,” he said, almost entreatingly. “I’d very
much enjoy the privilege of knocking you down.”
Dyke hesitated. Something told him it would be very rash for him to
attempt to slap Frank, so he said:
“Come away, governor. Don’t talk to the low fellow!”
And he led his father away.
CHAPTER VI.
THE SETTING OF THE SUN.
Toward evening Frank walked out to the village cemetery that lay on
the hillside. The sun was letting fall its slanting rays on the marble
shafts and white tombstones. Below the hill was a small, pretty lake.
Hat in hand, Frank Merriwell stood beside his mother’s grave, which was
marked by a beautiful slender marble shaft, at the apex of which was a
pure white dove.
The grave was well kept, as Frank had instructed that it should be. All
the grass had been neatly trimmed by a lawn-mower, and the flowers of
early autumn were growing there.
A long, long time the young man stood with his head bowed by the grave.
His thoughts were of the tenderest and saddest nature. Once again he,
a little boy, was standing beside the chair of his dear, sweet-faced
mother, and he seemed to feel her arm about him, while he laid his head
against her shoulder. How plainly he saw her as she looked fondly
into his eyes and told him one of the many stories that he begged
her to tell over and over, day after day. Not one of these stories
but had a moral and taught a lesson, and yet they were so skillfully
constructed and so beautifully told that they were his delight. He
realized that with the aid of these little stories she had helped shape
his future character, for they had taught him patience, perseverance,
truthfulness, honesty, kindness and forgiveness.
He thought it all over now as he stood there in the last rays of the
setting sun, and his heart swelled with gratitude and love for that
mother of whom he had been so proud and who had been so proud of him.
He knew that her whole life had been pure and tender and patient, and
her memory was an inspiration.
The tears dimmed his eyes and ran down his cheeks, but on his face was
a look of mingled sadness and happiness. Oh, it was good to have such a
mother to remember.
Down by the grave he knelt, and he prayed to his mother in heaven. He
felt that she was looking down on him and blessing him. He knew her
spirit would hover near him and guide him. She had been an angel on
earth, and it did not seem that she could be any purer now that she was
an angel in heaven.
At last he rose. There had been a pain in his heart, but it was gone;
there had been a sadness in his soul, but it was gone. He felt calm and
at peace with all the world. From the grave he plucked a few sprigs,
and with them in his hand he turned away.
The sun had set, and purple twilight lay in the valleys. Far across
the meadows cows were lowing, while the boy, driving them homeward,
whistled a merry strain. It seemed that there was nothing but peace and
tranquillity in all the world.
Along the road came a horseman at a canter. Frank paid little notice to
him till he was near, and then, happening to look at the person, he saw
it was Dyke Conrad.
The fellow recognized Frank at the same moment. There was no sidewalk
at this point, and Merry was walking along the road. With a muttered
exclamation, Dyke cut the horse with his whip, and the spirited animal
leaped straight at Frank.
It was an attempt to run Merry down, and Frank did not leap out of the
way. Instead, with a swift movement and a grasp of iron, he caught the
animal by the bit and set it on its haunches, with a single wrench,
causing it to snort with terror and bringing Dyke tumbling into the
dust.
Conrad sprang up, snarling forth angry words.
“What do you mean, you dog!” he almost shouted. “Why, I’ll--I’ll----”
“Be good enough to mount your horse and go on your way,” came quietly
from Frank. “I do not wish to lift my hand in anger against you--now.”
“But you caught my horse by the bit and made me lose my seat.”
“I was forced to do it to protect myself when you tried to run me
down.”
“You might have got out of the way!”
“There was little time for that. Come, do as I asked. I do not wish a
quarrel with you now.”
Dyke took this as a symptom of fear.
“Oh, no, you don’t want a quarrel! I know that! But I think I’ll cut
you across the face a few times with my whip, just so you will remember
me.”
“Stop! Don’t force me to give you a drubbing now, for I have just come
from my mother’s grave, and--I----”
“If your mother was like you----” The fellow got no further.
Releasing the horse, Frank sprang like a tiger upon him, caught him by
the collar till Dyke choked and grew purple, then swiftly said:
“Take it back! You may insult me, but your lips shall not breathe a
word about my mother! Take it back--quick!”
There was a look in Merry’s eyes that frightened Dyke as he had never
been frightened before. Before he realized it, he was cowering and
whimpering:
“I didn’t mean to say anything against your mother--honest, I didn’t.
I spoke before I thought. Of course I wouldn’t say anything against
anybody that is dead! Don’t! You choke!”
“You are not worth thrashing!” said Frank, in contempt. “But have a
care! It is well you found me in my present mood, or I would not have
let you off so easy. Go!”
He released the fellow and walked away, not once turning his head to
see what Conrad was doing.
When Frank reached the house he found the place in confusion. The nurse
had been driven from the professor’s room by the raving man, and she
said he had a revolver, with which he said he was hunting for Horace
Scotch, whom he would shoot on sight.
“He is crazy!” declared the excited woman. “He must be taken care of,
or he will murder somebody.”
Frank unhesitatingly went up to the room, opened the door and entered.
The professor was standing before a long mirror in his nightdress, with
the revolver in his hand, talking wildly to himself.
“Ha! ha! ha!” he laughed, shrilly. “So I have found you at last! You
thought you could get away, you robber! Ha! ha! ha! There is no escape
for such as you! You robbed the boy who trusted you! You deserve to
die, and now you shall!”
Then he lifted the revolver and fired straight into the center of the
mirror.
Frank reached him with a rush and grappled with him, attempting to hold
him still and wrest the revolver from his grasp. But the professor
developed the strength of a maniac for a time, and a terrible struggle
ensued, in which the revolver was twice discharged, although neither of
the bullets did any harm.
At last Frank secured the revolver, but even then the maniac fought on,
screaming:
“He deserves death! He shall not escape! Let me go! I will kill him! I
will kill him!”
“Be quiet, professor!” commanded Frank, as he finally forced the man
down upon a chair and held him there. “Be still, I tell you! You know
me. I am Frank.”
“Then why didn’t you let me kill him?” panted the man, giving up at
last. “You are the one he robbed. He should die, as he deserves! He was
a coward! Once he stood up to shoot himself with that very pistol, but
his nerve failed him, and he ran away, leaving me here in his place.
I have been watching for him to come back. Ha! ha! ha! Oh, he can’t
escape!”
Frank talked soothingly to the man, and finally got him back into the
bed. The professor was deathly white, and his eyes fairly burned. His
hands were hot and cold by turns.
Frank sat by the bedside till the doctor came and gave the sick man
something that put him to sleep.
When the physician heard Frank’s story, he shook his head, saying:
“I am afraid he is done for. There is every indication that his reason
is shattered. If he has another violent spell, you will be forced to
have him taken to a place where he can be properly cared for.”
“As long as there is a ray of hope, doctor, he shall remain here, and I
will care for him myself.”
That night Frank slept in a room near at hand, with the door standing
open, so that he could hear the nurse if she called. At intervals he
awoke and listened. Midnight passed, morning approached. Frank was
sleeping in the gray light of dawn when the nurse awoke him and said:
“He is awake now and a great change has come over him. He is asking for
you.”
CHAPTER VII.
PHANTOM FINGERS.
Frank rose immediately, a feeling of sickening dread stabbing him to
the heart.
When he entered the professor’s chamber, the sick man lay with his face
turned toward the door. Near the bed a lamp burned faintly, although
the pale light of morning sifted in at the windows.
“Professor, you are better!”
Frank uttered the exclamation gently, hurrying to the bedside and
clasping the thin hands that lay on the white spread.
“Do you think so?” asked the man, with a voice that seemed to come from
a great distance.
“Yes, yes! You will soon be well now!”
“But you--you cannot wish to see me get well? You would not wish, even
though I have been false to my trust and ruined you, that I should
recover and spend the rest of my days in prison? I am an old, old man.
At best there could not be many years left for me. They would be made
shorter within prison walls.”
“Don’t, professor--don’t talk about prisons!”
“Ah! but I am a criminal! Were I to get well, it would be your duty to
send me to prison.”
“Then, for once in my life, at least, I would shirk my duty!” cried
Frank.
The thin, cold fingers tightened over the warm ones of the youth, and a
light of happiness and admiration showed in the failing eyes.
“You are noble-hearted!” murmured the sick man. “Oh, heavens! how much
would I give could I undo the wrong I have done you!”
“There, there, professor! Think no more of that. Perhaps you have done
me the greatest good that could happen to me, for I shall be compelled
to make my own way in the world, and I might have been a sluggard.”
“No, not that! I am sure there is nothing of the sluggard in your
nature. A young man like you, with a small fortune to start on, has
great opportunities in life. I robbed you of those opportunities when I
lost your fortune.”
“I will make other opportunities, professor.”
“I believe it, my boy; but still I am guilty. I do not care to get
well. I am glad the end is near.”
Again that feeling of sickening dread stabbed Frank to the heart.
“You must not talk like that, professor. You are far better than you
were.”
“I think I must have been deranged. It seems like a bad dream to me.
But that is past. Put out that light, please. It seems to stifle me.”
The light was extinguished and the nurse carried it from the room,
leaving the man and youth alone together.
“It is morning,” whispered the sick man; “but how thin and pale the
light is! I wonder if I shall see the sunlight shining in at that
window again?”
“Of course you will! You must stop thinking and talking like that. I
can’t bear it, professor.”
“Oh, you have a kind and noble heart! I have known it always. Frank,
I could not have loved you more had you been my own son. I was an old
fool and easily duped. I thought I would make a large fortune for you.
It was for you alone that I was thinking; not for myself. It seemed a
safe investment. Ah, but that man could make things look promising! And
then, when I had lost more than half of your fortune, I had not the
courage to confess. I was desperate. It seemed that my last hope was
to plunge again. I went into cotton, and was led on till I reached the
last ditch. The crash came at last, and everything was swept away.
“My boy, this goes to show how one false step leads to another, and
to final ruin. Beware of the first step. There is seldom any turning
back for a person who once goes wrong. Honor is lost with the first
false move, and then the fine sensibilities become dulled so that
the descent, slow at first, becomes swift and sure after a time. The
black secret cannot be kept long. When it becomes known that the first
downward step has been taken, confidence in you is lost, and those
who know of your mistake are always expecting you to repeat it. You
discover this, and their lack of confidence in you causes you to doubt
yourself. As soon as you doubt yourself, the battle has turned against
you, and your defeat must follow.”
The professor paused, quite out of breath. After some seconds, he
hastened to say:
“I know you do not need this sermon, my boy, but something drew it from
me. You have learned the lesson well, and I am sure there is no cause
to fear for you. Your mother taught you all these things. I had hoped
to live to see you prosperous and successful, an honored man among men.
All those hopes are ended. I am weary now, and I shall soon be at rest.”
The final words came like a sigh, and, looking into the face of the
sick man, Frank saw the seal of the Destroyer there. Then Merry knew
that the time had come for a mortal being to face the Great Creator.
Like the lamplight that faded in the day dawn the human flame was
growing dimmer in the dawn of Eternity.
A breeze came up and moved the trees outside. Upon a window pane some
twigs were tapping like the ghostly fingers of death seeking admittance
to that chamber. The swaying of the branches made shifting blots and
blurs on the ceiling. They were shadowy hands that beckoned, beckoned,
beckoned.
“I was lonely in the world,” said the sinking man, after a time; “I was
lonely till you came into my life. Others did not understand me. They
said I was erratic and cranky. You seemed to understand me, and there
was a bond of sympathy between us. Now, at the last, you are the only
one to be with me. It is well; I ask no more.”
The dim eyes rested lovingly on Frank’s face, and the thin hands still
clung to those of the youth. Frank tried to speak, but he choked, and
then, despite his efforts, burst into tears, dropping his face upon the
bed.
“Don’t!” entreated the professor, placing one hand on Frank’s head. “It
is not right that you should weep for me, the cause of your misfortune.”
“Please don’t speak of that again!” sobbed Frank. “Do not make it any
harder for us both! You have been like a father to me, and it does not
seem that the time has come when we must part!”
“It is better. As I said, I am an old man. I have squandered your
fortune, and I would be adrift in the world, a wrecked vessel--a
derelict on the ocean of life.”
“Not that, professor, for I would stand by you.”
“You? Why, you have your own way to make in the world. You must set a
course for yourself and keep to it. Many a good vessel has been sunk
by a worthless derelict. It is better that I should go down than,
worthless and helpless, I should remain afloat.”
Again his voice failed him. Wiping away his tears, Frank saw the shadow
had deepened on the pale face, and the eyes were dimmer than before.
Tap! tap! tap! It seemed that the knocking at the window was louder and
more insistent. The dying man heard it.
“What is that?” he whispered, in a tone that filled Frank with awe. “Do
you hear that rapping?”
“Yes.”
“Let them enter.”
“It is nothing--nothing but the branches that reach the window.”
“No, no! They have come for me, the boatmen who are to take me over the
dark river. Let them enter!”
The weary eyes closed, and Frank leaned forward, thinking the end had
come. After some minutes, however, there was a slight heaving of the
breast, and the eyes opened again, as if by some mighty effort the
dying man had dragged his soul back from the borders of the unknown.
“Frank,” came the whisper like the wind amid the leaves, “are you
there?”
“Yes, professor.”
“I had forgotten something. I could not go till you forgave me for the
injury I have done you.”
“I freely forgive everything.”
A faint smile came to the life-weary face.
“Now I can go.”
Again the wind swept through the trees.
“Do you hear them? They are rapping again! You have not opened the
window!”
“No.”
“Do so at once! Admit them!”
An arm was lifted and a hand pointed toward the window. Frank crossed
the room and threw the casement wide. At that moment the morning
sunlight shone through the trees and reached the window. When Frank
turned about one bright ray was resting on the peaceful face of the
dead.
CHAPTER VIII.
UNWELCOME VISITORS.
It was all over at last. The funeral had been held, and Horace Scotch
was buried in the little village cemetery.
Frank returned to the old mansion, which seemed so lonely and deserted
now. From room to room he strayed, and the memories that hung about the
old place crowded thick upon him.
In one of the rooms was an old melodeon that had not been opened for
years. He opened it and sat down to it, letting his fingers stray over
the keys. It was marvelous how well it was in tune, considering the
fact that it had not been played upon for so long.
Frank played many of the old tunes that he remembered. Toots crept
up and listened at the door, not making a sound to disturb the young
master he loved so well.
At last Frank sang, and the song was one that thrills every heart,
“Home; Sweet Home.”
“An exile from home splendor dazzles in vain;
Oh! give me my lowly thatched cottage again;
The birds singing gayly, that come at my call;
Give me them, sweet peace of mind, dearer than all.
Home, home, sweet, sweet home,
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.
“Farewell, peaceful cottage! farewell, happy home!
Forever I’m doomed a poor exile to roam;
This poor aching heart must be laid in the tomb,
Ere it cease to regret the endearments of home.
Home, home, sweet, sweet home,
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”
As Frank stopped singing, he was surprised to hear a sobbing sound
behind him, and he turned to see Toots kneeling in the doorway, his
face buried in his hands.
“Why, what is the matter with you, Toots?” asked Merry, rising and
going toward the colored boy.
It was some moments before Toots could answer. Frank lifted him to his
feet.
“Oh, Mistah Frank,” sobbed the colored lad, “I feel so bad!”
“Everything will come out all right in the end, my boy.”
“Dat song neah broke me all up, sah. Dis ole place hab been mah home so
long, an’ now--an’ now----”
“And now we must bid it farewell. It is hard, but it is life.”
“I dunno what’s gwan teh become ob me, sah.”
“I will look out for you, Toots. I’ll see that you have a good position
somewhere. You are faithful and reliable. You love horses, and you
would make a first-class jockey. Don’t worry. I must go out and hustle
myself. It needs a stout heart to face the world.”
“Dat’s right, sah, but when I think ob leabin’ dis ole place it clean
breaks mah heart.”
Frank succeeded in comforting the colored boy after a time. He spoke to
Toots as gently as if the lad’s skin had been white, and the face of
the boy showed his love and admiration for his young master.
It was not easy for Frank to throw off the cloud of sadness that bore
down upon him, but he made an effort to do so. There was work before
him ere he could leave Bloomfield. All the tangled affairs must be
straightened, and every account must be settled.
It was some time before Frank could learn just how matters stood, but
he succeeded at last, and then he found, as he had feared, that the old
place must be sold. It was necessary, too, to dispose of it immediately.
Thus it came about that soon the whole of Bloomfield knew the Merriwell
mansion was for sale. Darius Conrad had his eye on the place. Believing
it must be disposed of at a great sacrifice, he was eager to get
possession of it, and so, with small loss of time, he set out to look
the property over.
Toots answered the ring at the door when Darius and his son Dyke
called. Young Conrad had been eager to accompany his father, thinking
he would find an opportunity to sneer at Frank and be quite safe with
his father near.
Toots knew D
|
the ground, and that these pieces will
take root and develop. An olive company in California has recently
transferred 3000 trees, 26 years old, from San Joaquin County to
Oroville and Marysville. The trunks were sawed off about 18 inches above
the ground, and the roots 12 inches from the stump. In a planting made 6
years previously the same method was used and resulted successfully.
Where trees are found undesirable for some reason, resort is had to
budding or grafting. By these means the undesirable trees are not a
complete loss, and results are obtained sooner. Many times varieties are
obtained from Europe which on developing are not found suited to the
conditions in this country; these plants may be used as stock for
desirable varieties or some desirable variety is obtained which may be
propagated rapidly by these means.
The pruning must be done by persons of understanding, as the fruit is
borne only on the two-year portion of the branches, and provision must
be made
[Illustration: Gathering Olives]
to cut excessive growth in the season of too heavy development and
stimulate in the season of poor development. The pruning thus regulates
the growth of the branches which two years later will control the
production of the fruit.
Pruning of very large branches is sometimes done to admit more light and
heat to the darker, cooler parts of the tree. The small branches thus
provided in turn furnish nursery stock. Pruning is done in late winter
and early spring. From March to October no pruning is done, but the
trees are carefully tended through cultivation, irrigation, and
fertilization.
In California the young stock is set out in the groves in April, and
about 35 feet apart. During the non-bearing period, the land between,
which like all California groves, is kept in good cultivation and free
from weeds, is utilized frequently for other crops.
Though numerous stories are written of the remarkable ability of the
olive tree to grow and bear in exposed situations, and with only small
amounts of soil and water, the olive, like all other fruit trees,
requires both cultivation and an adequate amount of water if a constant
and abundant harvest be desired. As the groves are irrigated, the proper
amount of water may be supplied at all times. The water is conducted
through a system of underground pipes, which are provided with outlets
at the end of each row of trees. From these outlets the water is
directed into furrows to water the trees. As the irrigation is
conducted by underground pipes, the groves are easily cultivated.
Products
It would seem that the olive is rightly and appropriately called the
“Tree of Abundance,” for all parts of it have been used, and to the
ancients, even with their limited cuisine as compared with that of
today, it was a symbol of plenty, witness the apostrophe of King
Sennacherib, made centuries before the Christian era, who called Assyria
“A land of corn and wine; a land of bread and vineyards; a land of oil,
olives, and honey.”
FLOWERS
In ancient medicine the blossoms of the olive were highly esteemed, but
are not mentioned in the medicine of today. They were used as poultices
to alleviate pain, sometimes alone, sometimes mixed with other
substances.
LEAVES
The leaves were also used in medicine, a decoction made from them being
said to stop bleeding, and on account of their astringency to reduce
inflammation. The leaves and bark have an acrid and bitter taste, and
have been prescribed as substitutes for cinchona. In France an extract
of the leaves is used as a febrifuge, and has also been found valuable
in preventing hectic paroxysms.
From time immemorial the leaf and branch have been employed as a symbol
of peace, and have appeared in sculpture and painting. No more
beautiful emblem than the olive branch can be selected or devised to
symbolize both peace and victory, and as such has been known through all
the ages. Egyptian mummies, dating from the 20th to the 26th dynasty,
have been found surrounded by garlands of olive leaves, and the tomb of
the hero of today will oftentimes have its sculptured olive branch,
telling its story and making its appeal stronger than could be made by
words.
Besides serving for esthetic purposes, the leaves, in spite of their
astringency, are eaten by animals as forage, so that the trees have to
be protected from them. It is curious that with all the ravages made by
animals on the olive trees in the neglected mission gardens in
California, after the missionaries had gone, some of these same trees
furnished scions for many of the olive groves of today.
WOOD
The wood of the olive tree is much prized for certain purposes. It is
very close, fine-grained, yellow to yellowish brown with irregular wavy
brown to black lines and mottlings, especially near the root. It has no
distinguishable annual rings or pith rays, and has evenly distributed
vessels. It takes a beautiful polish. At present it is employed chiefly
in lathe-work and carving for small fancy articles, and for cabinet
work.
In ancient times it seems to have had a much wider application, due no
doubt to the size of the trees, which were larger as a result of not
being subjected to the rigorous cultivation and pruning which they
receive today. The Bible states that olive wood was used in the Temple.
In the time of Pliny it furnished material for construction of ships,
for wagon spokes, wedges, columns, pedestals, statues, and furniture.
The Romans used both the wild and cultivated trees. The wood industry
was developed in the vicinity of Nice in both France and Italy, and
still flourishes. A considerable amount has been exported to England in
recent years for the manufacture of walking sticks. The poorer quality
is used for firewood, is inflammable, and produces great heat.
BARK
The bark contains a large amount of tannin. For medicinal purposes it is
reduced to powder and acts as an astringent, a tonic, and a febrifuge.
In warm climates a resin is exuded from it which solidifies in the air.
It is called Lecca gum, as it was first found near Lecca. It contains
some benzoic acid among other constituents and in ancient times was
prescribed in medicine, but is not at present, and the gum is considered
valueless.
FRUIT
The fruit has been considered a choice food at all times. It has
appeared at the feasts of epicures, both ancient and modern, as a
relish, and to be eaten at the end of the repast as part of the dessert,
and at all times it has also furnished a staple food for the poor in the
Orient and in Greek and Latin countries. Those who were well provided
were admonished to have care for those less fortunate: “When thou
beatest thine olive tree, thou shalt not go over the boughs again; it
shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow.”
(Deuteronomy XXIV., 20.) The people obliged to live frugally have found
it a great resource, particularly in Lent and for those at a distance
from the sea unable to obtain fresh fish. It is said that Plato
preferred olives to all other foods, and often made a meal on them
alone.
Though olives are known and consumed throughout the civilized world,
comparatively few persons, aside from those living in the regions of
their cultivation, know that olives have to undergo certain treatment
before they can be eaten. It is a common practise in olive regions to
encourage the visitor to taste the fruit directly from the tree. The
fruit, both green and black, looks so fine and tempting, that the
disgust on tasting is correspondingly great. It is claimed that some of
the older varieties could be eaten without preparation, that they dried
naturally, and were sweet like raisins.
The olive contains a bitter and acrid substance or substances which must
be removed before the olives are edible. It is referred to in most of
the literature as a “bitter principle”, and has been called an acid, a
tannin, and more recently a glucoside. Cruess has repeated the work of
the various investigators, who claimed these different substances, and
as a result has come to the conclusion that it is a glucoside, that is,
a combination of glucose with another compound.
In immature fleshy fruits there is usually an accumulation of acids,
tannins, and sometimes starch. As ripening proceeds, carbohydrates and
aromatic substances are formed, and the bitter, acrid, or astringent
taste disappears. In the olive there is no starch found at any stage of
maturity. Glucose has been found in all stages, and is supposed to be
the substance from which the oil is formed. The oil is in very minute
quantities in the fruit up to the time when the pit is formed, from then
on it increases gradually up to its maximum when the fruit is not quite
mature. In the plant economy the fat or oil is one of the most important
food reserves of plants. All parts of the fruit--rind, flesh, stone, and
seed--contain oil, the fleshy part, forming about 80% of the fruit,
containing the largest amount.
Contrary to the condition existing in most fruits, the bitterness
remains through all stages of development in the olive. A substance of
glucosidic nature, given the name “oleuropeine”, has been isolated, and
found to be of extreme bitterness. This may be the substance or one of
the substances which cause the inedibility of the untreated olive.
The oil is the most important constituent of the fruit on account of its
high food value and its use in the industries. It is used to a large
extent in cold countries and also in dry countries where there are few
cattle, the oil taking in the various culinary operations, the place of
butter and other fats.
Among the ancient Jews the oil was considered indispensable and as
necessary as bread. An abundance of oil was looked upon as a blessing
from God. Vast public storehouses were constructed to hold it for the
scarce years. To the Greeks the three indispensable foods were oil,
grains, and wine, the oil entering into most of their dishes. The Romans
had a large trade in the oil, and it was also used, to a large extent,
in their domestic cooking. In Italy and Spain street vendors fry
fritters in the oil and sell them while hot. It has considerable use in
conserving fish, particularly sardines. The higher grades of French,
Spanish, Norwegian, and American sardines are packed in olive oil. This
use has been extended in recent years to the packing of tuna fish.
Olive oil occupies a high position as a vegetable fat. Many others have
been prepared and offered as substitutes, and if judged by chemical
composition alone, give practically equal food value, but are lacking in
the delicious flavor which makes olive oil distinctive and gives it a
superiority over all other oils.
The oil is a large factor in the industries; it serves as an extractive
of perfumes, as a constituent of fine, smooth soaps, and as a lubricant
in watch factories. Formerly the lower grades were used commonly for
lubricating purposes, but with improved methods of clarifying and the
greater expense attendant on its use, it has been superseded by cheaper
lubricants.
An enormous quantity has been and is still used in religious ceremonies,
in the ordinations of the clergy and rulers, and anointing in the
sacraments, besides by old world peoples generally in the lamps in the
churches and temples, many of which are kept burning continually. An
idea of the vast amount consumed for this purpose can be obtained from
the fact that in one mosque alone there are 1,200 lamps burning
constantly, and requiring about 25,000 kilos of oil annually.
In medicine it has been and is still used extensively. The ancients
rubbed it on their bodies to make the muscles supple and to cleanse and
protect the skin, particularly after bathing, and it still functions for
these purposes. It was used to heal wounds, in liniments, and as a mild
laxative. At present it is a constituent of liniments, ointments,
cerates, and plasters. The people who are habitual patrons of the olive
and its oil are noted for their smooth, beautiful complexions. It is
said “the warm rosy complexion of the Italian and Sicilian women is due
to the free use of olive oil as much as to the air and climate of their
country.”
The residue or marc which remains after the oil is extracted is used as
a food for sheep and hogs, for fertilizer, and for fuel, and there is
obtained from it a clear, illuminating gas.
PREPARATION OF FRUIT
Foreign
In the early preparation of olives in order to remove the bitterness,
they were soaked in water, which was renewed from time to time,
sometimes hot water being used. The olives, after draining, were then
held in brine. The green olives as well as the mature and black were
used.
The Romans exercised the greatest care in their preparation, and
introduced refinements, by not only removing the bitterness, but by
causing them to acquire various flavors through infusion in solutions
containing aromatic substances.
One of their methods for the preparation of green olives consisted in
adding roasted salt to the olives after a preliminary soaking in hot
water, then covering them with grape must, boiled wine, or honey water,
and to this solution were added fennel, mint, and lentiscus seed. Fennel
was used as a tampon to keep the olives immersed. A simpler method was
to use vinegar with the brine. Sometimes the olives were beaten to
facilitate the action, but this caused discoloration, which was avoided
by making cuts in them. The brine was replaced by oil as a preserving
liquid. Another method was to put the olives with the aromatics in the
brine at the start, then they were removed, crushed lightly, and put in
a mixture of oil, vinegar, and honey, to which were added leek, celery,
mint, and sometimes rue. The rue was supposed to be most efficacious in
bringing out the natural flavor, and was most prized. The mature olives
were first put in brine for 30 to 40 days, then put in the preserving
liquid with the aromatics. Olives prepared in the ways indicated were
known as “Colymbades”.
A form of conserve made by the ancients, and to which the name
“Epityrum” was given, consisted in taking green, mature, or black fruit,
though, as in the former, the green were preferred, and drying them in
the shade, after which they were put in baskets, and crushed in a press.
The crushed fruit was then put in vessels, sprinkled with salt, and had
mixed with it lentiscus seed and minced leaves of fennel and rue, and
was finally covered with oil.
Many recipes have been left by the ancients, the preparations varying as
to time, strength of solutions, mixtures of spices, etc. To the recipes
of Palladius (1518-1580) is owed the knowledge that the Romans were
cognizant of and used lye solutions, though this is supposed to be a
modern practise. In this particular recipe sifted ashes are indicated as
one of the ingredients, and it is supposed that this recipe, changed in
detail, furnished the basis for present day methods. The use of wood
ashes was introduced into France by an Italian refugee named Picholini,
who settled in Provence, devoting himself to the preparation and sale of
preserved olives. The olives preserved according to his process are
called “olives a la Picholine”. Previous to his time the preparation in
southern France consisted of crushing the olives lightly, immersing in
clear water, which was renewed each day for about nine days, then
preserving in brine. This latter process is still employed for the
olives in which appearance is not an asset. For the more carefully
prepared ones, the method was to pick by hand when the olives had
attained full development, then they were carefully sorted, and immersed
in lye, the duration in the lye depending on the size of the fruit, and
the concentration of the lye. They were removed from the lye when the
flesh was penetrated to, and readily detached from, the stone.
There are many variations of the lye treatment. In the olive countries
the preparation is done in the homes as well as in factories, and it is
in the homes, naturally, that the greatest variations occur. Lime is
often used with the ashes, one formula consisting of the olives mixed
with a paste of wood ashes and freshly slaked lime. In the ordinary
methods, however, a solution is made of the sifted ashes and lime,
sometimes sodium carbonate taking the place of the ashes. In the
ordinary factory preparations both ashes and lime are omitted, and
either caustic soda or potash used. When removed from the lye, the
olives are put in clear water, changed night and morning for three or
four days, then put in brine.
The early accounts of olive preparation show quite conclusively that
great variation in strength of the caustic solution was inevitable, but
fortunately the tendency to err was on the weaker side. It was not until
the modern introduction of caustic preparations of soda and potash that
standardization of the process was possible. Even with this possibility
the practise remains largely empirical and is based upon the experience
of the operator. Some still adhere to the use of weak solutions, taking
considerable time to act upon the olive, whereas others use relatively
strong solutions so as to hasten the process.
The brine used has been subject to quite as marked variation as the lye.
A weak brine has been used in order to encourage the natural
fermentation of the fruit, which corresponds to the fermentation in our
cucumber pickles. The other extreme is represented by the use of a very
strong brine which practically inhibited all fermentative change and
this same brine was filtered and used a succeeding season. Every
gradation between these extremes has been in common use. As might be
expected, more or less of the fruit softened and underwent changes which
at present would be regarded as decomposition or rotting rather than as
clean, normal fermentation. The esthetic side of olive preparation has
not always been of the highest order, though, as in the case of many
other foods, very great improvement has been wrought in recent years.
Even with the later methods the use of aromatic substances has not been
abandoned, and many of these are used, such as bay leaves, cloves,
coriander, cumin, mint, orange skin, fennel, etc., the amounts and
combinations varying greatly. Sometimes the aromatics are first
extracted, the solution concentrated, and a quantity of this solution
added to the brine, or they are boiled in the brine at the start, then
removed, and when the brine is cooled, it is ready for use.
In Spain the ripe olives are not treated ordinarily with lye, but by the
slower process of soaking in water. The black olives, gathered late in
the year, are cured in a salt brine to which black pepper is added.
After the bitterness is removed, they are preserved in oil.
A process used at present for ripe olives which is very simple but
effective, is to mix fine salt with them after they have been cleaned
and sorted. They are stirred twice a day, and through the osmotic action
of the salt, a dark-colored juice is exuded which contains, among other
constituents, the substance causing the bitterness. To hasten the action
the olives are pierced with a needle. The Spaniards vary this method by
adding aromatics, as wild marjoram, thyme, fennel seed, anise seed,
garlic, laurel leaves, etc., at the same time as the salt. The special
spice mixtures are held as trade secrets by the manufacturers.
When the bitterness has been removed, the olives are washed, dried
lightly, and placed in casks or jars until required. Before being served
the olives are soaked in oil.
One style of Greek packing of ripe olives is of special excellence. Sour
wine is added to the pickle to accentuate the flavor and the product is
packed in oil. The olives are plump, tender, and brilliant, and possess
a very rich flavor.
In parts of Southern Europe certain kinds of olives are left on the
trees to become very ripe, and are then dried in the sun without any
preparation. These are only used locally as they are lacking in the fine
flavor of the prepared olive.
In the preparation of the olive, both green and ripe, during all these
centuries, there had been no attempt at sterilization. The olive was
preserved by partial drying, by the action of salt, and by its
spontaneous fermentation in pickle in which certain desirable forms of
organisms had the ascendency. With the good fruit thus prepared, there
must have been considerable which was spoiled, and yet no illness is
known to have resulted.
Though olives have figured so largely in the alimentation of southern
Europe, the oil particularly being so important and general a food, the
people of northern Europe have not esteemed either to an important
extent. With the crude methods in vogue for transporting the oil, and
the lack of understanding as to its nature, it is supposed that their
apathetic attitude was due to its being received in poor condition.
In England also, though so close to the olive growing districts, the
olive has not been used to any considerable extent, judging from its
absence from menus and from their cookery. In examining old cookery
books it was surprising to find no mention of olives. In Russel’s “Boke
of Nurture” and Mrs. Napier’s “Noble Boke off Cookry” the manuscripts
dating from the 15th century, there is no mention of olives, though
there are condiments and spices from foreign countries used in sauces
and other preparations. Neither is there any mention of olives in “The
Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Opened” written in the 17th century, though
Digby had traveled much and lived on the continent. The earliest mention
in 17 cookery books, published in the 17th and 18th centuries is the
following, published in 1745, and which is really a translation of a
French work by L. Lemery, physician to the King, and member of the Royal
Academy. It is interesting in showing the many virtues attributed to
olives.
=“OF OLIVES”=
“You ought to chuse such as are large, pulpy, well preserv’d and
tasted, and those that have been cultivated in hot Countries.
They create an Appetite, fortify the Stomach, dissolve and expell
the viscous and gross Humours fix’d there, repress Reachings, and
are a little nourishing.
They produce no ill Effects, unless they are us’d to excess.
They contain much Oil, Phlegm, and essential Salt.
They agree in cold Weather with any Sort of Age and Constitution,
provided they are good, and well preserv’d.”
=Remarks=
“_Olives_ are oblong or oval and juicy Fruits, larger or smaller,
according to the Country they grow in: Care must be taken to gather
them before they are ripe, and then they have a harsh bitter Taste not
to be endured, because their salts are clogg’d and swallow’d up by the
earthy and gross Parts.
_Olives_ are preserv’d with Water and Salt, and then they become
pleasing to the Taste; the Reason is, because the Liquor of Brine causes
a little Fermentation in the _Olives_, by the Help thereof the Salts
free themselves by degrees of the earthy Parts that do retain them; and
afterwards with more Lightness and Delicacy prick the nervous Fibres of
the Tongue.
“The Brine produces another good Effect in the _Olives_; for by its
saline Parts it stops up the Pores of this Fruit, and prevents the Air
from ent’ring too much into it, and thereby cause a considerable
Fermentation therein, which destroys the Fruit, and soon rots them.
_Olives_ well preserv’d create an Appetite, by gently pricking the Sides
of the Stomach, not only by their acid Salts, but also by those
communicated to them by the Pickle. They also bind up and fortify the
Stomach by their earthy Parts, which swallow up the over-abounding
Moistures that relax the Fibres of that Part.
The _Picholines_ are _Olives_ cut in several Places, and then steep’d in
Pickle; they are sooner in a Condition to be eaten than others, because
that by the Help of the Incision made in them, the Brine or Pickle is
sooner and more effectually communicated to their whole Substance.
Oil of _Olives_ is much us’d in Ailments; it’s of a qualifying,
mollifying, anodine, dissolving and detersive Nature, good for the
Cholic and Bloody-flux, and is prepar’d in this Manner.
They get together in _November_ or _December_, a great Quantity of full
ripe _Olives_, and lay them by for a Time in some Corner of the House,
where they are heated, and thereby become purified of their watry
Moisture; then they grind them in a Mill, and put them into Rush or Palm
Frails, plac’d on the Top of one another Pressways, and the first Oil
that comes from them, is called _Virgin’s Oil_.
They sprinkle the _Olives_ with warm water, and by pressing them a-new,
and still the more, there comes a good Oil from them.
This done, they stir the _Olives_ again, and sprinkle them with hot
Water, from which, thus order’d, there proceeds another Oil full of
Dregs, and not so good as the rest.
These Oils are easily separated from the Water, because they swim a top,
but they find a Kind of Lees to the Bottom, which the Ancients called
_Amurca_.
Those _Olives_ of which you design to make Oil, must ripen ’till they
are even rotten; and the Reason is, because the sulphurous Parts in them
have had Time to disengage themselves from those gross Principles, which
before fix’d them, which we know by the sweetish and oily Taste that
then they had. They also let them ferment for some time before they
press them, that so those sulphurous Parts may free themselves, and be
more fully separated from the watry and saline Parts, with which they
were united in the Fruits. Here it is to be observ’d that you cannot
extract a Drop of Oil from green olives, but only a viscous Juice,
because their oily Principles are very strictly united with their other
Principles.
The Leaves of the _Olive-Tree_ are astringent, and fit for to stop the
Bleeding of the Nose, and Looseness.
There are certain wild _Olive-Trees_ that grow near the Red-Sea, from
which there sweats out a Gum that stops Blood, and cures Wounds.
The _Olive-Tree_ in Latin called _Olea_, comes from the _Greek_ Word
_elaia_ which also signifies the same Thing.”
* * * * *
A later work, “The Lady’s Assistant” published in 1778, gives a much
better idea of how little they were used at that time in England.
OLIVES
“OLIVES are the fruits of trees, which grow wild in the warmer
parts of Europe; we have them in some of our gardens; but with us
they will not ripen to any perfection.
There are three kinds, the Italian, Spanish, and French; we have
them therefore of various sizes and flavors; some prefer one, and
some the other.
The fine sallad oil, as has been before mentioned, is made from
this fruit, for which purpose they are gathered ripe; but for
pickling they are gathered when half-ripe, at the latter end of
June: they are put into fresh water to soak for two days; after
this they throw them into lime-water in which some pearl-ashes have
been dissolved: they lie in this liquor six-and-thirty hours; then
they are thrown into water which has had bay-salt dissolved in it:
this is the last preparation, and they are sent over to us in this
liquor: they are naturally as they grow on the tree very bitter,
and therefore require all these preparations to bring them to their
fine flavor. To some olives they add a small quantity of essence of
spices, which is an oil drawn from cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon,
coriander and sweet-fennel seed distilled together for that
purpose: twelve drops are enough for a bushel of olives: some
prefer them flavored with this essence, but others like them best
plain.”
At present the use of aromatic substances commercially is not large. It
is contended that consumers cannot use flavored olives in sauces or
other preparations so freely, as extraneous flavors are introduced which
in some cases are undesirable, the unflavored olive permitting greater
freedom in use.
For the preparation of the green olives “a la Sevillane,” the fruit is
first treated with alkali, then washed in clear water, after which it is
put into 2 or 3 per cent boiled brine, where after a time fermentation
starts, which imparts a slight lactic acid taste to the fruit. It is
then washed in water, graded for size, and put in barrels with a 5 or 6%
salt, when they are ready for consumption.
The half ripe olives are put in a boiled brine of 12 to 15% for six
days, after which they are washed in running water and then put in jars
in a 6 to 8% brine with a bay leaf and a sprig of thyme and fennel.
Olives prepared in this way are called “a la Provencale.” A variation on
this method, called “a la Madrilene” is to put the olives in barrels,
after the preliminary salting and washing, in 10% brine with red
pimiento, pepper corns, laurel, thyme, and tomato purée.
The black olives are gathered at the time of the change in color, and
put in water, renewed every 12 hours, until the bitterness has
disappeared, which requires 40 to 50 days, sometimes even longer. They
are then put into brine.
The large olive “La Tanche” after sorting and cleaning is put directly
into a 10 to 15% brine in wooden casks or cement tanks which hold from
4,000 to 6,000 kilos. When the bitterness has been abstracted, they are
ready for sale. The brine is decanted and held until the following year.
To prepare them so that they may be ready for sale sooner, the fruit is
run over a roller provided with fine points which perforate the skin,
after which the olives are put in layers and sprinkled generously with
salt. They are stirred frequently, and when they “sweat,” they are put
in barrels with pepper corns and bay leaves, or in jars with olive oil
and condiments, or they may be put in jars without any addition as they
are preserved by their own oil and the absorbed salt.
The methods of preparation cited are those used for olives consumed in
foreign countries, very few thus prepared being imported, as they are
known only to olive connoisseurs.
Imported Green Olives
Nearly all the green olives used in this country come from Spain and are
generally known as “Queen olives.” In years of shortage a few come from
Italy, Greece, and France. They are hand picked, cleaned, treated in the
usual way with lye, and washed, but during this process care is
exercised to prevent them being exposed to the air as it is desired to
retain the green color. They are then graded for size and quality and
placed in huge casks or “pipes” with sufficient brine to cover them.
The “pipes” are exposed to the sun to favor the fermentation which
requires six weeks or more, depending upon the temperature. During the
fermentation, the olives change slowly from deep green to golden. The
pipes hold from 160 to 180 gallons and are used for shipping the olives
to this country. Ten per cent brine is used for filling the casks, but
the brine weakens during the curing and is usually 7 or 7-1/2% at the
finish.
The Queen olives are hand graded for size on the basis of the number per
kilo. The following grades are made:
QUEEN OLIVES
60-70
70-80
80-90
90-100
100-110
110-120
120-130
130-140
140-150
150-160
160-180
180-200
200-220
They are also graded for quality, as: “prime” or “first quality,”
“seconds,” and “Queen culls.” Only the first and second grade are sent
to this country though all sizes are, but there is no designation by
which the consumer may obtain a desired size. The term Queen olive may
mean those having only 60 to the kilo or those with 220 to the kilo.
Some green olives are packed in tins and shipped to this country and a
comparatively few are brought in bottles. The importers prefer to
purchase the olives in bulk and pack according to their trade
requirements, under the sanitary conditions imposed in this country
rather than those found abroad. The olives are transferred from the
pipes to bottles and either supplied with fresh brine or the brine from
the pipe is carefully filtered and only such addition made as needed to
make up the difference. The use of the original liquor gives a decidedly
better flavor, though it is often sacrificed in order to get one which
is perfectly clear.
The green olive is retailed almost wholly in glass, either in fancy hand
packed packages or in pint and quart jars. Many attempts have been made
to create a sale in tin containers, but without success as there are
decided advantages in being able to see the size and quality. Seeing the
fruit no doubt frequently suggests its use and purchase. A few olives
are still retailed in bulk but they soon become covered with yeast and
other organisms, and have an unattractive appearance.
The origin of the stuffed olive is of very recent date, but by whom
originated is not quite clear. According to an authority[1] on Spanish
olives, stuffed olives were unknown before 1893-4. It was in 1895 that
Señor Picasa, the general manager of the Sevilla Packing Company, had
seen olives stuffed with pimientos in Spain, and in the following year
introduced them into the United States, the company packing them under
the copyrighted name of “Pimola.” In 1897, a Spanish house packed
pepper-stuffed olives, and later on other firms also, among the latter
many American firms. As the pimiento is grown and prepared in Spain, and
labor cheaper there than here, the industry has been practically
transferred to that country.
[1.] H. C. Newcomb, former vice-consul to Spain.
The operation of stuffing consists in removing the pit and filling the
cavity with some other substance, particularly pimiento, these forming
the bulk of the stuffed olive trade. The bright red of the latter gives
a pleasing contrast with the green, and the mild pungency is very
agreeable to many persons. Pickled celery, capers, etc., have been used,
but were not so favorably received, and at present, the substances used
to any extent, aside from the pimiento, are Manzanillos stuffed with
pieces of Queens, and some stuffed with anchovies for the South American
trade. Pitting machines have been devised, and also machines for
stuffing the olives, but the work done by the stuffing machines is crude
as compared with hand work. The olives used for stuffing are the
Manzanillo which are smaller than the Queen. The sizes are as follows:
MANZANILLO (Stuffed)
180-200
200-220
220-240
240-260
260-280
280-300
300-320
320-340
340-360
They are packed in barrels of about 45 gallons capacity, and like the
Queen, are repacked into individual containers in this country.
A few olives are packed with a mince of capers, anchovies, truffles,
etc., and the
|
to Mrs. Browne, and addressed her.
"My father thought your little girl would be tired, and he told me to bring
my cousin Erminia's pony for her. It's as quiet as can be."
Now this was rather provoking to Mrs. Browne, as she chose to consider
Maggie in disgrace. However, there was no help for it: all she could do was
to spoil the enjoyment as far as possible, by looking and speaking in a
cold manner, which often chilled Maggie's little heart, and took all the
zest out of the pleasure now. It was in vain that Frank Buxton made the
pony trot and canter; she still looked sad and grave.
"Little dull thing!" he thought; but he was as kind and considerate as a
gentlemanly boy could be.
At last they reached Mr. Buxton's house. It was in the main street, and the
front door opened upon it by a flight of steps. Wide on each side extended
the stone-coped windows. It was in reality a mansion, and needed not
the neighboring contrast of the cottages on either side to make it look
imposing. When they went in, they entered a large hall, cool even on that
burning July day, with a black and white flag floor, and old settees
round the walls, and great jars of curious china, which were filled with
pot-pourrie. The dusky gloom was pleasant, after the glare of the street
outside; and the requisite light and cheerfulness were given by the peep
into the garden, framed, as it were, by the large door-way that opened into
it. There were roses, and sweet-peas, and poppies--a rich mass of color,
which looked well, set in the somewhat sombre coolness of the hall. All the
house told of wealth--wealth which had accumulated for generations, and
which was shown in a sort of comfortable, grand, unostentatious way. Mr.
Buxton's ancestors had been yeomen; but, two or three generations back,
they might, if ambitious, have taken their place as country gentry, so much
had the value of their property increased, and so great had been the amount
of their savings. They, however, continued to live in the old farm till Mr.
Buxton's grandfather built the house in Combehurst of which I am speaking,
and then he felt rather ashamed of what he had done; it seemed like
stepping out of his position. He and his wife always sat in the best
kitchen; and it was only after his son's marriage that the entertaining
rooms were furnished. Even then they were kept with closed shutters
and bagged-up furniture during the lifetime of the old couple, who,
nevertheless, took a pride in adding to the rich-fashioned ornaments and
grand old china of the apartments. But they died, and were gathered to
their fathers, and young Mr. and Mrs. Buxton (aged respectively fifty-one
and forty-five) reigned in their stead. They had the good taste to make no
sudden change; but gradually the rooms assumed an inhabited appearance, and
their son and daughter grew up in the enjoyment of great wealth, and no
small degree of refinement. But as yet they held back modestly from putting
themselves in any way on a level with the county people. Lawrence Buxton
was sent to the same school as his father had been before him; and the
notion of his going to college to complete his education was, after some
deliberation, negatived. In process of time he succeeded his father, and
married a sweet, gentle lady, of a decayed and very poor county family, by
whom he had one boy before she fell into delicate health. His sister had
married a man whose character was worse than his fortune, and had been left
a widow. Everybody thought her husband's death a blessing; but she loved
him, in spite of negligence and many grosser faults; and so, not many years
after, she died, leaving her little daughter to her brother's care, with
many a broken-voiced entreaty that he would never speak a word against
the dead father of her child. So the little Erminia was taken home by her
self-reproaching uncle, who felt now how hardly he had acted towards his
sister in breaking off all communication with her on her ill-starred
marriage.
"Where is Erminia, Frank?" asked his father, speaking over Maggie's
shoulder, while he still held her hand. "I want to take Mrs. Browne to your
mother. I told Erminia to be here to welcome this little girl."
"I'll take her to Minnie; I think she's in the garden. I'll come back to
you," nodding to Edward, "directly, and then we will go to the rabbits."
So Frank and Maggie left the great lofty room, full of strange rare
things, and rich with books, and went into the sunny scented garden, which
stretched far and wide behind the house. Down one of the walks, with a
hedge of roses on either side, came a little tripping fairy, with long
golden ringlets, and a complexion like a china rose. With the deep blue of
the summer sky behind her, Maggie thought she looked like an angel. She
neither hastened nor slackened her pace when she saw them, but came on with
the same dainty light prancing step.
"Make haste, Minnie," cried Frank.
But Minnie stopped to gather a rose.
"Don't stay with me," said Maggie, softly, although she had held his hand
like that of a friend, and did not feel that the little fairy's manner was
particularly cordial or gracious. Frank took her at her word, and ran off
to Edward.
Erminia came a little quicker when she saw that Maggie was left alone; but
for some time after they were together, they had nothing to say to each
other. Erminia was easily impressed by the pomps and vanities of the world;
and Maggie's new handsome frock seemed to her made of old ironed brown
silk. And though Maggie's voice was soft, with a silver ringing sound in
it, she pronounced her words in Nancy's broad country way. Her hair was cut
short all round; her shoes were thick, and clumped as she walked. Erminia
patronized her, and thought herself very kind and condescending; but they
were not particularly friendly. The visit promised to be more honorable
than agreeable, and Maggie almost wished herself at home again. Dinner-time
came. Mrs. Buxton dined in her own room. Mr. Buxton was hearty, and jovial,
and pressing; he almost scolded Maggie because she would not take more than
twice of his favorite pudding: but she remembered what her mother had said,
and that she would be watched all day; and this gave her a little prim,
quaint manner, very different from her usual soft charming unconsciousness.
She fancied that Edward and Master Buxton were just as little at their ease
with each other as she and Miss Harvey. Perhaps this feeling on the part of
the boys made all four children unite after dinner.
"Let us go to the swing in the shrubbery," said Frank, after a little
consideration; and off they ran. Frank proposed that he and Edward should
swing the two little girls; and for a time all went on very well. But
by-and-by Edward thought, that Maggie had had enough, and that he should
like a turn; and Maggie, at his first word, got out.
"Don't you like swinging?" asked Erminia.
"Yes! but Edward would like it now." And Edward accordingly took her place.
Frank turned away, and would not swing him. Maggie strove hard to do it,
but he was heavy, and the swing bent unevenly. He scolded her for what
she could not help, and at last jumped out so roughly, that the seat hit
Maggie's face, and knocked her down. When she got up, her lips quivered
with pain, but she did not cry; she only looked anxiously at her frock.
There was a great rent across the front breadth. Then she did shed
tears--tears of fright. What would her mother say?
Erminia saw her crying.
"Are you hurt?" said she, kindly. "Oh, how your cheek is swelled! What a
rude, cross boy your brother is!"
"I did not know he was going to jump out. I am not crying because I am
hurt, but because of this great rent in my nice new frock. Mamma will be so
displeased."
"Is it a new frock?" asked Erminia.
"It is a new one for me. Nancy has sat up several nights to make it. Oh!
what shall I do?"
Erminia's little heart was softened by such excessive poverty. A best frock
made of shabby old silk! She put her arms round Maggie's neck, and said:
"Come with me; we will go to my aunt's dressing-room, and Dawson will give
me some silk, and I'll help you to mend it."
"That's a kind little Minnie," said Frank. Ned had turned sulkily away. I
do not think the boys were ever cordial again that day; for, as Frank said
to his mother, "Ned might have said he was sorry; but he is a regular
tyrant to that little brown mouse of a sister of his."
Erminia and Maggie went, with their arms round each other's necks, to Mrs.
Buxton's dressing-room. The misfortune had made them friends. Mrs.
Buxton lay on the sofa; so fair and white and colorless, in her muslin
dressing-gown, that when Maggie first saw the lady lying with her eyes
shut, her heart gave a start, for she thought she was dead. But she opened
her large languid eyes, and called them to her, and listened to their story
with interest.
"Dawson is at tea. Look, Minnie, in my work-box; there is some silk there.
Take off your frock, my dear, and bring it here, and let me see how it can
be mended."
"Aunt Buxton," whispered Erminia, "do let me give her one of my frocks.
This is such an old thing."
"No, love. I'll tell you why afterwards," answered Mrs. Buxton.
She looked at the rent, and arranged it nicely for the little girls to
mend. Erminia helped Maggie with right good will. As they sat on the floor,
Mrs. Buxton thought what a pretty contrast they made; Erminia, dazzlingly
fair, with her golden ringlets, and her pale-blue frock; Maggie's little
round white shoulders peeping out of her petticoat; her brown hair as
glossy and smooth as the nuts that it resembled in color; her long black
eye-lashes drooping over her clear smooth cheek, which would have given the
idea of delicacy, but for the coral lips that spoke of perfect health: and
when she glanced up, she showed long, liquid, dark-gray eyes. The deep red
of the curtain behind, threw out these two little figures well.
Dawson came up. She was a grave elderly person, of whom Erminia was far
more afraid than she was of her aunt; but at Mrs. Buxton's desire she
finished mending the frock for Maggie.
"Mr. Buxton has asked some of your mamma's old friends to tea, as I am not
able to go down. But I think, Dawson, I must have these two little girls to
tea with me. Can you be very quiet, my dears; or shall you think it dull?"
They gladly accepted the invitation; and Erminia promised all sorts of
fanciful promises as to quietness; and went about on her tiptoes in such
a labored manner, that Mrs. Buxton begged her at last not to try and be
quiet, as she made much less noise when she did not. It was the happiest
part of the day to Maggie. Something in herself was so much in harmony with
Mrs. Buxton's sweet, resigned gentleness, that it answered like an echo,
and the two understood each other strangely well. They seemed like old
friends, Maggie, who was reserved at home because no one cared to hear what
she had to say, opened out, and told Erminia and Mrs. Buxton all about her
way of spending her day, and described her home.
"How odd!" said Erminia. "I have ridden that way on Abdel-Kadr, and never
seen your house."
"It is like the place the Sleeping Beauty lived in; people sometimes seem
to go round it and round it, and never find it. But unless you follow a
little sheep-track, which seems to end at a gray piece of rock, you may
come within a stone's throw of the chimneys and never see them. I think you
would think it so pretty. Do you ever come that way, ma'am?"
"No, love," answered Mrs. Buxton.
"But will you some time?"
"I am afraid I shall never be able to go out again," said Mrs. Buxton, in
a voice which, though low, was very cheerful. Maggie thought how sad a lot
was here before her; and by-and-by she took a little stool, and sat by Mrs.
Buxton's sofa, and stole her hand into hers.
Mrs. Browne was in full tide of pride and happiness down stairs. Mr. Buxton
had a number of jokes; which would have become dull from repetition (for he
worked a merry idea threadbare before he would let it go), had it not been
for his jovial blandness and good-nature. He liked to make people happy,
and, as far as bodily wants went, he had a quick perception of what was
required. He sat like a king (for, excepting the rector, there was not
another gentleman of his standing at Combehurst), among six or seven
ladies, who laughed merrily at all his sayings, and evidently thought Mrs.
Browne had been highly honored in having been asked to dinner as well as
to tea. In the evening, the carriage was ordered to take her as far as a
carriage could go; and there was a little mysterious handshaking between
her host and herself on taking leave, which made her very curious for the
lights of home by which to examine a bit of rustling paper that had been
put in her hand with some stammered-out words about Edward.
When every one had gone, there was a little gathering in Mrs. Buxton's
dressing-room. Husband, son and niece, all came to give her their opinions
on the day and the visitors.
"Good Mrs. Browne is a little tiresome," said Mr. Buxton, yawning. "Living
in that moorland hole, I suppose. However, I think she has enjoyed her day;
and we'll ask her down now and then, for Browne's sake. Poor Browne! What a
good man he was!"
"I don't like that boy at all," said Frank. "I beg you'll not ask him again
while I'm at home: he is so selfish and self-important; and yet he's a bit
snobbish now and then. Mother! I know what you mean by that look. Well! if
I am self-important sometimes, I'm not a snob."
"Little Maggie is very nice," said Erminia. "What a pity she has not a new
frock! Was not she good about it, Frank, when she tore it?"
"Yes, she's a nice little thing enough, if she does not get all spirit
cowed out of her by that brother. I'm thankful that he is going to school."
When Mrs. Browne heard where Maggie had drank tea, she was offended. She
had only sat with Mrs. Buxton for an hour before dinner. If Mrs. Buxton
could bear the noise of children, she could not think why she shut herself
up in that room, and gave herself such airs. She supposed it was because
she was the granddaughter of Sir Henry Biddulph that she took upon herself
to have such whims, and not sit at the head of her table, or make tea for
her company in a civil decent way. Poor Mr. Buxton! What a sad life for a
merry, light-hearted man to have such a wife! It was a good thing for him
to have agreeable society sometimes. She thought he looked a deal better
for seeing his friends. He must be sadly moped with that sickly wife.
(If she had been clairvoyante at that moment, she might have seen Mr.
Buxton tenderly chafing his wife's hands, and feeling in his innermost soul
a wonder how one so saint-like could ever have learnt to love such a boor
as he was; it was the wonderful mysterious blessing of his life. So little
do we know of the inner truths of the households, where we come and go like
intimate guests!)
Maggie could not bear to hear Mrs. Buxton spoken of as a fine lady assuming
illness. Her heart beat hard as she spoke. "Mamma! I am sure she is really
ill. Her lips kept going so white; and her hand was so burning hot all the
time that I held it."
"Have you been holding Mrs. Buxton's hand? Where were your manners? You are
a little forward creature, and ever were. But don't pretend to know better
than your elders. It is no use telling me Mrs. Buxton is ill, and she able
to bear the noise of children."
"I think they are all a pack of set-up people, and that Frank Buxton is the
worst of all," said Edward.
Maggie's heart sank within her to hear this cold, unkind way of talking
over the friends who had done so much to make their day happy. She had
never before ventured into the world, and did not know how common and
universal is the custom of picking to pieces those with whom we have just
been associating; and so it pained her. She was a little depressed, too,
with the idea that she should never see Mrs. Buxton and the lovely Erminia
again. Because no future visit or intercourse had been spoken about, she
fancied it would never take place; and she felt like the man in the Arabian
Nights, who caught a glimpse of the precious stones and dazzling glories
of the cavern, which was immediately after closed, and shut up into the
semblance of hard, barren rock. She tried to recall the house. Deep blue,
crimson red, warm brown draperies, were so striking after the light
chintzes of her own house; and the effect of a suite of rooms opening out
of each other was something quite new to the little girl; the apartments
seemed to melt away into vague distance, like the dim endings of the arched
aisles in church. But most of all she tried to recall Mrs. Buxton's face;
and Nancy had at last to put away her work, and come to bed, in order to
soothe the poor child, who was crying at the thought that Mrs. Buxton would
soon die, and that she should never see her again. Nancy loved Maggie
dearly, and felt no jealousy of this warm admiration of the unknown lady.
She listened to her story and her fears till the sobs were hushed; and the
moon fell through the casement on the white closed eyelids of one, who
still sighed in her sleep.
CHAPTER III.
In three weeks, the day came for Edward's departure. A great cake and a
parcel of gingerbread soothed his sorrows on leaving home.
"Don't cry, Maggie!" said he to her on the last morning; "you see I don't.
Christmas will soon be here, and I dare say I shall find time to write to
you now and then. Did Nancy put any citron in the cake?"
Maggie wished she might accompany her mother to Combehurst to see Edward
off by the coach; but it was not to be. She went with them, without her
bonnet, as far as her mother would allow her; and then she sat down, and
watched their progress for a long, long way. She was startled by the sound
of a horse's feet, softly trampling through the long heather. It was Frank
Buxton's.
"My father thought Mrs. Browne would like to see the Woodchester Herald. Is
Edward gone?" said he, noticing her sad face.
"Yes! he is just gone down the hill to the coach. I dare say you can see
him crossing the bridge, soon. I did so want to have gone with him,"
answered she, looking wistfully toward the town.
Frank felt sorry for her, left alone to gaze after her brother, whom,
strange as it was, she evidently regretted. After a minute's silence, he
said:
"You liked riding the other day. Would you like a ride now? Rhoda is very
gentle, if you can sit on my saddle. Look! I'll shorten the stirrup. There
now; there's a brave little girl! I'll lead her very carefully. Why,
Erminia durst not ride without a side-saddle! I'll tell you what; I'll
bring the newspaper every Wednesday till I go to school, and you shall have
a ride. Only I wish we had a side-saddle for Rhoda. Or, if Erminia will let
me, I'll bring Abdel-Kadr, the little Shetland you rode the other day."
"But will Mr. Buxton let you?" asked Maggie, half delighted--half afraid.
"Oh, my father! to be sure he will. I have him in very good order."
Maggie was rather puzzled by this way of speaking.
"When do you go to school?" asked she.
"Toward the end of August; I don't know the day."
"Does Erminia go to school?"
"No. I believe she will soon though, if mamma does not get better." Maggie
liked the change of voice, as he spoke of his mother.
"There, little lady! now jump down. Famous! you've a deal of spirit, you
little brown mouse."
Nancy came out, with a wondering look, to receive Maggie.
"It is Mr. Frank Buxton," said she, by way of an introduction. "He has
brought mamma the newspaper."
"Will you walk in, sir, and rest? I can tie up your horse."
"No, thank you," said he, "I must be off. Don't forget, little mousey, that
you are to ready for another ride next Wednesday." And away he went.
It needed a good deal of Nancy's diplomacy to procure Maggie this pleasure;
although I don't know why Mrs. Browne should have denied it, for the circle
they went was always within sight of the knoll in front of the house, if
any one cared enough about the matter to mount it, and look after them.
Frank and Maggie got great friends in these rides. Her fearlessness
delighted and surprised him, she had seemed so cowed and timid at first.
But she was only so with people, as he found out before holidays ended.
He saw her shrink from particular looks and inflexions of voice of her
mother's; and learnt to read them, and dislike Mrs. Browne accordingly,
notwithstanding all her sugary manner toward himself. The result of his
observations he communicated to his mother, and in consequence, he was the
bearer of a most civil and ceremonious message from Mrs. Buxton to Mrs.
Browne, to the effect that the former would be much obliged to the latter
if she would allow Maggie to ride down occasionally with the groom, who
would bring the newspapers on the Wednesdays (now Frank was going to
school), and to spend the afternoon with Erminia. Mrs. Browne consented,
proud of the honor, and yet a little annoyed that no mention was made of
herself. When Frank had bid good-bye, and fairly disappeared, she turned to
Maggie.
"You must not set yourself up if you go among these fine folks. It is their
way of showing attention to your father and myself. And you must mind and
work doubly hard on Thursdays to make up for playing on Wednesdays."
Maggie was in a flush of sudden color, and a happy palpitation of her
fluttering little heart. She could hardly feel any sorrow that the kind
Frank was going away, so brimful was she of the thoughts of seeing his
mother; who had grown strangely associated in her dreams, both sleeping
and waking, with the still calm marble effigies that lay for ever clasping
their hands in prayer on the altar-tombs in Combehurst church. All the
week was one happy season of anticipation. She was afraid her mother was
secretly irritated at her natural rejoicing; and so she did not speak to
her about it, but she kept awake till Nancy came to bed, and poured into
her sympathizing ears every detail, real or imaginary, of her past or
future intercourse with Mrs. Buxton, and the old servant listened with
interest, and fell into the custom of picturing the future with the ease
and simplicity of a child.
"Suppose, Nancy! only suppose, you know, that she did die. I don't mean
really die, but go into a trance like death; she looked as if she was in
one when I first saw her; I would not leave her, but I would sit by her,
and watch her, and watch her."
"Her lips would be always fresh and red," interrupted Nancy.
"Yes, I know you've told me before how they keep red--I should look at them
quite steadily; I would try never to go to sleep."
"The great thing would be to have air-holes left in the coffin." But Nancy
felt the little girl creep close to her at the grim suggestion, and, with
the tact of love, she changed the subject.
"Or supposing we could hear of a doctor who could charm away illness. There
were such in my young days; but I don't think people are so knowledgeable
now. Peggy Jackson, that lived near us when I was a girl, was cured of a
waste by a charm."
"What is a waste, Nancy?"
"It is just a pining away. Food does not nourish nor drink strengthen them,
but they just fade off, and grow thinner and thinner, till their shadow
looks gray instead of black at noonday; but he cured her in no time by a
charm."
"Oh, if we could find him."
"Lass, he's dead, and she's dead, too, long ago!"
While Maggie was in imagination going over moor and fell, into the hollows
of the distant mysterious hills, where she imagined all strange beasts and
weird people to haunt, she fell asleep.
Such were the fanciful thoughts which were engendered in the little girl's
mind by her secluded and solitary life. It was more solitary than ever, now
that Edward was gone to school. The house missed his loud cheerful voice,
and bursting presence. There seemed much less to be done, now that his
numerous wants no longer called for ministration and attendance. Maggie did
her task of work on her own gray rock; but as it was sooner finished, now
that he was not there to interrupt and call her off, she used to stray up
the Fell Lane at the back of the house; a little steep stony lane, more
like stairs cut in the rock than what we, in the level land, call a lane:
it reached on to the wide and open moor, and near its termination there
was a knotted thorn-tree; the only tree for apparent miles. Here the sheep
crouched under the storms, or stood and shaded themselves in the noontide
heat. The ground was brown with their cleft round foot-marks; and tufts of
wool were hung on the lower part of the stem, like votive offerings on some
shrine. Here Maggie used to come and sit and dream in any scarce half-hour
of leisure. Here she came to cry, when her little heart was overfull at her
mother's sharp fault-finding, or when bidden to keep out of the way, and
not be troublesome. She used to look over the swelling expanse of moor, and
the tears were dried up by the soft low-blowing wind which came sighing
along it. She forgot her little home griefs to wonder why a brown-purple
shadow always streaked one particular part in the fullest sunlight; why the
cloud-shadows always seemed to be wafted with a sidelong motion; or she
would imagine what lay beyond those old gray holy hills, which seemed to
bear up the white clouds of Heaven on which the angels flew abroad. Or she
would look straight up through the quivering air, as long as she could bear
its white dazzling, to try and see God's throne in that unfathomable and
infinite depth of blue. She thought she should see it blaze forth sudden
and glorious, if she were but full of faith. She always came down from the
thorn, comforted, and meekly gentle.
But there was danger of the child becoming dreamy, and finding her pleasure
in life in reverie, not in action, or endurance, or the holy rest which
comes after both, and prepares for further striving or bearing. Mrs.
Buxton's kindness prevented this danger just in time. It was partly out of
interest in Maggie, but also partly to give Erminia a companion, that she
wished the former to come down to Combehurst.
When she was on these visits, she received no regular instruction; and yet
all the knowledge, and most of the strength of her character, was derived
from these occasional hours. It is true her mother had given her daily
lessons in reading, writing, and arithmetic; but both teacher and taught
felt these more as painful duties to be gone through, than understood them
as means to an end. The "There! child; now that's done with," of relief,
from Mrs. Browne, was heartily echoed in Maggie's breast, as the dull
routine was concluded.
Mrs. Buxton did not make a set labor of teaching; I suppose she felt that
much was learned from her superintendence, but she never thought of doing
or saying anything with a latent idea of its indirect effect upon the
little girls, her companions. She was simply herself; she even confessed
(where the confession was called for) to short-comings, to faults, and
never denied the force of temptations, either of those which beset little
children, or of those which occasionally assailed herself. Pure, simple,
and truthful to the heart's core, her life, in its uneventful hours and
days, spoke many homilies. Maggie, who was grave, imaginative, and
somewhat quaint, took pains in finding words to express the thoughts to
which her solitary life had given rise, secure of Mrs. Buxton's ready
understanding and sympathy.
"You are so like a cloud," said she to Mrs. Buxton. "Up at the Thorn-tree,
it was quite curious how the clouds used to shape themselves, just
according as I was glad or sorry. I have seen the same clouds, that, when
I came up first, looked like a heap of little snow-hillocks over babies'
graves, turn, as soon as I grew happier, to a sort of long bright row of
angels. And you seem always to have had some sorrow when I am sad, and turn
bright and hopeful as soon as I grow glad. Dear Mrs. Buxton! I wish Nancy
knew you."
The gay, volatile, willful, warm-hearted Erminia was less earnest in all
things. Her childhood had been passed amid the distractions of wealth; and
passionately bent upon the attainment of some object at one moment, the
next found her angry at being reminded of the vanished anxiety she had
shown but a moment before. Her life was a shattered mirror; every part
dazzling and brilliant, but wanting the coherency and perfection of
a whole. Mrs. Buxton strove to bring her to a sense of the beauty of
completeness, and the relation which qualities and objects bear to each
other; but in all her striving she retained hold of the golden clue of
sympathy. She would enter into Erminia's eagerness, if the object of
it varied twenty times a day; but by-and-by, in her own mild, sweet,
suggestive way, she would place all these objects in their right and
fitting places, as they were worthy of desire. I do not know how it was,
but all discords, and disordered fragments, seemed to fall into harmony and
order before her presence.
She had no wish to make the two little girls into the same kind of pattern
character. They were diverse as the lily and the rose. But she tried to
give stability and earnestness to Erminia; while she aimed to direct
Maggie's imagination, so as to make it a great minister to high ends,
instead of simply contributing to the vividness and duration of a reverie.
She told her tales of saints and martyrs, and all holy heroines, who forgot
themselves, and strove only to be "ministers of Him, to do His pleasure."
The tears glistened in the eyes of hearer and speaker, while she spoke in
her low, faint voice, which was almost choked at times when she came to the
noblest part of all.
But when she found that Maggie was in danger of becoming too little a
dweller in the present, from the habit of anticipating the occasion for
some great heroic action, she spoke of other heroines. She told her how,
though the lives of these women of old were only known to us through some
striking glorious deed, they yet must have built up the temple of their
perfection by many noiseless stories; how, by small daily offerings laid
on the altar, they must have obtained their beautiful strength for the
crowning sacrifice. And then she would turn and speak of those whose names
will never be blazoned on earth--some poor maid-servant, or hard-worked
artisan, or weary governess--who have gone on through life quietly, with
holy purposes in their hearts, to which they gave up pleasure and ease,
in a soft, still, succession of resolute days. She quoted those lines of
George Herbert's:
"All may have,
If they dare choose, a glorious life, or grave."
And Maggie's mother was disappointed because Mrs. Buxton had never offered
to teach her "to play on the piano," which was to her the very head and
front of a genteel education. Maggie, in all her time of yearning to become
Joan of Arc, or some great heroine, was unconscious that she herself showed
no little heroism, in bearing meekly what she did every day from her
mother. It was hard to be questioned about Mrs. Buxton, and then to have
her answers turned into subjects for contempt, and fault-finding with that
sweet lady's ways.
When Ned came home for the holidays, he had much to tell. His mother
listened for hours to his tales; and proudly marked all that she could note
of his progress in learning. His copy-books and writing-flourishes were a
sight to behold; and his account-books contained towers and pyramids of
figures.
"Ay, ay!" said Mr. Buxton, when they were shown to him; "this is grand!
when I was a boy I could make a flying eagle with one stroke of my pen,
but I never could do all this. And yet I thought myself a fine fellow, I
warrant you. And these sums! why man! I must make you my agent. I need one,
I'm sure; for though I get an accountant every two or three years to do
up my books, they somehow have the knack of getting wrong again. Those
quarries, Mrs. Browne, which every one says are so valuable, and for the
stone out of which receive orders amounting to hundreds of pounds, what
d'ye think was the profit I made last year, according to my books?"
"I'm sure I don't know, sir; something very great, I've no doubt."
"Just seven-pence three farthings," said he, bursting into a fit of merry
laughter, such as another man would have kept for the announcement of
enormous profits. "But I must manage things differently soon. Frank will
want money when he goes to Oxford, and he shall have it. I'm but a rough
sort of fellow, but Frank shall take his place as a gentleman. Aha, Miss
Maggie! and where's my gingerbread? There you go, creeping up to Mrs.
Buxton on a Wednesday, and have never taught Cook how to make gingerbread
yet. Well, Ned! and how are the classics going on? Fine fellow, that
Virgil! Let me see, how does it begin?
'Arma, virumque cano, Trojae qui primus ab oris.'
That's pretty well, I think, considering I've never opened him since I left
school thirty years ago. To be sure, I spent six hours a day at it when I
was there
|
k stage-plays, interludes and
other theatrical entertainments, which not only occasion great and
unnecessary expenses, and discourage industry and frugality, but
likewise tend generally to increase immorality, impiety and a contempt
for religion,—Be it enacted”, _etc._
[8] Seilhamer, _History of the American Theatre_, vol. ii, pp. 51 _et
seq._; Winsor, _The Memorial History of Boston_, vol. iv, ch. v: “The
Drama in Boston,” by William W. Clapp, pp. 358 _et seq._
[9] Seilhamer, _op. cit._, vol. iii, p. 13; Dunlap, _History of the
American Theatre_, vol. i, p. 244; Snow, _History of Boston_, pp. 333
_et seq._
[10] _Acts and Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts_, 1792–3, pp.
686 _et seq._
[11] The public discussion and legislative phase of the situation,
together with the disorders occasioned by the determination of the
supporters of the theatre to serve their enterprise at any cost,
are well covered by Clapp in the chapter already cited in Winsor’s
_Memorial History of Boston_. _Cf._ also Seilhamer, vol. iii, pp. 14
_et seq._; Dunlap, vol. i, pp. 242 _et seq._; Willard, _Memories of
Youth and Manhood_, vol. i, pp. 324, 325; Bentley, _Diary_, vol. i. pp
340, 379, 380, 414, 415, 418, _etc._
[12] _The Speech of John Gardiner, Esquire, Delivered in the House
of Representatives. On Thursday, the 26th of January, 1792_, Boston,
1792, p. 18. Another publication of the same year, _The Rights of the
Drama: or, An Inquiry into the Origin, Principles, and Consequences
of Theatrical Entertainments. By Philo Dramatis_ (pseud.), discussed
the subject in different vein, but with the same object in view.
In the final chapter on “The Outlines of a Theatre, it’s Necessary
Appendages, a Plan of Regulation, Calculation of Expenses, Profits,
&c.”, doubtless by way of turning the balance of public judgment in
favor of the establishment of a local theatre, the author suggests that
the following ends may be served: the development of native genius,
and thus the elevation of America to a high rank in the republic of
letters; the reservation of a certain portion of the revenues of the
theatre by the Commonwealth, for the care of the poor of Boston, or
of the state, and for the support of the University at Cambridge
(Harvard), thus easing the burden of taxation. The closing words of
this pamphlet, stripped of their bombast, are not unworthy to stand
with Gardiner’s: “Whenever I consider this subject, and contemplate the
formation of a Theatre, I cannot help feeling a kind of enthusiasm...
I anticipate the time when the Garricks and Siddons of America shall
adorn the Stage, and melt the soul to pity. But here let me pause.—Let
the most rigid Stoic, or the greatest fanatic in religion, or the most
notorious dupe to prejudice, once hearken to the tale of the tragic
muse, whose office it is to soften, and to subdue the violent passions
of the mind, by painting the real misfortunes and distresses, which
accompany our journey through life; or attend to the laughable follies,
and vain inconsistencies, which daily mark the character of the human
species—the deformity of vice—the excellence of virtue—, and, from the
representation of the lively Comedy, ‘catch the manners living as they
rise,’ and then say, if he can, that lessons of instruction are unknown
to the Drama. If these have no effect, let him listen, with mute
attention, to the occasional symphonies, which burst from a thousand
strings, and accompany, and give life and animation to the Comic
scene—and then, if sunk below the brute creation, let him be fortified
against the impressions of sensibility. The stoicism of man must
surpass our comprehension, if the dramatic scene can be contemplated
without emotion; more especially when the representation of life and
manners is intended to correct and to enlarge the heart....”
[13] _Cf._ (Boston) _Independent Chronicle and Universal Advertiser_,
Thursday, March 28, 1793.
[14] _Pseud._: _Effects of the Stage on the Manners of a People: and
the Propriety of Encouraging and Establishing a Virtuous Theatre. By a
Bostonian_, Boston, 1792. The author is insipid enough; none the less
the pamphlet is by no means void of a certain practical-mindedness
and good sense as the author argues for the frank acceptance of the
theatre as an institution in the city’s life. The following constitute
his chief contentions: The theatre, in some form or other, is bound
to come, because of the fact that the people generally are interested
in the subject of amusement; the tastes and appetites of the people
already give painful evidence of serious debasement and corruption; the
acceptance of a “Virtuous Theatre” is the only possible expedient if
the people are to be saved from worse debauchment.
The view taken by the Reverend William Bentley, Salem’s well-known
minister, was less specious, though tinged with a mildly pessimistic
view of popular tastes. Under date of July 31, 1792, he wrote: “So much
talk has been in the Country about Theatrical entertainments that they
have become the pride even of the smallest children in our schools.
The fact puts in mind of the effect from the Rope flyers, who visited
N. England, after whose feats the children of seven were sliding down
the fences & wounding themselves in every quarter.” _Diary_, vol. i,
p. 384. Later, he wrote: “The Theatre opened for the first time [in
Salem] is now the subject. The enlightened who have not determined upon
its utter abolition have yet generally agreed that it is too early
introduced into our country.” _Ibid._, vol. ii, p. 81. _Cf. ibid._, pp.
258, _et seq._, 299, 322. It is clear that Bentley was apprehensive.
[15] Weeden, _Economic and Social History of New England_, vol. i, pp.
188, 195; Bishop, _History of American Manufactures_, vol. i, pp. 245
_et seq._
[16] _Ibid._, p. 250; vol. ii, pp. 501, 502. See also Clark, _History
of Manufactures in the United States_, p. 480.
[17] _Ibid._ Bishop notes the fact that in 1721 a small village of
forty houses, near Boston, made 3000 barrels of cider.
[18] _Ibid._, p. 269; Weeden, _op. cit._, vol. i, pp. 144, 148 _et seq._
[19] The impression that this decline toward a general state of
drunkenness set in early will appear from the following excerpt taken
from the Synod’s report on “The Necessity of Reformation”, presented
to the General Court of Massachusetts in 1679: “VIII. There is much
Intemperance. The heathenish and Idolatrous practice of Health-drinking
is become too general a Provocation. Dayes of Training, and other
publick Solemnityes, have been abused in this respect: and not only
English but Indians have been debauched, by those that call themselves
Christians, who have put their bottles to them, and made them drunk
also. This is a crying Sin, and the more aggravated in that the first
Planters of this Colony did (as in the Patent expressed) come into this
Land with a design to Convert the Heathen unto Christ.... There are
more Temptations and occasions unto _That Sin_, publickly allowed of,
than any necessity doth require; the proper end of Taverns, &c. being
to that end only, a far less number would suffice: But it is a common
practice for Town dwellers, yea and Church-members, to frequent publick
Houses, and there to misspend precious Time, unto the dishonour of
the Gospel, and the scandalizing of others, who are by such examples
induced to sin against God.” _Cf._ Walker, _Creeds and Platforms of
Congregationalism_, p. 430.
[20] Hatch, _The Administration of the American Revolutionary Army_,
pp. 89 _et seq._ The supplies of beer, cider, and rum furnished the
armies were not always held to be adequate. After the battle of
Brandywine, Congress ordered thirty hogsheads of rum distributed among
the soldiers as a tribute to their gallant conduct in that battle.
_Cf._ _One Hundred Years of Temperance_, New York, 1886, article by
Daniel Dorchester on “The Inception of the Temperance Reformation”, p.
113, for comments on the effects of the return of drunken soldiers to
the ranks of citizenship.
[21] Weeden, _op. cit._, vol. ii, p. 883, supplies the following
concerning the character of the coasting and river trade, which the
exigencies of the war greatly stimulated: “A cargo from Boston to Great
Barrington and Williamstown contained 11 hdds. and 6 tierces of rum, 3
bbls. of wine, 2 do. of brandy, 1/2 bale of cotton, and 1 small cask of
indigo. The proportion of ‘wet goods’ to the small quantity of cotton
and indigo is significant, and indicates the prevailing appetites”.
[22] In 1783 Massachusetts had no fewer than sixty-three distilleries.
In 1783 this state distilled 1,475,509 gallons of spirits from foreign,
and 11,490 gallons from domestic materials. From 1790 to 1800 in the
United States, 23,148,404 gallons of spirits were distilled from
molasses; of this 6,322,640 gallons were exported, leaving a quantity
for home consumption so large as to supply its own comment. Low grain
prices, together with the difficulty of gaining access to the molasses
markets, hastened a transition to grain distilling near the end of
the eighteenth century, with the result that in 1810 Mr. Gallatin,
Secretary of the Treasury, reported not less than 9,000,000 gallons of
spirits as having been distilled from grain and fruit in 1801. Bishop,
_History of American Manufactures_, vol. ii, pp. 30, 65, 83, 152;
Clark, _History of Manufactures in the United States_, p. 230.
[23] _Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society_, 6th ser.,
vol. iv, Belknap Papers, pt. iii, p. 440.
[24] _Ibid._, p. 508.
[25] _Diary of William Bentley_, vol. ii, p. 92: May 31, 1794: “The
observation of holydays at Election is an abuse in this part of the
Country. Not only at our return yesterday, did we observe crowds around
the new Tavern at the entrance of the Town, but even at this day, we
saw at Perkins’ on the neck, persons of all descriptions, dancing to a
fiddle, drinking, playing with pennies, &c. It is proper such excesses
should be checked.” _Cf._ also _ibid._, pp. 58, 363, 410, 444 _et seq._
_Cf._ also Earle, Alice Morse, _Stage-coach and Tavern Days_, New York,
1900.
[26] _Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society_, 6th Series,
vol. iv, Belknap Papers, pt. iii, p. 456. Jeremiah Libbey writes of
the situation at Portsmouth, [N. H.?]: “The common allowance of rum
to labourers here is half a pint per day, which has been the rule or
custom as long as I can remember. There are several persons in this
town that are endeavouring to abolish the custom by giving them more
wages in lieu of the _allowance_, as it is call’d; but the custom is
so rooted that it is very difficult to break it. The attachment is
so great, that in general if you were to offer double the price of
the allowance in money it would not be satisfactory to the labourers,
and altho’ that is the case & it is the ruin of them and familys in
many instances... untill a substitute of beer or some other drink is
introduced in general, it will be difficult to get over it”.
[27] _Diary of William Bentley_, vol. i, pp. 167, 175, 217, 218, 244,
247, 248, 255, 256, 281 _et seq._
[28] _Autobiography and Correspondence of Lyman Beecher_, vol. i, p. 30.
[29] _Ibid._, p. 24. The description of the meeting of the
Consociation, pp. 214 _et seq._, is unusually vivid: “... the
preparation for our creature comforts in the sitting-room of Mr.
Heart’s house, besides food, was a broad sideboard, covered with
decanters and bottles, and sugar, and pitchers of water. There we
found all the various kinds of liquors then in vogue. The drinking
was apparently universal. This preparation was made by the society as
a matter of course. When the Consociation arrived, they always took
something to drink round; also before public services, and always on
their return. As they could not all drink at once, they were obliged to
stand and wait, as people do when they go to mill. There was a decanter
of spirits also on the dinnertable, to help digestion, and gentlemen
partook of it through the afternoon and evening as they felt the need,
some more and some less; and the sideboard, with the spillings of
water, and sugar, and liquor, looked and smelled like the bar of a very
active grog-shop. None of the Consociation were drunk; but that there
was not, at times, a considerable amount of exhilaration, I can not
affirm.” It was Beecher’s judgment that “the tide was swelling in the
drinking habits of society.—” _Ibid._, p. 215.
[30] _Ibid._, vol. i, pp. 133, 138, 163, 255, 256, 371; vol. ii. pp.
294, 328 _et seq._
[31] _A Discourse on Some Events of the Last Century, delivered in the
Brick Church in New Haven, on Wednesday, January 7, 1801. By Timothy
Dwight, President of Yale College_, New Haven, 1801. _Cf._ this
author’s _Travels in New England and New York_, vol. iv, pp. 353 _et
seq._
[32] Dwight’s _Century Sermon_, p. 18.
[33] _Ibid._, pp. 18 _et seq._
[34] The testimony of a European traveller should prove as edifying
as that of an intimate participant in the country’s life. In 1788,
Brissot de Warville visited America. He remarked the change which had
come over the people of New England, of Boston in particular. The old
“Presbyterian austerity, which interdicted all pleasures, even that
of walking; which forbade travelling on Sunday, which persecuted men
whose opinions were different from their own” was no longer to be
encountered. Yet no evidence of the corruption of morals presented
itself to the distinguished traveller. On the contrary, he remarked the
general wholesomeness and soundness of domestic life, and the general
poise and temperance of a people which, “since the ancient puritan
austerity has disappeared”, was able to play cards without yielding
to the gambling instinct and to enjoy its clubs and parties without
offending the spirit of courtesy and good-breeding. The glow upon
the soul of Brissot as he contemplates the prosperity and unaffected
simplicity of the people of Boston is evident as he writes: “With
what pleasure did I contemplate this town, which first shook off the
English yoke! which, for a long time, resisted all the seductions, all
the menaces, all the horrors of a civil war! How I delighted to wander
up and down that long street, whose simple houses of wood border the
magnificent channel of Boston, and whose full stores offer me all the
productions of the continent which I had quitted! How I enjoyed the
activity of the merchants, the artizans, and the sailors! It was not
the noisy vortex of Paris; it was not the unquiet, eager mien of my
countrymen; it was the simple, dignified air of men, who are conscious
of liberty, and who see in all men their brothers and their equals.
Everything in this street bears the marks of a town still in its
infancy, but which, even in its infancy, enjoys a great prosperity....
Boston is just rising from the devastations of war, and its commerce is
flourishing; its manufactures, productions, arts, and sciences, offer a
number of curious and interesting observations.” (Brissot De Warville,
_New Travels in the United States of America_, pp. 70–82.) Equally
laudatory comment respecting the state of society in Connecticut is
made by Brissot (pp. 108, 109).
John Bernard, the English comedian, who was in this country at the
close of the eighteenth century, found the state of society very much
like that which he had left in his own country. “They wore the same
clothes, spoke the same language, and seemed to glow with the same
affable and hospitable feelings. In walking along the mall I could
scarcely believe I had not been whisked over to St. James’s Park; and
in their houses the last modes of London were observable in nearly
every article of ornament or utility. Other parts of the state were,
however, very different.” (Bernard, _Retrospections of America,
1797–1811_, p. 29.) Bernard found in New England abundant evidences of
progress such as he had not been accustomed to in England, and splendid
stamina of character (p. 30). Nothing, apparently, suggested to him
that the people were not virile and sound.
[35] Bentley, _Diary_, vol. i, pp. 253 _et seq._, discusses at length
“the Puerile Sports usual in these parts of New England”. Weeden,
_Economic and Social History of New England_, vol. ii, p. 696, comments
on the dearth of public amusement. _Cf._ also _ibid._, p. 864. The
changed attitude of the public toward dancing, as reported by Weeden,
pp. 696 and 864, doubtless finds its explanation in the growing
consciousness that the resources in the way of entertainment deserve to
be increased. At the close of the century, however, dancing was still
frowned upon. Bentley, _Diary_, vol. ii, pp. 17, 232, 233, 296, 322,
363.
[36] Brissot, _New Travels in the United States of America_, p. 72:
“Music, which their teachers formerly prescribed as a diabolic art,
begins to make part of their education. In some houses you hear the
forte-piano. This art, it is true, is still in its infancy; but the
young novices who exercise it, are so gentle, so complaisant, and so
modest, that the proud perfection of art gives no pleasure equal to
what they afford.” _Cf._ also Bentley, _Diary_, vol. ii, pp. 247 _et
seq._, 292.
[37] Brissot, _New Travels in the United States of America_, pp. 86 _et
seq._ Brissot generously explains this fact upon the ground that in a
country so new, whose immediate concerns were so compelling, and where,
also, wealth is not centered in a few hands, the cultivation of the
arts and sciences is not to be expected. On the side of invention the
situation was far from being as bad as a reading of Brissot might seem
to imply. Weeden, _Economic and Social History of New England_, vol.
ii, pp. 847–858.
[38] Goddard, _Studies in New England Transcendentalism_, p. 18.
While the passage cited deals with an earlier situation, the general
observation made concerning the well-poised character of the New
England type of mind is as valid for the close of the eighteenth
century as for the corresponding period of the preceding century; and
the failure of New England to take a “plunge... from the moral heights
of Puritanism” is all the more impressive in the later period in view
of the variety and character of the new incitements and impulses which
the people of New England generally felt in the period following the
Revolution.
[39] Conspicuous in this group was the new merchant class. In the wake
of the Revolution came an industrial and commercial revival which
profoundly affected the life of New England. While the period of the
Confederation, on account of its political disorganization and the
chaotic state of public finance and the currency, was characterized
by extreme economic depression, on the other hand, the adoption of
the Constitution communicated to the centers of industry and commerce
a feeling of optimism. The sense that a federal government had been
formed, equal to the task of guaranteeing to its citizens the rights
and privileges of trade, gave early evidence that the economic
impulses of the country had been quickened notably. Such evidence is
too abundant and too well known either to permit or to require full
statement here, but the following is suggestive: The fisheries of New
England, which had been nearly destroyed during the Revolution, had
so far revived by 1789 that a total of 480 vessels, representing a
tonnage of 27,000, were employed in the industry. At least 32,000 tons
of shipping were built in the United States, a very large part of this
in New England, in 1791. Before the war the largest amount built in any
one year was 26,544 tons. But the record of 1791 was modest. From 1789
to 1810, American shipping increased from 202,000 to 1,425,000 tons.
Because of the federal government’s proclamation of strict neutrality
with regard to the wars abroad, the carrying trade of the world came
largely into the hands of shipowners and seamen of the United States,
with the result that the dockyards and wharves of New England fairly
hummed with activity. The exports of 1793 amounted to $33,026,233.
By 1799 they had mounted to $78,665,522, of which $33,142,522 was
the growth, produce, or manufacture of the Union. Within a very few
years after the adoption of the Constitution, American merchants had
become the warehousers and distributors of merchandise to all parts
of the world. The wharves of New England were covered with goods from
Europe, the Orient, the West Indies, and from the looms, shops, and
distilleries of the nation. Directed by resourceful and far-sighted
men who had the instinct for commercial expansion, ships sailed from
New England ports for Batavia, Canton, Calcutta, St. Petersburg,
Port Louis. They carried with them coffee, fish, flour, provisions,
tobacco, rum, iron, cattle, horses; they brought back molasses, sugar,
wine, indigo, pepper, salt, muslins, calicoes, silks, hemp, duck. The
situation is dealt with in detail by Bishop, _History of American
Manufactures_, vol. ii, pp. 13–82; Clark, _History of Manufactures in
the United States_, pp. 227 _et seq._; Weeden, _Economic and Social
History of New England_, vol. ii, pp. 816–857.
[40] Winsor, _The Memorial History of Boston_, vol. iii, pp. 191, 203;
Morse, _The Federalist Party in Massachusetts_, pp. 37, 38; _Harvard
Theological Review_, January, 1916, p. 104.
[41] Weeden, _Early Life in Rhode Island_, pp. 357 _et seq._, calls
attention to the spacious and elegant houses which were built at
Providence about 1790, and to the new group of merchants which the
expansion of trans-oceanic commerce called into existence there.
Weeden, _Economic and Social History of New England_, pp. 821 _et
seq._, deals with the situation in a larger way.
[42] Parker, _History of the Second Church of Christ in Hartford_,
p. 172. The passage contains a vivid picture of the state of polite
society in an important Connecticut center. Love, _The Colonial
History of Hartford_, pp. 244 _et seq._, deals with the transformation
of social life with particular reference to the disintegration of
Puritanism.
[43] An outcry against the excesses of fashion began to make itself
heard. “An Old Farmer,” writing to the _Massachusetts Spy_, March 27,
1799, complains on account of the consequent drain upon the purses of
husbands and fathers: “I am a plain farmer, and therefore beg leave to
trouble you with a little plain language. By the dint of industry, and
application to agricultural concerns, I have, till lately, made out to
keep square with the world. But the late scarcity of money, together
with the extravagance of fashions have nearly ruined me.... I am by no
means tenacious of the _old way_, or of _old fashions_. I know that my
family must dress different from what I used to when I was young; yet
as I have the interest of husbands and fathers at heart, I wish there
might be some reformation in the present mode of female dress.... In
better times, six or seven yards of Calico would serve to make a gown;
but now fourteen yards are scarcely sufficient. I do not perceive that
women grow any larger now than formerly.... A few years since, my
daughters were not too proud to wear good calfskin shoes; two pair of
which would last them a year: But now none will suit them but morroco,
and these must be of the slenderest kind.... Young ladies used to be
contented with wearing nothing on their heads but what Nature gave
them.... But now they dare not appear in company, unless they have half
a bushel of gauze, and other stuff, stuck on their heads”. The letter
closes with a humorous account of the writer’s embarrassing experience
with the trains of the ladies’ dresses on the occasion of a recent
visit to church.
[44] Swift, Lindsay, _The Massachusetts Election Sermons_ (Publications
of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, vol. i, Transactions,
1892–1894), pp. 428 _et seq._
[45] Weeden, _Economic and Social History of New England_, vol. ii, pp.
864 _et seq._
[46] Scudder, _Recollections of Samuel Breck, with Passages from His
Note-Books_, pp. 178 _et seq._ Breck visited New England about 1791. He
was impressed with the looseness of life and gross lawlessness which
he saw. A fairer judgment appears on page 182: “The severe, gloomy
puritanical spirit that had governed New England since the days of the
Pilgrim forefathers was gradually giving way in the principal towns”,
_etc._
2. OMINOUS DISCONTENT WITH THE STANDING ORDER
The general impression of a revolt against morality and religion in
New England near the close of the eighteenth century was deepened
by the bitterness of spirit which marked the last stages of the
long struggle waged by dissenters to cut the bond between church
and state.[47] The Congregational Church was one of the fundamental
institutions of New England, and from the first the sword of the
magistrate had been invoked to enforce conformity to its worship and
polity. Strange enough seem the terms “Establishment” and “Standing
Order”[48] in the history of a people whose forefathers came to America
in quest of religious freedom. The freedom sought, however, was to be
construed as loyalty to a new order rather than as the embodiment of
tolerance. Thus it happened that for two whole centuries the battle on
behalf of the rights of dissent had to be waged in New England.[49]
To have this struggle construed by the aggrieved representatives of
the Establishment as the crowning expression of what they had come to
regard as the deep-seated and widespread irreligion of the age, was
not the least of the bitter taunts which dissenters had to bear.
(a) _Massachusetts_
In Massachusetts the eighteenth century dawned with some faint
promise of a kindlier day. The Charter of 1691 granted full liberty
of conscience to all Christians except Roman Catholics.[50] The
practical effects of this apparently sweeping reform were largely
nullified, however, when in the following year the General Court made
it obligatory for each town to have a minister for whose support all
its inhabitants should be taxed.[51] With the removal of all bonds upon
conscience and of all religious restrictions upon the right of suffrage
on the one hand, but with the principle of enforced support of the
institutions of religion on the other, the hallowed union of church
and state in Massachusetts obviously stood in no immediate danger. The
slight modifications speedily made in the law of 1692 did not touch the
principle of taxation in the interests of religious worship.[52]
A measure of relief came to the Episcopalians in 1727,[53] and to the
Quakers and Baptists in 1728,[54] in the form of exemption laws. In
the case of the Baptists the exemption granted was not absolute, but
only for a limited period of years. With the expiration of this period
the struggle for relief of necessity had to be renewed.[55] The rights
of dissent had begun to receive some recognition, but the limitations
embodied in the foregoing legislation bore convincing testimony of a
grudging temper of mind which would yield no ground without strong
pressure.
The spirit of excitement and controversy which characterized the
revival of religion of the third and fourth decades of the eighteenth
century (_i. e._, the Great Awakening) led to new complications and
difficulties. Stirred by the revival, itinerant preachers, some of them
of little learning and of less tact, invaded parishes of their clerical
brethren without their consent, and presumed to censure the ministers
and congregations that had not yielded to the emotional impulses of the
revival.[56] A clash of parties followed, producing new antipathies and
cleavages. Many who were in sympathy with the revival withdrew from
orthodox congregations to organize new churches, nominally Baptist,
with a view to obtaining exemption from the obligation to support
the state church. To meet this evasion in 1752 the General Court of
Massachusetts passed an act which provided
That no person for the future shall be so esteemed an A(n)nabaptist
as to have his poll or polls and estate exempted from paying a
proportionable part of the taxes that shall be raised in the
town or place where he or they belong, but such whose names shall
be contained in the lists taken by the assessors, as in said act
provided, or such as shall produce a certificate, under the hands
of the minister and of two principal members of such church,
setting forth that they conscientiously believe such person or
persons to be of their perswasion, and that he or they usually and
frequently attend the publick worship in such church on Lord’s
days.[57]
A further provision of the act denied to Baptist ministers and their
parishioners the right of furnishing the required certificates unless
three other Baptist churches previously should have certified that the
persons granting the certificates were regarded as members of that
body.[58] To make the situation more galling, if that were possible,
certificates so obtained had to be lodged annually with the town clerk
before the time to pay the rates arrived.
From every point of view this legislation was objectionable to
the Baptists. Their protest was instant and vigorous.[59] It was
decided to send one of their number as agent to England, to carry
their case before the government of the mother country.[60] A sharp
remonstrance, so plain in its language that its signers came very
near being taken into custody, was drawn up and presented to the
General Court at Boston.[61] But great as was the sense of injustice
under which the Baptists smarted, the operations of the act appear
to have been most severe in the case of those who had drawn off from
the orthodox churches on account of the disturbances created by the
Great Awakening. The position of these Separatists[62] was peculiarly
vulnerable. Baptist leaders found themselves embarrassed when called
upon to certify to the Baptist affiliations of the Separatists; such a
distasteful judgment of the motives and scruples of others was to be
avoided wherever possible.[63] On the other hand, if the Separatists
sought to set up churches and establish ministers of their own, they
were confronted by the fact that a second Congregational church could
not be formed in a parish without legislative permission, and the
orthodox party usually showed itself capable of forestalling all such
sanction on the part of the state. It was left, therefore, to the
Separatists either for conscience’ sake to bear the double burden of
taxation,[64] or to seek a permanent religious home in one of the
recognized dissenting bodies.[65]
Five years later, when the exemption law of 1752 expired and with it
the exemption laws that previously had been passed for the relief of
the Quakers, a new law was enacted governing both sects.[66] Henceforth
a Baptist who desired exemption must have his name upon a list to be
presented annually to the assessor and signed by the minister and three
principal members of the Baptist congregation to which the applicant
belonged, with the accompanying certification that the applicant was
recognized as a conscientious and faithful Baptist. Quakers were
placed under the same regulations. For thirteen years this law was in
operation, with manifold instances of distress resulting, particularly
in the case of Baptists.[67] Through difficulty in obtaining the
certificates, goods were seized, expensive and otherwise irritating
court trials were held, and not a few victims, either because of
poverty or on account of conscientious scruples, found their way to
prison. In some instances, despite the fact that the certificates were
duly obtained and presented, they were waved aside and the payment of
the tax required or the process of distraint invoked.[68] It is little
wonder that the feeling in the minds and hearts of New England Baptists
that there was a spirit of iniquity back of the oppressive measures
of the Standing Order, came to have all the significance of a settled
conviction.[69]
Further modifications in the exemption laws, made in 1770, were so
slight, leaving as they did the certificate principle practically
untouched,[70] that Baptist opposition was aroused even more deeply
and the determination struck deeper root to push the battle for
religious freedom to a decision. The times also were propitious. The
near approach of the Revolutionary struggle focused attention upon the
subject of tyranny and caused acts of oppression, whether civil or
ecclesiastical in character, to stand out in a new relief before the
eye of the public. That dissenters were quick to see the bearing of
political events will appear from the following pithy comments in the
address which the Committee of Grievances[71] drew up late in 1774 and
presented to the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts:
It seems that the two main rights which all America are contending
for at this time, are,—Not to be taxed where they are not
represented, and—To have their causes tried by unbiased judges. And
the Baptist churches in this province as heartily unite with their
countrymen in this cause, as any denomination in the land; and
|
meaner his action in calling Farmer Brown's
boy looked. It was one thing to try to steal those eggs himself, but it
was quite another matter to try to have them stolen by some one against
whom Hooty had no protection whatever.
“If it had been any one but Hooty, you would have done your best to have
kept Farmer Brown's boy away,” said the little voice inside. Blacky
hung his head. He knew that it was true. More than once, in fact many
times, he had warned other feathered folks when Farmer Brown's boy had
been hunting for their nests, and had helped to lead him away.
At last Blacky threw up his head and chuckled, and this time his chuckle
was good to hear. “I'm glad that Farmer Brown's boy didn't take those
eggs,” said he right out loud. “Yes, sir, I'm glad. I'll never do such
a thing as that again. I'm ashamed of what I did; yet I'm glad I did
it. I'm glad because I've learned some things. I've learned that Farmer
Brown's boy isn't as much to be feared as he used to be. I've learned
that Hooty isn't as stupid as I thought he was. I've learned that while
it may be all right for us people of the Green Forest to try to outwit
each other we ought to protect each other against common dangers. And
I've learned something I didn't know before, and that is that Hooty the
Owl is the very first of us to set up housekeeping. Now I think I'll go
hunt for an honest meal.” And he did.
CHAPTER XIV: Blacky Makes A Call
Judge no one by his style of dress;
Your ignorance you thus confess.
--Blacky the Crow.
“Caw, caw, caw, caw.” There was no need of looking to see who that was.
Peter Rabbit knew without looking. Mrs. Quack knew without looking. Just
the same, both looked up. Just alighting in the top of a tall tree was
Blacky the Crow. “Caw, caw, caw, caw,” he repeated, looking down at
Peter and Mrs. Quack and Mr. Quack and the six young Quacks. “I hope I
am not interrupting any secret gossip.”
“Not at all,” Peter hastened to say. “Mrs. Quack was just telling me
of the troubles and clangers in bringing up a young family in the Far
North. How did you know the Quacks had arrived?”
Blacky chuckled hoarsely. “I didn't,” said he. “I simply thought there
might be something going on I didn't know about over here in the pond
of Paddy the Beaver, so I came over to find out. Mr. Quack, you and Mrs.
Quack are looking very fine this fall. And those handsome young Quacks,
you don't mean to tell me that they are your children!”
Mrs. Quack nodded proudly. “They are,” said she.
“You don't say so!” exclaimed Blacky, as if he were very much surprised,
when all the time he wasn't surprised at all. “They are a credit to
their parents. Yes, indeed, they are a credit to their parents. Never
have I seen finer young Ducks in all my life. How glad the hunters with
terrible guns will be to see them.”
Mrs. Quack shivered at that, and Blacky saw it. He chuckled softly. You
know he dearly loves to make others uncomfortable. “I saw three hunters
over on the edge of the Big River early this very morning,” said he.
Mrs. Quack looked more anxious than ever. Blacky's sharp eyes noted
this.
“That is why I came over here,” he added kindly. “I wanted to give you
warning.”
“But you didn't know the Quacks were here!” spoke up Peter.
“True enough, Peter. True enough,” replied Blacky, his eyes twinkling.
“But I thought they might be. I had heard a rumor that those who go
south are traveling earlier than usual this fall, so I knew I might find
Mr. and Mrs. Quack over here any time now. Is it true, Mrs. Quack, that
we are going to have a long, hard, cold winter?”
“That is what they say up in the Far North,” replied Mrs. Quack. “And it
is true that Jack Frost had started down earlier than usual. That is
how it happens we are here now. But about those hunters over by the Big
River, do you suppose they will come over here?” There was an anxious
note in Mrs. Quack's voice.
“No,” replied Blacky promptly. “Farmer Brown's boy won't let them. I
know. I've been watching him and he has been watching those hunters. As
long as you stay here, you will be safe. What a great world this would
be if all those two-legged creatures were like Farmer Brown's boy.”
“Wouldn't it!” cried Peter. Then he added, “I wish they were.”
“You don't wish it half as much as I do,” declared Mrs. Quack.
“Yet I can remember when he used to hunt with a terrible gun and was as
bad as the worst of them,” said Blacky.
“What changed him?” asked Mrs. Quack, looking interested.
“Just getting really acquainted with some of the little people of the
Green Forest and the Green Meadows,” replied Blacky. “He found them
ready to meet him more than halfway in friendship and that some of them
really are his best friends.”
“And now he is their best friend,” spoke up Peter.
Blacky nodded. “Right, Peter,” said he. “That is why the Quacks are safe
here and will be as long as they stay.”
CHAPTER XV: Blacky Does A Little Looking About
Do not take the word of others
That things are or are not so
When there is a chance that you may
Find out for yourself and know.
--Blacky the Crow.
Blacky the Crow is a shrewd fellow. He is one of the smartest and
shrewdest of all the little people in the Green Forest and on the Green
Meadows. Everybody knows it. And because of this, all his neighbors have
a great deal of respect for him, despite his mischievous ways.
Of course, Blacky had noticed that Johnny Chuck had dug his house deeper
than usual and had stuffed himself until he was fatter than ever before.
He had noticed that Jerry Muskrat was making the walls of his house
thicker than in other years, and that Paddy the Beaver was doing the
same thing to his house. You know there is very little that escapes the
sharp eyes of Blacky the Crow.
He had guessed what these things meant. “They think we are going to have
a long, hard, cold winter,” muttered Blacky to himself. “Perhaps they
know, but I want to see some signs of it for myself. They may be only
guessing. Anybody can do that, and one guess is as good as another.”
Then he found Mr. and Mrs. Quack, the Mallard Ducks, and their children
in the pond of Paddy the Beaver and remembered that they never had come
down from their home in the Far North as early in the fall as this. Mrs.
Quack explained that Jack Frost had already started south, and so they
had started earlier to keep well ahead of him.
“Looks as if there may be something in this idea of a long, hard, cold
winter,” thought Blacky, “but perhaps the Quacks are only guessing,
too. I wouldn't take their word for it any more than I would the word
of Johnny Chuck or Jerry Muskrat or Paddy the Beaver. I'll look about a
little.”
So after warning the Quacks to remain in the pond of Paddy the Beaver
if they would be safe, Blacky bade them good-by and flew away. He headed
straight for the Green Meadows and Farmer Brown's cornfield. A little of
that yellow corn would make a good breakfast.
When he reached the cornfield, Blacky perched on top of a shock of corn,
for it already had been cut and put in shocks in readiness to be carted
up to Farmer Brown's barn. For a few minutes he sat there silent and
motionless, but all the time his sharp eyes were making sure that no
enemy was hiding behind one of those brown shocks. When he was quite
certain that things were as safe as they seemed, he picked out a plump
ear of corn and began to tear open the husks, so as to get at the yellow
grains.
“Seems to me these husks are unusually thick,” muttered Blacky, as he
tore at them with his stout bill. “Don't remember ever having seen them
as thick as these. Wonder if it just happens to be so on this ear.”
Then, as a sudden thought popped into his black head, he left that ear
and went to another. The husks of this were as thick as those on the
first. He flew to another shock and found the husks there just the same.
He tried a third shock with the same result.
“Huh, they are all alike,” said he. Then he looked thoughtful and for a
few minutes sat perfectly still like a black statue. “They are right,”
said he at last. “Yes, Sir, they are right.” Of course he meant Johnny
Chuck and Jerry Muskrat and Paddy the Beaver and the Quacks. “I don't
know how they know it, but they are right; we are going to have a long,
hard, cold winter. I know it myself now. I've found a sign. Old Mother
Nature has wrapped this corn in extra thick husks, and of course she has
done it to protect it. She doesn't do things without a reason. We are
going to have a cold winter, or my name isn't Blacky the Crow.”
CHAPTER XVI: Blacky Finds Other Signs
A single fact may fail to prove you either right or wrong;
Confirm it with another and your proof will then be strong.
--Blacky the Crow.
After his discovery that Old Mother Nature had wrapped all the ears
of corn in extra thick husks, Blacky had no doubt in his own mind that
Johnny Chuck and Jerry Muskrat and Paddy the Beaver and the Quacks were
quite right in feeling that the coming winter would be long, hard and
cold. But Blacky long ago learned that it isn't wise or wholly safe to
depend altogether on one thing.
“Old Mother Nature never does things by halves,” thought Blacky, as he
sat on the fence post on the Green Meadows, thinking over his discovery
of the thick husks on the corn. “She wouldn't take care to protect the
corn that way and not do as much for other things. There must be other
signs, if I am smart enough to find them.”
He lifted one black wing and began to set in order the feathers beneath
it. Suddenly he made a funny little hop straight up.
“Well, I never!” he exclaimed, as he spread his wings to regain his
balance. “I never did!”
“Is that so?” piped a squeaky little voice. “If you say you never did, I
suppose you never did, though I want the word of some one else before I
will believe it. What is it you never did?”
Blacky looked down. Peeping up at him from the brown grass were two
bright little eyes.
“Hello, Danny Meadow Mouse!” exclaimed Blacky. “I haven't seen you for a
long time. I've looked for you several times lately.”
“I don't doubt it. I don't doubt it at all,” squeaked Danny. “You'll
never see me when you are looking for me. That is, you won't if I can
help it. You won't if I see you first.”
Blacky chuckled. He knew what Danny meant. When Blacky goes looking
for Danny Meadow Mouse, it usually is in hope of having a Meadow Mouse
dinner, and he knew that Danny knew this. “I've had my breakfast,” said
Blacky, “and it isn't dinner time yet.”
“What is it you never did?” persisted Danny, in his squeaky voice.
“That was just an exclamation,” explained Blacky. “I made a discovery
that surprised me so I exclaimed right out.”
“What was it?” demanded Danny.
“It was that the feathers of my coat are coming in thicker than I ever
knew them to before. I hadn't noticed it until I started to set them in
order a minute ago.” He buried his bill in the feathers of his breast.
“Yes, sir,” said he in a muffled voice, “they are coming in thicker than
I ever knew them to before. There is a lot of down around the roots of
them. I am going to have the warmest coat I've ever had.”
“Well, don't think you are the only one,” retorted Danny. “My fur never
was so thick at this time of year as it is now, and it is the same way
with Nanny Meadow Mouse and all our children. I suppose you know what it
means.”
“What does it mean?” asked Blacky, just as if he didn't have the least
idea, although he had guessed the instant he discovered those extra
feathers.
“It means we are going to have a long, hard, cold winter, and Old Mother
Nature is preparing us for it,” replied Danny, quite as if he knew all
about it. “You'll find that everybody who doesn't go south or sleep all
winter has a thicker coat than usual. Hello! There is old Roughleg the
Hawk! He has come extra early this year. I think I'll go back to warn
Nanny.” Without another word Danny disappeared in the brown grass. Again
Blacky chuckled. “More signs,” said he to himself. “More signs. There
isn't a doubt that we are going to have a hard winter. I wonder if I
can stand it or if I'd better go a little way south, where it will be
warmer.”
CHAPTER XVII: Blacky Watches A Queer Performance
This much to me is very clear:
A thing not understood is queer.
--Blacky the Crow.
Blacky the Crow may be right. Again he may not be. If he is right, it
will account for a lot of the queer people in the world. They are not
understood, and so they are queer. At least, that is what other people
say, and never once think that perhaps they are the queer ones for not
understanding.
But Blacky isn't like those people who are satisfied not to understand
and to think other people and things queer. He does his best to
understand. He waits and watches and uses those sharp eyes of his and
those quick wits of his until at last usually he does understand.
The day of his discovery of Old Mother Nature's signs that the coming
winter would be long, hard and cold, Blacky paid a visit to the Big
River. Long ago he discovered that many things are to be seen on or
beside the Big River, things not to be seen elsewhere. So there are few
clays in which he does not get over there.
As he drew near the Big River, he was very watchful and careful, was
Blacky, for this was the season when hunters with terrible guns were
abroad, and he had discovered that they were likely to be hiding along
the Big River, hoping to shoot Mr. or Mrs. Quack or some of their
relatives. So he was very watchful as he drew near the Big River, for
he had learned that it was dangerous to pass too near a hunter with a
terrible gun. More than once he had been shot at. But he had learned by
these experiences. Oh, yes, Blacky had learned. For one thing, he had
learned to know a gun when he saw it. For another thing, he had learned
just how far away one of these dreadful guns could be and still hurt the
one it was pointed at, and to always keep just a little farther away.
Also he had learned that a man or boy without a terrible gun is quite
harmless, and he had learned that hunters with terrible guns are tricky
and sometimes hide from those they seek to kill, so that in the dreadful
hunting season it is best to look sharply before approaching any place.
On this afternoon, as he drew near the Big River, he saw a man who
seemed to be very busy on the shore of the Big River, at a place where
wild rice and rushes grew for some distance out in the water, for just
there it was shallow far out from the shore. Blacky looked sharply for a
terrible gun. But the man had none with him and therefore was not to be
feared. Blacky boldly drew near until he was able to see what the man
was doing.
Then Blacky's eyes stretched their widest and he almost cawed right out
with surprise. The man was taking yellow corn from a bag, a handful at
a time, and throwing it out in the water. Yes, Sir, that is what he was
doing, scattering nice yellow corn among the rushes and wild rice in the
water!
“That's a queer performance,” muttered Blacky, as he watched. “What is
he throwing perfectly good corn out in the water for? He isn't planting
it, for this isn't the planting season. Besides, it wouldn't grow in the
water, anyway. It is a shame to waste nice corn like that. What is he
doing it for?”
Blacky flew over to a tree some distance away and alighted in the top
of it to watch the queer performance. You know Blacky has very keen eyes
and he can see a long distance. For a while the man continued to scatter
corn and Blacky continued to wonder what he was doing it for. At last
the man went away in a boat. Blacky watched him until he was out of
sight. Then he spread his wings and slowly flew back and forth just
above the rushes and wild rice, at the place where the man had been
scattering the corn. He could see some of the yellow grains on the
bottom. Presently he saw something else. “Ha!” exclaimed Blacky.
CHAPTER XVIII: Blacky Becomes Very Suspicious
Of things you do not understand,
Beware!
They may be wholly harmless but--
Beware!
You'll find the older that you grow
That only things and folks you know
Are fully to be trusted, so
Beware!
--Blacky the Crow.
That is one of Blacky's wise sayings, and he lives up to it. It is one
reason why he has come to be regarded by all his neighbors as one of the
smartest of all who live in the Green Forest and on the Green Meadow. He
seldom gets into any real trouble because he first makes sure there
is no trouble to get into. When he discovers something he does not
understand, he is at once distrustful of it.
As he watched a man scattering yellow corn in the water from the shore
of the Big River he at once became suspicious. He couldn't understand
why a man should throw good corn among the rushes and wild rice in the
water, and because he couldn't understand, he at once began to suspect
that it was for no good purpose. When the man left in a boat, Blacky
slowly flew over the rushes where the man had thrown the corn, and
presently his sharp eyes made a discovery that caused him to exclaim
right out.
What was it Blacky had discovered? Only a few feathers. No one with eyes
less sharp than Blacky's would have noticed them. And few would have
given them a thought if they had noticed them. But Blacky knew right
away that those were feathers from a Duck. He knew that a Duck, or
perhaps a flock of Ducks, had been resting or feeding in there among
those rushes, and that in moving about they had left those two or three
downy feathers.
“Ha!” exclaimed Blacky. “Mr. and Mrs. Quack or some of their relatives
have been here. It is just the kind of a place Ducks like. Also some
Ducks like corn. If they should come back here and find this corn, they
would have a feast, and they would be sure to come again. That man who
scattered the corn here didn't have a terrible gun, but that doesn't
mean that he isn't a hunter. He may come back again, and then he may
have a terrible gun. I'm suspicious of that man. I am so. I believe he
put that corn here for Ducks and I don't believe he did it out of the
kindness of his heart. If it was Farmer Brown's boy I would know that
all is well; that he was thinking of hungry Ducks, with few places where
they can feed in safety, as they make the long journey from the Far
North to the Sunny South. But it wasn't Farmer Brown's boy. I don't like
the looks of it. I don't indeed. I'll keep watch of this place and see
what happens.”
All the way to his favorite perch in a certain big hemlock-tree in the
Green Forest, Blacky kept thinking about that corn and the man who
had seemed to be generous with it, and the more he thought, the more
suspicious he became. He didn't like the looks of it at all.
“I'll warn the Quacks to keep away from there. I'll do it the very first
thing in the morning,” he muttered, as he prepared to go to sleep. “If
they have any sense at all, they will stay in the pond of Paddy the
Beaver. But if they should go over to the Big River, they would be
almost sure to find that corn, and if they should once find it, they
would keep going back for more. It may be all right, but I don't like
the looks of it.”
And still full of suspicions, Blacky went to sleep.
CHAPTER XIX: Blacky Makes More Discoveries
Little things you fail to see
May important prove to be.
--Blacky the Crow.
One of the secrets of Blacky's success in life is the fact that he never
fails to take note of little things. Long ago he learned that little
things which in themselves seem harmless and not worth noticing may
together prove the most important things in life. So, no matter how
unimportant a thing may appear, Blacky examines it closely with those
sharp eyes of his and remembers it.
The very first thing Blacky did, as soon as he was awake the morning
after he discovered the man scattering corn in the rushes at a certain
place on the edge of the Big River, was to fly over to the pond of Paddy
the Beaver and again warn Mr. and Mrs. Quack to keep away from the Big
River, if they and their six children would remain safe. Then he got
some breakfast. He ate it in a hurry and flew straight over to the Big
River to the place where he had seen that yellow corn scattered.
Blacky wasn't wholly surprised to find Dusky the Black Duck, own cousin
to Mr. and Mrs. Quack the Mallard Ducks, with a number of his relatives
in among the rushes and wild rice at the very place where that corn had
been scattered. They seemed quite contented and in the best of spirits.
Blacky guessed why. Not a single grain of that yellow corn could Blacky
see. He knew the ways of Dusky and his relatives. He knew that they must
have come in there just at dusk the night before and at once had found
that corn. He knew that they would remain hiding there until frightened
out, and that then they would spend the day in some little pond where
they would not be likely to be disturbed or where at least no danger
could approach them without being seen in plenty of time. There they
would rest all day, and when the Black Shadows came creeping out from
the Purple Hills, they would return to that place on the Big River to
feed, for that is the time when they like best to hunt for their food.
Dusky looked up as Blacky flew over him, but Blacky said nothing, and
Dusky said nothing. But if Blacky didn't use his tongue, he did use his
eyes. He saw just on the edge of the shore what looked like a lot of
small bushes growing close together on the very edge of the water. Mixed
in with them were a lot of the brown rushes. They looked very harmless
and innocent. But Blacky knew every foot of that shore along the Big
River, and he knew that those bushes hadn't been there during the
summer. He knew that they hadn't grown there.
He flew directly over them. Just back of them were a couple of logs.
Those logs hadn't been there when he passed that way a few days before.
He was sure of it.
“Ha!” exclaimed Blacky under his breath. “Those look to me as if they
might be very handy, very handy indeed, for a hunter to sit on. Sitting
there behind those bushes, he would be hidden from any Duck who might
come in to look for nice yellow corn scattered out there among the
rushes. It doesn't look right to me. No, Sir, it doesn't look right to
me. I think I'll keep an eye on this place.”
So Blacky came back to the Big River several times that day. The second
time back he found that Dusky the Black Duck and his relatives had left.
When he returned in the afternoon, he saw the same man he had seen
there the afternoon before, and he was doing the same thing,--scattering
yellow corn out in the rushes. And as before, he went away in a boat.
“I don't like it,” muttered Blacky, shaking his black head. “I don't
like it.”
CHAPTER XX: Blacky Drops A Hint
When you see another's danger
Warn him though he be a stranger.
--Blacky the Crow.
Every day for a week a man came in a boat to scatter corn in the rushes
at a certain point along the bank of the Big River, and every day Blacky
the Crow watched him and shook his black head and talked to himself and
told himself that he didn't like it, and that he was sure that it was
for no good purpose. Sometimes Blacky watched from a distance, and
sometimes he flew right over the man. But never once did the man have a
gun with him.
Every morning, very early, Blacky flew over there, and every morning he
found Dusky the Black Duck and his flock in the rushes and wild rice at
that particular place, and he knew that they had been there all night,
He knew that they had come in there just at dusk the night before, to
feast on the yellow corn the man had scattered there in the afternoon.
“It is no business of mine what those Ducks do,” muttered Blacky to
himself, “but as surely as my tail feathers are black, something is
going to happen to some of them one of these days. That man may be
fooling them, but he isn't fooling me. Not a bit of it. He hasn't had
a gun with him once when I have seen him, but just the same he is a
hunter. I feel it in my bones. He knows those silly Ducks come in here
every night for that corn he puts out. He knows that after they have
been here a few times and nothing has frightened them, they will be
so sure that it is a safe place that they will not be the least bit
suspicious. Then he will hide behind those bushes he has placed close to
the edge of the water and wait for them with his terrible gun. That is
what he will do, or my name isn't Blacky.”
Finally Blacky decided to drop a hint to Dusky the Black Duck. So the
next morning he stopped for a call. “Good morning,” said he, as Dusky
swam in just in front of him. “I hope you are feeling as fine as you
look.”
“Quack, quack,” replied Dusky. “When Blacky the Crow flatters, he hopes
to gain something. What is it this time?”
“Not a thing,” replied Blacky. “On my honor, not a thing. There is
nothing for me here, though there seems to be plenty for you and your
relatives, to judge by the fact that I find you in this same place every
morning. What is it?”
“Corn,” replied Dusky in a low voice, as if afraid some one might
overhear him. “Nice yellow corn.”
“Corn!” exclaimed Blacky, as if very much astonished. “How does corn
happen to be way over here in the water?”
Dusky shook his head. “Don't ask me, for I can't tell you,” said he. “I
haven't the least idea. All I know is that every evening when we arrive,
we find it here. How it gets here, I don't know, and furthermore I don't
care. It is enough for me that it is here.”
“I've seen a man over here every afternoon,” said Blacky. “I thought he
might be a hunter.”
“Did he have a terrible gun?” asked Dusky suspiciously.
“No-o,” replied Blacky.
“Then he isn't a hunter,” declared Dusky, looking much relieved.
“But perhaps one of these days he will have one and will wait for you to
come in for your dinner,” suggested Blacky. “He could hide behind these
bushes, you know.”
“Nonsense,” retorted Dusky, tossing his head. “There hasn't been a sign
of danger here since we have been here. I know you, Blacky; you are
jealous because we find plenty to eat here, and you find nothing. You
are trying to scare us. But I'll tell you right now, you can't scare us
away from such splendid eating as we have had here. So there!”
CHAPTER XXI: At Last Blacky Is Sure
Who for another conquers fear
Is truly brave, it is most clear.
--Blacky the Crow.
It was late in the afternoon, and Blacky the Crow was on his way to the
Green Forest. As usual, he went around by the Big River to see if that
man was scattering corn for the Ducks. He wasn't there. No one was to be
seen along the bank of the Big River.
“He hasn't come to-day, or else he came early and has left,” thought
Blacky. And then his sharp eyes caught sight of something that made him
turn aside and make straight for a certain tree, from the top of which
he could see all that went on for a long distance. What was it Blacky
saw? It was a boat coming down the Big River.
Blacky sat still and watched. Presently the boat turned in among the
rushes, and a moment later a man stepped out on the shore. It was the
same man Blacky had watched scatter corn in the rushes every day for a
week. There wasn't the least doubt about it, it was the same man.
“Ha, ha!” exclaimed Blacky, and nearly lost his balance in his
excitement. “Ha, ha! It is just as I thought!” You see Blacky's sharp
eyes had seen that the man was carrying something, and that something
was a gun, a terrible gun. Blacky knows a terrible gun as far as he can
see it.
The hunter, for of course that is what he was, tramped along the shore
until he reached the bushes which Blacky had noticed close to the water
and which he knew had not grown there. The hunter looked out over the
Big River. Then he walked along where he had scattered corn the day
before. Not a grain was to be seen. This seemed to please him. Then he
went back to the bushes and sat down on a log behind them, his terrible
gun across his knees.
“I was sure of it,” muttered Blacky. “He is going to wait there for
those Ducks to come in, and then something dreadful will happen. What
terrible creatures these hunters are! They don't know what fairness is.
No, Sir, they don't know what fairness is. He has put food there day
after day, where Dusky the Black Duck and his flock would be sure to
find it, and has waited until they have become so sure there is no
danger that they are no longer suspicious. He knows they will feel so
sure that all is safe that they will come in without looking for danger.
Then he will fire that terrible gun and kill them without giving them
any chance at all.
“Reddy Fox is a sly, clever hunter, but he wouldn't do a thing like
that. Neither would Old Man Coyote or anybody else who wears fur or
feathers. They might hide and try to catch some one by surprise. That is
all right, because each of us is supposed to be on the watch for things
of that sort. Oh, dear, what's to be done? It is time I was getting home
to the Green Forest. The Black Shadows will soon come creeping out from
the Purple Hills, and I must be safe in my hemlock-tree by then. I would
be scared to death to be out after dark. Yet those Ducks ought to be
warned. Oh, dear, what shall I do?”
Blacky peered over at the Green Forest and then over toward the Purple
Hills, behind which jolly, round, red Mr. Sun would go to bed very
shortly. He shivered as he thought of the Black Shadows that soon would
come swiftly out from the Purple Hills across the Big River and over the
Green Meadows. With them might come Hooty the Owl, and Hooty wouldn't
object in the least to a Crow dinner. He wished he was in that
hemlock-tree that very minute. Then Blacky looked at the hunter with his
terrible gun and thought of what might happen, what would be almost sure
to happen, unless those Ducks were warned. “I'll wait a little while
longer,” muttered Blacky, and tried to feel brave. But instead he
shivered.
CHAPTER XXII: Blacky Goes Home Happy
No greater happiness is won
Than through a deed for others done.
--Blacky the Crow.
Blacky sat in the top of a tree near the bank of the Big River and
couldn't make up his mind what to do. He wanted to get home to the big,
thick hemlock-tree in the Green Forest before dusk, for Blacky is afraid
of the dark. That is, he is afraid to be out after dark.
“Go along home,” said a voice inside him, “there is hardly time now for
you to get there before the Black Shadows arrive. Don't waste any more
time here. What may happen to those silly Ducks is no business of yours,
and there is nothing you can do, anyway. Go along home.”
“Wait a few minutes,” said another little voice down inside him. “Don't
be a coward. You ought to warn Dusky the Black Duck and his flock that a
hunter with a terrible gun is waiting for them. Is it true that it is
no business of yours what happens to those Ducks? Think again, Blacky;
think again. It is the duty of each one who sees a common danger to warn
his neighbors. If something dreadful should happen to Dusky because
you were afraid of the dark, you never would be comfortable in your own
mind. Stay a little while and keep watch.”
Not five minutes later Blacky saw something that made him, oh, so glad
he had kept watch. It was a swiftly moving black line just above the
water far down the Big River, and it was coming up. He knew what that
black line was. He looked over at the hunter hiding behind some bushes
close to the edge of the water. The hunter was crouching with his
terrible gun in his hands and was peeping over the bushes, watching that
black line. He, too, knew what it was. It was a flock of Ducks flying.
Blacky was all ashake again, but this time it wasn't with fear of being
caught away from home in the dark; it was with excitement. He knew that
those Ducks had become so eager for more of that corn, that delicious
yellow corn which every night for a week they had found scattered in the
rushes just in front of the place where that hunter was now hiding, that
they couldn't wait for the coming of the Black Shadows. They were so
sure there was no danger that they were coming in to eat without waiting
for the Black Shadows, as they usually did. And Blacky was glad. Perhaps
now he could give them warning.
Up the middle of the Big River, flying just above the water, swept the
flock with Dusky at its head. How swiftly they flew, those nine big
birds! Blacky envied them their swift wings. On past the hidden hunter
but far out over the Big River they swept. For just a minute Blacky
thought they were going on up the river and not coming in to eat, after
all. Then they turned toward the other shore, swept around in a circle
and headed straight in toward that hidden hunter. Blacky glanced at him
and saw that he was ready to shoot.
Almost without thinking, Blacky spread his wings and started out from
that tree. “Caw, caw, caw, caw, caw!” he shriek
|
. He drank ravenously,
plunging his face and hands into the little line of water, making queer
noises over it.
Claire began to grow cold, and her ankle pained her till she shook like
a fevered person. He turned and sat up.
"You cold?" he managed to mutter.
She wanted to say "No," but her will was worn out. "Yes," she answered,
"very cold."
He laughed a little guttural laugh as he drew off his coat. "Take it,"
he said, dropping it near her hand.
She took the coat and drew it on. Lawrence was drinking again from the
stream. She listened to him for a time, as she lay there in the
darkness, then gradually her suffering and the strain under which she
had been, won the victory over her consciousness, and she heard no more.
He lay where he was, half unconscious. At last he began to feel the
chill of the place and drew himself up toward Claire. She did not move.
"We've got to do the best we can," he thought, and moved close to her so
that their bodies might warm each other.
CHAPTER III.
THE WAY OF THE PRIMITIVE.
Claire was the first to wake. She sat up and gazed around her. The
morning sun was just breaking through a heavy fog that had drifted in
from the ocean. Her clothes were damp, and she was chilled through,
while her swollen and discolored ankle throbbed with steady pain. She
looked down at the sleeping man beside her, and her forehead gathered in
a little thoughtful frown. Then she looked around her again. Despite the
knowledge of their desperate situation, she could not help noticing the
beauty of the scene.
Great trees grew in massive profusion all about them. Heavy tropical
moss hung from the branches and trailed its green mat over the stones.
Birds were beginning to sing, their notes breaking the silence of the
place in sharp thrills. Then she studied her companion. Finally, she
laughed aloud.
"Lawrence," she said gaily.
He turned and sat up, yawning drowsily. "What is it?" he demanded.
"We are certainly the primitive pair."
"H-m, I suppose. Anyhow, I feel better for my sleep."
"It's beastly cold," returned Claire, "and my ankle is playing fits and
jerks with me."
"We'll have to do something about it," he said earnestly. She did not
answer.
"We can bind it up, I presume," he went on. "But it's a frightful
inconvenience."
"Admitted," she said quickly. "It can't be helped, however."
"I'm very much for a fire," he suggested, as though he had not noticed
the hints of hardness in her voice.
"Some twenty feet ahead is a flat rock. We might build one there. Have
you matches?"
He shook his head. "We'll have to go it primeval."
"But I don't see how," she began.
"Never mind," he answered, with a malicious grin. "I do know some few
things."
"Perhaps you also know how to find food when there isn't any," she
retorted.
He rose without replying.
"Well," she continued, "I see plenty of roots and stuff. We may as well
prepare to eat them. It's unbelievable that I should be here, and with
you. It's a horrible nightmare, this being stranded and lame out here
somewhere with a blind man."
He winced, but answered quietly: "I'm not especially charmed myself. I
could prefer other things."
She looked at him and smiled. "Don't ever let me repeat those
sentiments," she said, simply. "I'm sorry. Of course you aren't to
blame, and I shouldn't have said that."
He stepped forward timidly. "Will you suggest the best means of finding
dry wood?" he asked, as though the matter were forgotten.
She pursed her lips and looked around her. "This moss seems to be feet
deep," she said at last. "You might dig up some that is dry, and with
that as a starter you can add twigs."
He stopped and began to tear away the moss. His hands were stiff, but he
worked rapidly and before long he had a heap of the brown, dry stuff
from underneath.
She watched him silently. When he stopped, she said: "Straight to your
left is the rock. Get the fire started. Then you can move the invalid."
He took the moss and felt his way to the rock, which was eight or ten
feet square and practically flat, standing up almost a foot from the
ground.
"Now, for a dry stick or two," he said, cheerily.
She directed him, and at last he found what he thought would do. Then
began the age-old procedure of twisting a pointed stick between one's
hands, the point resting on another piece of wood, until friction
brought a flame. It was a long, hard experiment; several times he
stopped to rest; but the consciousness of the skeptical expression he
knew to be on her face sent him quickly back again to his task. At last
the moss began to burn. True, it smoked much and flamed little, but he
gathered twigs from the shrubs near by and in time had a good fire. Then
he carried Claire to the rock and set her down beside it. She leaned her
elbow on the edge and said, happily: "It's quite a success, Lawrence. I
really feel as though we were progressing."
"Our woodcraft will doubtless improve with experience," he answered.
"Next, I guess we had better bathe your ankle," he observed, as though
giving due care to the order of procedure.
"Very well," she replied.
At her suggestion he gathered moss and wet it in the tiny stream. She
wound it about her ankle and held it tightly.
"Now the surgeon orders splints and bandages," she said.
He brought several sticks, and with a strip which she tore from the
lining of his coat, she bound them fast.
"There," she said, sighing, for the pain was wearing. "That ought to
help. I wonder what our distant grandparents did in such cases."
"Made the best of it," he said cheerfully. "Many of them died, I
suppose."
"And we are back again at their game. Whether we can outwit the master
strategist and survive, is at least interesting to try."
"In any event, we'll have to eat to do it," he said shortly.
She studied the greenery about her, meditatively. "It's probable that
most any of these things are edible, but are they nourishing?"
"We'll try them. Which shall I get?" he asked.
"I hate to start in on roots or leaves. If we only had some berries!"
He got up determinedly. "I'll go down the ravine and hunt. If I get
mixed in directions, I'll shout."
She watched him go, and when he had disappeared through the trees she
felt strangely sadder and very much alone. She fell to wondering if he
were really so necessary to her. Sooner or later would come the
inevitable problem between them. Would he fall in love with her, and
would she, in the days that they might be alone together, find his
companionship growing into any really vital proportion in her life? That
she, Claire Barkley, rich and independent, whose life had been selfish
to a marked degree and who had never considered anything except from the
point of view of vigor, perfection, or beauty, should ever love a blind
man was incredible.
"No," she thought, "not even the closest of daily relationships with him
could ever make me really care. He is not of my life." She wondered how
much she would sacrifice for him if it were necessary in their
pilgrimage toward civilization, and she answered herself, frankly: "No
more than I must to maintain a balance in our forced business
partnership." She knew that was all this meant to her.
From down the ravine she heard him shouting lustily, and she answered,
her clear, rich voice waking pleasant echoes as she called. She waited
for some time before he came. In his arms he carried a bundle of
branches loaded with red berries, while in one hand was a clump of large
mushrooms.
Claire watched him as he approached, and was surprised at the ease with
which he walked. There was less hesitation in his stride than she had
thought, and he came briskly through the trees, dodging as though by
instinct.
When he reached the rock, it was characteristic of her that she said:
"You came through those trees remarkably well."
He laughed. "I have an uncanny way of feeling things on my face before
they touch me. I experimented somewhat with it in the laboratory at
college. It's a sort of tropism, perhaps, such as bugs have, that
enables them to keep between two planks or that turns plant-roots toward
the sun. Anyway, I've brought some breakfast. These berries may be good,
and these other things may be toadstools. I brought them along."
"How does one tell?" she asked.
"Oh, mushrooms are pink underneath and ribbed like a fan."
She examined them and said they might be mushrooms, they looked it. He
sat down again, but not until he had replenished the fire.
"They may be poison, both of them," he hazarded. "That's our sporting
chance. Will you try them?"
Claire took some of the berries and ate them. "I don't feel anything
yet," she announced after a minute's solemn munching.
"Oh, you probably won't for several hours anyway," he said lightly. Then
he continued: "If we could devise a way, we might heat water and cook
the mushrooms. Then, too, I've been thinking we might even catch a
bird."
"Neither sounds very simple."
"Nothing in life is simple," he replied. "At home, in America, where we
leave food-getting to the farmer, dress from a store, and go to heaven
by way of a minister, things are fairly well arranged, but here we
aren't even sure of salvation unless we mind the business of thinking."
He continued after a pause. "Of course, I don't especially remember that
I counted on heaven. It always seemed a bit distant in the face of
living and working. Perhaps, however, you counted it as vital."
"I was fairly occupied with more immediate things," she answered.
"However, that is a different world from this. What we did then can't
especially matter to us here. This is our place of business, so to
speak, and social life doesn't factor."
"I see." He accepted the snub thoughtfully. "But this business of ours
will grow exceedingly irksome without talk. I doubt if we can find the
means of escape an all-sufficient topic."
"We haven't boiled our water yet," she said. "And the bird is still free
to roam."
He did not carry on his line of thought aloud. If she had known what was
going on in his mind, she might have been angered. He was wondering just
how much thinking she was capable of. Certain that she was beautiful, he
had scarcely allowed that to occupy him. His experience had led him to
estimate people almost wholly by their ability to be open-minded. In his
struggle against blindness, he had concluded that open minds were rare
indeed, and persons who limited his freedom of action or tended to baby
him he had grown to dismiss with a shrug. Claire did not belong to that
class. "She has shown remarkable willingness to let me go my own pace,"
he thought, "but is this due to her mind or to mere indifference?" He
decided at last that the relationship would be tiresome for both of
them, and that she was not especially eager to prevent it from being so.
This conclusion led him to adopt a definite attitude toward her. She
could do as she pleased; he, for his part, would treat her simply as an
uninteresting person, a machine that furnished the eyes which he could
use in his travel to liberty.
He recalled how, when he had been displeased with convention, he had
thought of life in the wild as the best possible means of liberty, and
he laughed.
Claire looked up. "What is there amusing just now?"
"Myself, and you."
"Why, pray, am I amusing?" Then she was sorry she had said it.
"Because you are you."
"And are you other than yourself?" she asked scornfully.
"Not at all, but my own particular interests seem infinitely more
important to me than there is any possibility of yours doing."
"You mean to say that you are an egotist."
"Frankly, I am," he agreed. "One is an egotist, I suppose, when he finds
himself and his needs and whims essentially worth while. I'll admit I
find mine so. Perhaps you feel the same about yours. One scarcely knows
where egotism and vanity meet or end in a woman." He smiled, for he
meant that to provoke, and it did.
Claire's voice was edged when she replied. "A very penetrating remark.
With men generally, vanity seems to be a widely extended cloak to spread
over all things in a woman that they cannot dispose of in any other way.
If I find you dull, or if I am not struck with your ability, or if you
do not seem to me sufficiently fascinating, I am possessed of feminine
vanity."
"Precisely. And why not? If I choose to regard myself as all those
things which you deny, why shouldn't I find the fault in you rather than
in myself?"
"Because it may be in you," suggested Claire.
"It may, but that doesn't alter the case. I quite agree that you are
right, but none the less you are at fault, because I, Lawrence, am the
most important of all things to me."
She did not answer. The conversation seemed to her useless. She saw no
reason for arguing the matter, and she half suspected that he was simply
teasing her. Besides, she could not but feel that to sit here in his
coat and discuss egotism was a trifle ridiculous. He was merely trying
to establish a friendship in talk which she did not care to encourage.
That was her conclusion.
As he rose to gather more sticks, he asked: "Do you happen to see a rock
that flattens to an edge?"
Told where he might find one, he brought it and struck it hard against
their boulder. It did not break. "It may do," he said thoughtfully, and
began to grind it against the side of the other rock. He worked steadily
and long, and the result was a fairly good edge, which was nicked and
toothed, but still an edge. He laid it down with a sigh of contentment.
"My first tool," he commented.
CHAPTER IV.
MUTUAL DISLIKE.
All day Lawrence worked, and when night came he had hollowed out a piece
of log to a depth of some eighteen inches, leaving six inches of solid
wood in the bottom. Both were very well pleased with the result. With
the coming of darkness, he gathered more berries, and heated water in
his log kettle. They were able to cook the mushrooms and to bind her
ankle in moss soaked in hot water. The building of a shelter was
discussed, but both decided to resume their journey on the following
day, so they slept again in the heavy moss.
In the morning, Claire was glad indeed of the hot water, for it warmed
her, and her ankle felt much better. They decided to follow the little
stream which would doubtless wind its way somehow around the present
ridge back to the ocean. Accordingly, they kept down the ravine, which
cut across the ridge in a southerly direction.
For the whole of that day and the next they followed the stream, which
grew to a small creek. At noon of the third day they dropped suddenly
down a steep slope to find themselves at the juncture of their stream,
with a river which flowed through a deep gorge out to the ocean. They
determined to follow it up toward its head.
"Somewhere inland must be a town," argued Claire. "At any rate, it's the
only way we can go."
After living for four days on berries, they were beginning to feel
acutely the need of other food, but they discussed the problem at length
without arriving at any feasible solution. Two days later fortune
temporarily relieved their difficulty.
They were following along the side of a steep ridge overlooking the
river, when Claire suddenly stopped him and gave a cry of delight. Near
them a small, furry animal, caught in a tangled mass of wirelike
creepers, was struggling to free itself. He killed the creature with his
stone-edged tool, and after barbecuing it on the end of a stick, they
ate it ravenously. Each of them would have disliked the whole scene at
any other time, but now neither thought anything of it until after they
were satisfied.
Leaning back against a rock, Lawrence stroked his chin, rapidly becoming
invisible under a heavy beard. "I hadn't known I was so hungry for real
food," he laughed.
Brown as a gipsy, her hair filled with tiny green leaves, Claire looked
at him, her eyes shining with the warm light of satisfied hunger. "We
ate like two beasts," she remarked languidly, and laughed. "It was
simply disgraceful."
"I know," he began to muse, "it doesn't take long for the most polished
man--not that I ever was that--to become a savage."
"You look the part," she laughed. "I suppose I do, too. My hair is
matted hopelessly; the curliness makes it worse. My face, too, is
rapidly hardening under this sun. If only I had a few more clothes--"
She stopped and looked at him. "I feel the need of them," she finished
lamely.
Claire had worn his coat continuously from the first night, and his
undershirt was tearing from contact with bush and tree. He grinned
contentedly, however.
"If you approach nakedness as rapidly as I," he chuckled, "I fear we
both will have to avoid civilization. Undisguised humanity isn't
tolerated there."
She flushed warmly, then laughed.
"I wonder why people are so afraid of being seen," Lawrence went on. "Of
course, there's the warmth and natural protection of clothing, but one
would feel so much freer without the encumbrance of shirt-stud and
feathered plume."
"We need them to complete a personality," said Claire. "I know few
people who would inspire respect in their elemental state. Stripped of
advertising silk and diamond, they wouldn't be so suggestive of
wealth."
"But why be so eager to impress others with your power?"
She turned toward him with a faint smile. "If you didn't ask that as
mere conversation, I would think you childish. You know very well why.
It probably goes back to the days when the possession of a fish-hook,
more or less, meant surer life. It has come to mean, now, that the
decoration of an extra feather or white flannel trousers means
advantageous position, the place of more power, more pleasure; in short,
greater fulness of living."
"But we are living fully, goodness knows," he interrupted. "This last
week we have had to exert our wits and bodies in more ways than we ever
did before in all our lives. True, I do miss my modeling somewhat." He
spoke the last with a soft mellowness in his voice and a wistfulness
that made her look at him quickly.
"Modeling?" she asked.
He nodded slowly.
"What sort of modeling?" she insisted.
"Oh, probably poor, for the most part. I did some work that was
beginning to make its way, though."
"You mean sculpture?"
He nodded again.
She looked at him earnestly. Here was a new revelation. She had wondered
at this man's apparent keen sense of form, and his imaginative power
when he spoke of color or mentioned line, and she had been sure from his
occasional word that he was a wide student of literature.
"What did you do at home?" she asked abruptly.
"Oh, played with living," he said indifferently.
She felt irritated that he would not tell her more of his life, yet she
remembered that she had practically refused to discuss her own with him.
"See here, Lawrence," she said suddenly, "we aren't quite fair with each
other, are we?"
"Why not?" he answered quietly. "I carry you toward your old life, you
guide me toward mine. It's a fair business, with equal investment. I'm
not complaining."
She was silent and watched him as he lay on his back, dreaming of days
at home with his work. As he lay there, she studied his hands. They
were practically healed, and she noticed they were well-shaped, the
fingers long and tapering, yet with an appearance of unusual strength.
She knew already that they were sensitive; when he had cut out a piece
of wood to heat water in, she had seen that. So they were sculptor's
hands. What a revelation, and what a pity that he was blind! She fell to
wondering if he really was good at his work, or whether he merely
fancied he was and hewed away without real artistry, deceived by his
blindness. She studied his face in repose. Then her mind came back to
his hands, and she felt a sudden sense of displeasure, a little chagrin,
and some wonder, accompanied by the feeling that she wished he had not
carried her. She did not quite know why, yet the dependence on him made
her restless. Suddenly she wondered poignantly what he thought of her.
The more she wondered, the more she wanted to know, and at last she
ventured, "Are you asleep?"
"No, dreaming."
"Lawrence."
"What is it?" He sat up and waited.
"What do you think of me?" She was surprised to find herself waiting
eagerly for his answer.
He laughed outright, a gay, hearty laugh.
"Claire," he said merrily, "you embarrass me dreadfully. You see, I
haven't thought much about you. However, if you like, I'll study you for
a week and report."
Hot anger surged up in her. "You needn't bother," she said dryly. "Our
lives are so utterly different in every phase that nothing could be
gained."
He lay back carelessly. "So I had decided," he replied, and lapsed into
silence again.
She could have cried with vexation. For the first time in her life
Claire was utterly humiliated, and there grew within her an aggressive
dislike for this man, a determination to make him feel her power and to
punish him for his indifference. She did not want him to love her, by
any means, but he had never even shown her the courteous deference, the
admiration or regard that she was accustomed to receive from men. Her
mind went back over the past week, and she grew more humiliated, more
angry. Tears of vexation came to her eyes, but she brushed them away
fiercely.
"Shall we take the remains of our meat and move on toward the habitats
of men?" said Lawrence, sitting up.
She controlled herself to answer, "As you please."
He stooped to lift her into his arms. She flushed warm as his hands
slipped under her, and he straightened up. She hesitated, and wanted not
to do it, but realized the necessity, and put her arm around his neck.
"I shall be grateful when I can walk," was her comment.
"It will make our progress more rapid," he agreed, and she was angry
again. She knew that he thought only in terms of the most efficient
means of getting ahead. A longing possessed her to make him realize that
he was physically distasteful to her.
"We are so vastly different," she said, "it is disagreeable to be
carried this way."
Lawrence flushed, and she was pleased. At least he understood now.
"Of course," he admitted calmly, "it isn't pleasant, but I suppose one
must make the best of a bad bargain."
There was silence for a while, then he said suddenly, "I think I
realize, Claire, that a blind man is at best a poor companion for a
woman who is accustomed to being amused, and whose interests are those
of the society glow-worm."
Claire resented the picture, but she kept her voice steady. "Surely at
home you had your own social group," she said pleasantly.
"Of a sort, yes. We were all workers, not going in much for form,
entertainment, and that sort of thing. We generally sat in the gallery
at the opera, and did mostly as we pleased everywhere. None of us were
rolling in wealth. We worked for the love of it, and looked to the
future for pay."
"I see." She was thinking fast. "You were struggling young artists." Her
voice was sugar-coated.
"We were struggling young artizans," he answered, seemingly indifferent
to her irony.
As he made slower progress when he talked, she did not attempt to carry
on the conversation. The stops for rest were gradually lengthening out,
and he was getting hard and wiry so that his endurance was greater. He
was quicker at catching himself when he stumbled, and he did not puff so
hard between grades. Claire felt the easier swing of his body when he
walked, and noticed that he was growing surer of foot and more graceful
in movement, and she realized that except for his eyes he was a splendid
specimen of manhood. She now admitted all these things to herself, but
they only added to her feeling against him. She wondered if he had been
as indifferent to all women as he was to her, and was displeased that
she wondered.
Suddenly Lawrence stopped and put her down by his side. Claire looked up
at him and saw his forehead gathering in a frown.
"What is it?" she asked anxiously.
"You are letting your thoughts obstruct your eyes," he said simply. "I
have walked into three boulders without your knowing it."
"I am sorry," she said earnestly. "It was silly of me."
He laughed and sat down. "You see, as eyes you can't afford to think. At
other times perhaps I, too, should wander into abstractions, but at
present it won't work."
"I know it," she admitted contritely. "I won't repeat it."
"What," he asked, "is the subject of all this meditation?"
She blushed, and her eyes darkened. She wondered whether she should tell
the truth, started to do so, then changed her mind. "I was asking myself
what my husband was probably doing and thinking."
"Poor fellow!" Lawrence was sincerely thoughtful. "I can imagine what it
must be to him, supposing you lost at sea. Yes, he must be suffering
badly. I don't believe I would change places with him."
Claire started at Lawrence. "Are you flattering me?" she asked coldly.
"Not at all," he replied. "I am merely stating the truth. I have an
imagination, my dear lady. I can quite grasp your husband's position.
You would certainly be a loss to a man who loved you, and I shouldn't
care to be that man."
"Shouldn't you?" she said instinctively, and bit her lip for saying it.
"Not under the circumstances," answered Lawrence. "I never did fancy the
idea of death visiting my loved ones. I have never got over its having
done so."
"Oh"--her voice softened--"then you have lost your--" She waited.
"I am an orphan," he said bruskly.
She was ashamed of her relief. How ridiculous it was to have imagined
him, even for an instant, as a married man! He was so cold, so
impersonal; of course, he had never married, and never would. Well, that
was best; a blind man had no right to marry. He owed it to himself and
to any woman not to place her in the position of caring for him,
handicapped as he was, and so unable to give her the companionship, the
comradeship a woman deserved. She could see how he would treat a wife:
feed her well, clothe her, care for her comfort, and talk to her if she
desired, but he would never be tender, loving, sympathetic, or
understanding. No, he could not be; he was too self-centered, too much
the artist. That last seemed to her a correct estimate of him, and she
settled her mind on it as being final.
"So you are alone in the world?" Claire said, renewing the conversation.
"Quite," answered Lawrence. "I am as free from family hindrances as a
young wolf that runs his first season's hunt alone."
She thought how apt a comparison he had made. "So you regard the family
as a hindrance?"
"Oh--no and yes. One can never do quite as he pleases while a family and
its wishes, aims, and loves are concerned. They always hold him down to
some extent. He is an equal hindrance to them. They love each other, and
as a result they have to sacrifice their individual wishes. But the
family keeps man more social, more gregarious, and less selfish. If we
were as free from family love as is the wolf I mentioned, we would be
able to live our lives more completely, and, on the other hand, we would
die in greater numbers. The love of man and woman for each other and
their children lifts humanity out of its serfdom, but it also places
limitations. You ought to know more about that than I, however," he
laughed. "I merely theorize."
"So I noticed," Claire observed. "One can easily gather that you aren't
experienced."
"No. My parents died when I was small. I had to work my way through
school. The accident made it somewhat harder, but I got along." He was
plainly matter of fact.
"Oh!" She exclaimed at his words more forcefully than she had intended.
He smiled a little, comprehendingly. "Yes, it explains a lot, doesn't
it?" He spoke carelessly. "You doubtless can now understand my lack of
social grace."
She thought to deny it, but that seemed foolish. He was silent, and
there seemed little use in talking. Claire knew she understood him well
enough.
CHAPTER V.
THE FACE OF DEATH.
In the days that followed they talked but little. Lawrence had fallen
into the habit of speaking only when she seemed to desire conversation,
and his mind was occupied with planning their escape. If he thought of
her in any other way than merely as his eyes, he never showed it. Though
watchful of her comfort, in every act and word, he was markedly
impersonal.
Following the river, they had progressed steadily north and east over
increasingly higher and rougher ground. The tropical vegetation of
intertwining crimson was now changing to a faint gold. There were days
when they were forced to make long détours over broken ridges to get
around some deep gorge through which the gray-green stream dashed its
foamy way downward. They were well into the mountains, and above them
the higher Andes raised their snowy peaks in forbidding austerity. It
was daily growing colder, and their clothes were now only ragged strips.
Then came days when sharp, biting winds whipped through the cañon they
followed, or headed against them on some plateau, and they were forced
to face new issues. Food was less plentiful, and winter was at hand. To
be sure they were in the tropics, but on the mountains the air was cold,
and warmer clothes became imperative.
Claire's ankle was almost well. After weeks of pain, which she had borne
bravely, it was healing, and the time was near when she would be able to
walk. Shoes were absolutely essential for her. Furthermore, Lawrence's
own shoes were worn through, and his walking was becoming a continual
pain. In spite of Claire's increasingly careful guidance, he stepped on
small, sharp rocks that dug into his flesh. He did not complain, but
Claire knew that he was suffering. The times when he stepped out freely
became more and more seldom, and his face was usually taut.
They were, indeed, a pitiable couple. Lawrence's thin face was shaggy
with hair. Claire's once soft skin was now brown and hard. Both were
thin and wiry, with the gaunt lines of the undernourished showing
plainly.
One morning, to fight the frost that bit into them, they were forced to
build a fire long before dawn. As they sat huddled together over it,
Lawrence finally broached the subject that had been engrossing both
their minds for days.
"Claire," he said thoughtfully, "we can't make it through. We'll have to
find a place somewhere and prepare for winter. It's tough, but it's
inevitable. I hate to give up now, but it will be even worse for us if
we don't get meat, fur, and a house against the snow that will soon be
covering everything."
"I know," she said sadly, her thin hands supporting her chin. "It seems
as though we had played our long farce to its end. Death is as
inexorable in its demands as life." The circles under her eyes were
great half-moons.
"We have done well, though," he argued. "We've done better than well.
Who would have believed that a blind man and a crippled woman could have
come as far as this?"
"I didn't believe it, Lawrence," she said, and her voice and eyes were
full of a warmth that had grown of late to be fairly constant. "I
didn't believe it, and I wouldn't believe it now if I were told the
story back home."
"I'm not sure; I might have," Lawrence said proudly. "I know the blind
and their capabilities."
"I'm learning to know them," she admitted, and lapsed into silence.
"Shall we go into camp, then," he asked, as if they had not mentioned
anything else.
Claire hesitated, then said slowly: "It's our only chance. Are you
willing to spend a winter with me?" Her eyes glanced amusedly at him.
Catching the note in her voice, Lawrence laughed. "It seems inevitable,"
he said, "and, anyway, I couldn't ask for a better companion. You don't
disturb me, and I don't irritate you--that is, not especially."
She looked at him impatiently. "Don't you?" she said, meditatively.
"Well, I'm glad I don't bother you."
"Yes," he assented seriously. "You've been mighty open-minded, Claire,
and you haven't hampered me with incredulities."
"Oh, that is what you mean."
He moved uneasily, his muscles drawing a little. Claire saw and
wondered.
"Yes," Lawrence said shortly. "When morning comes, we'll hunt for a
location."
They ceased speaking, each occupied with his own thoughts.
Claire was asking herself what the winter would mean to her, spent with
this silent man, and he was questioning how long she would continue to
regard him as a mere imperfect carrier, devoid of the stuff that men are
made of. Sometimes when her body was in his arms, he had wondered if she
was capable of love, but always he had remembered her husband, her
social life, her assumption of superior reserve, and had forced himself
into a habitual attitude of indifference. The strain was telling on his
will, however, and often he longed to make this woman see him as he was.
He thought of the old days in his studio when he had proved himself
master of blindness in his power to imagine and carry the sense of form
into the carved stone. He recalled the praise of his comrades, and over
all else there surged in him the swift, warm blood of the artist.
"Lawrence," said Claire suddenly, "at what do you value human life?"
"That depends," he answered, "on whose life it is."
"Well, at what would you value mine?" she demanded.
"From varying points of view, at varying prices. From your husband's
point of view, it is invaluable. From your own, it is worth more than
anything else. From my point of view, it is worth as much as my own,
since without you mine ceases."
"Then your care of me and all your trouble is merely because you value
your own life."
"What else?" He moved uneasily.
She ignored that question. "If you could get through without me, would
you do it?"
"That depends on circumstances. If I could get through without you, and
do it quickly, and could not get through with you"--he paused--"I should
leave you behind."
"And suppose, when I can walk, I do that myself?"
He smiled. "As you please," he said quietly. "I advise you to make your
estimate well, however. My hands and strength are assets which you might
have trouble in doing without."
"And do you estimate the whole of our relationship on a carefully
itemized basis of material gain and loss?"
"Claire, isn't that your understanding, stated by yourself, of our
partnership?"
"Yes, but--well, it's hard to
|
oked one of his eleven-mm's out, letting the whole clip go.
Thrombley and Gomez slid down onto the floor, and both began trying to
drag me down with them, imploring me not to expose myself.
As far as I could see, there was nothing to expose myself to. The other
cars kept coming, but neither of them were firing at us. There was also
no indication that Hoddy's salvo had had any effect on them. Our
chauffeur went into a perfect frenzy of twisting and dodging, at the
same time using his radiophone to tell somebody to get the goddamn
gate open in a hurry. I saw the blue skies and green plains of New
Texas replacing one another above, under, in front of and behind us.
Then the car set down on a broad stretch of concrete, the wings were
retracted, and we went whizzing down a city street.
We whizzed down a number of streets. We cut corners on two wheels, and
on one wheel, and, I was prepared to swear, on no wheels. A couple of
times, with the wings retracted, we actually jetted into the air and
jumped over vehicles in front of us, landing again with bone-shaking
jolts. Then we made an abrupt turn and shot in under a concrete arch,
and a big door banged shut behind us, and we stopped, in the middle of a
wide patio, the front of the car a few inches short of a fountain. Four
or five people, in diplomatic striped trousers, local dress and the
uniform of the Space Marines, came running over.
Thrombley pulled himself erect and half-climbed, half-fell, out of the
car. Gomez got out on the other side with Hoddy; I climbed out after
Thrombley.
A tall, sandy-haired man in the uniform of the Space Navy came over.
"What the devil's the matter, Thrombley?" he demanded. Then, seeing me,
he gave me as much of a salute as a naval officer will ever bestow on
anybody in civilian clothes.
"Mr. Silk?" He looked at my costume and the pistols on my belt in
well-bred concealment of surprise. "I'm your military attaché,
Stonehenge; Space-Commander, Space Navy."
I noticed that Hoddy's ears had pricked up, but he wasn't making any
effort to attract Stonehenge's attention. I shook hands with him,
introduced Hoddy, and offered my cigarette case around.
"You seem to have had a hectic trip from the spaceport, Mr. Ambassador.
What happened?"
Thrombley began accusing our driver of trying to murder the lot of us.
Hoddy brushed him aside and explained:
"Just after we'd took off, two other cars took off after us. We speeded
up, and they speeded up, too. Then your fly-boy, here, got fancy. That
shook 'em off. Time we got into the city, we'd dropped them. Nice job of
driving. Probably saved our lives."
"Shucks, that wasn't nothin'," the driver disclaimed. "When you drive
for politicians, you're either good or you're good and dead."
"I'm surprised they started so soon," Stonehenge said. Then he looked
around at my fellow-passengers, who seemed to have realized, by now,
that they were no longer dangling by their fingernails over the brink of
the grave. "But gentlemen, let's not keep the Ambassador standing out
here in the hot sun."
So we went over the arches at the side of the patio, and were about to
sit down when one of the Embassy servants came up, followed by a man in
a loose vest and blue Levis and a big hat. He had a pair of automatics
in his belt, too.
"I'm Captain Nelson; New Texas Rangers," he introduced himself. "Which
one of you-all is Mr. Stephen Silk?"
I admitted it.
The Ranger pushed back his wide hat and grinned at me.
"I just can't figure this out," he said. "You're in the right place and
the right company, but we got a report, from a mighty good source, that
you'd been kidnapped at the spaceport by a gang of thugs!"
"A blond source?" I made curving motions with my hands. "I don't blame
her. My efficient and conscientious chargé d'affaires, Mr. Thrombley,
felt that I should reach the Embassy, here, as soon as possible, and
from where she was standing, it must have looked like a kidnapping.
Fact is, it looked like one from where I was standing, too.
Was that you and your people who were chasing us? Then I must apologize
for opening fire on you... I hope nobody was hurt."
"No, our cars are pretty well armored. You scored a couple of times on
one of them, but no harm done. I reckon after what happened to Silas
Cumshaw, you had a right to be suspicious."
I noticed that refreshments, including several bottles, had been placed
on a big wicker table under the arched veranda.
"Can I offer you a drink, Captain, in token of mutual amity?" I asked.
"Well, now, I'd like to, Mr. Ambassador, but I'm on duty..." he began.
"You can't be. You're an officer of the Planetary Government of New
Texas, and in this Embassy, you're in the territory of the Solar
League."
"That's right, now, Mr. Ambassador," he grinned. "Extraterritoriality.
Wonderful thing, extraterritoriality." He looked at Hoddy, who, for the
first time since I had met him, was trying to shrink into the
background. "And diplomatic immunity, too. Ain't it, Hoddy?"
After he had had his drink and departed, we all sat down. Thrombley
began speaking almost at once.
"Mr. Ambassador, you must, you simply must, issue a public statement,
immediately, sir. Only a public statement, issued promptly, will relieve
the crisis into which we have all been thrust."
"Oh, come, Mr. Thrombley," I objected. "Captain Nelson'll take care of
all that in his report to his superiors."
Thrombley looked at me for a moment as though I had been speaking to
him in Hottentot, then waved his hands in polite exasperation.
"Oh, no, no! I don't mean that, sir. I mean a public statement to the
effect that you have assumed full responsibility for the Embassy. Where
is that thing? Mr. Gomez!"
Gomez gave him four or five sheets, stapled together. He laid them on
the table, turned to the last sheet, and whipped out a pen.
"Here, sir; just sign here."
"Are you crazy?" I demanded. "I'll be damned if I'll sign that. Not till
I've taken an inventory of the physical property of the Embassy, and
familiarized myself with all its commitments, and had the books audited
by some firm of certified public accountants."
Thrombley and Gomez looked at one another. They both groaned.
"But we must have a statement of assumption of responsibility..." Gomez
dithered.
"... or the business of the Embassy will be at a dead stop, and we can't
do anything," Thrombley finished.
"Wait a moment, Thrombley," Stonehenge cut in. "I understand Mr. Silk's
attitude. I've taken command of a good many ships and installations, at
one time or another, and I've never signed for anything I couldn't see
and feel and count. I know men who retired as brigadier generals or
vice-admirals, but they retired loaded with debts incurred because as
second lieutenants or ensigns they forgot that simple rule."
He turned to me. "Without any disrespect to the chargé d'affaires, Mr.
Silk, this Embassy has been pretty badly disorganized since Mr.
Cumshaw's death. No one felt authorized, or, to put it more accurately,
no one dared, to declare himself acting head of the Embassy--"
"Because that would make him the next target?" I interrupted. "Well,
that's what I was sent here for. Mr. Gomez, as Secretary of the Embassy,
will you please, at once, prepare a statement for the press and telecast
release to the effect that I am now the authorized head of this Embassy,
responsible from this hour for all its future policies and all its
present commitments insofar as they obligate the government of the Solar
League. Get that out at once. Tomorrow, I will present my credentials to
the Secretary of State here. Thereafter, Mr. Thrombley, you can rest in
the assurance that I'll be the one they'll be shooting at."
"But you can't wait that long, Mr. Ambassador," Thrombley almost wailed.
"We must go immediately to the Statehouse. The reception for you is
already going on."
I looked at my watch, which had been regulated aboard ship for Capella
IV time. It was just 1315.
"What time do they hold diplomatic receptions on this planet, Mr.
Thrombley?" I asked.
"Oh, any time at all, sir. This one started about 0900 when the news
that the ship was in orbit off-planet got in. It'll be a barbecue, of
course, and--"
"Barbecued supercow! Yipeee!" Hoddy yelled. "What I been waitin' for for
five years!"
It would be the vilest cruelty not to take him along, I thought. And it
would also keep him and Stonehenge apart for a while.
"But we must hurry, Mr. Ambassador," Thrombley was saying. "If you will
change, now, to formal dress..."
And he was looking at me, gasping. I think it was the first time he had
actually seen what I was wearing.
"In native dress, Mr. Ambassador!"
Thrombley's eyes and tone were again those of an innocent spaniel caught
in the middle of a marital argument.
Then his gaze fell to my belt and his eyes became saucers. "Oh, dear!
And armed!"
My chargé d'affaires was shuddering and he could not look directly at
me.
"Mr. Ambassador, I understand that you were recently appointed from the
Consular Service. I sincerely hope that you will not take it amiss if I
point out, here in private, that--"
"Mr. Thrombley, I am wearing this costume and these pistols on the
direct order of Secretary of State Ghopal Singh."
That set him back on his heels.
"I... I can't believe it!" he exclaimed. "An ambassador is _never_
armed."
"Not when he's dealing with a government which respects the comity of
nations and the usages of diplomatic practice, no," I replied. "But the
fate of Mr. Cumshaw clearly indicates that the government of New Texas
is not such a government. These pistols are in the nature of a
not-too-subtle hint of the manner in which this government, here, is
being regarded by the government of the Solar League." I turned to
Stonehenge. "Commander, what sort of an Embassy guard have we?" I asked.
"Space Marines, sergeant and five men. I double as guard officer, sir."
"Very well. Mr. Thrombley insists that it is necessary for me to go to
this fish-fry or whatever it is immediately. I want two men, a driver
and an auto-rifleman, for my car. And from now on, I would suggest,
Commander, that you wear your sidearm at all times outside the Embassy."
"Yes, sir!" and this time, Stonehenge gave me a real salute.
"Well, I must phone the Statehouse, then," Thrombley said. "We will have
to call on Secretary of State Palme, and then on President Hutchinson."
With that, he got up, excused himself, motioned Gomez to follow, and
hurried away.
I got up, too, and motioned Stonehenge aside.
"Aboard ship, coming in, I was told that there's a task force of the
Space Navy on maneuvers about five light-years from here," I said.
"Yes, sir. Task Force Red-Blue-Green, Fifth Space Fleet. Fleet Admiral
Sir Rodney Tregaskis."
"Can we get hold of a fast space-boat, with hyperdrive engines, in a
hurry?"
"Eight or ten of them always around New Austin spaceport, available for
charter."
"All right; charter one and get out to that fleet. Tell Admiral
Tregaskis that the Ambassador at New Austin feels in need of protection;
possibility of z'Srauff invasion. I'll give you written orders. I want
the Fleet within radio call. How far out would that be, with our
facilities?"
"The Embassy radio isn't reliable beyond about sixty light-minutes,
sir."
"Then tell Sir Rodney to bring his fleet in that close. The invasion, if
it comes, will probably not come from the direction of the z'Srauff
star-cluster; they'll probably jump past us and move in from the other
side. I hope you don't think I'm having nightmares, Commander. Danger of
a z'Srauff invasion was pointed out to me by persons on the very highest
level, on Luna."
Stonehenge nodded. "I'm always having the same kind of nightmares, sir.
Especially since this special envoy arrived here, ostensibly to
negotiate a meteor-mining treaty." He hesitated for a moment. "We don't
want the New Texans to know, of course, that you've sent for the fleet?"
"Naturally not."
"Well, if I can wait till about midnight before I leave, I can get a
boat owned, manned and operated by Solar League people. The boat's a
dreadful-looking old tub, but she's sound and fast. The gang who own her
are pretty notorious characters--suspected of smuggling, piracy, and
what not--but they'll keep their mouths shut if well paid."
"Then pay them well," I said. "And it's just as well you're not leaving
at once. When I get back from this clambake, I'll want to have a general
informal council, and I certainly want you in on it."
On the way to the Statehouse in the aircar, I kept wondering just how
smart I had been.
I was pretty sure that the z'Srauff was getting ready for a sneak attack
on New Texas, and, as Solar League Ambassador, I of course had the right
to call on the Space Navy for any amount of armed protection.
Sending Stonehenge off on what couldn't be less than an eighteen-hour
trip would delay anything he and Hoddy might be cooking up, too.
On the other hand, with the fleet so near, they might decide to have me
rubbed out in a hurry, to justify seizing the planet ahead of the
z'Srauff.
I was in that pleasant spot called, "Damned if you do and damned if you
don't...."
CHAPTER IV
The Statehouse appeared to cover about a square mile of ground and it
was an insane jumble of buildings piled beside and on top of one
another, as though it had been in continuous construction ever since the
planet was colonized, eighty-odd years before.
At what looked like one of the main entrances, the car stopped. I told
our Marine driver and auto-rifleman to park the car and take in the
barbecue, but to leave word with the doorman where they could be found.
Hoddy, Thrombley and I then went in, to be met by a couple of New Texas
Rangers, one of them the officer who had called at the Embassy. They
guided us to the office of the Secretary of State.
"We're dreadfully late," Thrombley was fretting. "I do hope we haven't
kept the Secretary waiting too long."
From the looks of him, I was afraid we had. He jumped up from his desk
and hurried across the room as soon as the receptionist opened the door
for us, his hand extended.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Thrombley," he burbled nervously. "And this is the
new Ambassador, I suppose. And this--" He caught sight of Hoddy Ringo,
bringing up the rear and stopped short, hand flying to open mouth. "Oh,
dear me!"
So far, I had been building myself a New Texas stereotype from Hoddy
Ringo and the Ranger officer who had chased us to the Embassy. But this
frightened little rabbit of a fellow simply didn't fit it. An alien
would be justified in assigning him to an entirely different species.
Thrombley introduced me. I introduced Hoddy as my confidential secretary
and advisor. We all shook hands, and Thrombley dug my credentials out of
his briefcase and handed them to me, and I handed them to the Secretary
of State, Mr. William A. Palme. He barely glanced at them, then shook my
hand again fervently and mumbled something about "inexpressible
pleasure" and "entirely acceptable to my government."
That made me the accredited and accepted Ambassador to New Texas.
Mr. Palme hoped, or said he hoped, that my stay in New Texas would be
long and pleasant. He seemed rather less than convinced that it would
be. His eyes kept returning in horrified fascination to my belt. Each
time they would focus on the butts of my Krupp-Tattas, he would pull
them resolutely away again.
"And now, we must take you to President Hutchinson; he is most anxious
to meet you, Mr. Silk. If you will please come with me..."
Four or five Rangers who had been loitering the hall outside moved to
follow us as we went toward the elevator. Although we had come into the
building onto a floor only a few feet above street-level, we went down
three floors from the hallway outside the Secretary of State's office,
into a huge room, the concrete floor of which was oil-stained, as
though vehicles were continually being driven in and out. It was about a
hundred feet wide, and two or three hundred in length. Daylight was
visible through open doors at the end. As we approached them, the
Rangers fanning out on either side and in front of us, I could hear a
perfect bedlam of noise outside--shouting, singing, dance-band music,
interspersed with the banging of shots.
When we reached the doors at the end, we emerged into one end of a big
rectangular plaza, at least five hundred yards in length. Most of the
uproar was centered at the opposite end, where several thousand people,
in costumes colored through the whole spectrum, were milling about.
There seemed to be at least two square-dances going on, to the music of
competing bands. At the distant end of the plaza, over the heads of the
crowd, I could see the piles and tracks of an overhead crane, towering
above what looked like an open-hearth furnace. Between us and the bulk
of the crowd, in a cleared space, two medium tanks, heavily padded with
mats, were ramming and trying to overturn each other, the mob of
spectators crowding as close to them as they dared. The din was
positively deafening, though we were at least two hundred yards from the
center of the crowd.
"Oh, dear, I always dread these things!" Palme was saying.
"Yes, absolutely anything could happen," Thrombley twittered.
"Man, this is a real barbecue!" Hoddy gloated. "Now I really feel at
home!"
"Over this way, Mr. Silk," Palme said, guiding me toward the short end
of the plaza, on our left. "We will see the President and then..."
He gulped.
"... then we will all go to the barbecue."
In the center of the short end of the plaza, dwarfed by the monster
bulks of steel and concrete and glass around it, stood a little old
building of warm-tinted adobe. I had never seen it before, but somehow
it was familiar-looking. And then I remembered. Although I had never
seen it before, I had seen it pictured many times; pictured under
attack, with gunsmoke spouting from windows and parapets.
I plucked Thrombley's sleeve.
"Isn't that a replica of the Alamo?"
He was shocked. "Oh, dear, Mr. Ambassador, don't let anybody hear you
ask that. That's no replica. It _is_ the Alamo. _The_ Alamo."
I stood there a moment, looking at it. I was remembering, and finally
understanding, what my psycho-history lessons about the "Romantic
Freeze" had meant.
_They had taken this little mission-fort down, brick by adobe brick,
loaded it carefully into a spaceship, brought it here, forty two
light-years away from Terra, and reverently set it up again. Then they
had built a whole world and a whole social philosophy around it_.
It had been the dissatisfied, of course, the discontented, the dreamers,
who had led the vanguard of man's explosion into space following the
discovery of the hyperspace-drive. They had gone from Terra cherishing
dreams of things that had been dumped into the dust bin of history,
carrying with them pictures of ways of life that had passed away, or
that had never really been. Then, in their new life, on new planets,
they had set to work making those dreams and those pictures live.
And, many times, they had come close to succeeding.
These Texans, now: they had left behind the cold fact that it had been
their state's great industrial complex that had made their migration
possible. They ignored the fact that their life here on Capella IV was
possible only by application of modern industrial technology. That rodeo
down the plaza--tank-tilting instead of bronco-busting. Here they were,
living frozen in a romantic dream, a world of roving cowboys and ranch
kingdoms.
No wonder Hoddy hadn't liked the books I had been reading on the ship.
They shook the fabric of that dream.
There were people moving about, at this relatively quiet end of the
plaza, mostly in the direction of the barbecue. Ten or twelve Rangers
loitered at the front of the Alamo, and with them I saw the dress blues
of my two Marines. There was a little three-wheeled motorcart among
them, from which they were helping themselves to food and drink. When
they saw us coming, the two Marines shoved their sandwiches into the
hands of a couple of Rangers and tried to come to attention.
"At ease, at ease," I told them. "Have a good time, boys. Hoddy, you
better get in on some of this grub; I may be inside for quite a while."
As soon as the Rangers saw Hoddy, they hastily got things out of their
right hands. Hoddy grinned at them.
"Take it easy, boys," he said. "I'm protected by the game laws. I'm a
diplomat, I am."
There were a couple of Rangers lounging outside the door of the
President's office and both of them carried autorifles, implying things
I didn't like.
I had seen the President of the Solar League wandering around the
dome-city of Artemis unattended, looking for all the world like a
professor in his academic halls. Since then, maybe before then, I had
always had a healthy suspicion of governments whose chiefs had to
surround themselves with bodyguards.
But the President of New Texas, John Hutchinson, was alone in his office
when we were shown in. He got up and came around his desk to greet us, a
slender, stoop-shouldered man in a black-and-gold laced jacket. He had a
narrow compressed mouth and eyes that seemed to be watching every corner
of the room at once. He wore a pair of small pistols in cross-body
holsters under his coat, and he always kept one hand or the other close
to his abdomen.
He was like, and yet unlike, the Secretary of State. Both had the look
of hunted animals; but where Palme was a rabbit, twitching to take
flight at the first whiff of danger, Hutchinson was a cat who hears
hounds baying--ready to run if he could, or claw if he must.
"Good day, Mr. Silk," he said, shaking hands with me after the
introductions. "I see you're heeled; you're smart. You wouldn't be here
today if poor Silas Cumshaw'd been as smart as you are. Great man,
though; a wise and farseeing statesman. He and I were real friends."
"You know who Mr. Silk brought with him as bodyguard?" Palme asked.
"Hoddy Ringo!"
"Oh, my God! I thought this planet was rid of him!" The President turned
to me. "You got a good trigger-man, though, Mr. Ambassador. Good man to
watch your back for you. But lot of folks here won't thank you for
bringing him back to New Texas."
He looked at his watch. "We have time for a little drink, before we go
outside, Mr. Silk," he said. "Care to join me?"
I assented and he got a bottle of superbourbon out of his desk, with
four glasses. Palme got some water tumblers and brought the pitcher of
ice-water from the cooler.
I noticed that the New Texas Secretary of State filled his three-ounce
liquor glass to the top and gulped it down at once. He might act as
though he were descended from a long line of maiden aunts, but he took
his liquor in blasts that would have floored a spaceport labor-boss.
We had another drink, a little slower, and chatted for a while, and then
Hutchinson said, regretfully that we'd have to go outside and meet the
folks. Outside, our guards--Hoddy, the two Marines, the Rangers who had
escorted us from Palme's office, and Hutchinson's retinue--surrounded
us, and we made our way down the plaza, through the crowd. The
din--ear-piercing yells, whistles, cowbells, pistol shots, the cacophony
of the two dance-bands, and the chorus-singing, of which I caught only
the words: _The skies of freedom are above you!_--was as bad as New
Year's Eve in Manhattan or Nairobi or New Moscow, on Terra.
"Don't take all this as a personal tribute, Mr. Silk!" Hutchinson
screamed into my ear. "On this planet, to paraphrase Nietzsche, a good
barbecue halloweth any cause!"
That surprised me, at the moment. Later I found out that John Hutchinson
was one of the leading scholars on New Texas and had once been president
of one of their universities. New Texas Christian, I believe.
As we got up onto the platform, close enough to the barbecue pits to
feel the heat from them, somebody let off what sounded like a fifty-mm
anti-tank gun five or six times. Hutchinson grabbed a microphone and
bellowed into it: "Ladies and gentlemen! Your attention, please!"
The noise began to diminish, slowly, until I could hear one voice, in
the crowd below:
"Shut up, you damn fools! We can't eat till this is over!"
Hutchinson introduced me, in very few words. I gathered that lengthy
speeches at barbecues were not popular on New Texas.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" I yelled into the microphone. "Appreciative as I
am of this honor, there is one here who is more deserving of your notice
than I; one to whom I, also, pay homage. He's over there on the fire,
and I want a slice of him as soon as possible!"
That got a big ovation. There was, beside the water pitcher, a bottle of
superbourbon. I ostentatiously threw the water out of the glass, poured
a big shot of the corrosive stuff, and downed it.
"For God's sake, let's eat!" I finished. Then I turned to Thrombley, who
was looking like a priest who has just seen the bishop spit in the
holy-water font. "Stick close to me," I whispered. "Cue me in on the
local notables, and the other members of the Diplomatic Corps." Then we
all got down off the platform, and a band climbed up and began playing
one of those raucous "cowboy ballads" which had originated in Manhattan
about the middle of the Twentieth Century.
"The sandwiches'll be here in a moment, Mr. Ambassador," Hutchinson
screamed--in effect, whispered--in my ear. "Don't feel any reluctance
about shaking hands with a sandwich in your other hand; that's standard
practice, here. You struck just the right note, up there. That business
with the liquor was positively inspired!"
The sandwiches--huge masses of meat and hot relish, wrapped in tortillas
of some sort--arrived and I bit into one.
I'd been eating supercow all my life, frozen or electron-beamed for
transportation, and now I was discovering that I had never really eaten
supercow before. I finished the first sandwich in surprisingly short
order and was starting on my second when the crowd began coming.
First, the Diplomatic Corps, the usual collection of weirdies, human and
otherwise....
There was the Ambassador from Tara, in a suit of what his planet
produced as a substitute for Irish homespuns. His Embassy, if it was
like the others I had seen elsewhere, would be an outsize cottage with
whitewashed walls and a thatched roof, with a bowl of milk outside the
door for the Little People...
The Ambassador from Alpheratz II, the South African Nationalist planet,
with a full beard, and old fashioned plug hat and tail-coat. They were a
frustrated lot. They had gone into space to practice _apartheid_ and had
settled on a planet where there was no other intelligent race to be
superior to....
The Mormon Ambassador from Deseret--Delta Camelopardalis V....
The Ambassador from Spica VII, a short jolly-looking little fellow, with
a head like a seal's, long arms, short legs and a tail like a
kangaroo's....
The Ambassador from Beta Cephus VI, who could have passed for human if
he hadn't had blood with a copper base instead of iron. His skin was a
dark green and his hair was a bright blue....
I was beginning to correct my first impression that Thrombley was a
complete dithering fool. He stood at my left elbow, whispering the names
and governments and home planets of the Ambassadors as they came up,
handing me little slips of paper on which he had written phonetically
correct renditions of the greetings I would give them in their own
language. I was still twittering a reply to the greeting of
Nanadabadian, from Beta Cephus VI, when he whispered to me:
"Here it comes, sir. The z'Srauff!"
The z'Srauff were reasonably close to human stature and appearance,
allowing for the fact that their ancestry had been canine instead of
simian. They had, of course, longer and narrower jaws than we have, and
definitely carnivorous teeth.
There were stories floating around that they enjoyed barbecued Terran
even better than they did supercow and hot relish.
This one advanced, extending his three-fingered hand.
"I am most happy to make connection with Solar League representative,"
he said. "I am named Gglafrr Ddespttann Vuvuvu."
No wonder Thrombley let him introduce himself. I answered in the Basic
English that was all he'd admit to understanding:
"The name of your great nation has gone before you to me. The stories we
tell to our young of you are at the top of our books. I have hope to
make great pleasure in you and me to be friends."
Gglafrr Vuvuvu's smile wavered a little at the oblique reference to the
couple of trouncings our Space Navy had administered to z'Srauff ships
in the past. "We will be in the same place again times with no number,"
the alien replied. "I have hope for you that time you are in this place
will be long and will put pleasure in your heart."
Then the pressure of the line behind him pushed him on. Cabinet Members;
Senators and Representatives; prominent citizens, mostly Judge
so-and-so, or Colonel this-or-that. It was all a blur, so much so that
it was an instant before I recognized the gleaming golden hair and the
statuesque figure.
"Thank you! I have met the Ambassador." The lovely voice was shaking
with restrained anger.
"Gail!" I exclaimed.
"Your father coming to the barbecue, Gail?" President Hutchinson was
asking.
"He ought to be here any minute. He sent me on ahead from the hotel. He
wants to meet the Ambassador. That's why I joined the line."
"Well, suppose I leave Mr. Silk in your hands for a while," Hutchinson
said. "I ought to circulate around a little."
"Yes. Just leave him in my hands!" she said vindictively.
"What's wrong, Gail?" I wanted to know. "I know, I was supposed to meet
you at the spaceport, but--"
"You made a beautiful fool of me at the spaceport!"
"Look, I can explain everything. My Embassy staff insisted on hurrying
me off--"
Somebody gave a high-pitched whoop directly behind me and emptied the
clip of a pistol. I couldn't even hear what else I said. I couldn't hear
what she said, either, but it was something angry.
"You have to listen to me!" I roared in her ear. "I can explain
everything!"
"Any diplomat can explain anything!" she shouted back.
"Look, Gail, you're hanging an innocent man!" I yelled back at her. "I'm
entitled to a fair trial!"
Somebody on the platform began firing his pistol within inches of the
loud-speakers and it sounded like an H-bomb going off. She grabbed my
wrist and dragged me toward a door under the platform.
"Down here!" she yelled. "And this better be good, Mr. Silk!"
We went down a spiral ramp, lighted by widely-scattered overhead lights.
"Space-attack shelter," she explained. "And look: what goes on in
space-ships is one thing, but it's as much as a girl's reputation is
worth to come down here during a barbecue."
There seemed to be quite few girls at that barbecue who didn't care what
happened to their reputations. We discovered that after looking into a
couple of passageways that branched off the entrance.
"Over this way," Gail said, "Confederate Courts Building. There won't be
anything going on over here, now."
I told her, with as much humorous detail as possible, about how
Thrombley had shanghaied me to the Embassy, and about the chase by the
Rangers. Before I was half through, she was laughing heartily, all
traces of her anger gone. Finally, we came to a stairway, and at the
head of it to a small door.
"It's been four years that I've been away from here," she said. "I think
there's a reading room of the Law Library up here. Let's go in and enjoy
the quiet for a while."
But when we opened the door, there was a Ranger standing inside.
"Come to see a trial, Mr. Silk? Oh, hello, Gail. Just in time; they're
going to prepare for the next trial."
As he spoke, something clicked at the door. Gail looked at me in
consternation.
"Now we're locked in," she said. "We can't get out till the
trial's over."
CHAPTER V
I looked around.
We were on a high balcony, at the end of a long, narrow room. In front
of us, windows rose to the ceiling, and it was evident that the floor of
the room was about twenty feet below ground level. Outside, I could see
the barbecue still going on, but not a murmur of noise penetrated to us.
What seemed to be the judge's bench was against the outside wall, under
the tall windows. To the right of it was a railed stand with a chair in
it, and in front, arranged in U-shape, were three tables at which a
number of men were hastily conferring. There were nine judges in a row
on the bench, all in black gowns. The spectators' seats below were
filled with people, and there were quite a few up here on the balcony.
"What is this? Supreme Court?" I asked as Gail piloted me to a couple of
seats where we could be alone.
"No, Court of Political Justice," she told me. "This is the court that's
going to try those three Bonney brothers, who killed Mr. Cumshaw."
It suddenly occurred to me that this was the first time I had heard
anything specific about the death of my predecessor.
"That isn't the trial that's going on now, I hope?"
"Oh, no; that won't be for a couple of days. Not till after you can
arrange to attend. I don't know what this trial is
|
.
"You'll surely have it good with him. He's a quiet little old man. He
has run his course and left all sorts of sins behind him. Now he lives
in order to eat a little bite, and he grumbles and purrs like a satiated
Tom-cat."
"But isn't he a sorcerer?" asked the boy.
"Why? I should think there are no sorcerers in the cities." After
reflecting a few moments, the blacksmith went on. "Anyway it's all the
same to you. A sorcerer is a man, too. But remember this, a city is a
dangerous place. This is how it spoils people: the wife of a man goes
away on a pilgrimage, and he immediately puts in her place some
housemaid or other, and indulges himself. But the old man can't show you
such an example. That's why I say you'll have it good with him. You will
live with him as behind a bush, sitting and looking."
"And when he dies?" Yevsey inquired warily.
"That probably won't be soon. Smear your head with oil to keep your hair
from sticking out."
About noon the uncle made Yevsey bid farewell to their hosts, and taking
him firmly by the hand led him to the city. They walked for a long time.
It was sultry. Often they asked the passersby how to get to the Circle.
Yevsey regarded everything with his owl-like eyes, pressing close up to
his uncle. The doors of shops slammed, pulleys squeaked, carriages
rattled, wagons rumbled heavily, traders shouted, and feet scraped and
tramped. All these sounds jumbled together were tangled up in the
stifling dusty atmosphere. The people walked quickly, and hurried across
the streets under the horses' noses as if afraid of being too late for
something. The bustle tired the boy's eyes. Now and then he closed them,
whereupon he would stumble and say to his uncle:
"Come, faster!"
Yevsey wanted to get to some place in a corner where it was not so
stirring, not so noisy and hot. Finally they reached a little open place
hemmed in by a narrow circle of old houses, which seemed to support one
another solidly and firmly. In the center of the Circle was a fountain
about which moist shadows hovered on the soil. It was more tranquil
here, and the noise was subdued.
"Look," said Yevsey, "there are only houses and no ground around them at
all."
The blacksmith answered with a sigh:
"It's pretty crowded. Read the signs. Where is Raspopov's shop?"
They walked to the center of the Circle, and stopped at the fountain.
There were many signs, which covered every house like the motley patches
of a beggar's coat. When Yevsey saw the name his uncle had mentioned, a
chill shiver ran through his body, and he examined it carefully without
saying anything. It was small and eaten by rust, and was placed on the
door of a dark basement. On either side the door there was an area
between the pavement and the house, which was fenced in by a low iron
railing. The house, a dirty yellow with peeling plaster, was narrow with
four stories and three windows to each floor. It looked blind as a mole,
crafty, and uncozy.
"Well," asked the smith, "can't you see the sign?"
"There it is," said the boy, indicating the place with a nod of his
head.
"Let's cross ourselves and go."
They descended to the door at the bottom of five stone steps. The
blacksmith raised his cap from his head, and looked cautiously into the
shop.
"Come in," said a clear voice.
The master, wearing a black silk cap without a visor, was sitting at a
table by the window drinking tea.
"Take a chair, peasant, and have some tea. Boy, fetch a glass from the
shelf."
The master pointed to the other end of the shop. Yevsey looked in the
same direction, but saw no boy there. The master turned toward him.
"Well, what's the matter? Aren't you the boy?"
"He's not used to it yet," said Uncle Piotr quietly.
The old man again waved his hand.
"The second shelf on the right. A master must be understood when he says
only half. That's the rule."
The blacksmith sighed. Yevsey groped for the glass in the dim light, and
stumbled over a pile of books on the floor in his haste to hand it to
the master.
"Put it on the table. And the saucer?"
"Oh, you!" exclaimed Uncle Piotr. "What's the matter with you? Get the
saucer."
"It will take a long time to teach him," said the old man with an
imposing look at the blacksmith. "Now, boy, go around the shop, and fix
the place where everything stands in your memory."
Yevsey felt as if something commanding had entered his body, which
impelled him powerfully to move as it pleased. He shrank together, drew
his head in his shoulders, and straining his eyes began to look around
the shop, all the time listening to the words of his master. It was
cool, dusky, and quiet. The noise of the city entered reluctantly, like
the muffled swashing of a stream. Narrow and long as a grave the shop
was closely lined with shelves holding books in compact rows. Large
piles of books cluttered the floor, and barricaded the rear wall, rising
almost to the ceiling. Besides the books Yevsey found only a ladder, an
umbrella, galoshes, and a white pot whose handle was broken off. There
was a great deal of dust, which probably accounted for the heavy odor.
"I'm a quiet man. I am all alone, and if he suits me, maybe I will make
him perfectly happy."
"Of course it lies with you," said Uncle Piotr.
"I am fifty-seven years old. I lived an honest and straightforward life,
and I will not excuse dishonesty. If I notice any such thing I'll hand
him over to the court. Nowadays they sentence minors, too. They have
founded a prison to frighten them called the Junior Colony of
Criminals--for little thieves, you know."
His colorless, drawling words enveloped Yevsey tightly, evoking a
timorous desire to soothe the old man and please him.
"Now, good-bye. The boy must get at the work."
Uncle Piotr rose and sighed.
"Well, Orphan, so you live here now. Obey your master. He won't want to
do you any harm. Why should he? He is going to buy you city clothes. Now
don't be downcast, will you?"
"No," said Yevsey.
"You ought to say 'No, sir,'" corrected the master.
"No, sir," repeated Yevsey.
"Well, good-bye," said the blacksmith putting his hand on the boy's
shoulder, and giving his nephew a little shake he walked out as if
suddenly grown alarmed.
Yevsey shivered, oppressed by a chill sorrow. He went to the door, and
fixed his round eyes questioningly on the yellow face of the master. The
old man twirling the grey tuft on his chin looked down upon the boy.
Yevsey thought he could discern large dim black eyes behind the glasses.
As the two stood thus for a few minutes apparently expecting something
from each other, the boy's breast began to beat with a vague terror; but
the old man merely took a book from a shelf, and pointed to the cover.
"What number is this?"
"1873," replied Yevsey lowering his head.
"That's it."
The master touched Yevsey's chin with his dry finger.
"Look at me."
The boy straightened his neck and quickly mumbled closing his eyes:
"Little uncle, I shall always obey you. I don't need beatings." His eyes
grew dim, his heart sank within him.
"Come here."
The old man seated himself resting his hands on his knees. He removed
his cap and wiped his bald spot with his handkerchief. His spectacles
slid to the end of his nose, and he looked over them at Yevsey. Now he
seemed to have two pairs of eyes. The real eyes were small, immobile,
and dark grey with red lids. Without the glasses the master's face
looked thinner, more wrinkled, and less stern. In fact it wore an
injured and downcast expression, and there was nothing in the least
formidable in his eyes. The bump over his forehead got larger.
"Have you been beaten often?"
"Yes, sir, often."
"Who beat you?"
"The boys."
"Oh!"
The master drew his glasses close to his eyes and mumbled his lips.
"The boys are scrappers here, too," he said. "Don't have anything to do
with them, do you hear?"
"Yes, sir."
"Be on your guard against them. They are impudent rascals and thieves. I
want you to know I am not going to teach you anything bad. Don't be
afraid of me. I am a good man. You ought to get to love me. You will
love me. You'll have it very good with me, you understand?"
"Yes, sir. I will."
The master's face assumed its former expression. He rose, and taking
Yevsey by the hand led him to the further end of the shop.
"Here's work for you. You see these books? On every book the date is
marked. There are twelve books to each year. Arrange them in order. How
are you going to do it?"
Yevsey thought a while, and answered timidly:
"I don't know."
"Well, I am not going to tell you. You can read and you ought to be able
to find out by yourself. Go, get to work."
The old man's dry even voice seemed to lash Yevsey, driving away the
melancholy feeling of separation from his uncle and replacing it with
the anxious desire to begin to work quickly. Restraining his tears the
boy rapidly and quietly untied the packages. Each time a book dropped to
the floor with a thud he started and looked around. The master was
sitting at the table writing with a pen that scratched slightly. As the
people hastened past the door, their feet flashed and their shadows
jerked across the shop. Tears rolled from Yevsey's eyes one after the
other. In fear lest they be detected he hurriedly wiped them from his
face with dusty hands, and full of a vague dread went tensely at his
work of sorting the books.
At first it was difficult for him, but in a few minutes he was already
immersed in that familiar state of thoughtlessness and emptiness which
took such powerful hold of him when, after beatings and insults, he sat
himself down alone in some corner. His eye caught the date and the name
of the month, his hand mechanically arranged the books in a row, while
he sat on the floor swinging his body regularly. He became more and
more deeply plunged in the tranquil state of half-conscious negation
of reality. As always at such times the dim hope glowed in him of
something different, unlike what he saw around him. Sometimes the
all-comprehending, capacious phrase uttered by Yashka dimly glimmered in
his memory:
"It will pass away."
The thought pressed his heart warmly and softly with a promise of
something unusual. The boy's hands involuntarily began to move more
quickly, and he ceased to notice the lapse of time.
"You see, you knew how to do it," said the master.
Yevsey, who had not heard the old man approach him, started from his
reverie. Glancing at his work, he asked:
"Is it all right?"
"Absolutely. Do you want tea?"
"No."
"You ought to say, 'No, thank you.' Well, keep on with your work."
He walked away. Yevsey looking after him saw a man carrying a cane enter
the door. He had neither a beard nor mustache, and wore a round hat
shoved back on the nape of his neck. He seated himself at the table, at
the same time putting upon it some small black and white objects. When
Yevsey again started to work, he every once in a while heard abrupt
sounds from his master and the newcomer.
"Castle."
"King."
"Soon."
The confused noise of the street penetrated the shop wearily, with
strange words quacking in it, like frogs in a marsh.
"What are they doing?" thought the boy, and sighed. He experienced a
soft sensation, that from all directions something unusual was coming
upon him, but not what he timidly awaited. The dust settled upon his
face, tickled his nose and eyes, and set his teeth on edge. He recalled
his uncle's words:
"You will live with him as behind a bush."
It grew dark.
"King and checkmate!" cried the guest in a thick voice. The master
clucking his tongue called out:
"Boy, close up the shop!"
The old man lived in two small rooms in the fourth story of the same
house. In the first room, which had one window, stood a large chest and
a wardrobe.
"This is where you will sleep."
The two windows in the second room gave upon the street, with a view
over an endless vista of uneven roofs and rosy sky. In the corner, in
front of the ikons, flickered a little light in a blue glass lamp. In
another corner stood a bed covered with a red blanket. On the walls hung
gaudy portraits of the Czar and various generals. The room was close and
smelt like a church, but it was clean.
Yevsey remained at the door looking at his elderly master, who said:
"Mark the arrangement of everything here. I want it always to be the
same as it is now."
Against the wall stood a broad black sofa, a round table, and about the
table chairs also black. This corner had a mournful, sinister aspect.
A tall, white-faced woman with eyes like a sheep's entered the room, and
asked in a low singing voice:
"Shall I serve supper?"
"Bring it in, Rayisa Petrovna."
"A new boy?"
"Yes, new. His name is Yevsey."
The woman walked out.
"Close the door," ordered the old man. Yevsey obeyed, and he continued
in a lower voice. "She is the landlady. I rent the rooms from her with
dinner and supper. You understand?"
"I understand."
"But you have one master--me. You understand?"
"Yes."
"That is to say, you must listen only to me. Open the door, and go into
the kitchen and wash yourself."
The master's voice echoed drily in the boy's bosom, causing his alarmed
heart to palpitate. The old man, it seemed to Yevsey, was hiding
something dangerous behind his words, something of which he himself was
afraid.
While washing in the kitchen he surreptitiously tried to look at the
mistress of the apartment. The woman was preparing the supper
noiselessly but briskly. As she arranged plates, knives, and bread on an
ample tray her large round face seemed kind. Her smoothly combed dark
hair; her unwinking eyes with thin lashes, and her broad nose made the
boy think, "She looks to be a gentle person."
Noticing that she, in her turn, was looking at him, the thin red lips of
her small mouth tightly compressed, he grew confused, and spilt some
water on the floor.
"Wipe it," she said without anger. "There's a cloth under the chair."
When he returned, the old man looked at him and asked:
"What did she tell you?"
But Yevsey had no time to answer before the woman brought in the tray.
"Well, I'll go," she said after setting it on the table.
"Very well," replied the master.
She raised her hand to smooth the hair over her temples--her fingers
were long--and left.
The old man and the boy sat down to their supper. The master ate slowly,
noisily munching his food and at times sighing wearily. When they began
to eat the finely chopped roast meat, he said:
"You see what good food? I always have only good food."
After supper he told Yevsey to carry the dishes into the kitchen, and
showed him how to light the lamp.
"Now, go to sleep. You will find a piece of padding in the wardrobe and
a pillow and a blanket. They belong to you. To-morrow I'll buy you new
clothes, good clothes. Go, now."
When he was half asleep the master came in to Yevsey.
"Are you comfortable?"
Though the chest made a hard bed, Yevsey answered:
"Yes."
"If it is too hot, open the window."
The boy at once opened the window, which looked out upon the roof of the
next house. He counted the chimneys. There were four, all alike. He
looked at the stars with the dim gaze of a timid animal in a cage. But
the stars said nothing to his heart. He flung himself on the chest
again, drew the blanket over his head, and closed his eyes tightly. He
began to feel stifled, thrust his head out, and without opening his eyes
listened. In his master's room something rustled monotonously, then
Yevsey heard a dry, distinct voice:
"Behold, God is mine helper; the Lord is with them that uphold--"
* * * * *
Yevsey realized that the old man was reciting the Psalter; and listening
attentively to the familiar words of King David, which, however, he did
not comprehend, the boy fell asleep.
CHAPTER III
Yevsey's life passed smoothly and evenly.
He wanted to please his master, even realized this would be of advantage
to him, and he felt he would succeed, though he behaved with watchful
circumspection and no warmth in his heart for the old man. The fear of
people engendered in him a desire to suit them, a readiness for all
kinds of services, in order to defend himself against the possibility of
attack. The constant expectation of danger developed a keen power of
observation, which still more deepened his mistrust.
He observed the strange life in the house without understanding it. From
basement to roof people lived close packed, and every day, from morning
until night, they crawled about in the tenement like crabs in a basket.
Here they worked more than in the village, and, it seemed, were imbued
with even keener bitterness. They lived restlessly, noisily, and
hurriedly, as if to get through all the work as soon as possible in
preparation of a holiday, which they wanted to meet as free people,
washed, clean, peaceful, and tranquilly joyous. The heart of the boy
sank within him, and the question constantly recurred:
"Will it pass away?"
But the holiday never came. The people spurred one another on, wrangled,
and sometimes fought. Scarcely a day passed on which they did not speak
ill of one another.
In the mornings the master went down to the shop, while Yevsey remained
in the apartment to put it in order. This accomplished, he washed
himself, went to the tavern for boiling water, and then returned to the
shop, where he drank the morning tea with his master. While breakfasting
the old man almost invariably asked him:
"Well, what now?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing is little."
Once, however, Yevsey had a different answer.
"To-day the watchmaker told the furrier's cook that you received stolen
articles."
Yevsey said this unexpectedly to himself, and was instantly seized with
a tremble of fear. He bowed his head. The old man laughed quietly, and
said in a drawling voice without sincerity:
"The scoundrel!" His dark, dry lips quivered. "Thank you for telling me.
Thank you! You see how the people don't love me."
From that time Yevsey began to pay close attention to the conversation
of the tenants, and promptly repeated everything he heard to his master,
speaking in a quiet, calm voice and looking straight into his face.
Several days later, while putting his master's room into order, he found
a crumpled paper ruble on the floor, and when at tea the old man asked
him, "Well, what now?" Yevsey replied, "Here I have found a ruble."
"You found a ruble, did you? I found a gold piece," said the master
laughing.
Another time Yevsey picked up a twenty-kopek piece in the entrance to
the shop, which he also gave to the master. The old man slid his glasses
to the end of his nose, and rubbing the coin with his fingers looked
into the boy's face for a few seconds without speaking.
"According to the law," he said thoughtfully, "a third of what you find,
six kopeks, belongs to you." He was silent, sighed, and stuck the coin
into his vest pocket. "But anyway you're a stupid boy." Yevsey did not
get the six kopeks.
Quiet, unnoticed, and when noticed, obliging, Yevsey Klimkov scarcely
ever drew the attention of the people to himself, though he stubbornly
followed them with the broad, empty gaze of his owl-like eyes, with the
look that did not abide in the memory of those who met it.
From the first days the reticent quiet Rayisa Petrovna interested him
strongly. Every evening she put on a dark, rustling dress and a black
hat, and sallied forth. In the morning when he put the rooms in order
she was still asleep. He saw her only in the evening before supper, and
that not every day. Her life seemed mysterious to him, and her entire
taciturn being, her white face and stationary eyes, roused in him vague
suggestions of something peculiar. He persuaded himself that she lived
better and knew more than everybody else. A kindly feeling which he did
not understand sprang up in his heart for this woman. Every day she
appeared to him more and more beautiful.
Once he awoke at daybreak, and walked into the kitchen for a drink.
Suddenly he heard someone entering the door of the vestibule. He rushed
to his room in fright, lay down, and covered himself with the blanket,
trying to press himself to the chest as closely as possible. In a few
minutes he stuck out his ear, and in the kitchen heard heavy steps, the
rustle of a dress, and the voice of Rayisa Petrovna.
"Oh, oh, you--" she was saying.
Yevsey rose, walked to the door on tiptoe, and looked into the kitchen.
The quiet woman was sitting at the window taking off her hat. Her face
seemed whiter than ever, and tears streamed from her eyes. Her large
body swayed, her hands moved slowly.
"I know you!" she said, shaking her head. She rose to her feet,
supporting herself on the window-sill.
The bed in the master's room creaked. Yevsey quickly jumped back on his
chest, lay down, and wrapped himself up.
"They've done something bad to her," he thought, full of keen pity. At
the same time, however, he was inwardly glad of her tears. They brought
this woman, who lived a secret nocturnal existence, nearer to him.
The next moment someone seemed to be passing by him with sly steps. He
raised his head, and suddenly jumped from the chest, as if burned by the
thin angry shout:
"Ugh! Go away!"
Then there was some hissing. The master in his nightgown hastily came
out of the kitchen, stopped, and said to Yevsey in a whistling voice:
"Sleep! Sleep! What's the matter? Sleep!"
The next morning in the shop the old man asked him:
"Were you frightened last night?"
"Yes."
"She was in her cups. It happens to her sometimes."
Though the question trembled on his lips, Yevsey did not dare to ask
what her occupation was. Some minutes later the old man asked:
"Do you like her?"
"I do."
"Well," said the master sternly, "even if you do, you ought to know that
she's an extremely shrewd woman. She is silent, but bad. She's a sinner.
Yes, that's what she is. Do you know what she does? She's a musician.
She plays the piano." The old man accurately described a piano, and
added didactically, "A person who plays the piano is called a pianist.
And do you know what a house of ill fame is?"
From the talk of the furriers and glaziers in the yard Yevsey already
knew something about disreputable resorts; but desiring to learn more he
answered:
"I don't know."
The old man gave him a lengthy explanation in words very intelligible to
Yevsey. He spoke with heat, occasionally spitting and wrinkling up his
face to express his disgust of the abomination. Yevsey regarded the old
man with his watery eyes, and for some reason did not believe in his
aversion.
"So you see, every evening she plays in a house like that, and depraved
women dance with drunken men to the accompaniment of her music. The men
are all crooks, some of them, maybe, even murderers." Raspopov sighed in
exhaustion, and wiped his perspiring face. "Don't trust her. You
understand? I tell you, she's a cunning woman, and she's mean."
The boy believed everything the master told him about the piano and the
house of ill fame, but failed to be impressed by a single word regarding
the woman. In fact, everything the old man said of her merely increased
the cautious, ever-watchful feeling of mistrust with which Yevsey
treated his master, and by coloring Rayisa Petrovna with a still deeper
tinge of the unusual, made her seem even more beautiful in his eyes.
Another object of Yevsey's curiosity besides Rayisa was Anatol,
apprentice to the glazier, Kuzin, a thin, flat-nosed boy with ragged
hair, dirty, always jolly, and always steeped in the odor of oil. He had
a high ringing voice, which Yevsey liked very much to hear when he
shouted:
"Wi-i-ndow pa-anes."
He spoke to Yevsey first. Yevsey was sweeping the stairway when he
suddenly heard from below the loud question:
"Say there, kid, what government are you from?"
"From this government," answered Yevsey.
"I am from the government of Kostrom. How old are you?"
"Thirteen."
"I am, too. Come along with me."
"Where to?"
"To the river to go in bathing."
"I have to stay in the shop."
"To-day is Sunday."
"That doesn't make any difference."
"Well, go to the devil."
The glazier boy disappeared. Yevsey was not offended by his oath.
Anatol was off the whole day carrying a box of glass about the city, and
usually returned home just as the shop was being closed. Then almost the
entire evening his indefatigable voice, his laughter, whistling, and
singing would rise from the yard. Everybody scolded him, yet all loved
to meddle with him and laugh at his pranks. Yevsey was surprised at the
boldness with which the ragged, snub-nosed boy behaved toward the
grown-up folk, and he experienced a sense of envy when he saw the
gold-embroidery girl run about the yard in chase of the jolly, insolent
fellow. He was powerfully drawn to the glazier boy, for whom he found a
place in his vague fancies of a clean and quiet life.
Once, after supper, Yevsey asked the master:
"May I go down in the yard?"
The old man consented reluctantly.
"Go, but don't stay long. Be sure not to stay long."
Another time when Yevsey put the same request the master added:
"No good will come of your being in the yard."
Yevsey ran down the stairway quickly, and seated himself in the shade to
observe Anatol. The yard was small and hemmed in on all sides by the
high houses. The tenants, workingmen and women, and servants, sat
resting on the rubbish heaps against the walls. In the center of the
ring Anatol was giving a performance.
"The furrier Zvorykin going to church!" he shouted.
To his astonishment Yevsey saw the little stout furrier with hanging
lower lip and eyes painfully screwed up. Thrusting out his abdomen and
leaning his head to one side, Anatol struggled toward the gate in short
steps, reluctance depicted in his walk. The people sitting around
laughed and shouted approval.
"Zvorykin returning from the saloon!"
Now Anatol swayed through the yard, his feet dragging along feebly, his
arms hanging limp, a dull look in his wide-open eyes, his mouth gaping
hideously yet comically. He stopped, tapped himself on the chest, and
said in a wheezy pitiful voice:
"God--how satisfied I am with everything and everybody! Lord, how good
and pleasant everything is to Thy servant, Yakov Ivanich. But the
glazier Kuzin is a blackguard--a scamp before God, a jackass before all
the people--that's true, God--"
The audience roared, but Yevsey did not laugh. He was oppressed by a
twofold feeling of astonishment and envy. The desire to see this boy
frightened and wronged mingled with the expectation of new pranks. He
felt vexed and unpleasant because the glazier boy did not show up men
who inflicted hurt, but merely funny men. Yevsey sat there with mouth
agape and a stupid expression on his face, his owlish eyes staring.
"Here goes glazier Kuzin!"
Before Yevsey appeared the gaunt red muzhik always half drunk, the
sleeves of his dirty shirt tucked up, his right hand thrust in the
breast of his apron, his left hand deliberately stroking his
beard--Kuzin had a reddish forked beard. He was frowning and surly and
moved slowly, like a heavy cart-load. Looking sidewise he screeched in a
cracked, hoarse voice:
"You are carrying on again, you heretic? Am I to listen to this nonsense
for long? You blasted, confounded--"
"Skinflint Raspopov!" announced Anatol.
The smooth, sharp little figure of Yevsey's master crept past him moving
his feet noiselessly. He worked his nose as if smelling something,
nodded his head quickly, and kept tugging at the tuft on his chin with
his little hand. In this characterization something loathsome, pitiful,
and laughable became quite apparent to Yevsey, whose vexation rose. He
felt sure his master was not such as the young glazier represented him
to be.
Next, Anatol took to mimicking members of the audience. Inexhaustible,
stimulated by the applause, he tinkled until late at night like a little
bell, evoking kindly, cheerful laughter. Sometimes the man who was
touched would rush to catch him, and a noisy chase about the yard would
ensue.
Yevsey sighed. Anatol noticed him, and pulled him by the hand into the
middle of the yard, where he introduced him to the audience.
"Here he is--sugar and soap. Skinflint Raspopov's cousin morel."
Turning the boy's little figure in all directions, he poured forth a
flowing stream of strange comic words about his master, about Rayisa
Petrovna, and about Yevsey himself.
"Let me go!" Yevsey quietly demanded, trying to tear his hand from
Anatol's strong grip, in the meantime listening attentively in the
endeavor to understand the hints, the filth of which he felt. Whenever
Yevsey struggled hard to tear himself away, the audience, usually the
women, said lazily to Anatol:
"Let him go."
For some reason their intercession was disagreeable to Yevsey. It
exasperated Anatol, too, who began to push and pinch his victim and
challenge him to a fight. Some of the men urged the boys on.
"Well--fight! See which will do the other up."
The women objected:
"A fight! Thanks, we're not interested. Don't."
Yevsey again felt something unpleasant in these words.
Finally Anatol scornfully pushed Yevsey aside.
"Oh, you kid!"
The next morning Yevsey met Anatol outside the house carrying his box of
glass, and suddenly, without desiring to do it, he said to him:
"Why do you make fun of me?"
The glazier boy looked at him.
"What of it?"
Yevsey was unable to reply.
"Do you want to fight?" asked Anatol again. "Come to our shed. I will
wait for you until evening."
He spoke calmly and in a business-like way.
"No, I don't want to fight," replied Yevsey quietly.
"Then you needn't! I'd lick you anyway," said the glazier, and added
with assurance, "I certainly would."
Yevsey sighed. He could not understand this boy, but he longed to
understand him. So he asked a second time:
"I say, why do you make fun of me?"
Anatol apparently felt awkward. He winked his lively eyes, smiled, and
suddenly shouted in anger:
"Go to the devil! What are you bothering me about? I'll give it to you
so--"
Yevsey quickly ran into the shop, and for a whole day felt the itching
of an undeserved insult. This did not put an end to his inclination for
Anatol, but it forced him to leave the yard whenever Anatol noticed him,
and he dismissed the glazier boy from the sphere of his dreams.
CHAPTER IV
Soon after this unsuccessful attempt to draw near to a human being
Yevsey was one evening awakened by talking in his master's room. He
listened and thought he distinguished Rayisa's voice. Desiring to
convince himself of her presence there he rose and quietly slipped over
to the tightly closed door, and put his eyes to the keyhole.
His sleepy glance first perceived the light of the candle, which blinded
him. Then he saw the large rotund body of the woman on the black sofa.
She lay face upward entirely naked. Her hair was spread over her breast,
and her long fingers slowly weaved it into a braid. The light quivered
on her fair body. Clean and bright, it seemed like a light cloud which
rocked and breathed. It was very beautiful. She was saying something.
Yevsey could not catch the words, but heard only the singing, tired,
plaintive voice. The master was sitting in his nightgown upon a chair by
the sofa, and was pouring wine into a glass with a trembling hand. The
tuft of grey hair on his chin also trembled. He had removed his glasses,
and his face was loathsome.
"Yes, yes, yes! Hm! What a woman you are!"
Yevsey moved away from the door, lay down on his bed, and thought:
"They have gotten married."
He pitied Rayisa Petrovna for having become the wife of a man who spoke
ill of her, and he pitied her because it must have been very cold for
her to lie naked on the leather sofa. An evil thought flashed through
his mind, which confirmed the words of the old man about her, but Yevsey
anxiously drove it away.
The evening of the next day Rayisa Petrovna brought in supper as always,
and said in her usual voice:
"I am going."
The master, too, spoke to her in his usual voice, dry and careless.
Several days passed by. The relation between the master and Rayisa did
not change, and Yevsey began to think he had seen the naked woman in a
dream. He was very reluctant to believe his master's words about her.
Once his Uncle Piotr appeared unexpectedly and, so it seemed to Yevsey,
needlessly. He had grown grey, wrinkled, and shorter.
"I am getting blind, Orphan," he said sipping tea from a saucer noisily
and smiling with his wet eyes. "I cannot work anymore, so I will have to
go begging. Yashka is unmanageable. He wants to go to the city, and if I
don't let him, he will run away. That's the kind of a chap he is."
Everything the blacksmith said was wearisome and difficult to listen to.
He seemed to have grown duller. He looked guilty, and Yevsey felt
awkward and ashamed for him in the presence of his master. When he got
ready to go, Yevsey quietly thrust three rubles into his hand, and saw
him out with pleasure.
Though Yevsey endeavored as before to please his master in every way, he
became afraid to agree with him. The bookshop after a time aroused a dim
suspicion by
|
not ten years older than his young friend. "I only fancied--no
doubt it was but the foolish fancy of my own anxiety--that you did not
respond quite so heartily as usual to my remark."
The mother's eyes were anxiously fixed on her son during the
conversation, for her instincts told her that he was not quite at
his ease. She had never given him any scope, never trusted him, or
trained him to freedom; but, herself a prisoner to her drawing-room and
bed-room, sought with all her energy and contrivance, for which she had
plenty of leisure, to keep, strengthen, and repair the invisible cable
by which she seemed to herself to hold, and in fact did hold, him, even
when he was out of her sight, and himself least aware of the fact.
As yet again Thomas made no reply, Mr. Simon changed the subject.
"Have you much pain to-night, Mrs. Worboise?" he asked.
"I can bear it," she answered. "It will not last forever."
"You find comfort in looking to the rest that remaineth," responded
Mr. Simon. "It is the truest comfort. Still, your friends would gladly
see you enjoy a little more of the present--" _world_, Mr. Simon was
going to say, but the word was unsuitable; so he changed it--"of the
present--ah! dispensation," he said.
"The love of this world bringeth a snare," suggested Mrs. Worboise,
believing that she quoted Scripture.
Thomas rose and left the room. He did not return till the curate had
taken his leave. It was then almost time for his mother to retire. As
soon as he entered he felt her anxious pale-blue eyes fixed upon him.
"Why did you go, Thomas?" she asked, moving on her couch, and revealing
by her face a twinge of sharper pain than ordinary. "You used to listen
with interest to the conversation of Mr. Simon. He is a man whose
conversation is in Heaven."
"I thought you would like to have a little private talk with him,
mamma. You generally do have a talk with him alone."
"Don't call it talk, Thomas. That is not the proper word to use."
"Communion then, mother," answered Thomas, with the feeling of aversion
a little stronger and more recognizable than before, but at the same
time annoyed with himself that he thus felt. And, afraid that he had
shown the feeling which he did recognize, he hastened to change the
subject and speak of one which he had at heart.
"But, mother, dear, I wanted to speak to you about something. You
mustn't mind my being late once or twice a week now, for I am going
in for German. There is a very good master lives a few doors from the
counting-house; and if you take lessons in the evening at his own
lodgings, he charges so much less for it. And, you know, it is such an
advantage nowadays for any one who wants to get on in business to know
German!"
"Does Mr. Wither join you, Thomas?" asked his mother, in a tone of
knowing reproof.
"No, indeed, mother," answered Thomas; and a gleam of satisfaction shot
through his brain as his mother seemed satisfied. Either, however, he
managed to keep it off his face, or his mother did not perceive or
understand it, for the satisfaction remained on her countenance.
"I will speak to your father about it," she answered.
This was quite as much as Thomas could have hoped for: he had no
fear of his father making any objection. He kissed his mother on the
cheek--it was a part of her system of mortifying the flesh with its
affections and lusts that she never kissed him with any fervor, and
rarely allowed those straight lips to meet his--and they parted for the
night.
CHAPTER III.
EXPOSTULATION.
Thomas descended to breakfast, feeling fresh and hopeful. The weather
had changed during the night, and it was a clear, frosty morning, cold
blue cloudless sky and cold gray leafless earth reflecting each other's
winter attributes. The sun was there, watching from afar how they could
get on without him; but, as if they knew he had not forsaken them, they
were both merry. Thomas stood up with his back to the blazing fire, and
through the window saw his father walking bareheaded in the garden.
He had not returned home till late the night before, and Thomas had
gone to bed without seeing him. Still he had been up the first in the
house, and had been at work for a couple of hours upon the papers he
had brought home in his blue bag. Thomas walked to the window to show
himself, as a hint to his father that breakfast was ready. Mr. Worboise
saw him, and came in. Father and son did not shake hands or wish each
other good-morning, but they nodded and smiled, and took their seats
at the table. As Mr. Worboise sat down, he smoothed, first with one
hand, then with the other, two long side-tresses of thin hair, trained
like creepers over the top of his head, which was perfectly bald. Their
arrangement added to the resemblance his forehead naturally possessed
to the bottom of a flat-iron, set up on the base of its triangle. His
eyebrows were very dark, straight, and bushy, his eyes a keen hazel;
his nose straight on the ridge, but forming an obtuse angle at the
point; his mouth curved upward, and drawn upward by the corners when he
smiled, which gave him the appearance of laughing down at everything;
his chin now is remarkable. And there, reader, I hope you have him. I
ought to have mentioned that no one ever saw his teeth, though to judge
from his performances at the table, they were in serviceable condition.
He was considerably above the middle hight, shapeless rather than
stout, and wore black clothes.
"You're going to dine at the Boxall's to-night, I believe, Tom? Mr.
Boxall asked me, but I can't go. I am so busy with that case of Spender
& Spoon."
"No, father. I don't mean to go," said Tom.
"Why not?" asked Mr. Worboise, with some surprise, and more than a
hint of dissatisfaction. "Your mother hasn't been objecting, has she?"
"I am not aware that my mother knows of the invitation," answered Tom,
trying to hide his discomfort in formality of speech.
"Well, _I_ said nothing about it, I believe. But I accepted for you at
the same time that I declined for myself. You saw the letter--I left it
for you."
"Yes, sir, I did."
"Well, in the name of Heaven, what do you mean? You answer as if you
were in the witness-box. I am not going to take any advantage of you.
Speak out, man. Why won't you go to Boxall's?"
"Well, sir, to tell the truth, I didn't think he behaved quite well to
me yesterday. I happened to be a few minutes late, and--"
"And Boxall blew you up; and that's the way you take to show your
dignified resentment! Bah!"
"He ought to behave to me like a gentleman."
"But how is he, if he isn't a gentleman? He hasn't had the bringing up
you've had. But he's a good, honest fellow, and says what he means."
"That is just what I did, sir. And you have always told me that honesty
is the best policy."
"Yes, I confess. But that is not exactly the kind of honesty I mean,"
returned Mr. Worboise with a fishy smile, for his mouth was exactly of
the fish type. "The law scarcely refers to the conduct of a gentleman
as a gentleman."
This was obscure to his son, as it may be to the reader.
"Then you don't want me to behave like a gentleman?" said Tom.
"Keep your diploma in your pocket till it's asked for," answered his
father. "If you are constantly obtruding it on other people, they
will say you bought it and paid for it. A gentleman can afford to put
an affront in beside it, when he knows it's there. But the idea of
good old Boxall insulting a son of mine is too absurd, Tom. You must
remember you are his servant."
"So he told me," said Tom, with reviving indignation.
"And that, I suppose, is what you call an insult, eh?"
"Well, to say the least, it is not a pleasant word to use."
"Especially as it expresses a disagreeable fact. Come, come, my boy.
Better men then you will ever be have had to sweep their master's
office before now. But no reference is made to the fact after they
call the office their own. You go and tell Mr. Boxall that you will be
happy to dine with him to-night if he will allow you to change your
mind."
"But I told him I was engaged."
"Tell him the engagement is put off, and you are at his service."
"But--" began Tom, and stopped. He was going to say the engagement was
not put off.
"But what?" said his father.
"I don't like to do it," answered Tom. "He will take it for giving in
and wanting to make up."
"Leave it to me, then, my boy," returned his father, kindly. "I will
manage it. My business is not so very pressing but that I can go if I
choose. I will write and say that a change in my plans has put it in my
power to be his guest, after all, and that I have persuaded you to put
off your engagement and come with me."
"But that would be--would not be true," hesitated Tom.
"Pooh! pooh! I'll take the responsibility of that. Besides, it _is_
true. Your mother will make a perfect spoon of you--with the help of
good little Master Simon. Can't I change my plans if I like? We must
_not_ offend Boxall. He is a man of mark--and warm. I say nothing about
figures--I never tell secrets. I don't even say how many figures. But
I know all about it, and venture to say, between father and son, that
he is warm, decidedly warm--possibly hot," concluded Mr. Worboise,
laughing.
"I don't exactly understand you, sir," said Tom, meditatively.
"You would understand me well enough if you had a mind to business,"
answered his father.
But what he really meant in his heart was that Mr. Boxall had two
daughters, to one of whom it was possible that his son might take a
fancy, or rather--to express it in the result, which was all that he
looked to--a marriage might be brought about between Tom and Jane or
Mary Boxall; in desiring which he thought he knew what he was about,
for he was Mr. Boxall's man of business.
"I won't have you offend Mr. Boxall, anyhow," he concluded. "He is your
governor."
The father had tact enough to substitute the clerk's pseudonym for the
obnoxious term.
"Very well, sir; I suppose I must leave it to you," answered Tom; and
they finished their breakfast without returning to the subject.
When he reached the counting-house, Tom went at once to Mr. Boxall's
room, and made his apologies for being late again, on the ground that
his father had detained him while he wrote the letter he now handed to
him. Mr. Boxall glanced at the note.
"I am very glad, Tom, that both your father and you have thought better
of it. Be punctual at seven."
"Wife must put another leaf yet in the table," he said to himself, as
Thomas retired to his desk. "Thirteen's not lucky, though; but one is
sure to be absent."
No one was absent, however, and number thirteen was the standing
subject of the jokes of the evening, especially as the thirteenth was
late, in the person of Mr. Wither, whom Mr. Boxall had invited out of
mere good nature; for he did not care much about introducing him to his
family, although his conduct in the counting-house was irreproachable.
Miss Worboise had been invited with her father and brother, but whether
she stayed at home to nurse her mother or to tease the curate, is of no
great importance to my history.
The dinner was a good, well-contrived, rather antiquated dinner,
within the compass of the house itself; for Mrs. Boxall only pleased
her husband as often as she said that they were and would remain
old-fashioned people, and would have their own maids to prepare and
serve a dinner--"none of those men-cooks and undertakers to turn up
their noses at everything in the house!" But Tom abused the whole
affair within himself as nothing but a shop-dinner; for there was Mr.
Stopper, the head-clerk, looking as sour as a summons; and there was
Mr. Wither, a good enough fellow and gentleman-like, but still of the
shop; besides young Weston, of whom nobody could predicate any thing
in particular, save that he stood in such awe of Mr. Stopper, that he
missed the way to his mouth in taking stolen stares at him across the
table. Mr. Worboise sat at the hostess's left hand, and Mr. Stopper at
her right; Tom a little way from his father, with Mary Boxall, whom he
had taken down, beside him; and many were the underbrowed glances which
the head-clerk shot across the dishes at the couple.
Mary was a very pretty, brown-haired, white-skinned, blue-eyed damsel,
whose charms lay in harmony of color, general roundness, the smallness
of her extremities, and her simple kind-heartedness. She was dressed in
white muslin, with ribbons precisely the color of her eyes. Tom could
not help being pleased at having her beside him. She was not difficult
to entertain, for she was willing to be interested in anything; and
while Tom was telling her a story about a young lad in his class at
the Sunday-school, whom he had gone to see at his wretched home, those
sweet eyes filled with tears, and Mr. Stopper saw it, and choked in
his glass of sherry. Tom saw it too, and would have been more overcome
thereby, had it not been for reasons.
Charles Wither, on the opposite side of the table, was neglecting his
own lady for the one at his other elbow, who was Jane Boxall--a fine,
regular-featured, dark-skinned young woman. They were watched with
stolen glances of some anxiety from both ends of the table, for neither
father nor mother cared much about Charles Wither, although the former
was too kind to omit inviting him to his house occasionally.
After the ladies retired, the talk was about politics, the
money-market, and other subjects quite uninteresting to Tom, who, as I
have already said, was at this period of his history a reader of Byron,
and had therefore little sympathy with human pursuits except they took
some abnormal form--such as piracy, atheism, or the like--in the person
of one endowed with splendid faculties and gifts in general. So he
stole away from the table, and joined the ladies some time before the
others rose from their wine; not, however, before he had himself drunk
more than his gravity of demeanor was quite sufficient to ballast. He
found Mary turning over some music, and as he drew near he saw her
laying aside, in its turn, Byron's song, "She walks in beauty."
"Oh! do you sing that song, Miss Mary?" he asked with _empressement_.
"I have sung it several times," she answered; "but I am afraid I cannot
sing it well enough to please you. Are you fond of the song?"
"I only know the words of it, and should so much like to hear you sing
it. I never heard it sung. _Do_, Miss Mary."
"You will be indulgent, then?"
"I shall have no chance of exercising that virtue, I know. There."
He put the music on the piano as he spoke, and Mary, adjusting her
white skirts and her white shoulders, began to sing the song with
taste, and, what was more, with simplicity. Her voice was very pleasant
to the ears of Thomas, warbling one of the songs of the man whom,
against his conscience, he could not help regarding as the greatest he
knew. So much moved was he, that the signs of his emotion would have
been plainly seen had not the rest of the company, while listening
more or less to the song, been employing their eyes at the same time
with Jane's portfolio of drawings. All the time he had his eyes upon
her white shoulder: stooping to turn the last leaf from behind her, he
kissed it lightly. At the same moment the door opened, and Mr. Stopper
entered. Mary stopped singing, and rose with a face of crimson and the
timidest, slightest glance at Tom, whose face flushed up in response.
It was a foolish action, possibly repented almost as soon as done.
Certainly, for the rest of the evening, Thomas sought no opportunity
of again approaching Mary. I do not doubt it was with some feeling of
relief that he heard his father say it was time for them to be going
home.
None of the parents would have been displeased had they seen the little
passage between the young people. Neither was Mary offended at what had
occurred. While she sat singing, she knew that the face bending over
her was one of the handsomest--a face rather long and pale, of almost
pure Greek outline, with a high forehead, and dark eyes with a yet
darker fringe. Nor, although the reader must see that Tom had nothing
yet that could be called character, was his face therefore devoid of
expression; for he had plenty of feeling, and that will sometimes shine
out the more from the very absence of a _characteristic_ meaning in
the countenance. Hence, when Mary felt the kiss, and glanced at the
face whence it had fallen, she read more in the face than there was
in it to read, and the touch of his lips went deeper than her white
shoulder. They were both young, and as yet mere electric jars charged
with emotions. Had they both continued such as they were now, there
could have been no story to tell about them; none such, at least, as
I should care to tell. They belonged to the common class of mortals
who, although they are weaving a history, are not aware of it, and in
whom the process goes on so slowly that the eye of the artist can find
in them no substance sufficient to be woven into a human creation in
tale or poem. How dull that life looks to him, with its ambitions,
its love-making, its dinners, its sermons, its tailors' bills, its
weariness over all--without end or goal save that toward which it is
driven purposeless! Not till a hope is born such that its fullfilment
depends upon the will of him who cherishes it, does a man begin to
develop the stuff out of which a tale can be wrought. For then he
begins to have a story of his own--it may be for good, it may be for
evil--but a story. Thomas's religion was no sign of this yet; for a man
can no more be saved by the mere reflex of parental influences than he
will be condemned by his inheritance of parental sins. I do not say
that there is no interest in the emotions of such young people; but I
say there is not reality enough in them to do anything with. They are
neither consistent nor persistent enough to be wrought into form. Such
are in the condition over which, in the miracle-play, Adam laments to
Eve after their expulsion from Paradise--
"Oure hap was hard, _oure wytt was nesche_ (_soft, tender_) To paradys
whan we were brought."
Mr. Boxall lived in an old-fashioned house in Hackney, with great rooms
and a large garden. Through the latter he went with Mr. Worboise and
Tom to let them out at a door in the wall, which would save them a few
hundred yards in going to the North London Railway. There were some
old trees in the garden, and much shrubbery. As he returned he heard
a rustle among the lilacs that crowded about a side-walk, and thought
he saw the shimmer of a white dress. When he entered the drawing-room,
his daughter Jane entered from the opposite door. He glanced round
the room: Mr. Wither was gone. This made Mr. Boxall suspicious and
restless; for, as I have said, he had not confidence in Mr. Wither.
Though punctual and attentive to business, he was convinced that he
was inclined to be a fast man; and he strongly suspected him of being
concerned in betting transactions of different sorts, which are an
abomination to the man of true business associations and habits.
Mr. Worboise left the house in comfortable spirits, for Providence had
been propitious to him for some months past, and it mattered nothing
to him whether or how the wind blew. But it blew from the damp west
cold and grateful upon Thomas's brow. The immediate influence of the
wine he had drunk had gone off, and its effects remained in discomfort
and doubt. Had he got himself into a scrape with Mary Boxall? He had
said nothing to her. He had not committed himself to anything. And the
wind blew cooler and more refreshing upon his forehead. And then came
a glow of pleasure as he recalled her blush and the glance she had
so timidly lifted toward his lordly face. That was something to be
proud of! Certainly he was one whom women--I suppose he said _girls_
to himself--were ready to--yes--to fall in love with. Proud position!
Enviable destiny! Before he reached home the wind had blown away every
atom of remorse with the sickly fumes of the wine; and although he
resolved to be careful how he behaved to Mary Boxall in future, he
hugged his own handsome idea in the thought that she felt his presence,
and was--just a little--not dangerously--but really a little in love
with him.
CHAPTER IV.
GUILD COURT.
The office was closed, the shutters were up in the old-fashioned way on
the outside, the lights extinguished, and Mr. Stopper, who was always
the last to leave, was gone. The narrow street looked very dreary,
for most of its windows were similarly covered. The shutters, the
pavements, the kennels, everything shone and darkened by fits. For it
was a blowing night, with intermittent showers, and everything was wet,
and reflected the gaslights in turn, which the wind teased into all
angles of relation with neighboring objects, tossing them about like
flowers ready at any moment to be blown from their stems. Great masses
of gray went sweeping over the narrow section of the sky that could be
seen from the pavement.
Now and then the moon gleamed out for one moment and no more, swallowed
the next by a mile of floating rain, dusky and shapeless. Fighting now
with a fierce gust, and now limping along in comparative quiet, with a
cotton umbrella for a staff, an old woman passed the office, glanced up
at the shuttered windows, and, after walking a short distance, turned
into a paved archway, and then going along a narrow passage, reached a
small paved square, called Guild Court. Here she took from her pocket
a latch-key, and opening a door much in want of paint, but otherwise
in good condition, entered, and ascended a broad, dusky stair-case,
with great landings, whence each ascent rose at right angles to the
preceding. The dim light of the tallow candle, which she had left in
a corner of the stair-case as she descended, and now took up with
her again, was sufficient to show that the balusters were turned and
carved, and the hand-rail on the top of them broad and channeled. When
she reached the first floor, she went along a passage, and at the end
of it opened a door. A cheerful fire burned at the other end of a large
room, and by the side of the fire sat a girl, gazing so intently into
the glowing coals, that she seemed unaware of the old woman's entrance.
When she spoke to her, she started and rose.
"So you're come home, Lucy, and searching the fire for a wishing-cap,
as usual!" said the old lady, cheerily.
The girl did not reply, and she resumed, with a little change of tone--
"I do declare, child, I'll never let him cross the door again, if it
drives you into the dumps that way. Take heart of grace, my girl;
you're good enough for him any day, though he be a fine gentleman. He's
no better gentleman than my son, anyhow, though he's more of a buck."
Lucy moved about a little uneasily; turned to the high mantel-piece,
took up some trifle and played with it nervously, set it down with a
light sigh, the lightness of which was probably affected; went across
the room to a chest of drawers, in doing which she turned her back on
the old woman; and then only replied, in a low pleasant voice, which
wavered a little, as if a good cry were not far off--
"I'm sure, grannie, you're always kind to him when he comes."
"I'm civil to him, child. Who could help it? Such a fine, handsome
fellow! And has got very winning ways with him, too! That's the
mischief of it! I always had a soft heart to a frank face. A body would
think I wasn't a bit wiser than the day I was born."
And she laughed a toothless old laugh which must once have been very
pleasant to her husband to hear, and indeed was pleasant to hear now.
By this time she had got her black bonnet off, revealing a widow's
cap, with gray hair neatly arranged down the sides of a very wrinkled
old face. Indeed the wrinkles were innumerable, so that her cheeks
and forehead looked as if they had been crimped with a penknife, like
a piece of fine cambric frill. But there was not one deep rut in her
forehead or cheek. Care seemed to have had nothing at all to do with
this condition of them.
"Well, grannie, why should you be so cross with me for liking him, when
you like him just as much yourself?" said Lucy, archly.
"Cross with you, child! I'm not cross with you, and you know that quite
well. You know I never could be cross with you even if I ought to be.
And I didn't ought now, I'm sure. But I _am_ cross with him; for he
can't be behaving right to you when your sweet face looks like that."
"Now don't, grannie, else I shall have to be cross with you. Don't
say a word against him. Don't now, dear grannie, or you and I shall
quarrel, and that would break my heart."
"Bless the child! I'm not saying a word for or against him. I'm afraid
you're a great deal too fond of him, Lucy. What hold have you on him
now?"
"What hold, granny!" exclaimed Lucy, indignantly. "Do you think if
I were going to be married to him to-morrow, and he never came to
the church--do you think I would lift that bonnet to hold him to it?
Indeed, then, I wouldn't."
And Lucy did not cry, but she turned her back on her grandmother as if
she would rather her face should not be seen.
"What makes you out of sorts, to-night, then, lovey?"
Lucy made no reply, but moved hastily to the window, made the smallest
possible chink between the blind and the window-frame, and peeped out
into the court. She had heard a footstep which she knew; and now she
glided, quiet and swift as a ghost, out of the room, closing the door
behind her.
"I wonder when it will come to an end. Always the same thing over
again, I suppose, to the last of the world. It's no use telling them
what _we_ know. It won't make one of them young things the wiser.
The first man that looks at them turns the head of them. And I must
confess, if I was young again myself, and hearkening for my John's foot
in the court, I might hobble--no, not hobble then, but run down the
stairs like Lucy there, to open the door for him. But then John was a
good one; and there's few o' them like him now, I doubt."
Something like this, I venture to imagine, was passing through the
old woman's mind when the room door opened again, and Lucy entered
with Thomas Worboise. Her face was shining like a summer now, and a
conscious pride sat on the forehead of the young man which made him
look far nobler than he has yet shown himself to my reader. The last of
a sentence came into the room with him.
"So you see, Lucy, I could not help it. My father--How do you do you
do, Mrs. Boxall? What a blowing night it is! But you have a kind of
swallow's nest here, for hardly a breath gets into the court when our
windows down below in the counting-house are shaking themselves to
bits."
It was hardly a room to compare to a swallow's nest. It was a
very large room indeed. The floor, which was dark with age, was
uncarpeted, save just before the fire, which blazed brilliantly in
a small kitchen-range, curiously contrasting with the tall, carved
chimney-piece above it. The ceiling corresponded in style, for it was
covered with ornaments--
All made out of the carver's brain.
And the room was strangely furnished. The high oak settle of a
farm-house stood back against the wall not far from the fire, and a
few feet from it a tall, old-fashioned piano, which bore the name
of Broadwood under the cover. At the side of the room farthest from
the fire stood one of those chests of drawers, on which the sloping
lid at the top left just room for a glass-doored book-case to stand,
rivaling the piano in hight. Then there was a sofa, covered with chintz
plentifully besprinkled with rose-buds; and in the middle of the room
a square mahogany table, called by upholsterers a _pembroke_, I think,
the color of which was all but black with age and manipulation, only
it could not be seen now because it was covered with a check of red
and blue. A few mahogany chairs, seated with horse hair, a fire-screen
in faded red silk, a wooden footstool and a tall backed easy-chair,
covered with striped stuff, almost completed the furniture of the
nondescript apartment.
Thomas Worboise carried a chair to the fire, and put his feet on the
broad-barred bright kitchen fender in front of it.
"Are your feet wet, Thomas?" asked Lucy with some gentle anxiety, and a
tremor upon his name, as if she had not yet got quite used to saying it
without a _Mr._ before it.
"Oh no, thank you. I don't mind a little wet. Hark how the wind blows
in the old chimney up there! It'll be an awkward night on the west
coast, this. I wonder what it feels like to be driving right on the
rocks at the Land's End, or some such place."
"Don't talk of such things in that cool way, Mr. Thomas. You make my
blood run cold," said Mrs. Boxall.
"He doesn't mean it, you know, grannie," said Lucy meditating.
"But I do mean it. I should like to know how it feels," persisted
Thomas--"with the very shrouds, as taut as steel bars, blowing out in
the hiss of the nor'wester."
"Yes, I dare say!" returned the old lady, with some indignation. "You
would like to know how it felt so long as your muddy boots was on my
clean fender!"
Thomas did not know that the old lady had lost one son at sea, and had
another the captain of a sailing-vessel, or he would not have spoken
as he did. But he was always wanting to know how things felt. Had not
his education rendered it impossible for him to see into the state of
his own mind, he might, questioned as to what he considered the ideal
of life, have replied, "A continuous succession of delicate and poetic
sensations." Hence he had made many a frantic effort after religious
sensations. But the necessity of these was now somewhat superseded by
his growing attachment to Lucy, and the sensations consequent upon that.
Up to this moment, in his carriage and speech, he had been remarkably
different from himself, as already shown in my history. For he was, or
thought himself, somebody here; and there was a freedom and ease about
his manner, amounting, in fact, to a slight though not disagreeable
swagger, which presented him to far more advantage than he had in
the presence of his father and mother, or even of Mr. Boxall and
Mr. Stopper. But he never could bear any one to be displeased with
him except he were angry himself. So when Mrs. Boxall spoke as she
did, his countenance fell. He instantly removed his feet from the
fender, glanced up at her face, saw that she was really indignant,
and, missing the real reason of course, supposed that it was because
he had been indiscreet in being disrespectful to a cherished article
of housewifely. It was quite characteristic of Tom that he instantly
pulled his handkerchief from his pocket, and began therewith to restore
the brightness of the desecrated iron. This went at once to the old
lady's heart. She snatched the handkerchief out of his hand.
"Come, come, Mr. Thomas. Don't ye mind an old woman like that. To think
of using your handkerchief that way! And cambric too!"
Thomas looked up in surprise, and straightway recovered his behavior.
"I didn't think of your fender," he said.
"Oh, drat the fender!" exclaimed Mrs. Boxall, with more energy than
refinement.
And so the matter dropped, and all sat silent for a few moments, Mrs.
Boxall with her knitting, and Tom and Lucy beside each other with their
thoughts. Lucy presently returned to their talk on the stair-case.
"So you were out at dinner on Wednesday, Thomas?"
"Yes. It was a great bore, but I had to go.--Boxall's, you know. I beg
your pardon, Mrs. Boxall; but that's how fellows like me talk, you
know. I should have said Mr. Boxall. And I didn't mean that he was a
bore. That he is not, though he is a little particular--of course. I
only meant it was a bore to go there when I wanted to come here."
"Is my cousin Mary _very_ pretty?" asked Lucy, with a meaning in her
tone which Thomas easily enough understood.
He could not help blushing, for he remembered, as well he might. And
she could not help seeing, for she had eyes, very large ones, and at
least as loving as they were large.
"Yes, she is very pretty," answered Thomas; "but not nearly so pretty
as you, Lucy."
Thomas, then, was not stupid, although my reader will see that he was
weak enough. And Lucy was more than half satisfied, though she did not
half like that blush. But Thomas himself did not like either the blush
or its cause. And poor Lucy knew nothing of either, only meditated upon
another blush, quite like this as far as appearance went, but with a
different heart to it.
Thomas did not stop more than half an hour. When he left, instead
of walking straight out of Guild Court by the narrow paved passage,
he crossed to the opposite side of the court, opened the door of a
more ancient-looking house, and entered. Reappearing--that is, to the
watchful eyes of Lucy manoeuvring with the window-blind--after about
two minutes, he walked home to Highbury, and told his mother that he
had come straight from his German master, who gave him hopes of being
able, before many months should have passed, to write a business letter
in intelligible German.
CHAPTER V.
MORE ABOUT GUILD COURT.
Mrs. Boxall was the mother of Richard Boxall, the "governor" of
Thomas Worboise. Her John had been the possessor of a small landed
property, which he farmed himself, and upon which they brought up a
family of three sons and one daughter, of whom Richard was the eldest,
and the daughter Lucy the youngest.
|
tattered linsey skirt for her
pocket.
“Yes, I can read and write too; but I really must be going home; it is
getting so late,” said Fairy.
“Wait a minute, child; I am not going to keep you long. I want you to
read a letter for me I had from my son this morning; maybe there is
something in it I should not care for just everyone to know; I have
been on the look out for John Shelley or gentleman Jack all day, but
I have missed them somehow, and I can’t read writing myself. Ah! here
it is at last,” producing a letter from the bottom of a very capacious
pocket filled with some very incongruous articles—a few coppers, a
piece of cheese, a thimble, a sock she was knitting, some corks, and
various other odds and ends too numerous to mention.
Fairy took the letter, and by Dame Hursey’s instructions read it aloud.
It ran as follows:—
“Dear Mother,
“I am just home from Australia, but I am going back there again at
once. First, I want to see you, as I think you can tell me something I
want to know, so will you meet me on the top of Mount Harry at three
o’clock next Saturday afternoon? I shall be there, and, if you are
living, I shall expect you. Till then I am your affectionate son,
“GEORGE.”
“Is that all? Every word of it?” asked Dame Hursey, fixing her black
eyes on the child.
“Yes. Shall I read it again?” said Fairy.
“No. Next Saturday afternoon at three o’clock, on the top of Mount
Harry. I shall be there safe enough. Thank you, my pretty one; I shan’t
forget that one good turn deserves another. Good-night,” and the old
wool-gatherer dived into a lane, and was out of sight before Fairy
had recovered her astonishment, when she took to her heels and fled
breathless to Mrs. Shelley, who was anxiously watching at the gate for
her.
(_To be continued._)
NOTICES OF NEW MUSIC.
NOVELLO, EWER, AND CO.
_Beethoven’s Songs._ Vol. I. With both the German words and an English
version. By the Rev. Dr. Troutbeck, to whom we are indebted for so
many excellent translations of words to music.—This truly valuable
collection, including such specimens as “Adelaide,” “The Glory of God
in Nature,” popularly known as “Creation’s Hymn,” will be eagerly
sought for by all singers; particularly when we mention that the
twenty-six songs may be purchased for eighteenpence.
[Illustration]
_Liederkreis._ The opus 39. By Schumann.—A circle of twelve songs,
many well known to you. Amongst them we find the “Frühlingsnacht,”
“Mondnacht,” “In der Fremde,” and other lovely poems.
_Six Duets._ For soprano and contralto. By F. H. Cowen.—Form a most
charming volume, and are published at the same moderate price and in
the same excellent form, with clear type and careful editing.
_Six Vocal Duets_, for the same voices. By Oliver King, a rising
composer, may also be warmly recommended.
_Ten Songs._ By George J. Bennett, a youthful Academy student. Settings
of words by Robert Burns. Are all most fresh and delightful, and add to
a reputation which this hard-working young composer has already firmly
established.
_Three volumes of Piano pieces_, by Fritz Spindler, a well-known
pianoforte teacher and composer in Dresden (forming numbers
of Novello’s Pianoforte Albums), are most useful and artistic
contributions to our store of light piano music. The transcriptions of
subjects by Wagner are very good.
FORSYTH BROTHERS.
_Scales and Arpeggios._ By Harvey Löhr.—These excellent studies
are systematically fingered, and contain many useful hints towards
improving the pianist’s technique.
JOSEPH WILLIAMS.
_The Star of our Love._ By F. H. Cowen.—A graceful, well-written song,
to words by the late Hugh Conway, whose little books have created so
much excitement lately. Compass D to E or F to G.
_Clouds_, and _I love you too well_. Two more songs by the same eminent
composer. Published in one or two keys.
_Three Songs._ Words and music by W. A. Aikin.—Very simple and
effective.
_The Ride of Fortune_ (founded on Shakespeare’s lines, “There is a
tide in the affairs of men,” &c.). By Charles A. Trew.—An excellent
contralto song.
_Operatic Fantasias._ For violin, with piano accompaniment. By F.
Davidson Palmer Mus.Bac.—Judging from _Il Trovatore_, the number
before us, these fantasias should be often used for concerts and other
entertainments, where a faithful transcription of operatic melodies is
required, untrammelled by too many cadenzas and fireworks for the solo
instrument.
_La Figlia del Reggimento._—This selection is also to be commended. It
is for two violins and piano, and arranged by John Barnard.
_Sarabande_ (ancien style). Pour piano. Par Henri Roubier. _Idée
Dansante._ For piano. By Percy Reeve.—Two dances above the average,
graceful and musicianly.
WILLIAM CZERNY.
_Partita_, in D minor. For violin and piano. By Hubert Parry.—A
scholarly work, made up of six sections:—Maestoso, Allemande, Presto,
Sarabande, two Bourrées, and a Passepied in Rondo form. One might
almost call it a Sonatina of many movements. The partita differs from
the suite in not being restricted to dances only.
_Je l’aimerai toujours._ An easy piano piece for beginners. Composed by
François Behr.
_Intermezzo-Minuet._ A short entr’acte for piano. By G. Bachmann.—This
smoothly-written morceau is included in Czerny’s orchestral series as a
string quartett.
_Adoration._ A meditation upon Bach’s 7th “Small Prelude.” By Oscar
Wagner.—Arranged for piano and violin, or flute or violoncello, with
organ and additional strings, upon the model of Gounod’s similar work,
but scarcely so interesting, and certainly not so spontaneous in
melodic treatment. It is also arranged as an “O Salutaris Hostia” for
voice, violin, piano, and organ or harmonium.
_Stars of the Summer Night._ By Edouard Lassen.
_My All-in-all._ By Theodor Bradsky.—Both these songs have violin
obbligatos, in which the chief fault appears to be that the violin
never rests, not even for a bar.
_Happy Days._ A touching song. By poor Max Schröter. Compass C to F.
PHILLIPS AND PAGE.
_For ever with the Lord!_ Sacred song. By Gounod.—A new song by Gounod
needs only to be mentioned to engage the attention of our readers.
Gounod has been happier in his setting of other English hymns, such as
the “Green hill far away” and the “King of Love my Shepherd is.” But
there are some lovely points in this. It is published in keys suitable
to all voices, both as a solo and a duet, and it also appears in anthem
form for four voices and organ.
J. AND J. HOPKINSON.
_She Noddit to Me._ A song that bids fair to become most popular. The
words by A. Dewar Willock.—Describe the delight of a Scotch body at
receiving a “special bow” from the Queen as she passed her cottage
on the Deeside. The music is by J. Hoffmann, and it is dedicated by
special permission to Her Majesty.
_The Crusader._ A stirring baritone song. By Theo. Bonheur.
_The Goblin._ A cynical poem, set to music by Gustav Ernest, whose
clever works we have before noticed.
E. ASCHERBERG AND CO.
_The Winged Chorister._ The music by Pinsuti.—The chorister in question
(although there is a harmonium part) is not a dying choir boy, but a
robin which has got into the church by some means, and whose “pure,
clear notes,” it is suggested, “would harmonise our coarser tones, and
bear them straight to Heaven.” Our recollection of the robin’s note,
easily imitated by tapping two pennies together, hardly carries out
this lofty idea!
_Let us Wander by the Sea_, and _The Merry Summer Time_. Two duets for
soprano and contralto. By our much lamented countryman, Henry Smart,
whose delicate fancy has in so many ways enriched English music.—The
edition before us is ruined, as far as outward appearance goes, by
vulgar drawings on the covers.
_Aubade Française._ A most elegant serenade in the purely French style.
By M. de Nevers.—Very suitable for a light tenor voice.
_Gavotte des Oiseaux._ A bright little dance for pianoforte. By G.
Bachmann.
F. PITMAN.
_The Musical Monthly._—This last year’s number is as extraordinary
a shillingsworth as ever, containing, in the midst of much that is
unworthy, several good old English airs, some of Mendelssohn’s songs
without words, five songs from the _Bohemian Girl_, of Balfe’s, some
good Scotch songs, etc., etc.
* * * * *
We have also received an advance copy of No. 1 of the “Violin Soloist,”
well got up, and containing ten or twelve good solos. It is to be
brought out monthly at a penny per number.
_Canadian March._ For Piano. Solo and duet, and for every other
imaginable combination. Composed by Carl Litolff.
NORTH OF ENGLAND SCHOOL FURNISHING COMPANY.
_150 Exercises and Questions in the Elements of Music._ By I. L.
Jopling, L.R.A.M.—Most thorough and searching test questions,
systematically and exhaustively treated. This little book will prove of
great help in preparing for the elementary examinations of the various
colleges and academies. It is to be used after studying Mr. Davenport’s
primer.
THE LONDON MUSIC PUBLISHING COMPANY.
Six songs by Erskine Allon to words by Sir Thomas Wyatt, who died in
1542.—All that Mr. Allon writes is interesting. In these songs the
accompaniments are as full of charm as the melodies are of quaint
character and grace.
C. KING.
Shakesperian Sketches, for Pianoforte, by Frank Adlam.—Clever
illustrations of passages and scenes in Shakespeare’s plays.
BOOSEY AND CO.
_The Choralist_: 269, “Waiting for the Spring.” 270, “A Winter
Serenade.”—Two capital four-part songs by J. S. Mitchell.—267, “Come,
Lassies and Lads.”—A masterly arrangement in four parts of the good old
seventeenth-century ditty.
_Cavendish Music Books._—In No. 101 we have a selection of American
pieces. To those who wish to know what our cousins on the other side of
the Atlantic are doing in musical composition, we advise a perusal of
this selection. It proves that, at any rate in this kind of art work,
we are more “go-ahead” than they are.
_The Sweet old River._ Song by Sydney Smith.—A smoothly written song,
published in C and E flat.
_Dreams._ Song by Cecile S. Hartog.—Miss Hartog’s compositions are
exceptionally good, and far above the average ballad.
_The Wide, Wide Sea._—One of the best songs that Stephen Adams has
written. Compass, B flat to E flat, or C to F.
_In the Chimney Corner._ By F. H. Cowen.—A song of the Behrend type,
but higher in conception, and rather more hopeful in tone.
_Go, Pretty Rose._ Duet in canon. By Marzials.—We recommend this duet
to all who have sung and admired his other canon, “My true love hath
my heart.” It is a most elegant canon, and very melodious and bright
withal.
STANLEY LUCAS AND CO.
_Grave and Corno._ By Joseph Gibbs (1744), and air and jigg by Richard
Jones (17th century). All for violin and piano.—These really good and
interesting relics of old English composition have been revived by Herr
Peiniger, who has arranged a piano part from the figured basses. Just
as we admire the case of an organ, so may we speak of the admirable
covers to these pieces. They are in excellent taste.
_Five Pictures on a Journey._ By F. W. Davenport.—Well written and
suggestive piano pieces.
_Episodes for the Piano._ By Frederick Westlake.—We have received No.
1, Prelude, and feel sure that the others equally well sustain the
reputation of this esteemed professor of the Royal Academy.
EVERY GIRL A BUSINESS WOMAN.
A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO THE WORLD OF INDUSTRY AND THRIFT.
BY JAMES MASON.
PART II.
We come now to speak about the receiving and the paying away of money.
These are things which, by common consent, are always done in a certain
way. If they are done otherwise it shows either a want of sense or a
want of education.
When money owing to any person is paid, a receipt for it should always
be given—that is to say, it should be acknowledged in writing that the
money has changed hands. If the receiver merely takes it and puts it in
her pocket, she who pays will have no security, except the receiver’s
good faith and good memory, against being called on to pay the sum a
second time.
A receipt may be given in any form of words, but the following are
correct forms for business purposes—
_LONDON, 15th September, 1886._
£17 4s. 6d.
_Received from Miss Rose Hastaway, Chester, the sum of
seventeen pounds four shillings and sixpence in payment of
account rendered (or of annexed account.)_
FLORA MALCOLM.
_GUILDFORD, 12th July, 1886._
_Received from Mrs. Trundle the sum of six pounds seven
shillings and ninepence, in payment of account to this date._
£6 7s. 9d.
ELIZABETH BADGER.
On all receipts for money amounting to £2 or upwards you must put a
penny stamp. Not long ago there was a stamp sold expressly for the
purpose, but now a penny postage stamp is used, which is much simpler.
The stamp may be placed anywhere, but is best where the signature is,
the signature being written across it. If the receipt of money is
acknowledged in a letter, the stamp should be put at the end, just
where you sign your name. It is always better, however, to give a
separate and formal receipt.
The Government require that either the name or the initials of the
person giving the receipt be put on the stamp, _together with the true
date of writing_, the object being to show clearly and distinctly that
the stamp has been used. Ordinarily the date is given in a contracted
form, for instance, the two receipts given above would have “15. ix.
86” under the name of Flora Malcolm, and “12. vii. 86” under that of
Elizabeth Badger. Figures representing the amount for which the receipt
is given are often added also.
Whoever gives the receipt pays for the stamp, and the penalty for
refusing to give a duly stamped receipt in any case where the receipt
is liable to duty is £10.
When you receive money as a loan, you may acknowledge it by what is
called an I O U, which is in this form:—
_CARLISLE, 3rd October, 1886._
_To Miss Alice Golightly,
I O U three pounds ten shillings._
ANNE WINKLE.
I O U’s are not much in favour in business; they are rather friendly
documents than business ones.
An I O U does not need a stamp, whatever the amount may be, as it
is simply an acknowledgment of a debt, and neither a receipt nor a
promissory note—that is, a note giving a promise to pay at a particular
time. Suppose Miss Winkle had written, “_I O U Three pounds ten
shillings to be paid on the 2nd of January, 1887_,” she would have
changed her I O U into a promissory note, which would have required a
stamp.
But “neither a borrower nor a lender be”—which is another way of saying
that I O U’s are to be avoided. When the money is repaid, the I O U, of
course, is returned to the person who gave it.
In cases where money is received in payment of an account, and
the acknowledgment is put on the account itself, the account is
“discharged,” as it is called, in any one of the following ways.
The person to whom the account is due writes on it her own name,
and, preceding her name, the words, “_Paid_,” “_Received Payment_,”
“_Received_,” or “_Discharged_,” or—if such be the case—“_Same time
paid_,” or “_Paid by cheque_.”
Or this form may be used. Suppose the amount to be £25 10s. and the
discount five per cent.
_21st September,_
_By cash_ £24.4.6
” _Discount,_ 5% 1.5.6
------£25.10.0
MARION FEATLY.
Should you be receiving payment for somebody else, you sign as you
would a letter in similar circumstances. Thus:—
_Same time paid,
for MARGARET BELL,
ELLEN CHAPMAN._
or,
_Paid by cheque,
MARY G. GROVE,
per INA MEADOWS._
Some polite people, in discharging accounts write “_with thanks_” in
the left-hand bottom corner or under their signature. In the case of
tradespeople, it is a courteous phrase that sometimes goes a long way
towards securing another order.
Receipts of all kinds should be kept for at least six years. After that
time you may either continue to keep them or make a bonfire of them.
The reason for your being then free to please yourself is that actions
for unclaimed debt arising out of a simple contract are limited to six
years _from the date of the cause of action_. After six years you are
safe against being called on to pay the money a second time.
Bills are occasionally rendered a second time after being paid, not
the least, perhaps, from an intention to defraud, but simply from
carelessness. People omit to enter the money they receive in their
books, and forget they have got it; and to keep all receipts is a way
of protecting oneself against such a happy-go-lucky style of doing
things.
Receipts should be folded in the same way as letters, and marked on the
outside with all necessary particulars. Thus:—
_12th August, 1886.
Griffin and Constable,
Manchester.
Washing Machine_
£3 15s.
If you have a set of pigeon-holes, receipts should have a pigeon-hole
all to themselves; if not, keep them tied up in a bundle and arranged
in alphabetical order.
When you have to make out accounts always do it as neatly as possible.
A neat account has a well-to-do air, and may do as much good to one’s
credit sometimes as a handsome balance at the bank. Hard-up people are
seldom neat either in accounts, or correspondence, or anything else.
Accounts or invoices in business are usually made out on ruled and
printed forms, and are headed with the address of the seller. After
that come the names of the buyer and seller, thus:—
_MISS RACHEL O’FLINN,
Bought of LEIGH, GOLDHAWK, AND STILL._
Or the wording may be,
_MISS RACHEL O’FLINN,
To LEIGH, GOLDHAWK, AND STILL_,
which mean that Miss Rachel O’Flinn is _debtor to_ the firm named, the
word “debtor” being dropped in practice.
Below the names of the parties the terms of sale are sometimes put:
“_Nett Cash_” or “_Cash in 14 days_,” or “_Accounts rendered monthly_,”
or whatever the conditions are. Then follow the particulars of the
goods sold, the dates when they passed into the hands of the purchaser
being put in the left hand margin.
People who have any money transactions at all, and do not wish their
affairs to get into hopeless confusion, must keep books of some
sort—that is to say, they must adopt a plan of writing down their
transactions in regular order for easy reference.
It may be a primitive method or a very elaborate one—that depends on
the nature and requirements of the business—but some system there
must be, and of book-keeping in at least its general principles every
business woman should make a study. By its means we gain an exact
knowledge of how we stand, we see what comes in and what goes out,
how much we owe and how much other people owe us, and whether we are
putting any of our money into bags with holes.
There are many good books published on the subject of book-keeping, and
by all means study the best treatise you can get; but better than all
books is actual practice. The experience of keeping an account of one’s
own transactions for a week gives more insight than all the books that
have ever been written. In a book, things seem sometimes exceedingly
puzzling, whilst in reality they are simple enough.
The main fact to be grasped in book-keeping is the distinction between
debtor and creditor; you must get it well into your head that _the
person or thing represented by an account is “debtor to” what he, she,
or it receives, and “creditor by” whatever he, she, or it gives or
parts with_.
The simpler business books are the better, so long as they answer the
purpose for which they are intended. They must be clear to the person
who keeps them, and clear also to any who have to consult them. The
utmost care should be taken with them, so as to have no blotting, no
scraping out of figures, and no tearing out of leaves.
There are two ways of keeping books, known as single entry and double
entry. Single entry is called so because each item is entered only once
in the accounts of the ledger, which is the principal book. In double
entry, on the other hand, it is entered twice, to the debtor side of
one account and to the credit of some other account.
In this way, when books on the double entry system have all the sums
on the debtor side and all the sums on the creditor side added up, the
total amounts in both cases are the same. That is, if the books have
been rightly kept and no mistake has been made in addition, like that
of the man who spent a long time trying to make them come right, and
found at last he had made the slight mistake on one of the sides of
adding in the figures of the current year.
The object of double entry is to establish a series of checks so
that mistakes are not likely to occur, and in all establishments of
any importance this is the system adopted. Books kept by the other
and simpler system of single entry afford no check upon themselves.
“Errors in addition,” says Mr. A. L. Lewis, “which are as easy to make
in hundreds of pounds as in pence, errors and omissions in posting or
in carrying forward balances, any or all of which may entail serious
loss, can only be prevented in single entry books by the most careful
checking and rechecking every item, and no one, however sharpsighted,
can always avoid making an error, and even failing to discover it when
made.”
What is called _posting_ in book-keeping is the operation of
transferring items from one book to another, and arranging them there
under their proper heads. The difference between the Dr. and Cr. sides
of an account is known as the _balance_.
Transactions are entered in their books by business people at once.
They never put off making an entry till to-morrow, for they are well
aware that there is no putting any dependence on memory.
They are constantly turning over their books, too, so as to keep their
affairs fresh in their minds, and see in a general way how they are
getting on. Then every little while they go particularly into all their
accounts and strike a balance as it is called—that is to say, make out
a statement of their assets and liabilities, and arrange things for
a fresh start. The word assets, we may as well mention, stands for
property or sums of money owing to anyone, and liabilities means just
the reverse.
There are two mistakes often made in balancing books which a business
woman must take care never to fall into. The first is to include bad
debts—debts of which you are never likely to get a farthing, or, at
best only a few shillings in the pound—on the same footing as if they
were good ones. The second is to calculate that property we possess is
worth what we paid for it, never considering that as a general rule
things decrease in value every year through use and change of fashion
and other causes. The only wise plan is to subtract from the first
cost, every time we balance, a certain sum to represent what is termed
_depreciation of property_. All such deductions should be made with a
liberal hand; no harm is done by estimating ourselves poorer than we
really are, but many a one has been ruined by mistaken calculations,
showing property to be worth a good deal more than it would fetch in
the market.
When one person acts for another in money matters, a statement, called
an account current, should be sent at regular intervals—say once a half
year or once every twelve months—showing the transactions. Here is an
example. For convenience in printing we shall place the Cr. side below
the Dr.; but in practice the two sides should be placed alongside of
each other—the Dr. side to the left, and the Cr. side to the right.
_MISS WINIFRED HOLT, EDINBURGH, in account current with
NATHANIEL EVANS, LONDON._
DR.
1885.
June 30. To balance of last account £9 4 2
Aug. 3. Cash paid M. Perry on
your account 2 2 9
Sept. 27. Cash paid J. Short on
your account 4 12 7
Dec. 12. Cash paid you 80 0 0
--------
£95 19 6
CR.
Aug. 1. By cash received from
B. Green on your
account £50 0 0
” 12. Cash received from W.
Rae on your account 35 0 0
Dec. Balance of account carried
to your debit in
new account 10 19 6
--------
£95 19 6
_Errors Excepted._
NATHANIEL EVANS.
_LONDON, December 31st, 1885._
Here on the Cr. side we have all the sums received by Nathaniel Evans
for Miss Winifred Holt, and on the Dr. side all the payments made to
her or for her by him. Instead of “_Errors Excepted_,” before the
signature, “_E. E._” might have been written, or “_E. & O.E._,” which
last means “_Errors and Omissions Excepted_.” These guarded phrases,
however, may be omitted. You may correct errors afterwards, whether
they are there or not. If accounts of this kind, or, indeed, any
accounts, are thought to be incorrect, the fact should be intimated to
the persons sending them _at once_.
Book-keeping and the making out of accounts requires ability in
calculation. Indeed, no one can succeed in getting a character for
business capacity who has not all the rules of arithmetic at her
fingers’ ends. The use of “Ready Reckoners,” “Interest Tables,” or
such-like compilations, often saves, however, a great deal of trouble,
even when people are quick at figures. Some pretend they can do
without such helps, but they would be better to use them. We ought to
avail ourselves of all the help we can get, and it is absurd to take
roundabout ways of doing things when short cuts will answer the same
purpose.
Besides understanding about the right method of keeping books and
making out accounts, the thorough business woman will know well about
the art of buying. Here we see how a knowledge of business ways may
assist in the upbuilding of happy homes. One who understands the art of
buying will return triumphant from marketing expeditions, and when she
goes shopping there will be no fear of her wasting the contents of the
family purse.
The good buyer does not spend much time in going her rounds. She has
made herself familiar beforehand with the qualities of things, the
methods by which they are adulterated, and the seasons when they are
cheapest, and if the goods shown her are not what she wants, she says
so, and no persuasive tongue can induce her to take them. “Much comment
on the part of the seller,” says an American writer, “she regards as an
incentive to be wary; and all pretences to confidential favours, unless
proved to be such by undoubted documentary evidence, as a reproach to
her understanding.”
She makes it a rule to deal with respectable people only, knowing
that by that course she is best served, and you never find her very
sharp-set on bargains. She knows better.
On the subject of bargains Mr. Charles Dickens, in his “Dictionary of
London,” has some wise remarks. They specially refer to the metropolis,
but they are applicable to all large towns over the country. Everywhere
skilfully-baited traps are set for the unwary, though it is in London
that the traps catch most victims and rogues reap the best harvest.
Bargains, Mr. Dickens points out, are to be met with, of course, but
only by those who know very well what they are about. The numerous
“bankrupts’ stocks,” “tremendous sacrifices,” and so forth, are just so
many hooks on which to catch simpletons.
“One of the commonest tricks of all is that of putting in the window,
say, a handsome mantle, worth eight or ten guineas, and labelled,
say, £3 15s., and keeping inside for sale others made up in precisely
the same style, but of utterly worthless material. If they decline to
sell you the actual thing out of the window, be sure that the whole
affair is a swindle. See, too, that in taking it from the window they
do not drop it behind the counter and substitute one of the others—an
ingenious little bit of juggling not very difficult of performance.
“Another very taking device is the attaching to each article a price
label in black ink, elaborately altered in red to one twenty or five
and twenty per cent. less. This has a very ingenuous air. But when the
price has been—as it commonly has—raised thirty or forty per cent.
before the first black ink marking, the economy is not large.
“Of course, if you do buy anything out of one of these shops, you will
take it with you. If you have it sent, be particularly careful not to
pay for it until it arrives, and not then till you have thoroughly
examined it.
“When a shop of this kind sends you ‘patterns,’ you will usually find
a request attached not to cut them. Always carefully disregard this,
keeping a small piece for comparison.
“There are, however, some houses where, if you at all understand your
business, real bargains are at times to be had.”
The business woman is not often to be seen at auctions either, and if
ever she does go, she makes sure beforehand that the sale is to be
conducted on strictly honourable principles, and presided over by
an auctioneer who is above suspicion. She is well aware that there
are many unscrupulous individuals who, under cover of an auctioneer’s
licence, lend themselves to transactions the reverse of honest.
For example, in company with a band of “followers,” as they
are called—back-street brokers and “general dealers” of shady
character—auctioneers of this sort take a dwelling-house, and cram
it with worthless furniture. Then, after a month or two, the whole
is seized under a fictitious “bill of sale,” to give the affair an
appearance of genuineness, and the trashy goods are disposed of by
auction to the unsuspicious public, the rogues dividing the spoil.
Another plan is to get possession of a shop in a frequented
thoroughfare, and, day after day, beguile innocent folk to enter the
premises, and then wheedle and bully them into bidding for and buying a
lot of rubbish at four or five times more than its actual worth. It is
quite a mistake to suppose that goods disposed of “under the hammer,”
as it is termed, must necessarily sell for less than their real worth.
These mock auctions are swindles pure and simple, and what the
initiated call “rigged sales” are not much better. These take place at
auction rooms of more or less legitimate position, are usually held
in the evening, and consist chiefly of articles vamped up or made
expressly for the purpose. No one should go to them who wants to get
value for her money.
In all dealings with tradespeople, a good business woman will do her
best to pay cash. As she does this, she always goes to ready-money
shops. Shops that give credit must charge higher prices, for they must
have interest for the money out of which they lie; and, besides, they
must add to the price of their articles to cover the risk that some of
their customers will not pay. Those who do pay, pay not only for the
credit they get themselves, but for the failure of others.
Now and again, however, to postpone paying one’s debts has an
advantage, as was the case with a merchant whom Southey, the poet,
once met at Lisbon. “I never pay a porter,” said this merchant, “for
bringing a burden till the next day; for while the fellow feels his
back ache with the weight he charges high; but when he comes the next
day, the feeling is gone, and he asks only half the money.” But it is
not often that one has the chance of getting a reduction in this way.
The cash buyer has many advantages, not the least being an easy mind
and a knowledge at all times of what she is worth. Let every girl,
then, keep in mind for the rest of her days the remark of the American
writer, who said, “I have discovered the philosopher’s stone. It
consists of four short words of homely English—‘Pay as you go.’” The
easiness of credit has been the ruin of many people, by inducing them
to buy what they could not hope, unless by a miracle, ever to pay for.
So much for the business woman in her dealings in a private capacity
with business people. In a business capacity, however, one must
sometimes both give and receive credit. But, it cannot be said with too
strong an emphasis, the less of it the better.
VARIETIES.
THE COMPOSER AND THE SEA-CAPTAIN.
When Haydn, the composer, was in London, he had several whimsical
adventures, and the following is one of them:—A captain in the Navy
came to him one morning, and asked him to compose a march for some
troops he had on board, offering him thirty guineas for his trouble,
but requiring it to be done immediately, as the vessel was to sail next
day for Calcutta.
As soon as the captain had gone, Haydn sat down to the pianoforte, and
the march was ready in a few minutes. Feeling some scruples, however,
at gaining his money so very easily, Haydn wrote two other marches,
intending first to give the captain his choice, and then to make him a
present of all the three, as a return for his liberality.
Next morning the captain came and asked for his march.
“Here
|
husband had been two months in the grave Henry was
causing a bill for her dresses to be paid out of the Exchequer.
It was generally considered that the King had chosen well. Wriothesley,
the Chancellor, was sure His Majesty had never a wife more agreeable to
his heart. Gardiner had not only performed the marriage ceremony but
had given away the bride. According to an old chronicle the new Queen
was a woman “compleat with singular humility.”[13] She had, at any
rate, the adroitness, in her relations with the King, to assume the
appearance of it, and was a well-educated, sensible, and kindly woman,
“quieter than any of the young wives the King had had, and, as she knew
more of the world, she always got on pleasantly with the King, and had
no caprices.”[14]
The story of the marriage was an old one in 1546. Seymour had returned
from his mission and resumed his former position at Court as the King’s
brother-in-law and the uncle of his heir, and not even the Queen’s
enemies--and she had enough of them and to spare--had found an excuse
for calling to mind the relations once existing between the Admiral
and the King’s wife. Nevertheless, and in spite of the blamelessness
of her conduct, the satisfaction which had greeted the marriage was
on the wane. A hard task would have awaited Queen or courtier who
should have attempted to minister to the contentment of all the rival
parties striving for predominance in the State and at Court, and to be
adjudged the friend of the one was practically equivalent to a pledge
of distrust from the other. Whitehall, like the country at large,
was divided against itself by theological strife; and whilst the men
faithful to the ancient creed in its entirety were inevitably in bitter
opposition to the adherents of the new teachers whose headquarters were
in Germany, a third party, more unscrupulous than either, was made up
of the middle men who moulded--outwardly or inwardly--their faith upon
the King’s, and would, if they could, have created a Papacy without a
Pope, a Catholic Church without its corner-stone.
At Court, as elsewhere, each of these three parties were standing
on their guard, ready to parry or to strike a blow when occasion
arose, jealous of every success scored by their opponents. The fall
of Cromwell had inspired the Catholics with hope, and, with Gardiner
as Minister and Wriothesley as Chancellor, they had been in a more
favourable position than for some time past at the date of the King’s
last marriage. It had then been assumed that the new Queen’s influence
would be employed upon their side--an expectation confirmed by her
friendship with the Princess Mary. The discovery that the widow of Lord
Latimer--so fervent a Catholic that he had joined in the north-country
insurrection known as the Pilgrimage of Grace--had broken with her
past, openly displayed her sympathy with Protestant doctrine, and, in
common with the King’s nieces, was addicted to what was called the “new
learning,” quickly disabused them of their hopes, rendered the Catholic
party at Court her embittered enemies, and lent additional danger to
what was already a perilous position by affording those at present in
power a motive for removing from the King’s side a woman regarded as
the advocate of innovation.
So far their efforts had been fruitless. Katherine still held her
own. During Henry’s absence in France, whither he had gone to conduct
the campaign in person, she had administered the Government, as
Queen-Regent, with tact and discretion; the King loved her--as he
understood love--and, what was perhaps a more important matter, she had
contrived to render herself necessary to him. Wary, prudent, and pious,
and notwithstanding the possession of qualities marking her out in some
sort as the superior woman of her day, she was not above pandering to
his love of flattery. Into her book entitled _The Lamentations of a
Sinner_, she introduced a fulsome panegyric of the godly and learned
King who had removed from his realm the veils and mists of error, and
in the guise of a modern Moses had been victorious over the Roman
Pharaoh. What she publicly printed she doubtless reiterated in private;
and the King found the domestic incense soothing to an irritable
temper, still further acerbated by disease.
By other methods she had commended herself to those who were about
him open to conciliation. She had served a long apprenticeship in
the art of the step-mother, both Lord Borough, her first husband,
and Lord Latimer having possessed children when she married them;
and her skill in dealing with the little heir to the throne and his
sisters proved that she had turned her experience to good account. Her
genuine kindness, not only to Mary, who had been her friend from the
first, but to Elizabeth, ten years old at the time of the marriage,
was calculated to propitiate the adherents of each; and to her good
offices it was in especial due that Anne Boleyn’s daughter, hitherto
kept chiefly at a distance from Court, was brought to Whitehall. The
child, young as she was, was old enough to appreciate the importance of
possessing a friend in her father’s wife, and the letter she addressed
to her step-mother on the occasion overflowed with expressions of
devotion and gratitude. To the place the Queen won in the affections of
the all-important heir, the boy’s letters bear witness.
[Illustration:
From an engraving by F. Bartolozzi after a picture by Holbein.
HENRY VIII. AND HIS THREE CHILDREN.]
There is no need to assume that Katherine’s course of action was wholly
dictated by interested motives. Yet in this case principle and prudence
went hand in hand. Henry was becoming increasingly sick and suffering,
and, with the shadow of death deepening above him, the gifts he asked
of life were insensibly changing their character. His autocratic and
violent temper remained the same, but peace and quiet, a soothing
atmosphere of submissive affection, the absence of domestic friction,
if not sufficient to ensure his wife immunity from peril, constituted
her best chance of escaping the doom of her predecessors. To a selfish
man the appeal must be to self-interest. This appeal Katherine
consistently made and it had so far proved successful. For the rest,
whether she suffered from terror of possible disaster or resolutely
shut her eyes to what might have unnerved and rendered her unfit for
the part she had to play, none can tell, any more than it can be
determined whether, as she looked from the man she had married to the
man she had loved, she indulged in vain regrets for the happiness of
which she had caught a glimpse in those brief days when she had dreamed
of a future to be shared with Thomas Seymour.
In spite, however, of her caution, in spite of the perfection with
which she performed the duties of wife and nurse, by 1546 disquieting
reports were afloat.
“I am confused and apprehensive,” wrote Charles V.’s ambassador from
London in the February of that year, “to have to inform Your Majesty
that there are rumours here of a new Queen, although I do not know how
true they be.... The King shows no alteration in his behaviour towards
the Queen, though I am informed that she is annoyed by the rumours.”[15]
With the history of the past to quicken her apprehensions, she may
well have been more than “annoyed” by them. But, true or false, she
could but pursue the line of conduct she had adopted, and must have
turned with relief from domestic anxieties to any other matters that
could serve to distract her mind from her precarious future. Amongst
the learned ladies of a day when scholarship was becoming a fashion
she occupied a foremost place, and was actively engaged in promoting
educational interests. Stimulated by her step-mother’s approval, the
Princess Mary had been encouraged to undertake part of the translation
of Erasmus’s paraphrases of the Gospels; and Elizabeth is found sending
the Queen, as a fitting offering, a translation from the Italian
inscribed on vellum and entitled the _Glasse of the Synneful Soule_,
accompanying it by the expression of a hope that, having passed through
hands so learned as the Queen’s, it would come forth from them in a new
form. The education of the little Prince Edward too was pushed rapidly
forward, and at six years old, the year of his father’s marriage, he
had been taken out of the hands of women and committed to the tuition
of John Cheke and Dr. Richard Cox. These two, explains Heylyn, being
equal in authority, employed themselves to his advantage in their
several kinds--Dr. Cox for knowledge of divinity, philosophy, and
gravity of manners, Mr. Cheke for eloquence in the Greek and Latin
tongues; whilst other masters instructed the poor child in modern
languages, so that in a short time he spoke French perfectly, and was
able to express himself “magnificently enough” in Italian, Greek, and
Spanish.[16]
His companion and playfellow was one Barnaby Fitzpatrick, to whom
he clung throughout his short life with constant affection. It was
Barnaby’s office to bear whatever punishment the Prince had merited--a
method more successful in the case of the Prince than it might have
proved with a less soft-hearted offender, since it is said that “it was
not easy to affirm whether Fitzpatrick smarted more for the default
of the Prince, or the Prince conceived more grief for the smart of
Fitzpatrick.”[17]
Katherine Parr is not likely to have regretted the pressure put upon
her stepson; and the boy, apologising for his simple and rude letters,
adds his acknowledgments for those addressed to him by the Queen,
“which do give me much comfort and encouragement to go forward in such
things wherein your Grace beareth me on hand.”
The King’s latest wife was, in fact, a teacher by nature and choice,
and admirably fitted to direct the studies of his son and daughters, as
well as of any other children who might be brought within the sphere
of her influence. That influence, it may be, had something to do with
moulding the character and the destiny of a child fated to be unhappily
prominent in the near future. This was Lady Jane Grey.
CHAPTER III
1546
The Marquis of Dorset and his family--Bradgate Park--Lady Jane
Grey--Her relations with her cousins--Mary Tudor--Protestantism
at Whitehall--Religious persecution.
Amongst the households where both affairs at Court and the religious
struggle distracting the country were watched with the deepest interest
was that of the Marquis of Dorset, the husband of the King’s niece and
father of Lady Jane Grey.
Married at eighteen to the infirm and aged Louis XII. of France, Mary
Tudor, daughter of Henry VII. and friend of the luckless Katherine of
Aragon, had been released by his death after less than three months
of wedded life, and had lost no time in choosing a more congenial
bridegroom. At Calais, on her way home, she had bestowed her hand upon
“that martial and pompous gentleman,” Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk,
who, sent by her brother to conduct her back to England, thought it
well to secure his bride and to wait until the union was accomplished
before obtaining the King’s consent. Of this hurried marriage the
eldest child was the mother of Jane Grey, who thus derived her
disastrous heritage of royal blood.
It was at the country home of the Dorset family, Bradgate Park, that
Lady Jane had been born, in 1537. Six miles distant from the town of
Leicester, and forming the south-east end of Charnwood Forest, it was
a pleasant and quiet place. Over the wide park itself, seven miles
in circumference, bracken grew freely; here and there bare rocks
rose amidst the masses of green undergrowth, broken now and then
by a solitary oak, and the unwooded expanse was covered with “wild
verdure.”[18]
The house itself had not long been built, nor is there much remaining
at the present day to show what had been its aspect at the time when
Lady Jane was its inmate. Early in the eighteenth century it was
destroyed by fire, tradition ascribing the catastrophe to a Lady
Suffolk who, brought to her husband’s home as a bride, complained that
the country was a forest and the inhabitants were brutes, and, at the
suggestion of her sister, took the most certain means of ensuring a
change of residence.
But if little outward trace is left of the place where the victim of
state-craft and ambition was born and passed her early years, it is not
a difficult matter to hazard a guess at the religious and political
atmosphere of her home. Echoes of the fight carried on, openly or
covertly, between the parties striving for predominance in the realm
must have almost daily reached Bradgate, the accounts of the incidents
marking the combat taking their colour from the sympathies of the
master and mistress of the house, strongly enlisted upon the side of
Protestantism. At Lord Dorset’s house, though with closed doors, the
condition of religious affairs must have supplied constant matter for
discussion; and Jane will have listened to the conversation with the
eager attention of an intelligent child, piecing together the fragments
she gathered up, and gradually realising, with a thrill of excitement,
as she became old enough to grasp the significance of what she heard,
that men and women were suffering and dying in torment for the sake of
doctrines she had herself been taught as a matter of course. Serious
and precocious, and already beginning an education said to have
included in later years Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Chaldaic, Arabic, French,
and Italian, the stories reaching her father’s house of the events
taking place in London and at Court must have imprinted themselves upon
her imagination at an age specially open to such impressions, and it is
not unnatural that she should have grown up nurtured in the principles
of polemics and apt at controversy.
Nor were edifying tales of martyrdom or of suffering for conscience’
sake the only ones to penetrate to the green and quiet precincts of
Bradgate. At his niece’s house the King’s domestic affairs--a scandal
and a by-word in Europe--must have been regarded with the added
interest, perhaps the sharper criticism, due to kinship. Henry was
not only Lady Dorset’s sovereign, but her uncle, and she had a more
personal interest than others in what Messer Barbaro, in his report
to the Venetian senate, described as “this confusion of wives.”[19]
To keep a child ignorant was no part of the training of the day,
and Jane, herself destined for a court life, no doubt had heard, as
she grew older, many of the stories of terror and pity circulating
throughout the country, and investing, in the eyes of those afar off,
the distant city--the stage whereon most of them had been enacted--with
the atmosphere of mystery and fear and excitement belonging to a place
where martyrs were shedding their blood, or heretics atoning for their
guilt, according as the narrators inclined to the ancient or the novel
faith; where tragedies of love and hatred and revenge were being
played, and men went in hourly peril of their lives.
Of this place, invested with the attraction and glamour belonging to a
land of glitter and romance, Lady Jane had glimpses on the occasions
when, as a near relation of the King’s, she accompanied her mother to
Court, becoming for a while a sharer in the life of palaces and an
actor, by reason of her strain of royal blood, in the pageant ever
going forward at St. James’s or Whitehall;[20] and though it does not
appear that she was finally transferred from the guardianship of her
parents to that of the Queen until after the death of Henry in the
beginning of the year 1547, it is not unlikely that the book-loving
child of nine may have attracted the attention of the scholarly
Queen during her visits to Court and that Katherine’s belligerent
Protestantism had its share in the development of the convictions which
afterwards proved so strong both in life and in death.
There is at this date little trace of any connection between Jane
and her cousins, the King’s children. A strong affection on the part
of Edward is said to have existed, and to it has been attributed his
consent to set his sisters aside in Lady Jane’s favour. “She charmed
all who knew her,” says Burnet, “in particular the young King, about
whom she was bred, and who had always lived with her in the familiarity
of a brother.” For this statement there is no contemporary authority,
and, so far as can be ascertained, intercourse between the two can
have been but slight. Between Edward and his younger sister, on
the other hand, the bond of affection was strong, their education
being carried on at this time much together at Hatfield; and “a
concurrence and sympathy of their natures and affections, together
with the celestial bond, conformity in religion,”[21] made it the
more remarkable that the Prince should have afterwards agreed to set
aside, in favour of his cousin, Elizabeth’s claim to the succession.
It is true that in their occasional meetings the studious boy and the
serious-minded little girl may have discovered that they had tastes in
common, but such casual acquaintanceship can scarcely have availed to
counterbalance the affection produced by close companionship and the
tie of blood; and grounds for the Prince’s subsequent conduct, other
than the influence and arguments of those about him, can only be matter
of conjecture.
Of the relations existing between Jane and the Prince’s sisters there
is little more mention; but the entry by Mary Tudor in a note-book
of the gift of a gold necklace set with pearls, made “to my cousin,
Jane Gray,” shows that the two had met in the course of this summer,
and would seem to indicate a kindly feeling on the part of the older
woman towards the unfortunate child whom, not eight years later, she
was to send to the scaffold. Could the future have been laid bare it
would perhaps not have been the victim who would have recoiled from the
revelation with the greatest horror.
Although what was to follow lends a tragic significance to the
juxtaposition of the names of the two cousins, there was nothing
sinister about the King’s elder daughter as she filled the place
at Court in which she had been reinstated at the instance of her
step-mother. A gentle, brown-eyed woman, past her first youth, and
bearing on her countenance the traces of sickness and sorrow and
suffering, she enjoyed at this date so great a popularity as almost,
according to a foreign observer, to be an object of adoration to her
father’s subjects, obstinately faithful to her injured and repudiated
mother. But, ameliorated as was the Princess’s condition, she had
been too well acquainted, from childhood upwards, with the reverses
of fortune to count over-securely upon a future depending upon her
father’s caprice.
Her health was always delicate, and during the early part of the
year she had been ill. By the spring, however, she had resumed her
attendance at Court, and--to judge by a letter from her little wise
brother, contemplating from a safe distance the dangerous pastimes
of Whitehall--was taking a conspicuous part in the entertainments in
fashion. Writing in Latin to his step-mother, Prince Edward besought
her “to preserve his dear sister Mary from the enchantments of the
Evil One, by beseeching her no longer to attend to foreign dances and
merriments, unbecoming in a most Christian Princess”--and least of
all in one for whom he expressed the wish, in the course of the same
summer, that the wisdom of Esther might be hers.
It does not appear whether or not Mary took the admonitions of her
nine-year-old Mentor to heart. The pleasures of court life are not
likely to have exercised a perilous fascination over the Princess,
her spirits clouded by the memory of her melancholy past and the
uncertainty of her future, and probably represented to her a more or
less wearisome part of the necessary routine of existence.
Whilst the entertainments the Prince deplored went forward at
Whitehall, they were accompanied by other practices he would have
wholly approved. Not only was his step-mother addicted to personal
study of the Scriptures, but she had secured the services of learned
men to instruct her further in them; holding private conferences with
these teachers; and, especially during Lent, causing a sermon to be
delivered each afternoon for her own benefit and that of any of her
ladies disposed to profit by it, when the discourse frequently turned
or touched upon abuses in the Church.[22]
It was a bold stroke, Henry’s claims to the position of sole arbiter
on questions of doctrine considered. Nevertheless the Queen acted
openly, and so far her husband had testified no dissatisfaction. Yet
the practice must have served to accentuate the dividing line of
theological opinion, already sufficiently marked at Court; some members
of the royal household, like Princess Mary, holding aloof; others
eagerly welcoming the step; the Seymours, Cranmer, and their friends
looking on with approval, whilst the Howard connection, with Gardiner
and Wriothesley, took note of the Queen’s imprudence, and waited and
watched their opportunity to turn it to their advantage and to her
destruction.
[Illustration: Edward Prince
From an engraving by R. Dalton after a drawing by Holbein.
PRINCE EDWARD, AFTERWARDS EDWARD VI.]
Such was the internal condition of the Court. The spring had meanwhile
been marked by rejoicings for the peace with foreign powers, at last
concluded. On Whit-Sunday a great procession proceeded from St. Paul’s
to St. Peter’s, Cornhill, accompanied by a banner, and by crosses from
every parish church, the children of St. Paul’s School joining in the
show. It was composed of a motley company. Bishop Bonner--as vehement
in his Catholicism as Gardiner, and so much less wary in the display
of his opinions that his brother of Winchester was wont at times to
term him “asse”--carried the Blessed Sacrament under a canopy, with
“clerks and priests and vicars and parsons”; the Lord Mayor was there
in crimson velvet, the aldermen were in scarlet, and all the crafts
in their best apparel. The occasion was worthy of the pomp displayed in
honour of it, for it was--the words sound like a jest--the festival of
a “Universal Peace for ever,” announced by the Mayor, standing between
standard and cross, and including in the proclamation of general amity
the names of the Emperor, the King of England, the French King, and all
Christian Kings.[23]
If soldiers had for the moment consented to proclaim a truce and to
name it, merrily, eternal, theologians had agreed to no like suspension
of hostilities, and the perennial religious strife showed no signs of
intermission.
“Sire,” wrote Admiral d’Annebaut, sent by Francis to London to ratify
the peace, “I know not what to tell your Majesty as to the order given
me to inform myself of the condition of religious affairs in England;
except that Henry has declared himself head of the Anglican Church,
and woe to whomsoever refuses to recognise him in that capacity. He
has also usurped all ecclesiastical property, and destroyed all the
convents. He attends Mass nevertheless daily, and permits the papal
nuncio to live in London. What is strangest of all is that Catholics
are there burnt as well as Lutherans and other heretics. Was anything
like it ever seen?”[24]
Punishment was indeed dealt out with singular impartiality. During the
spring Dr. Crome had been examined touching a sermon he had delivered
against Catholic doctrine. Two or three weeks later, preaching once
more at Paul’s Cross, he had boldly declared he was not there for the
purpose of denying his former assertions; but a second “examination”
had proved more effective, and on the Sunday following the feast of
Corpus Christi he eschewed his heresies.[25] “Our news here,” wrote a
merchant of London to his brother on July 2, “of Dr. Crome’s canting,
recanting, decanting, or rather double-canting, be this.”[26] The
transaction was representative of many others, which, with their
undercurrent of terror, struggle, intimidation, menace, and remorse,
formed a melancholy and recurrent feature of the day, the victory
remaining sometimes with a man’s conscience--whatever it dictates might
be--sometimes with his fears.
The King was, in fact, still endeavouring to stem the torrent he
had set loose. In his speech to Parliament on Christmas Eve, 1545,
after commending and thanking Lords and Commons for their loyalty and
affection towards himself, he had spoken with severity of the discord
and dissension prevalent in the realm; the clergy, by their sermons
against each other, sowing debate and discord amongst the people....
“I am very sorry to know and hear how unreverently that most precious
jewel, the Word of God, is disputed, rimed, sung and jangled in every
ale-house and tavern... and yet I am even as much sorry that the
readers of the same follow it in doing so faintly and so coldly. For
of this I am sure, that charity was never so faint amongst you, and
virtuous and godly living was never less used, nor God Himself amongst
Christians was never less reverenced, honoured, and served.”[27]
Delivered scarcely more than a year before his death, Henry’s speech
was a singular commentary upon the condition of the realm, consequent
upon his own policy, during the concluding years of his reign.
CHAPTER IV
1546
Anne Askew--Her trial and execution--Katherine Parr’s danger--Plot
against her--Her escape.
As the months of 1546 went by the measures taken by the King and his
advisers to enforce unanimity of practice and opinion in matters
of religion did not become less drastic. A great burning of books
disapproved by Henry took place during the autumn, preceded in July
by the condemnation and execution of a victim whose fate attracted an
unusual amount of attention, the effect at Court being enhanced by the
fact that the heroine of the story was personally known to the Queen
and her ladies. It was indeed reported that one of the King’s special
causes of displeasure was that she had been the means of imbuing his
nieces--among whom was Lady Dorset, Jane Grey’s mother--as well as his
wife, with heretical doctrines.
Added to the species of glamour commonly surrounding a spiritual
leader, more particularly in times of persecution, Anne Askew was
beautiful and young--not more than twenty-five at the time of her
death--and the thought of her racked frame, her undaunted courage, and
her final agony at the stake, may well have haunted with the horror of
a night-mare those who had been her disciples, and who looked on from a
distance, and with sympathy they dared not display.
There were other circumstances increasing the interest with which
the melancholy drama was watched. Well born and educated, Anne had
been the wife of a Lincolnshire gentleman of the name of Kyme. Their
life together had been of short duration. In a period of bitter party
feeling and recrimination, it is difficult to ascertain with certainty
the truth on any given point; and whilst a hostile chronicler asserts
that Anne left her husband in order “to gad up and down a-gospelling
and gossipping where she might and ought not, but especially in
London and near the Court,”[28] another authority explains that Kyme
had turned her out of his house upon her conversion to Protestant
doctrines. Whatever might have been the origin of her mode of life, it
is certain that she resumed her maiden name, and proceeded to “execute
the office of an apostle.”[29]
Her success in her new profession made her unfortunately conspicuous,
and in 1545 she was committed to Newgate, “for that she was very
obstinate and heady in reasoning on matters of religion.” The
charge, it must be confessed, is corroborated by her demeanour under
examination, when the qualities of meekness and humility were markedly
absent, and her replies to the interrogatories addressed to her were
rather calculated to irritate than to prove conciliatory. On this first
occasion, for example, asked to interpret certain passages in the
Scriptures, she declined to comply with the request on the score that
she would not cast pearls among swine--acorns were good enough; and,
urged by Bonner to open her wound, she again refused. Her conscience
was clear, she said; to lay a plaster on a whole skin might seem much
folly, and the similitude of a wound appeared to her unsavoury.[30]
For the time she escaped; but in the course of the following year
her case was again brought forward, and on this occasion she found
no mercy. Her examinations, mostly reported by herself, show her as
alike keen-witted and sharp-tongued, rarely at a loss for an answer,
and profoundly convinced of the justice of her cause. If she was not
without the genuine enjoyment of the born controversialist in the
opportunity of argument and discussion, she possessed, underlying the
self-assertion and confidence natural in a woman holding the position
of a religious leader, a fund of indomitable heroism. For she must
have been fully conscious of her danger. It is possible that, had she
not been brought into prominence by her association with those in high
places, she might again have escaped; but, apart from the grudge owed
her for her influence over the King’s own kin, her attitude was almost
such as to court her fate. Refusing “to sing a new song of the Lord
in a strange land,” she replied to the Bishop of Winchester, when he
complained that she spoke in parables, that it was best for him that
she should do so. Had she shown him the open truth, he would not accept
it.
“Then the Bishop said he would speak with me familiarly. I said, ‘So
did Judas when he unfriendlily betrayed Christ....’ In conclusion,” she
ended, in her account of the interview, “we could not agree.”
Spirited as was her bearing, and thrilling as the prisoner plainly was
with all the excitement of a battle of words, it was not strange that
the strain should tell upon her.
“On the Sunday,” she proceeds--and there is a pathetic contrast between
the physical weakness to which she confesses and her undaunted boldness
in confronting the men bent upon her destruction--“I was sore sick,
thinking no less than to die.... Then was I sent to Newgate in my
extremity of sickness, for in all my life I was never in such pain.
Thus the Lord strengthen us in His truth. Pray, pray, pray.”
Her condemnation was a foregone conclusion. It followed quickly, with
a subsequent visit from one Nicholas Shaxton, who, having, for his own
part, made his recantation, counselled her to do the same. He spoke
in vain. It were, she told him, good for him never to have been born,
“with many like words.” More was to follow. If her assertion is to
be believed--and there seems no valid reason to doubt it--the rack
was applied “till I was nigh dead.... After that I sat two long hours
reasoning with my Lord Chancellor upon the bare floor. Then was I
brought into a house and laid in a bed with as weary and painful bones
as ever had patient Job. I thank my God therefore.”
A scarcely credible addition is made to the story, to the effect that
when the Lieutenant of the Tower had refused to put the victim to the
torture a second time, the Lord Chancellor, Wriothesley, less merciful,
took the office upon himself, and applied the rack with his own hands,
the Lieutenant departing to report the matter to the King, “who seemed
not very well to like such handling of a woman.”[31] What is certain
is the final scene at Smithfield, where Shaxton delivered a sermon,
Anne listening, endorsing his words when she approved of them and
correcting them “when he said amiss.”
So the shameful episode was brought to an end. The tale, penetrating
even the thick walls of a palace, must have caused a thrill of horror
at Whitehall, accentuated by reason of certain events going forward
there about the same time.
The King’s disease was gaining upon him apace. He had become so
unwieldy in bulk that the use of machinery was necessary to move him,
and with the progress of his disorder his temper was becoming more
and more irritable. In view of his approaching death the question of
the guardianship and custody of the heir to the throne was increasing
in importance and the jealousy of the rival parties was becoming more
embittered. In the course of the summer the Catholics about the Court
ventured on a bold stroke, directed against no less a person than the
Queen.
Emboldened by the tolerance displayed by the King towards her religious
practices and the preachers and teachers she gathered around her,
Katherine had grown so daring as to make matters of doctrine a constant
subject of conversation with Henry, urging him to complete the work he
had begun, and to free the Church of England from superstition.[32]
Henry appears at first--though he was a man ill to argue with--to
have shown singular patience under his wife’s admonitions. But daily
controversy is not soothing to a sick man’s nerves and temper, and
Katherine’s enemies, watching their opportunity, conceived that it was
at hand.
Henry’s habits had been altered by illness, and it had become the
Queen’s custom to wait for a summons before visiting his apartments;
although on some occasions, after dinner or supper, or when she had
reason to imagine she would be welcome, she repaired thither on her own
initiative. But perhaps the more as she perceived that time was short,
she continued her imprudent exhortations. And still her enemies, wary
and silent, watched.
Henry appears--and it says much for his affection for her--to have
for a time maintained the attitude of a not uncomplacent listener.
On a certain day, however, when Katherine was, as usual, descanting
upon questions of theology, he changed the subject abruptly, “which
somewhat amazed the Queen.” Reassured by perceiving no further signs of
displeasure, she talked upon other topics until the time came for the
King to bid her farewell, which he did with his customary affection.
The account of what followed--Foxe being, as before, the narrator--must
be accepted with reservation. Gardiner, chancing to be present, was
made the recipient of his master’s irritation. It was a good hearing,
the King said ironically, when women were become clerks, and a thing
much to his comfort, to come in his old days to be taught by his wife.
Gardiner made prompt use of the opening afforded him; he had waited
long for it, and it was not wasted. The Queen, he said, had forgotten
herself, in arguing with a King whose virtues and whose learnedness in
matters of religion were not only greater than were possessed by other
princes, but exceeded those of doctors in divinity. For the Bishop and
his friends it was a grievous thing to hear. Proceeding to enlarge upon
the subject at length, he concluded by saying that, though he dared not
declare what he knew without special warranty from the King, he and
others were aware of treason cloaked in heresy. Henry, he warned him,
was cherishing a serpent in his bosom.
It was risking much, but the Bishop knew to whom he spoke, and,
working adroitly upon Henry’s fears and wrath, succeeded in obtaining
permission to consult with his colleagues and to draw up articles by
which the Queen’s life might be touched. “They thought it best to
begin with such ladies as she most esteemed and were privy to all her
doings--as the Lady Herbert, her sister, the Lady Lane, who was her
first cousin, and the Lady Tyrwhitt, all of her privy chamber.” The
plan was to accuse these ladies of the breach of the Six Articles, to
search their coffers for documents or books compromising to the Queen,
and, in case anything of that nature were found, to carry Katherine
by night to the Tower. The King, acquainted with the design, appears
to have given his consent, and all went on as before, Henry still
encouraging, or at
|
that she was in she gave way to him. They
spoke in French, and arguments always seemed more incontestable in a
language that refused to allow anything in the nature of a vague
explanation; besides, her own body was responding against her will to
the logic of surrender.
"Pride is all very well," said Carrier. "I am proud of being the
greatest aviator of the moment, but if I fall and smash myself to pulp,
what becomes of my pride? It's impossible for you to lead the life you
are leading now without debasing yourself, and then where will your
pride be? Listen to me. You have been at the cabaret very little over a
month, and already it is telling upon you. It is very good that you are
able even for so long to keep men at a distance, but are you keeping
them at a distance? For me it is the same thing logically if you drink
with men or--" He shrugged his shoulders. "You sell your freedom in
either case. _N'est pas que j'ai raison, ma petite Sylvie?_ For me it
would be a greater pride to return to England and walk with my head in
the air and laugh at the world. Besides, you have a _je ne sais quoi_
that will prevent the world from laughing, but if you continue you will
have nothing. When I fall and smash myself to pulp, I sha'n't care about
the world's laughter. Nor will you."
Indeed he was right, Sylvia thought. That first impulse of defiance
seemed already like a piece of petulance, the gesture of a spoiled
child.
"And you will let me, as a good _copain_, lend you the money for your
fare back?"
"No," Sylvia said. "I think I can just manage to earn it by going once
more to-night to the cabaret. I've arranged to meet some count with an
unpronounceable name, who will probably open at least twenty-four
bottles. I get my week's salary to-night also. I shall have, with what I
have saved, enough to travel back as I came, third class. It has been a
thoroughly third-class adventure, _mon vieux_. A thousand thanks for
your kindness, but I must pay my pride the little solace of earning
enough to get me home again."
Carrier shrugged his shoulders.
"It must be as you feel. That I understand. But it gives me much
pleasure that you are going to be wise. I wish you _de la veine_
to-night."
He pressed upon her a mascot to charm fortune into attendance; it was a
little red devil with his tongue sticking out.
Sylvia went down to the cabaret that evening with the firm intention of
its being the last occasion; her headache had grown worse all the
afternoon and the gloom upon her spirit was deepening. What a fool she
had been to run away with so much assurance of having the courage to
endure this life, what a fool she had been! For the first time the
thought of suicide presented itself to her as a practical solution of
everything. In her present state she could perceive not one valid
argument against it. Who had attacked existence with less caution than
she, and who had deserved more from it in consequence? Had she once
flinched? Had she once taken the easier path? Yes, there had been
Arthur; that was the first time she had given way to indecision, and how
swiftly the punishment had followed. Was it really worth while to seek
now to repair that mistake? Was anything worth while? Except to go
suddenly out of it all, passing as abruptly from life to death as she
had passed from one society to another, one tour to another, one country
to another. She would abide by to-night's decision; if fortune put it
into the head of the count with the unpronounceable name to buy enough
bottles of champagne to make up what was still wanting to her fare, she
would return to England, devote herself to her work, turn again to
books, watch over her godchildren, and live at Mulberry Cottage. If, on
the other hand, the fare should not be made up on this night, why, then
she should kill herself. To-night should be a night of hell. How her
body was burning; how vile the people smelled in this tram; how
wearisome was this garish sunset. She took from her velvet bag the red
devil that Carrier had given her; in this feverish atmosphere it had a
certain fitness, a portentousness even; one could almost believe it
really was a tribute to fate.
The cabaret was crowded that evening; never before had there been such a
hurly-burly of greed and thirst. Sylvia, by good luck, was feeling
thirsty; for the dust from the tram had parched her mouth, and her
tongue was like cork; so much the better, because if she was going to
win that champagne she must be able herself to drink. The tintamarre of
plates, knives, and forks; the chickerchack as of multitudinous apes;
the blare and glare would have prevented the loudest soprano in the
world from sounding more than the squeak of a slate-pencil; and Sylvia
sang with gestures alone, forming with her lips mute words. "I'm paid
for my body, not for my voice; so let my body play the antic," she
muttered, angrily.
When her turn was over, Sylvia came down and joined the two young
Russians, who were waiting for her with another girl at a table on which
already the bottles of champagne were standing like giant pawns.
"_Ils ont la cuite_," the girl whispered to Sylvia. "_Alors, il faut
briffer, chérie; autrement ils seront trop soûlés._"
This seemed good advice, because if their hosts were too drunk too soon
they might get tired of the entertainment; and Sylvia proposed an
adjournment to eat, though she had little enough appetite. As a matter
of fact, the men wanted to drink vodka when supper was proposed, and not
merely to drink it themselves, but to make Sylvia and the other girl
keep them company glass by glass. In Sylvia's condition to drink vodka
would have been to drink liquid fire, and she managed to plead thirst
with such effect that the count benevolently ordered twenty-four bottles
of champagne to be brought immediately for her to quench it. The other
girl was full of admiration for Sylvia's strategy; if the worst came to
the worst, they would have earned seventy-five francs each and could
boast of a successful evening. Sylvia, however, wanted a hundred and
fifty francs for herself, and invoking the little red devil she showed a
way of breaking a bottle in half by filling it with hot water,
saturating a string in methylated spirits, tying the string round the
bottle, setting light to it, and afterward tapping the bottle gently
with a knife until it broke. The count was delighted with this trick,
but thought, as Sylvia hoped he would think, that the trick would be
much better if practised on an unopened bottle of champagne. In this way
twenty-six bottles were broken in childish rage by the count, because
the trick only worked with the help of hot water. He was by now in a
state of drunken obstinacy, and, being determined to show the
superiority of the human mind over matter, he ordered twenty-four more
bottles of champagne, as a Roman emperor might have ordered two dozen
slaves to test an empirical method of execution. By a fluke he managed
to succeed with the twenty-fourth bottle, and having by now gathered
round him an audience, he challenged the onlookers to repeat the trick.
Other women were anxious for their hosts to excel, particularly with
such profit to themselves; soon at every table in the cabaret
champagne-bottles were being cracked like eggs. The count was afraid
that there might not be enough wine left to carry them through the
evening, and ordered another two dozen bottles to be held in reserve for
his table.
Sylvia, though she was feeling horribly ill by now, was nevertheless at
peace, for she had earned her fare back to England. Unluckily, she could
not quit the table and go home, because, unless she waited until three,
she would not be paid her commission on the champagne. She felt herself
receding from the noise of breaking glass all round her, and thought she
was going to faint, but with an effort she gathered the noise round her
again and tried to believe that the room still existed. She seemed to be
catching hold of the great chandelier that hung from the middle of the
ceiling, and fancied that it was only her will and courage to maintain
her hold that was keeping the cabaret and everybody in it from
destruction.
"_Tu es malade, chérie?_" the other girl was asking.
"_Rien, rien_," she was whispering. "_Le chaleur._"
"_Oui, il fait très-chaud._"
The laughter and shouts of triumph rose higher; the noise of breaking
glass was like the waves upon a beach of shingle.
"_Pourquoi il te regarde?_" she found herself asking.
"_Personne ne me regarde, chérie_," the other girl replied.
But somebody was looking at her, somebody seated in one of the boxes for
private supper-parties that were fixed all round the hall, somebody tall
with short fair hair sticking up like a brush, somebody in uniform. He
was beckoning to her now and inviting her to join him in the box. He had
slanting eyes, cruel eyes that glittered and glittered.
"_Il te regarde. Il te regarde_," said Sylvia, hopelessly. "_Il te veut.
Oh, mon Dieu, il te veut! Quoi faire? Il n'y a rien à faire. Il n'y a
rien à faire. Il t'aura. Tu seras perdue. Perdue!_" she moaned.
"_Dis, Sylvie, dis, qu'est-ce que tu as? Tu me fais peur. Tes yeux sont
comme les yeux d'une folle. Est-ce que tu as pris de l'ethère ce soir?_"
It seemed to Sylvia that her companion was being dragged to damnation
before her eyes, and she implored her to flee while there was still
time.
Somebody stood up on a table and shouted at the top of his voice:
"_Il n'y a plus de champagne!_"
The count was much excited by this and demanded immediately how they
were going to spend the money they had brought with them. If there was
no more champagne, they should have to drink vodka, but first they must
play skittles with the empty bottles that were not already broken to
pieces. He picked a circular cheese from the table and bowled it across
the room.
"_Encore du fromage! Encore du fromage!_" everybody was shouting, and
soon everywhere crimson cheeses were rolling along the floor.
"The cheeses belong to me," the count cried. "Nobody else is to order
cheeses. _Garçon! garçon!_ bring me all the cheeses you have. The
cheeses are mine. Mine! Mine!"
His voice rose to a scream.
"_Mon Dieu! ils vont se battre à cause du fromage_" cried the other
girl, holding her hand to her eyes and cowering in her chair.
By this time the management thought it would soon lose what it had made
that evening and ordered the cabaret to be closed. The girls, who were
anxious to escape, ran to be paid for their champagne. Sylvia swayed
and nearly fell in the rush; her companion kept her head and exacted
from the management every copeck. Then she dragged Sylvia with her to a
droshky, put her in, and said good night.
"_Tu ne viens pas avec moi?_" Sylvia cried.
"_Non, non, il faut que j'aille avec lui._"
"_Avec l'homme qui te regardait du loge?_"
"_Non, non, avec mon ami._"
She gave the address of the _pension_ to the driver and vanished in the
confusion. Sylvia fancied that this girl was lost forever, and wept to
herself all the way home, but without shedding a single tear; her body
was like fire. There was nobody about in the _pension_ when she arrived
back; she dragged herself up to her room and lay down on the bed fully
dressed. It seemed that all reality was collapsing fast, and she
clutched the notes stuffed into her corsage as the only solid fact left
to her, the only link between herself and home. Once or twice she
vaguely wondered if she were really ill, but her mental state was so
much worse than the physical pain that she struggled feebly to quieten
her nerves and kept on trying to assure herself that her own unnatural
excitement was nothing except the result of the unnatural excitement at
the cabaret. She found herself wondering if she were going mad, and
trying to piece together the links of the chain that would lead her to
the explanation of this madness.
"What could have made me go mad suddenly like this?" she kept moaning.
It seemed that if she could only discover the cause of her madness she
should be able to cure it. All her attention was soon taken up in
watching little round red devils that kept rising out of the floor
beside the bed, little round red devils that swelled and ripened like
tomatoes, burst, and vanished. Her faculties concentrated upon
discovering a reasonable explanation for such a queer occurrence; many
explanations presented themselves, hovered upon the outskirts of her
brain, and escaped before they could be stated. There was no doubt in
Sylvia's mind that a reasonable explanation existed, and it was
tantalizing never to be able to catch it, because it was quite certain
that such an explanation would have been very interesting; at any rate,
it was a relief to know that there was an explanation and that these
devils were not figments of the imagination. As soon as she had settled
that they had an objective existence, it became rather amusing to watch
them; there was a new variety now that floated about the floor like
bubbles before they burst.
Suddenly Sylvia sat up on the bed and listened; the stairs were creaking
under the footsteps of some heavy person who was ascending. It must be
Carrier. She should go out and call to him; she should like him to see
those devils. She went out into the passage dove-gray with the dawn, and
called. Ah, it was not Carrier; it was that man who had stared from the
box at her friend! She closed the door hurriedly and bolted it; every
sensation of being ill had departed from her; she could feel nothing but
an unspeakable fear. She put her hand to her forehead; it was dripping
wet, and she shivered. The devils were nowhere to be seen; dawn was
creeping about the room in a gray mist. The door opened, and the bolt
fell with a clatter upon the floor; she shrank back upon the bed,
burying her face in the pillow. The intruder clanked up and down the
room with his sword, but never spoke a word; at last, Sylvia, finding
that it was impossible to shut him out by closing her eyes and ears to
his presence, sat up and asked him in French what he wanted and why he
had broken into her room like this. All her unnatural mental excitement
had died away before this drunken giant who was staring at her from
glazed eyes and leaning unsteadily with both hands upon his sword; she
felt nothing but an intense physical weariness and a savage desire to
sleep.
"Why didn't you wait for me at the cabaret?" the giant demanded, in a
thick voice.
Sylvia estimated the distance between herself and the door, and wondered
if her aching legs would carry her there quickly enough to escape those
huge freckled hands that were silky with golden hairs. Her heart was
beating so loudly that she was afraid he would hear it and be angry.
"You didn't ask me to wait," she said. "It was my friend whom you
wanted. She's still there. You've made a mistake. Why don't you go back
and look for her?"
He banged his sword upon the floor angrily.
"A trick! A trick to get rid of me," he muttered. Then he unbuckled his
sword, flung it against a chair, and began to unbutton his tunic.
"But you can't stay here," Sylvia cried. "Don't you understand that
you've made a mistake? You don't want _me_. Go away from here."
"Money?" the giant muttered. "Take it."
He put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a bundle of notes, and threw
them on the bed, after which he took off his tunic.
"You're drunk or mad," Sylvia cried, now more exasperated than
frightened. "Go out of my room before I wake up the house."
The giant paid not the least attention, and, seating himself on a chair,
bent over to unlace his boots. Sylvia again tried to muster enough
strength to rise, but her limbs were growing weaker every moment.
"And if you're not the girl I wanted," said the giant, looking up from
his boots, "you're a _girl_, aren't you? I've paid you, haven't I? A
splendid state the world's coming to when a cocotte takes it into her
head to argue with a Russian officer who pays her the honor of his
attentions. The world's turning upside down. The people must have a
lesson. Come, get off that bed and help me undo these boots."
"Do you know that I'm English?" Sylvia said. "You'll find that even
Russian officers cannot insult Englishwomen."
"A cocotte has no nationality," the giant contradicted, solemnly. "She
is common property. Come, if you had wished to talk, you should have
joined my table earlier in the evening. One does not wish to talk when
one is sleepy."
The English acrobats slept next door to Sylvia, and she hammered on the
partition.
"Are you killing bugs?" the giant asked. "You need not bother. They
never disturb me."
Sylvia went on hammering; her arms were getting weaker, and unless help
came soon she should faint. There was a tap on the door.
"Come in," she cried. "Come in at once--at once!"
Willie entered in purple silk pajamas, rubbing his eyes.
"Whatever is it, Sylvia?"
"Take this drunken brute out of my room."
"Bobbie! Bobbie!" he called. "Come here, Bobbie! Bobbie! Will you come?
You are mean. Oh, there's such a nasty man in Sylvia's room! Oh, he's
something dreadful to look at!"
The drunken officer stared at Willie in amazement, trying to make up his
mind if he were an alcoholic vision; his judgment was still further
shaken by the appearance of Bobbie in pajamas of emerald-green silk.
"Oh, Willie, he's got a sword!" said Bobbie. "Oh, doesn't he look
fierce? Oh, he does look fierce! Most alarming I'm sure."
The intruder staggered to his feet.
"_Foutez-moi le camp_," he bellowed, making a grab for his sword.
"For Heaven's sake get rid of the brute," Sylvia moaned. "I'm too weak
to move."
The two young men pirouetted into the middle of the room, as they were
wont to pirouette upon the stage, with arms stretched out in a curve
from the shoulder and fingers raised mincingly above an imaginary teacup
held between the first finger and thumb. When they reached the giant
they stopped short to sustain the preliminary pose of a female acrobat;
then turning round, they ran back a few steps, turned round again, and
with a scream flung themselves upon their adversary; he went down with a
crash, and they danced upon his prostrate form like two butterflies over
a cabbage.
The noise had wakened the other inhabitants of the _pension_, who came
crowding into Sylvia's room; with the rest was Carrier and they managed
to extract from her a vague account of what had happened. The aviator,
in a rage, demanded an explanation of his conduct from the officer, who
called him a _maquereau_. Carrier was strong; with help from the
acrobats he had pushed the officer half-way through the window when Mère
Gontran, who, notwithstanding her bedroom being two hundred yards away
from the _pension_, had an uncanny faculty for divining when anything
had gone wrong, appeared on the scene. Thirty-five years in Russia had
made her very fearful of offending the military, and she implored
Carrier and the acrobats to think what they were doing: in her red
dressing-gown she looked like an insane cardinal.
"They'll confiscate my property. They'll send me to Siberia. Treat his
Excellency more gently, I beg. Sylvia, tell them to stop. Sylvia, he's
going--he's going--he's gone!"
He was gone indeed, head first into a clump of lilacs underneath the
window, whither his tunic and sword followed him.
The adventure with the drunken officer had exhausted the last forces of
Sylvia; she lay back on the bed in a semi-trance, soothed by the
unending bibble-babble all round. She was faintly aware of somebody's
taking her hand and feeling her pulse, of somebody's saying that her
eyes were like a dead woman's, of somebody's throwing a coverlet over
her. Then the bibble-babble became much louder; there was a sound of
crackling and a smell of smoke, and she heard shouts of "Fire!" "Fire!"
"He has set fire to the outhouse!" There was a noise of splashing water,
a rushing sound of water, a roar as of a thousand torrents in her head;
the people in the room became animated surfaces, cardboard figures
without substance and without reality; the devils began once more to
sprout from the floor; she felt that she was dying, and in the throes of
dissolution she struggled to explain that she must travel back to
England, that she must not be buried in Russia. It seemed to her in a
new access of semi-consciousness that Carrier and the two acrobats were
kneeling by her bed and trying to comfort her, that they were patting
her hands kindly and gently. She tried to warn them that they would
blister themselves if they touched her, but her tongue seemed to have
separated itself from her body. She tried to tell them that her tongue
was already dead, and the effort to explain racked her whole body. Then,
suddenly, dark and gigantic figures came marching into the room: they
must be demons, and it was true about hell. She tried to scream her
belief in immortality and to beg a merciful God to show mercy and save
her from the Fiend. The somber forms drew near her bed. From an
unimaginably distant past she saw framed in fire the picture of The
Impenitent Sinner's Deathbed that used to hang in the kitchen at Lille;
and again from the past came suddenly back the text of a sermon preached
by Dorward at Green Lanes--_Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall
be as white as snow_. It seemed to her that if only she could explain to
God that her name was really Snow and that Scarlett was only the name
assumed for her by her father, all might even now be well. The somber
forms had seized her, and she beat against them with unavailing hands;
they snatched her from the bed and wrapped her round and round with
something that stifled her cries; with her last breath she tried to
shriek a warning to Carrier of the existence of hell, to beg him to put
away his little red devils lest he, when he should ultimately fall from
the sky, should fall as deep as hell.
Sylvia came out of her delirium to find herself in the ward of a
hospital kept by French nuns; she asked what had been the matter with
her, and, smiling compassionately, they said it was a bad fever. She lay
for a fortnight in a state of utter lassitude, watching the nuns going
about their work as she would have watched birds in the cool deeps of a
forest. The lassitude was not unpleasant; it was a fatigue so intense
that her spirit seemed able to leave her tired body and float about
among the shadows of this long room. She knew that there were other
patients in the ward, but she had no inclination to know who they were
or what they looked like; she had no desire to communicate with the
outside world, nor any anxiety about the future. She could not imagine
that she should ever wish to do anything except lie here watching the
nuns at their work like birds in the cool deeps of a forest. When the
doctor visited her and spoke cheerfully, she wondered vaguely how he
managed to keep his very long black beard so frizzy, but she was not
sufficiently interested to ask him. To his questions about her bodily
welfare she let her tired body answer automatically, and often, when the
doctor was bending over to listen to her heart or lungs, her spirit
would have mounted up to float upon the shadows of sunlight rippling
over the ceiling, that he and her body might commune without disturbing
herself. At last there came a morning when the body grew impatient at
being left behind and when it trembled with a faint desire to follow the
spirit. Sylvia raised herself up on her elbow and asked a nun to bring
her a looking-glass.
"But all my hair has been cut!" she exclaimed. She looked at her eyes:
there was not much life in them, yet they were larger than she had ever
seen them, and she liked them better than before, because they were now
very kind eyes: this new Sylvia appealed to her.
She put the glass down and asked if she had been very ill.
"Very ill indeed," said the nun.
Sylvia longed to tell the nun that she must not believe all she had said
when she was delirious: and then she wondered what she had said.
"Was I very violent in my delirium?" she asked.
The nun smiled.
"I thought I was in hell," said Sylvia, seriously. "When are my friends
coming to see me?"
The nun looked grave.
"Your friends have all gone away," she said at last. "They used to come
every day to inquire after you, but they went away when war was
declared."
"War?" Sylvia repeated. "Did you say war?"
The nun nodded.
"War?" she went on. "This isn't part of my delirium? You're not teasing
me? War between whom?"
"Russia, France, and England are at war with Germany and Austria."
"Then Carrier has left Petersburg?"
"Hush," said the nun. "It's no longer Petersburg. It's Petrograd now."
"But I don't understand. Do you mean to tell me that everybody has
changed his name? I've changed my name back to my real name. My name is
Sylvia Snow now. I changed it when I was delirious, but I shall always
be Sylvia Snow. I've been thinking about it all these days while I've
been lying so quiet. Did Carrier leave any message for me? He was the
aviator, you know."
"He has gone back to fight for France," the nun said, crossing herself.
"He was very sorry about your being so ill. You must pray for him."
"Yes, I will pray for him," Sylvia said. "And there is nobody left?
Those two funny little English acrobats with fair curly hair. Have they
gone?"
"They've gone, too," said the nun. "They came every day to inquire for
you, and they brought you flowers, which were put beside your bed, but
you were unconscious."
"I think I smelled a sweetness in the air sometimes," Sylvia said.
"They were always put outside the window at night," the nun explained.
The faintest flicker of an inclination to be amused at the nun's point
of view about flowers came over Sylvia; but it scarcely endured for an
instant, because it was so obviously the right point of view in this
hospital, where even flowers, not to seem out of place, must acquire
orderly habits. The nun asked her if she wanted anything and passed on
down the ward when she shook her head.
Sylvia lay back to consider her situation and to pick up the threads of
normal existence, which seemed so inextricably tangled at present that
she felt like a princess in a fairy tale who had been set an impossible
task by an envious witch.
In the first place, putting on one side all the extravagance of
delirium, Sylvia was conscious of a change in her personality so
profound and so violent, that now with the return of reason and with the
impulse to renewed activity, she was convinced of her rightness in
deciding to go back to her real name of Sylvia Snow. The anxiety that
she had experienced during her delirium to make the change positively
remained from that condition as something of value that bore no relation
to the grosser terrors of hell she had experienced. The sense of
regeneration that she was feeling at this moment could not entirely be
explained by her mind's reaction to the peace of the hospital, in the
absence of pain, and to her bodily well-being. She was able to set in
its proportion each of these factors, and when she had done so there
still remained this emotion that was indefinable unless she accepted
for it the definition of regeneration.
"The fact is I've eaten rose leaves and I'm no longer a golden ass," she
murmured. "But what I want to arrive at is when exactly I was turned
into an ass and when I ate the rose leaves."
For a time her mind, unused since her fever to concentrated thinking,
wandered off into the tale of Apuleius. She wished vaguely that she had
the volume so inscribed by Michael Fane with her in Petersburg, but she
had left it behind at Mulberry Cottage. It was some time before she
brought herself back to the realization that the details of the Roman
story had not the least bearing upon her meditation, and that the
symbolism of the enchanted transformation and the recovery of human
shape by eating rose leaves had been an essentially modern and romantic
gloss upon the old author. This gloss, however, had served
extraordinarily well to symbolize her state of mind before she had been
ill, and she was not going to abandon it now.
"I must have had an experience once that fitted in with the idea, or it
would not recur to me like this with such an imputation of
significance."
Sylvia thought hard for a while; the nun on day duty was pecking away at
a medicine-bottle, and the busy little noise competed with her thoughts,
so that she was determined before the nun could achieve her purpose with
the medicine-bottle to discover when she became a golden ass. Suddenly
the answer flashed across her mind; at the same moment the nun triumphed
over her bottle and the ward was absolutely still again.
"I became a golden ass when I married Philip and I ate the rose leaves
when Arthur refused to marry me."
This solution of the problem, though she knew that it was not radically
more satisfying than the defeat of a toy puzzle, was nevertheless
wonderfully comforting, so comforting that she fell asleep and woke up
late in the afternoon, refreshingly alert and eager to resume her
unraveling of the tangled skein.
"I became a golden ass when I married Philip," she repeated to herself.
For a while she tried to reconstruct the motives that fourteen years ago
had induced her toward that step. If she had really begun her life all
over again, it should be easy to do this. But the more she pondered
herself at the age of seventeen the more impossibly remote that Sylvia
seemed. Certain results, however, could even at this distance of time be
ascribed to that unfortunate marriage: among others the three months
after she left Philip. When Sylvia came to survey all her life since,
she saw how those three months had lurked at the back of everything, how
really they had spoiled everything.
"Have I fallen a prey to remorse?" she asked herself. "Must I forever be
haunted by the memory of what was, after all, a necessary incident to my
assumption of assishness? Did I not pay for them that day at Mulberry
Cottage when I could not be myself to Michael, but could only bray at
him the unrealities of my outward shape?"
Lying here in the cool hospital, Sylvia began to conjure against her
will the incidents of those three fatal months, and so weak was she
still from the typhus that she could not shake off their obsession. Her
mind clutched at other memories; but no sooner did she think that she
was safely wrapped up in their protecting fragrance than like Furies
those three months drove her mind forth from its sanctuary and scourged
it with cruel images.
"This is the sort of madness that makes a woman kill her seducer," said
Sylvia, "this insurgent rage at feeling that the men who crossed my path
during those three months still live without remorse for what they did."
Gradually, however, her rage died down before the pleadings of
reasonableness; she recalled that somewhere she had read how the human
body changes entirely every seven years: this reflection consoled her,
and though she admitted that it was a trivial and superficial
consolation, since remorse was conceived with the spirit rather than
with the body, nevertheless the thought that not one corpuscle of her
present blood existed fourteen years ago restored her sense of
proportion and enabled her to shake off the obsession of those three
months, at any rate so far as to allow her to proceed with her
contemplation of the new Sylvia lying here in this hospital.
"Then of course there was Lily," she said to herself. "How can I
possibly excuse my treatment of Lily, or not so much my treatment of her
as my attitude toward her? I suppose all this introspection is morbid,
but having been brought up sharp like this and having been planked down
on this bed of interminable sickness, who wouldn't be morbid? It's
better to have it out with myself now, lest when I emerge from here--for
incredible as it seems just at present I certainly shall emerge one fine
morning--I start being introspective instead of getting down to the hard
facts of earning a living and finding my way back to England. Lily!" she
went on. "I believe really when I look back at it that I took a cruel
delight in watching Lily's fading. It seemed jolly and cynical to
predestine her to maculation, to regard her as a flower, an almost
inanimate thing that could only be displayed by somebody else and was
incapable of developing herself. Yet in the end she did develop herself.
I was very ill then; but when I was in the clinic at Rio I had none of
the sensations that I have now. What sensations did I have, then?
Mostly, I believe, they were worries about Lily because she did not come
to see me. Strange that something so essentially insignificant as Lily
could have created such a catastrophe for Michael, and that I, when she
went her own way, let her drop as easily as a piece of paper from a
carriage. The fact was that, having smirched myself and survived the
smirching, I was unable to fret myself very much over Lily's smirching.
And yet I did fret myself in a queer, irrational way. But what use to
continue? I behaved badly to Lily, and I can't excuse my attitude
toward her by saying that I behaved badly to myself also."
The longer Sylvia went on with the reconstruction of the past the more
deeply did she feel that she was to blame for everything in it.
"I'm so sorry, Sister; I was talking to myself. I think I must really be
very much better to-day."
The nun hastened to her bedside and asked her what she wanted.
"And yet I had the impudence to resent Arthur's treatment of me," she
cried.
The nun shook her forefinger at Sylvia and retired again to her table at
the end of the ward.
"Why, I deserved a much worse humiliation," Sylvia went on. "And I got
it, too. The fact was that when I ate those rose leaves and became a
woman again I was so elated really that I thought everything I had done
in the shape of an ass had been obliterated by the disenchantment. Ah,
how much, how tremendously I deserve the humiliation which that Russian
officer inflicted. And then mercifully came this fever on top of it, and
I have got to rise from this bed and confront life from an entirely
different point of view. I'm going to start from where I was that
afternoon in Brompton Cemetery, when I was speculating about the human
soul. Obviously, now I look back at it, I was just then beginning to
apprehend that I might,
|
no good
grandmother or wise aunt survived at Kirkham to insist upon it, and the
thing was not done. The man of law did not, however, revert to what was
past remedy, but gave his mind to considering how his client might be
extricated from his existing dilemma with least pain and offence. Mr.
Fairfax had a legal right to the custody of his young kinswoman, but he
had not the conscience to plead his legal right against the long-allowed
use and custom of her friends. If they were reluctant to let her go, and
she were reluctant to come, what then? John Short confessed that Mr.
Carnegie and Bessie herself might give them trouble if they were so
disposed; but he had a reasonable expectation that they would view the
matter through the medium of common sense.
Thus much by way of prelude to the story of Bessie Fairfax's
Vicissitudes, which date from this momentous era of her life.
CHAPTER II.
_THE LAWYER'S LETTER._
"The postman! Run, Jack, and bring the letter."
_The letter_, said Mr. Carnegie; for the correspondence between the
doctor's house and the world outside it was limited. Jack jumped off his
chair at the breakfast-table and rushed to do his father's bidding.
"For mother!" cried he, returning at the speed of a small whirlwind, the
epistle held aloft. Down he clapped it on the table by her plate,
mounted into his chair again, and resumed the interrupted business of
the hour.
Mrs. Carnegie glanced aside at the letter, read the post-mark, and
reflected aloud: "Norminster--who can be writing to us from Norminster?
Some of Bessie's people?"
"The shortest way would be to open the letter and see. Hand it over to
me," said the doctor.
Bessie pricked her ears; but Mr. Carnegie read the letter to himself,
while his wife was busy replenishing the little mugs that came up in
single file incessantly for more milk. A momentary pause in the wants of
her offspring gave her leisure to notice her husband's visage--a
dusk-red and weather-brown visage at its best, but gathered now into
extraordinary blackness. She looked, but did not speak; the doctor was
the first to speak.
"It is about Bessie--from her grandfather's agent," said he with
suppressed vexation as he replaced the large full sheet in its envelope.
"What about _me_?" cried Bessie in an explosion of natural curiosity.
"Your mother will tell you presently. Mind, boys, you are good to-day,
and don't tire your sister."
So unusual an admonition made the boys stare, and everybody was hushed
with a presentiment of something going to happen that nobody would
approve. Mrs. Carnegie had her conjectures, not far wide of the truth,
and Bessie was conscious of impatience to get the children out of the
way, that she might have her curiosity appeased.
The doctor discerned the insurrection of self in her face, and said,
almost bitterly, "Wait till I am gone, Bessie; you will have all the
rest of your life to think of it. Now, boys, you have done eating; be
off, and get ready for school."
Jack and the rest cleared out of the parlor and pattered up stairs,
Bessie following close on their heels, purposely deaf to her mother's
voice: "You may stay, love." She was hurt and perturbed. An idea of what
was impending had flashed into her mind. After all, her abrupt exit was
convenient to her elders; they could discuss the circumstances more
freely in her absence. Mrs. Carnegie began.
"Well, Thomas, what does this wonderful letter say? I think I can
guess--Bessie is to go home?"
"Home! What place can be home to her if this is not?" rejoined the
doctor, and strode across the room to shut the door on his retreating
progeny, while his wife entered on the perusal of the letter.
It was from Mr. John Short, on the business that we wot of. To Mr.
Carnegie it read like a cool intimation that Bessie Fairfax was
wanted--was become of importance at Abbotsmead, and must break with her
present associations. It would have been impossible to convey in
palatable words the requisition that the lawyer was put upon making; but
to Mrs. Carnegie the demand did not sound harsh, nor the manner of it
insolent. She had always kept her mind in a state of preparedness for
some such change, and the only sense of annoyance that smote her was for
her own shortcomings--for how she had suffered Bessie to be almost a
servant to her own children, and how she could neither speak French nor
play on the piano.
The doctor pooh-poohed her remorse. "You have done the best for her you
could, Jane. What right has her grandfather to expect anything? He left
her on your hands without a penny."
"Bessie has been worth more than she costs, if that were the way to look
at it. But she will have to leave us now; she will have to go."
"Yes, she will have to go. But the old gentleman shall never deny our
share in her."
"The future will rest with Bessie herself."
"And she has a good heart and a will of her own. She will be a woman
with brains, whether she can play on the piano or not. Don't fret
yourself, Jane, for any fancied neglect of Bessie."
"I am sadly grieved for her, Thomas; she will be sent to school, and
what a life she will lead, dear child, so backward in her learning!"
"Nonsense! She is a bit of very good company. Wherever Bessie goes she
will hold her own. She has plenty of character, and, take my word for
it, character tells more in the long-run than talking French. There is
the gig at the gate, and I must be off, though Bessie was starting for
Woldshire by the next post. The letter is not one to be answered on the
spur of the moment; acknowledge it, and say that it shall be answered
shortly."
With a comfortable kiss the doctor bade his wife good-bye for the day,
admonishing her not to fall a-crying with Bessie over what could not be
remedied. And so he left her with the tears in her eyes already. She sat
a few minutes feeling rather than reflecting, then with the lawyer's
letter in her hands went up stairs, calling softly as she went, "Bessie
dear, where are you?"
"Here, mother, in my own room;" and Bessie appeared in the doorway
handling a scarlet feather-brush with which she was accustomed to dust
her small property in books and ornaments each morning after the
housemaid had performed her heavier task.
Mrs. Carnegie entered with her, and shut the door; for the two-leaved
lattice was wide open, and the muslin curtains were blowing half across
the tiny triangular nook under the thatch, which had been Bessie
Fairfax's "own room" ever since she came to live in the doctor's house.
Bessie was very fond of it, very proud of keeping it neat. There were
assembled all the personal memorials of no moneysworth that had been
rescued from the rectory-sale after her father's death; two miniatures,
not valuable as works of art, but precious as likenesses of her parents;
a faint sketch in water-colors of Kirkham Church and Parsonage House,
and another sketch of Abbotsmead; an Indian work-box, a China bowl, two
jars and a dish, very antiquated, and diffusing a soft perfume of
roses; and about a hundred and fifty volumes of books, selected by his
widow from the rectory library, for their binding rather than their
contents, and perhaps not very suitable for a girl's collection. But
Bessie set great store by them; and though the ancient Fathers of the
Church accumulated dust on their upper shelves, and the sages of Greece
and Rome were truly sealed books to her, she could have given a fair
account of her Shakespeare and of the Aldine Poets to a judicious
catechist, and of many another book with a story besides; even of her
Hume, Gibbon, Goldsmith, and Rollin, and of her Scott, perennially
delightful. She was, in fact, no dunce, though she had not been
disciplined in the conventional routine of education; and as for
training in the higher sense, she could not have grown into a more
upright or good girl under any guidance, than under that of her tender
and careful mother.
And in appearance what was she like, this Bessie Fairfax, subjected so
early to the caprices of fortune? It is not to be pretended that she
reached the heroic standard. Mr. Carnegie said she bade fair to be very
handsome, but she was at the angular age when the framework of a girl's
bones might stand almost as well for a boy's, and there was, indeed,
something brusque, frank, and boyish in Bessie's air and aspect at this
date. She walked well, danced well, rode well--looked to the manner born
when mounted on the little bay mare, which carried the doctor on his
second journeys of a day, and occasionally carried Bessie in his company
when he was going on a round, where, at certain points, rest and
refreshment were to be had for man and beast. Her figure had not the
promise of majestic height, but it was perfectly proportioned, and her
face was a capital letter of introduction. Feature by feature, it was,
perhaps, not classical, but never was a girl nicer looking taken
altogether; the firm sweetness of her mouth, the clear candor of her
blue eyes, the fair breadth of her forehead, from which her light
golden-threaded hair stood off in a wavy halo, and the downy peach of
her round cheeks made up a most kissable, agreeable face. And there were
sense and courage in it as well as sweetness; qualities which in her
peculiar circumstances would not be liable to rust for want of using.
The mistiness of tears clouded Bessie's eyes when her mother, without
preamble, announced the purport of the letter in her hand.
"It has come at last, Bessie, the recall that I have kept you in mind
was sure to come sooner or later; not that we shall be any the less
grieved to lose you, dear. Father will miss his clever little Bessie
sadly,"--here the kind mother paused for emotion, and Bessie, athirst to
know all, asked if she might read the letter.
The letter was not written for her reading, and Mrs. Carnegie hesitated;
but Bessie's promptitude overruled her doubt in a manner not unusual
with them. She took possession of the document, and sat down in the deep
window-seat to study it; and she had read but a little way when there
appeared signs in her face that it did not please her. Her mother knew
these signs well; the stubborn set of the lips, the resolute depression
of the level brows, much darker than her hair, the angry sparkle of her
eyes, which never did sparkle but when her temper was ready to flash out
in impetuous speech. Mrs. Carnegie spoke to forewarn her against rash
declarations.
"It is of no use to say you _won't_, Bessie, for you _must_. Your father
said, before he went out, that we have no choice but to let you go."
Bessie did not condescend to any rejoinder yet. She was reading over
again some passage of the letter by which she felt herself peculiarly
affronted. She continued to the end of it, and it was perhaps lucky that
her tenderness had then so far prevailed over her wrath that she could
only give way to tears of self-pity, instead of voice to the defiant
words that had trembled on her tongue a minute ago.
"I did hope, dear, that you would not take it so much to heart," said
her mother, comforting her. "But it is mortifying to think of being sent
to school. What a pity we have let time go on till you are fifteen, and
can neither speak a word of French nor play a note on the piano!"
Bessie had so often heard Mr. Carnegie's opinion of these
accomplishments that her mother's regrets wore a comic aspect to her
mind, and between laughing and crying she protested that she did not
care, she should not try to improve to please _them_--meaning her
Woldshire kinsfolk mentioned in the lawyer's letter.
"You have good common-sense, Bessie, and I am sure you will use it,"
said her mother with persuasive gravity. "If you show off with your
tempers, that will give a color to their notion that you have been badly
brought up. You must do us and yourself what credit you can, going
amongst strangers. I am not afraid for you, unless you set up your
little back, and determine to be downright naughty and perverse."
Bessie's countenance was not promising as she gave ear to these
premonitions. Her upper lip was short, and her nether lip pressed
against it with a scorny indignation. Her back was very much up, indeed,
in the moral sense indicated by her mother, and as these inauspicious
moods of hers were apt to last the longer the longer they were reasoned
with, her mother prudently refrained from further disquisition. She bade
her go about her ordinary business as if nothing had happened, and
Bessie did go about these duties with a quiet practical obedience to law
and order which bore out the testimony to her good common-sense. She
thought of Mr. John Short's letter, it is true, and once she stood for a
minute considering the sketch of Abbotsmead which hung above her chest
of drawers. "Gloomy dull old place," was her criticism on it; but even
as she looked, there ensued the reflection that the sun _must_ shine
upon it sometimes, though the artist had drawn it as destitute of light
and shade as the famous portrait of Queen Elizabeth, when she wished to
be painted fair, and was painted merely insipid.
CHAPTER III.
_THE COMMUNITY OF BEECHHURST._
The lawyer's letter from Norminster had thrust aside all minor
interests. Even the school-feast that was to be at the rectory that
afternoon was forgotten, until the boys reminded their mother of it at
dinner-time. "Bessie will take you," said Mrs. Carnegie, and Bessie
acquiesced. The one thing she found impossible to-day was to sit still.
We will go to the school-feast with the children. The opportunity will
be good for introducing to the reader a few persons of chief
consideration in the rural community where Bessie Fairfax acquired some
of her permanent views of life.
Beechhurst Rectory was the most charming rectory-house on the Forest. It
would be delightful to add that the rector was as charming as his abode;
but Beechhurst did not call itself happy in its pastor at this
moment--the Rev. Askew Wiley. Mr. Wiley's immediate predecessor--the
Rev. John Hutton--had been a pattern for country parsons. Hale, hearty,
honest as the daylight; knowing in sport, in farming, in gardening; bred
at Westminster and Oxford; the third son of a family distinguished in
the Church; happily married, having sons of his own, and sufficient
private fortune to make life easy both in the present and the future.
Unluckily for Beechhurst, he preferred the north to the south country,
and, after holding the benefice a little over one year, he exchanged it
against Otterburn, a moorland border parish of Cumberland, whence Mr.
Wiley had for some time past been making strenuous efforts to escape.
Both were crown livings, but Otterburn stood for twice as much in the
king's books as Beechhurst. Mr. Wiley was, however, willing to pay the
forfeiture of half his income to get away from it. He had failed to make
friends with the farmers, his principal parishioners, and the vulgar
squabbles of Otterburn had grown into such a notorious scandal that the
bishop was only too thankful to promote his removal. Mrs. Wiley's health
was the ostensible reason, and though Otterburn knew better, Beechhurst
accepted it in good faith, and gave its new rector a cordial
welcome--none the less cordial that his wife came on the scene a robust
and capable woman, ready and fit for parish work, and with no air of the
fragile invalid it had been led to expect.
But men are shrewd on the Forest as on the Border, and the Rev. Askew
Wiley was soon at a discount. His appearance was eminently clerical, but
no two of his congregation formed the same opinion of what he was
besides, unless the opinion that they did not like him. It was a clear
case of Dr. Fell; for there was nothing in his life to except to, and
in his character only a deficiency of courage. _Only?_ But
stay--consider what a crop of servile faults spring from a deficiency of
courage.
"He do so beat the devil about the bush that there is no knowing where
to have him," was the dictum early enunciated by a village Solomon,
which went on to be verified more and more, until the new rector was as
much despised on the Forest as on the Border. But he had a different
race to deal with. At Otterburn the rude statesmen provoked and defied
him with loud contempt; at Beechhurst his congregation dwindled down to
the gentlefolks, who tolerated him out of respect to his office, and to
the aged poor, who received a weekly dole of bread, bequeathed by some
long-ago benefactor; and these were mostly women. Mr. Carnegie was a
fair sample of the men, and he made no secret of his aversion.
The Reverend Askew Wiley, see him as he paces the lawn, his supple back
writhed just a little towards my lady deferentially, his head just a
little on one side, lending her an ear. By the gait of him he is looking
another way. Yes; for now my lady turns, he turns too, and they halt
front to front; his pallid visage half averted from her observation, his
glittering eyes roving with bold stealth over the populous garden, and
his thin-lipped, scarlet mouth working and twisting incessantly in the
covert of his thick-set beard.
My lady speaks with an impatience scarcely controlled. She is the great
lady of Beechhurst, the Dowager Lady Latimer, in the local estimation a
very great lady indeed; once a leader in society, now retired from it,
and living obscurely on her rich dower in the Forest, with almsdeeds and
works of patronage and improvement for her pleasure and her occupation.
My lady always loved her own way, but she had worked harmoniously with
Mr. Hutton through his year's incumbency. He was sufficient for his
duties, and gave her no opportunity for the exercise of unlawful
authority, no ground for encroachments, no room for interference. But it
was very different with poor Mr. Wiley. Everybody knew that he was a
trial to her. He could not hold his own against her propensity to
dictate. He deferred to her, and contrived to thwart her, to do the very
thing she would not have done, and to do it in the most obnoxious way.
The puzzle was--could he help it? Was he one of those tactless persons
who are for ever blundering, or had he the will to assert himself, and
not the pluck to do it boldly? His refuge was in round-about
manoeuvres, and my lady felt towards him as those intolerant
Cumberland statesmen felt before their enmity made the bleak moorland
too hot for him. He was called an able man, but his foibles were
precisely of the sort to create in the large-hearted of the gentle sex
an almost masculine antipathy to their spiritual pastor. Bessie Fairfax
could not bear him, and she could render a reason. Mr. Wiley received
pupils to read at his house, and he had refused to receive a dear
comrade of hers. It was his rule to receive none but the sons of
gentlemen. Young Musgrave was the son of a farmer on the Forest, who
called cousins with the young Carnegies. As the connection was wide,
perhaps the vigorous dislike of more important persons than Bessie
Fairfax is sufficiently accounted for. All the world is agreed that a
slight wound to men's self-love rankles much longer than a mortal
injury.
It is not, however, to be supposed that the Beechhurst people spited
themselves so far as to keep away from the rector's school-treat because
they did not love the rector. (By the by, it was not his treat, but only
buns and tea by subscription distributed in his grounds, with the
privilege of admittance to the subscribers.) The orthodox gentility of
the neighborhood assembled in force for the occasion when the sun shone
upon it as it shone to-day, and the entertainment was an event for
children of all classes. If the richer sort did not care for buns, they
did for games; and the Carnegie boys were so eager to lose none of the
sport that they coaxed Bessie to take time by the forelock, and
presented themselves almost first on the scene. Mrs. Wiley, ready and
waiting out of doors to welcome her more distinguished guests, met a
trio of the little folks, in Bessie's charge, trotting round the end of
the house to reach the lawn.
"Always in good time, Bessie Carnegie," said she. "But is not your
mother coming?"
"No, thank you, Mrs. Wiley," said Bessie with prim decorum.
"By the by, that is not your name. What is your name, Bessie?"
"Elizabeth Fairfax."
"Ah! yes; now I remember--Elizabeth Fairfax. And is your uncle pretty
well? I suppose we shall see him later in the day? He ought to look in
upon us before we break up. There! run away to the children in the
orchard, and leave the lawn clear."
Bessie accepted her dismissal gladly, thankful to escape the
catechetical ordeal that would have ensued had there been leisure for
it. She was almost as shy of the rector's wife as of the rector. Mrs.
Wiley had a brusque, absent manner, and it was a trick of hers to expose
her young acquaintance to a fire of questions, of which she as regularly
forgot the answers. She had often affronted Bessie Fairfax by asking her
real name, and in the next breath calling her affably Bessie Carnegie,
the doctor's step-daughter, niece or other little kinswoman whom he kept
as a help in his house for charity's sake.
Bessie had but faint recollections of the rectory as her home, for since
her father's death she had never gone there except as a visitor on
public days. But the tradition was always in her memory that once she
had lived in those pleasant rooms, had run up and down those broad sunny
stairs, and played on the spacious lawns of that mossy, tree-shadowed
garden. In the orchard had assembled, besides the children, a group of
their ex-teachers--Miss Semple and her sister, the village dressmakers,
Miss Genet, the daughter at the post-office, and the two Miss
Mittens--well-behaved and well-instructed young persons whom Mr. Wiley's
predecessors had been pleased to employ, but for whom Mrs. Wiley found
no encouragement. She had the ordering of the school, and preferred
gentlewomen for her lay-sisters. She had them, and only herself knew
what trouble in keeping them punctual to their duty and in keeping the
peace amongst them. There was dear fat Miss Buff, who had been right
hand in succession to Mr. Fairfax, Mr. Roebuck and Mr. Hutton, who
adored supremacy, and exercised it with the easy sway of long usage; she
felt herself pushed on one side by that ardent young Irish recruit, Miss
Thusy O'Flynn, whose peculiar temper no one cared to provoke, and who
ruled by the terror of it with a caprice that was trying in the last
degree. Miss Buff gave way to her, but not without grumbling, appealing,
and threatening to withdraw her services. But she loved her work in the
school and in the choir, and could not bear to punish herself or let
Miss Thusy triumph to the extent of driving her into private life; so
she adhered to her charge in the hope of better days, when she would
again be mistress paramount. And the same did Miss Wort--also one of the
old governing body--but from higher motives, which she was not afraid to
publish: she distrusted Mr. Wiley's doctrine, and she feared that he was
inclined to truckle to the taste for ecclesiastical decoration
manifested by certain lambs of his flock who doted on private
theatricals and saw no harm in balls. She adhered to her post, that the
truth might not suffer for want of a witness; and if the rising
generation of girls in preposterous hats had taken her for their pattern
of a laborious teacher, true to time as the school-bell itself, Mrs.
Wiley's preference for young ladies over young persons would have been
better justified, and Lady Latimer would not have been able to find
fault with the irregular attendance of the children, to express her
opinion that the school was not what it might be, and to throw out hints
that she must set about reforming it unless it soon reformed itself.
Bessie Fairfax was on speaking terms with nearly everybody, and Miss
Mitten called her the moment she appeared to help in setting a ring for
"drop hankercher." Two of the little Carnegies merrily joined hands with
the rest, and they were just about to begin, Jack being unanimously
nominated as first chase for his dexterous running, when a shrill voice
called to them peremptorily to desist.
"Why have you fallen out of rank? You ought to have kept your ranks
until you had sung grace before tea. Get into line again quickly, for
here come the buns;" and there was Miss Thusy O'Flynn, perched on a
mole-hill, in an attitude of command, waving her parasol and
demonstrating how they were to stand.
"The buns, indeed! It is time, I'm sure," muttered Miss Buff,
substantial in purple silk and a black lace bonnet. Her rival was a
pretty, red-haired, resolute little girl, very prettily dressed, who
showed to no disadvantage on the mole-hill. But Miss Buff could see no
charm she had; she it was who had given leave for a game, to pass the
time before tea. The children had been an hour in the orchard, and the
feast was still delayed.
"Perhaps the kettle does not boil," suggested Miss Wort, indulgently.
"We are kept waiting for Miss O'Flynn's aunt," rejoined Miss Buff. "Here
she comes, with our angelical parson, and Lady Latimer, out in the cold,
walking behind them."
Bessie Fairfax looked up. Lady Latimer was her supreme admiration. She
did not think that another lady so good, so gracious, so beautiful,
enriched the world. If there did, that lady was not the Viscountess
Poldoody. Bessie had a lively sense of fun, and the Irish dame was a
figure to call a smile to a more guarded face than hers--a short squab
figure that waddled, and was surmounted by a negative visage composed of
pulpy, formless features, and a brown wig of false curls--glaringly
false, for they were the first thing about her that fixed the eye,
though there were many matters besides to fascinate an observer with
leisure to look again. She seemed, however, a most free and cheerful old
lady, and talked in a loud, mellow voice, with a pleasant touch of the
brogue. She had been a popular Dublin singer and actress in her day--a
day some forty years ago--but only Lady Latimer and herself in the
rectory garden that afternoon were aware of the fact.
Grand people possessed an irresistible attraction for Mr. Wiley. The
Viscountess Poldoody had taken a house in his parish for the fine
season, and came to his church with her niece; he had called upon her,
and now escorted her to the orchard with a fulsome assiduity which was
betrayed to those who followed by the uneasy writhing of his back and
shoulders. With many complimentary words he invited her to distribute
the prizes to the children.
"If your ladyship will so honor them, it will be a day in their lives to
remember."
"Give away the prizes? Oh yes, if ye'll show me which choild to give 'em
to," replied the viscountess with a good-humored readiness. Then, with
a propriety of feeling which was thought very nice in her, she added, in
the same natural, distinct manner, standing and looking round as she
spoke:
"But is it not my Lady Latimer's right? What should I know of your
children, who am only a summer visitor?"
Lady Latimer acknowledged the courteous disclaimer with that exquisite
smile which had been the magic of her loveliness always. The children
would appreciate the kindness of a stranger, she said; and with a
perfect grace yielded the precedence, and at the same time resigned the
opportunity she had always enjoyed before of giving the children a
monition once a year on their duty to God, their parents, their pastors
and masters, elders and betters, and neighbors in general. Whether my
lady felt aggrieved or not nobody could discern; but the people about
were aggrieved for her, and Miss Buff confided to a friend, in a
semi-audible whisper of intense exasperation, that the rector was the
biggest muff and toady that ever it had been her misfortune to know.
Miss Buff, it will be perceived, liked strong terms; but, as she justly
pleaded in extenuation of a taste for which she was reproached, what was
the use of there being strong terms in the language if they were not to
be applied on suitable occasions?
The person, however, on whom this incident made the deepest impression
was Bessie Fairfax. Bessie admired Lady Latimer because she was
admirable. She had listened too often to Mr. Carnegie's radical talk to
have any reverence for rank and title unadorned; but her love of beauty
and goodness made her look up with enthusiastic respect to the one noble
lady she knew, of whom even the doctor spoke as "a great woman." The
children sang their grace and sat down to tea, and Lady Latimer stood
looking on, her countenance changed to a stern gravity; and Bessie,
quite diverted from the active business of the feast, stood looking at
her and feeling sorry. The child's long abstracted gaze ended by drawing
my lady's attention. She spoke to her, and Bessie started out of her
reverie, wide-awake in an instant.
"Is there nothing for you to do, Bessie Fairfax, that you stand musing?
Bring me a chair into the shade of the old walnut tree over yonder. I
have something to say to you. Do you remember what we talked about that
wet morning last winter at my house?"
"Yes, my lady," replied Bessie, and brought the chair with prompt
obedience.
On the occasion alluded to Bessie had been caught in a heavy rain while
riding with the doctor. He had deposited her in Lady Latimer's kitchen,
to be dried and comforted by the housekeeper while he went on his
farther way; and my lady coming into the culinary quarter while Bessie
was there, had given her a delicious cheese-cake from a tin just hot out
of the oven, and had then entered into conversation with her about her
likes and dislikes, concluding with the remark that she had in her the
making of an excellent National School mistress, and ought to be trained
for that special walk in life. Bessie had carried home a report of what
Lady Latimer had said; but neither her father nor mother admired the
suggestion, and it had not been mentioned again. Now, however, being
comfortably seated, my lady revived it in a serious, methodical way,
Bessie standing before her listening and blushing with a confusion that
increased every moment. She was thinking of the letter from Norminster,
but she did not venture yet to arrest Lady Latimer's flow of advice. My
lady did not discern that anything was amiss. She was accustomed to have
her counsels heard with deference. From advice she passed into
exhortation, assuming that Bessie was, of course, destined to some sort
of work for a living--to dressmaking, teaching or service in some
shape--and encouraging her to make advances for her future, that it
might not overtake her unprepared. Lady Latimer had not come into the
Forest until some years after the Reverend Geoffry Fairfax's death, and
she had no knowledge of Bessie's birth, parentage and connections; but
she had a principle against poor women pining in the shadow of gentility
when they could help themselves by honest endeavors; and also, she had a
plan for raising the quality of National School teaching by introducing
into the ranks of the teachers young gentlewomen unprovided by fortune.
She advised no more than she would have done, and all she said was good,
if Bessie's circumstances had been what she assumed. But Bessie,
conscious that they were about to suffer a change, felt impelled at
last to set Lady Latimer right. Her shy face mitigated the effect of her
speech.
"I have kindred in Woldshire, my lady, who want me. I am the only child
in this generation, and my grandfather Fairfax says that it is necessary
for me to go back to my own people."
Lady Latimer's face suddenly reflected a tint of Bessie's. But no
after-thought was in Bessie's mind, her simplicity was genuine. She
esteemed it praise to be selected as a fit child to teach children; and,
besides, whatever my lady had said at this period would have sounded
right in Bessie's ears. When she had uttered her statement, she waited
till Lady Latimer spoke.
"Do you belong to the Fairfaxes of Kirkham? Is your grandfather Richard
Fairfax of Abbotsmead?" she said in a quick voice, with an inflection of
surprise.
"Yes, my lady. My father was Geoffry, the third son; my mother was
Elizabeth Bulmer."
"I knew Abbotsmead many years ago. It will be a great change for you.
How old are you, Bessie? Fourteen, fifteen?"
"Fifteen, my lady, last birthday, the fourth of March."
Lady Latimer thought to herself, "Here is an exact little girl!" Then
she said aloud, "It would have been better for you if your grandfather
had recalled you when you were younger."
Bessie was prepared to hear this style of remark, and to repudiate the
implication. She replied almost with warmth, "My lady, I have lost
nothing by being left here. Beechhurst will always be home to me. If I
had my choice I would not go to Kirkham."
Lady Latimer thought again what a nice voice Bessie had, and regarded
her with a growing interest, that arose in part out of her own
recollections. She questioned her concerning her father's death, and the
circumstances of her adoption by Mr. and Mrs. Carnegie, and reflected
that, happily, she was too simple, too much of a child yet, for any but
family attachments--happily, because, though Bessie had no experience to
measure it by, there would be a wide difference between her position as
the doctor's adopted daughter amongst a house full of children, and as
heiress presumptive of Mr. Fairfax of Abbotsmead.
"Have you ever seen Abbotsmead, Bessie?" she said.
"No, my lady, I have never been in Woldshire since I was a baby. I was
born at Kirkham vicarage, my grandfather Bulmer's house, but I was not a
year old when we came
|
have just found in Mr.
Ruskin’s last volume of “The Stones of Venice” (the Sea Stories). As I
do not _always_ subscribe to his theories of Art, I am the more
delighted with this anticipation of a moral agreement between us.
“We have much studied and much perfected of late, the great civilised
invention of the division of labour, only we give it a false name. It is
not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided, but the men:—divided
into mere segments of men,—broken into small fragments and crumbs of
life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man
is not enough to make a pin or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the
point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now, it is a good and desirable
thing truly to make many pins in a day, but if we could only see with
what crystal sand their points are polished—sand of human soul, much to
be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is,—we should think
there might be some loss in it also; and the great cry that rises from
all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace-blast, is all in
very deed for this,—that we manufacture everything there except men,—we
blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape
pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single
living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages; and all the
evil to which that cry is urging our myriads, can be met only in one
way,—not by teaching nor preaching; for to teach them is but to show
them their misery; and to preach to them—if we do nothing more than
preach,—is to mock at it. It can be met only by a right understanding on
the part of all classes, of what kinds of labour are good for men,
raising them and making them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such
convenience, or beauty or cheapness, as is to be got only by the
degradation of the workman, and by equally determined demand for the
products and results of a healthy and ennobling labour.”....
“We are always in these days trying to separate the two (intellect and
work). We want one man to be always thinking, and another to be always
working; and we call one a gentleman and the other an operative;
whereas, the workman ought to be often thinking, and the thinker often
working, and both should be gentlemen in the best sense. It is only by
labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour
can be made happy; and the two cannot be separated with impunity.”
Wordsworth, however, had said the same thing before either of us:
“Our life is turn’d
Out of her course wherever man is made
An offering or a sacrifice,—a tool
Or implement,—a passive thing employed
As a brute mean, without acknowledgment
Of common right or interest in the end,
Used or abused as selfishness may prompt.
Say what can follow for a rational soul
Perverted thus, but weakness in all good
And strength in evil?”
[Illustration]
And this leads us to the consideration of another mistake, analogous
with the above, but referable in its results chiefly to the higher, or
what Mr. Ruskin calls the _thinking_, classes of the community.
It is not good for us to have all that we value of worldly material
things in the form of money. It is the most vulgar form in which value
can be invested. Not only books, pictures, and all beautiful things are
better; but even jewels and trinkets are sometimes to be preferred to
mere hard money. Lands and tenements are good, as involving duties; but
still what is valuable in the market sense should sometimes take the
ideal and the beautiful form, and be dear and lovely and valuable for
its own sake as well as for its convertible worth in hard gold. I think
the character would be apt to deteriorate when all its material
possessions take the form of money, and when money becomes valuable for
its own sake, or as the mere instrument or representative of power.
[Illustration]
4.
We are told in a late account of Laura Bridgeman, the blind, deaf, and
dumb girl, that her instructor once endeavoured to explain the
difference between the material and the immaterial, and used the word
“soul.” She interrupted to ask, “What is soul?”
“That which thinks, feels, hopes, loves,——”
“And _aches_?” she added eagerly.
[Illustration]
5.
I was reading to-day in the Notes to Boswell’s Life of Johnson that “it
is a theory which every one knows to be _false in fact_, that virtue in
real life is always productive of happiness, and vice of misery.” I
should say that all my experience teaches me that the position is not
false but true: that virtue _does_ produce happiness, and vice _does_
produce misery. But let us settle the meaning of the words. By
_happiness_, we do not necessarily mean a state of worldly prosperity.
By _virtue_, we do not mean a series of good actions which may or may
not be rewarded, and, if done for reward, lose the essence of virtue.
Virtue, according to my idea, is the habitual sense of right, and the
habitual courage to act up to that sense of right, combined with
benevolent sympathies, the charity which thinketh no evil. This union of
the highest conscience and the highest sympathy fulfils my notion of
virtue. Strength is essential to it; weakness incompatible with it.
Where virtue is, the noblest faculties and the softest feelings are
predominant; the whole being is in that state of harmony which I call
happiness. Pain may reach it, passion may disturb it, but there is
always a glimpse of blue sky above our head; as we ascend in dignity of
being, we ascend in happiness, which is, in my sense of the word, the
feeling which connects us with the infinite and with God.
And vice is necessarily misery: for that fluctuation of principle, that
diseased craving for excitement, that weakness out of which springs
falsehood, that suspicion of others, that discord with ourselves, with
the absence of the benevolent propensities,—these constitute misery as a
state of being. The most miserable person I ever met with in my life had
12,000_l._ a year; a cunning mind, dexterous to compass its own ends;
very little conscience, not enough, one would have thought, to vex with
any retributive pang; but it was the absence of goodness that made the
misery, obvious and hourly increasing. The perpetual kicking against the
pricks, the unreasonable _exigéance_ with regard to things, without any
high standard with regard to persons,—these made the misery. I can speak
of it as misery who had it daily in my sight for five long years.
I have had arguments, if it be not presumption to call them so, with
Carlyle on this point. It appeared to me that he confounded happiness
with pleasure, with self-indulgence. He set aside with a towering scorn
the idea of living for the sake of happiness, so called: he styled this
philosophy of happiness, “the philosophy of the frying-pan.” But this
was like the reasoning of a child, whose idea of happiness is plenty of
sugar-plums. Pleasure, pleasurable sensation, is, as the world goes,
something to thank God for. I should be one of the last to undervalue
it; I hope I am one of the last to live for it; and pain is pain, a
great evil, which I do not like either to inflict or suffer. But
happiness lies beyond either pain or pleasure—is as sublime a thing as
virtue itself, indivisible from it; and under this point of view it
seems a perilous mistake to separate them.
[Illustration]
6.
Dante places in his lowest Hell those who in life were melancholy and
repining without a cause, thus profaning and darkening God’s blessed
sunshine—_Tristi fummo nel’ aer dolce_; and in some of the ancient
Christian systems of virtues and vices, Melancholy is unholy, and a
vice; Cheerfulness is holy, and a virtue.
Lord Bacon also makes one of the characteristics of moral health and
goodness to consist in “a constant quick sense of felicity, and a noble
satisfaction.”
What moments, hours, days of exquisite felicity must Christ, our
Redeemer, have had, though it has become too customary to place him
before us only in the attitude of pain and sorrow! Why should he be
always crowned with thorns, bleeding with wounds, weeping over the world
he was appointed to heal, to save, to reconcile with God? The radiant
head of Christ in Raphael’s Transfiguration should rather be our ideal
of Him who came “to bind up the broken-hearted, to preach the acceptable
year of the Lord.”
[Illustration]
7.
A profound intellect is weakened and narrowed in general power and
influence by a limited range of sympathies. I think this is especially
true of C——: excellent, honest, gifted as he is, he does not do half the
good he might do, because his sympathies are so confined. And then he
wants gentleness: he does not seem to acknowledge that “the wisdom that
is from above is _gentle_.” He is a man who carries his bright intellect
as a light in a dark-lantern; he sees only the objects on which he
chooses to throw that blaze of light: those he sees vividly, but, as it
were, exclusively. All other things, though lying near, are dark,
because perversely he _will_ not throw the light of his mind upon them.
[Illustration]
8.
Wilhelm von Humboldt says, “Old letters lose their vitality.”
Not true. It is because they retain their vitality that it is so
dangerous to keep some letters,—so wicked to burn others.
[Illustration]
9.
A Man thinks himself, and is thought by others to be insulted when
another man gives him the lie. It is an offence to be retracted at once,
or only to be effaced in blood. To give a woman the lie is not
considered in the same unpardonable light by herself or others,—is
indeed a slight thing. Now, whence this difference? Is not truth as
dear to a woman as to a man? Is the virtue itself, or the reputation of
it, less necessary to the woman than to the man? If not, what causes
this distinction,—one so injurious to the morals of both sexes?
[Illustration]
10.
It is good for us to look up, morally and mentally. If I were tired I
would get some help to hold my head up, as Moses got some one to hold up
his arms while he prayed.
“Ce qui est moins que moi m’éteint et m’assomme; ce qui est à côté de
moi m’ennuie et me fatigue. II n’y a que ce qui est au-dessus de moi qui
me soutienne et m’arrache à moi-même.”
[Illustration]
11.
There is an order of writers who, with characters perverted or hardened
through long practice of iniquity, yet possess an inherent divine sense
of the good and the beautiful, and a passion for setting it forth, so
that men’s hearts glow with the tenderness and the elevation which live
not in the heart of the writer,—only in his head.
And there is another class of writers who are excellent in the social
relations of life, and kindly and true in heart, yet who,
intellectually, have a perverted pleasure in the ridiculous and
distorted, the cunning, the crooked, the vicious,—who are never weary of
holding up before us finished representations of folly and rascality.
Now, which is the worst of these? the former, who do mischief by making
us mistrust the good? or the latter, who degrade us by making us
familiar with evil?
[Illustration]
12.
“Thought and theory,” said Wordsworth, “must precede all action that
moves to salutary purposes. Yet action is nobler in itself than either
thought or theory.”
Yes, and no. What we _act_ has its consequences on earth. What we
_think_, its consequences in heaven. It is not without reason that
action should be preferred before barren thought; but all action which
in its result is worth any thing, must result from thought. So the old
rhymester hath it:
“He that good thinketh good may do,
And God will help him there unto;
For was never good work wrought,
Without beginning of good thought.”
The result of impulse is the positive; the result of consideration the
negative. The positive is essentially and abstractedly better than the
negative, though relatively to facts and circumstances it may not be the
most expedient.
On my observing how often I had had reason to regret not having followed
the first impulse, O. G. said, “In _good_ minds the first impulses are
generally right and true, and, when altered or relinquished from regard
to expediency arising out of complicated relations, I always feel sorry,
for they remain right. Our first impulses always lean to the positive,
our second thoughts to the negative; and I have no respect for the
negative,—it is the vulgar side of every thing.”
On the other hand, it must be conceded, that one who stands endowed with
great power and with great responsibilities in the midst of a thousand
duties and interests, can no longer take things in this simple fashion;
for the good first impulse, in its flow, meets, perhaps, some rock, and
splits upon it; it recoils on the heart, and becomes abortive. Or the
impulse to do good _here_ becomes injury _there_, and we are forced to
calculate results; we cannot trust to them.
[Illustration]
I have not sought to deduce my principles from conventional notions of
expediency, but have believed that out of the steady adherence to
certain fixed principles, the right and the expedient _must_ ensue, and
I believe it still. The moment one begins to solder right and wrong
together, one’s conscience becomes like a piece of plated goods.
[Illustration]
It requires merely passive courage and strength to resist, and in some
cases to overcome evil. But it requires more—it needs bravery and
self-reliance and surpassing faith—to act out the true inspirations of
your intelligence and the true impulses of your heart.
[Illustration]
Out of the attempt to harmonise our actual life with our aspirations,
our experience with our faith, we make poetry,—or, it may be, religion.
[Illustration]
F—— used the phrase “_stung into heroism_” as Shelley said, “_cradled
into poetry_,” by wrong.
[Illustration]
13.
Coleridge calls the personal existence of the Evil Principle, “a mere
fiction, or, at best, an allegory supported by a few popular phrases and
figures of speech, used incidentally or dramatically by the
Evangelists.” And he says, that “the existence of a personal,
intelligent, Evil Being, the counterpart and antagonist of God, is in
direct contradiction to the most express declarations of Holy Writ.
‘_Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?_’—Amos,
iii. 6. ‘_I make peace and create evil._’—Isaiah, xlv. 7. This is the
deep mystery of the abyss of God.”
Do our theologians go with him here? I think not: yet, as a theologian,
Coleridge is constantly appealed to by Churchmen.
[Illustration]
14.
“We find (in the Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians), every where
instilled as the essence of all well-being and well-doing, (without
which the wisest public and political constitution is but a lifeless
formula, and the highest powers of individual endowment profitless or
pernicious,) the spirit of a divine sympathy with the happiness and
rights,—with the peculiarities, gifts, graces, and endowments of other
minds, which alone, whether in the family or in the Church, can impart
unity and effectual working together for good in the communities of
men.”
“The Christian religion was, in fact, a charter of freedom to the whole
human race.”—_Thom’s Discourses on St. Paul’s Epistle to the
Corinthians._
And this is the true Catholic spirit,—the spirit and the teaching of
Paul,—in contradistinction to the Roman Catholic spirit,—the spirit and
tendency of Peter, which stands upon forms, which has no respect for
individuality except in so far as it can imprison this individuality
within a creed, or use it to a purpose.
[Illustration]
15.
Dr. Baillie once said that “all his observation of death-beds inclined
him to believe that nature intended that we should go out of the world
as unconscious as we came into it.” “In all my experience,” he added, “I
have not seen one instance in fifty to the contrary.”
Yet even in such a large experience the occurrence of “one instance in
fifty to the contrary” would invalidate the assumption that such was the
law of nature (or “nature’s intention,” which, if it means any thing,
means the same).
The moment in which the spirit meets death is perhaps like the moment in
which it is embraced by sleep. It never, I suppose, happened to any one
to be conscious of the immediate transition from the waking to the
sleeping state.
[Illustration]
16.
_Thoughts on a Sermon._
He is really sublime, this man! with his faith in “the religion of
pain,” and “the deification of sorrow!” But is he therefore right? What
has he preached to us to-day with all the force of eloquence, all the
earnestness of conviction? that “pain is the life of God as shown forth
in Christ;”—“that we are to be crucified to the world and the world to
us.” This perpetual presence of a crucified God between us and a pitying
redeeming Christ, leads many a mourner to the belief that this world is
all a Golgotha of pain, and that we are here to crucify each other. Is
this the law under which we are to live and strive? The missionary
Bridaine accused himself of sin in that he had preached fasting,
penance, and the chastisements of God to wretches steeped in poverty and
dying of hunger; and is there not a similar cruelty and misuse of power
in the servants of Him who came to bind up the broken-hearted, when
they preach the necessity, or at least the theory, of moral pain to
those whose hearts are aching from moral evil?
Surely there is a great difference between the resignation or the
endurance of a truthful, faithful, loving, hopeful spirit, and this
dreadful theology of suffering as the necessary and appointed state of
things! I, for one, will not accept it. Even while most miserable, I
will believe in happiness; even while I do or suffer evil, I will
believe in goodness; even while my eyes see not through tears, I will
believe in the existence of what I do not see—that God is benign, that
nature is fair, that the world is not made as a prison or a penance.
While I stand lost in utter darkness, I will yet wait for the return of
the unfailing dawn,—even though my soul be amazed into such a blind
perplexity that I know not on which side to look for it, and ask “where
is the East? and whence the dayspring?” For the East holds its wonted
place, and the light is withheld only till its appointed time.
God so strengthen me that I may think of pain and sin only as accidental
apparent discords in his great harmonious scheme of good! Then I am
ready—I will take up the cross, and hear it bravely, while I _must_; but
I will lay it down when I can, and in any case I will never lay it on
another.
[Illustration]
17.
If I fear God it is because I love him, and believe in his love; I
cannot conceive myself as standing in fear of any spiritual or human
being in whose love I do not entirely believe. Of that Impersonation of
Evil, who goes about seeking whom he may devour, the image brings to me
no fear, only intense disgust and aversion. Yes, it is because of his
love for me that I fear to offend against God; it is because of his love
that his displeasure must be terrible. And with regard to human beings,
only the being I love has the power to give me pain or inspire me with
fear; only those in whose love I believe, have the power to injure me.
Take away my love, and you take away my fear: take away _their_ love,
and you take away the power to do me any harm which can reach me in the
sources of life and feeling.
18.
Social opinion is like a sharp knife. There are foolish people who
regard it only with terror, and dare not touch or meddle with it. There
are more foolish people, who, in rashness or defiance, seize it by the
blade, and get cut and mangled for their pains. And there are wise
people, who grasp it discreetly and boldly by the handle, and use it to
carve out their own purposes.
[Illustration]
19.
While we were discussing Balzac’s celebrity as a romance writer, she (O.
G.) said, with a shudder: “His laurels are steeped in the tears of
women,—every truth he tells has been wrung in tortures from some woman’s
heart.”
[Illustration]
20.
Sir Walter Scott, writing in 1831, seems to regard it as a terrible
misfortune that the whole burgher class in Scotland should be gradually
preparing for representative reform. “I mean,” he says, “the middle and
respectable classes: when a borough reform comes, which, perhaps, cannot
long be delayed, ministers will no longer return a member for Scotland
from the towns.” “The gentry,” he adds, “will abide longer by _sound_
principles, for they are needy, and desire advancement for themselves,
and appointments for their sons and so on. But this is a very hollow
dependence, and those who sincerely hold ancient opinions are waxing
old,” &c. &c.
With a great deal more, showing the strange moral confusion which his
political bias had caused in his otherwise clear head and honest mind.
The sound principles, then, by which educated people are to abide,—over
the decay of which he laments,—are such as can only be upheld by the
most vulgar self-interest! If a man should utter openly such sentiments
in these days, what should we think of him?
[Illustration]
In the order of absolutism lurk the elements of change and destruction.
In the unrest of freedom the spirit of change and progress.
[Illustration]
21.
“A single life,” said Bacon, “doth well with churchmen, for charity will
hardly water the ground where it must first fill a pool.”
Certainly there are men whose charities are limited, if not dried up, by
their concentrated domestic anxieties and relations. But there are
others whose charities are more diffused, as well as healthier and
warmer, through the strength of their domestic affections.
Wordsworth speaks strongly of the evils of ordaining men as clergymen in
places where they had been born or brought up, or in the midst of their
own relatives: “Their habits, their manners, their talk, their
acquaintanceships, their friendships, and let me say, even their
domestic affections, naturally draw them one way, while their
professional obligations point out another.” If this were true
universally, or even generally, it would be a strong argument in favour
of the celibacy of the Roman Catholic clergy, which certainly is one
element, and not the least, of their power.
[Illustration]
22.
Landor says truly: “Love is a secondary passion in those who love most,
a primary in those who love least: he who is inspired by it in the
strongest degree is inspired by honour in a greater.”
“Whatever is worthy of being loved for any thing is worthy to be
preserved.”
Again:—“Those are the worst of suicides who voluntarily and prepensely
stab or suffocate their own fame, when God hath commanded them to stand
on high for an example.”
“Weak motives,” he says, “are sufficient for weak minds; whenever we see
a mind which we believed a stronger than our own moved habitually by
what appears inadequate, we may be certain that there is—to bring a
metaphor from the forest—_more top than root_.”
Here is another sentence from the same writer—rich in wise sayings:—
“Plato would make wives common to abolish selfishness; the very mischief
which, above all others, it would directly and immediately bring forth.
There is no selfishness where there is a wife and family. There the
house is lighted up by mutual charities; everything achieved for them is
a victory; everything endured a triumph. How many vices are suppressed
that there may be no _bad_ example! How many exertions made to recommend
and inculcate a _good_ one.”
True: and I have much more confidence in the charity which begins in the
home and diverges into a large humanity, than in the world-wide
philanthropy which begins at the outside of our horizon to converge into
egotism, of which I could show you many and notable examples.
[Illustration]
All my experience of the world teaches me that in ninety-nine cases out
of a hundred, the safe side and the just side of a question is the
generous side and the merciful side. This your mere worldly people do
not seem to know, and therein make the sorriest and the vulgarest of all
mistakes. “_Pour être assez bon il faut l’être trop_:” we all need more
mercy than we deserve.
How often in this world the actions that we condemn are the result of
sentiments that we love and opinions that we admire!
[Illustration]
23.
A.—— observed in reference to some of her friends who had gone over to
the Roman Catholic Church, “that the peace and comfort which they had
sought and found in that mode of faith was like the drugged sleep in
comparison with the natural sleep: necessary, healing perhaps, where
there is disease and unrest, not otherwise.”
[Illustration]
24.
“A poet,” says Coleridge, “ought not to pick nature’s pocket. Let him
borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine
nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to your
imagination than your memory.”
This advice is even more applicable to the painter, but true perhaps in
its application to all artists. Raphael and Mozart were, in this sense,
great borrowers.
[Illustration]
25.
“What is the difference between being good and being bad? the good do
not yield to temptation and the bad do.”
This is often the distinction between the good and the bad in regard to
act and deed; but it does not constitute the difference between _being_
good and _being_ bad.
[Illustration]
26.
The Italians say (in one of their characteristic proverbs) _Sospetto
licenzia Fede_. Lord Bacon interprets the saying “as if suspicion did
give a passport to faith,” which is somewhat obscure and ambiguous. It
means, that suspicion discharges us from the duty of good faith; and in
this, its original sense, it is, like many of the old Italian proverbs,
worldly wise and profoundly immoral.
[Illustration]
27.
IT was well said by Themistocles to the King of Persia, that “speech was
like cloth of arras opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth
appear in figure, whereas in thoughts they lie but in packs” (_i. e._
rolled up or packed up). Dryden had evidently this passage in his mind
when he wrote those beautiful lines:
“Speech is the light, the morning of the mind;
It spreads the beauteous images abroad,
Which else lie furled and shrouded in the soul.”
Here the comparison of Themistocles, happy in itself, is expanded into a
vivid poetical image.
[Illustration]
28.
“Those are the killing griefs that do not speak,” is true of some, not
all characters. There are natures in which the killing grief finds
utterance while it kills; moods in which we cry aloud, “as the beast
crieth, expansive not appealing.” That is my own nature: so in grief or
in joy, I say as the birds sing:
“Und wenn der Mensch in seiner Qual verstummt,
Gab mir ein Got zu sagen was ich leide!”
[Illustration]
29.
Blessed is the memory of those who have kept themselves unspotted _from_
the world!—yet more blessed and more dear the memory of those who have
kept themselves unspotted _in_ the world!
[Illustration]
30.
Everything that ever has been, from the beginning of the world till now,
belongs to us, is ours, is even a part of us. We belong to the future,
and shall be a part of it. Therefore the sympathies of _all_ are in the
past; only the poet and the prophet sympathise with the future.
When Tennyson makes Ulysses say, “I am a part of all that I have seen,”
it ought to be rather the converse,—“What I have seen becomes a part of
me.”
[Illustration]
31.
In what regards policy—government—the interest of the many is sacrificed
to the few; in what regards society, the morals and happiness of
individuals are sacrificed to the many.
32.
We spoke to-night of the cowardice, the crime of a particular suicide:
O. G. agreed as to this instance, but added: “There is a different
aspect under which suicide might be regarded. It is not always, I think,
from a want of religion, or in a spirit of defiance, or a want of
confidence in God that we quit life. It is as if we should flee to the
feet of the Almighty and embrace his knees, and exclaim, ‘O my father!
take me home! I have endured as long as it was possible; I can endure no
more, so I come to you!’”
Of an amiable man with a disagreeable expressionless face, she said:
“His countenance always gives me the idea of matter too strong, too hard
for the soul to pierce through. It is as a plaster mask which I long to
break (making the gesture with her hand), that I may see the countenance
of his heart, for that must be beautiful!”
[Illustration]
33.
Carlyle said to me: “I want to see some institution to teach a man the
truth, the worth, the beauty, the heroism of which his present existence
is capable; where’s the use of sending him to study what the Greeks and
Romans did, and said, and wrote? Do ye think the Greeks and Romans would
have been what they were, if they had just only studied what the
Phœnicians did before them?” I should have answered, had I dared: “Yet
perhaps the Greeks and Romans would not have been what they were if the
Egyptians and Phœnicians had not been before them.”
[Illustration]
34.
Can there be _progress_ which is not _progression_—which does not leave
a past from which to start—on which to rest our foot when we spring
forward? No wise man kicks the ladder from beneath him, or obliterates
the traces of the road through which he has travelled, or pulls down the
memorials he has built by the way side. We cannot _get on_ without
linking our present and our future with our past. All reaction is
destructive—all progress conservative. When we have destroyed that
which the past built up, what reward have we?—we are forced to fall
back, and have to begin anew. “Novelty,” as Lord Bacon says, “cannot be
content to add, but it must deface.” For this very reason novelty is not
progress, as the French would try to persuade themselves and us. We gain
nothing by defacing and trampling down the idols of the past to set up
new ones in their places—let it be sufficient to leave them behind us,
measuring our advance by keeping them in sight.
[Illustration]
35.
E—— was compassionating to-day the old and the invalided; those whose
life is prolonged in spite of suffering; and she seemed, even out of the
excess of her pity and sympathy, to wish them fairly out of the world;
but it is a mistake in reasoning and feeling. She does not know how much
of happiness may consist with suffering, with physical suffering, and
even with mental suffering.
[Illustration]
36.
“Renoncez dans votre âme, et renoncez y fermement, une fois pour toutes,
à vouloir vous connaître au-delà de cette existence passagère qui vous
est imposée, et vous redeviendrez agréable à Dieu, utile aux autres
hommes, tranquille avec vous-mêmes.”
This does not mean “renounce hope or faith in the future.” No! But
renounce that perpetual craving after a selfish interest in the
unrevealed future life which takes the true relish from the duties and
the pleasures of this. We can conceive of no future life which is not a
continuation of this: to anticipate in that _future_ life, _another_
life, a _different_ life; what is it but to call in doubt our individual
identity?
If we pray, “O teach us where and what is peace!” would not the answer
be, “In the grave ye shall have it—not before?” Yet is it not strange
that those who believe most absolutely in an after-life, yet think of
the grave as peace? Now, if we carry this life with us—and what other
life can we carry with us, unless we cease to be ourselves—how shall
there be peace?
[Illustration]
As to the future, my soul, like Cato’s, “shrinks back upon herself and
startles at destruction;” but I do not think of my own destruction,
rather of that which I love. That I should cease to be is not very
intolerable; but that what I love, and do now in my soul possess, should
cease to be—there is the pang, the terror! I desire that which I love to
be immortal, whether I be so myself or not.
[Illustration]
Is not the idea which most men entertain of another, of an eternal life,
merely a continuation of this present existence under pleasanter
conditions? We cannot conceive another state of existence,—we only fancy
we do so.
[Illustration]
“I conceive that in all probability we have immortality already. Most
men seem to divide life and immortality, making them two distinct
things, when, in fact, they are one and the same. What is immortality
but a continuation of life—life which is already our own? We have, then,
begun our immortality even now.”
For the same reason, or, rather, through the same want of reasoning by
which we make _life_ and _immortality_ two (distinct things), do we make
_time_ and _eternity_ two, which like the others are really one and the
same. As immortality is but the continuation of life, so eternity is but
the continuation of time; and what we call time is only that part of
eternity in which we exist _now_.—_The New Philosophy._
[Illustration]
37.
Strength does not consist only in the _more_ or the _less_. There are
different sorts of strength as well as different degrees:—The strength
of marble to resist; the strength of steel to oppose; the strength of
the fine gold, which you can twist round your finger, but which can bear
the force of innumerable pounds without breaking.
[Illustration]
38.
Goethe used to say, that while intellectual attainment is progressive,
it is difficult to be as good when we are old, as we were when young.
Dr. Johnson has expressed the same thing.
Then are we to assume, that to _do_ good effectively and wisely is the
privilege of age and experience? To _be_ good, through faith in
goodness, the privilege of the young.
To preserve our faith in goodness with an extended knowledge of evil, to
preserve the tenderness of our pity after long contemplation of pain,
and the warmth of our charity after long experience of falsehood, is to
be at once good and wise—to understand and to love each
|
show
off your bad manners, does it?”
“Gee whiz! And to think I was trying to get fresh with a couple of real
men like you! I’m darned sorry—and I apologize, Mr. Bolton, and to you,
too, Chief Osceola.”
“That’s all right, kid. No harm done,” laughed Osceola. “Quit stalling
and tell us something about yourself.”
“Well, I’m Charlie Evans,” returned the boy, still awestruck at his
discovery of their identity. “My father is C. B. Evans. We live in
Boston, and this is our yacht, the _Merrymaid_.”
Bill walked over to the divan and sat down, while Osceola leaned against
the arm of a chair. “Come over here, Charlie,” he invited, “and tell me
how it happens that we find you alone on this yacht. Chief Osceola and I
are on our way from Miami to New York. We sighted the _Merrymaid_ adrift
and evidently abandoned out here, so we naturally landed to
investigate.”
“Gee, that was fine of you!” Charlie curled up on the couch beside him.
“But you see, I can’t very well tell you what happened, because I don’t
know!”
“You don’t know?” Osceola’s voice sounded rather gruff.
“Look here, Charlie,” cut in Bill. “This is a serious matter. We’ve got
to be on our way soon. You are wasting our time and your own.”
Charlie flushed. “I ain’t kidding you, Mr. Bolton, really I’m not.”
“But there must have been a crew and passengers aboard this ship. Do you
mean to say that they disappeared into thin air and you don’t know why
or how?”
“Yes, sir, I do. You see, I went below to the trunk room after
breakfast. When I came on deck again, there wasn’t a soul in sight. I
searched the yacht, but you fellas are the first people I’ve seen since
I came up on deck.”
“I reckon you’d better start at the beginning,” said Osceola. “I’ll ask
questions and you answer them. And maybe we’ll be able to get somewhere.
Suppose you tell us where this yacht was going and who were aboard her
at breakfast time?”
“That’s easy,” returned young Evans. “We were out of Boston, bound for
Savannah. Dad had business there, so he took Mother and me and Uncle
Arthur along. Uncle Arthur is Mother’s brother, you know. The four of us
had breakfast together at eight o’clock, and—”
“Woa, not so fast. I suppose somebody skippered this boat?”
“That’s right. Captain Ridley is skipper. I forgot to say that he had
breakfast with us, too. And we carry a pretty big crew. I can’t tell you
how many without counting them, but I know all their names.”
Osceola smiled at the boy’s earnestness. “Never mind the crew, now. What
happened after breakfast? I take it everything was running as usual up
to that time?”
“Yes, that’s right, chief. Well, you see, after breakfast, I wanted to
practice that slow drop Harold Lane told me about. You see, I pitch on
our team. So I asked Uncle Arthur if he would catch for me. He said he
would, so we went out on deck—but say—Uncle Arthur can’t catch for nuts!
He muffed the very first ball, and it went overboard—”
“You shouldn’t pitch balls,” interrupted Bill. “Strikes are what make a
pitcher.”
“Who’s kidding now?” said Charlie delightedly.
“Say,” Osceola broke in, “I’m cross examining this witness. Don’t listen
to him Charlie. What did you do after the ball was lost?”
“I went into my cabin, but I couldn’t find another one there. Then I
remembered that I had one in my trunk—so I went below to get it. Well,
when I got the trunk open, I got interested in some things I found that
I didn’t know I’d brought with me—and I guess I stayed down there for
some time.”
“About how long, do you think?”
“Oh, something over an hour, maybe. I came across a book I like, and got
to reading it.”
“Did you know the ship had stopped moving?”
“Of course, but that was nothing. I mean, father often has her stopped
on a hot day, and goes overboard for a swim. I do, too, and so does
Uncle Arthur.”
“I see—and when you came upstairs again—”
“One says topside or above on shipboard,” suggested Bill, winking at
Charlie.
“O-and likewise-K,” replied Osceola. “Not that it has a thing to do with
the matter in hand. Now, Charlie, when you came—on deck, you found that
everybody had vanished—that you were alone on board?”
“Yes, sir. And believe me but I was some scared! I went all over the
ship, but even the cat had gone. And, well—I guess you men won’t tell on
a fella—I came in here, and I guess I cried some—” He ended
shame-facedly.
“Of course you did! I would probably have done the same thing in your
place!” Bill encouraged him.
Charlie looked relieved. “Gee whiz, but it was lonesome!” he exploded.
“I hung round a bit, didn’t know just what to do. Then I thought of
sending out a call for help. I know the International Morse Code. But
when I got to the radio room—someone had put the darn thing on the
fritz. Wouldn’t that jar yuh!”
“Pretty tough!” agreed Bill. “What next?”
“Well, I kind of nosed around. Thought Dad or Mother might have left a
note or something for me. I couldn’t find anything, though. Gosh, it was
so quiet! Then I made myself a couple of sandwiches and ate half a plum
cake I found in the pantry, and felt better.
“After that, I hunted some more, but it wasn’t any use. I heard your
plane about that time. I didn’t know who you were, of course, so I
decided I’d better lay low until I could size up what kind of guys you
were. Oh, Mr. Bolton—can’t you find Mother and Dad for me?” Charlie’s
voice broke suddenly and he sounded very much like a lost small boy.
Just then Osceola raised a warning hand. “Listen!”
There came a rush of feet on deck. Before the three in the salon could
reach for revolvers, men with leveled rifles appeared at every porthole.
“Stick ’em up and keep ’em there!” cracked a voice from the open
doorway, and a man in the smart white uniform of a ship’s officer strode
into the room.
Chapter III
MAN OVERBOARD
The man who entered so abruptly was a tall, heavy-set individual in the
early thirties. Blond as only the Scandinavians or North Germans are
blond, his very next words betrayed Teutonic origin.
“So!” he sneered as the three kept their hands level with their ears. “A
boy and two half-grown men. Master Evans, and a pair of aviators, eh?
The one, we miss the first time. The others descend on us like manna out
of heaven,—I don’t think! Three more mouths to feed and no money in it
for anyone. _Donnerwetter, noch ein Mahl!_”
“Nichts kom heraus, mahogany bedstead,” piped Charlie. The added danger
seemed to revive his waning spirits with a vengeance. “The same to you
and many of ’em, Dutchy. I know some more, too,” he went on proudly.
“Schweitzerkäse, frankfurters and getthe-Houtofhere! That last is the
longest word in the Heinie dictionary!”
“What’s the shortest?” inquired Bill, who was enjoying this byplay.
“Oh, I don’t know—but the one they say the quickest is ‘camerad.’”
“_Halts ’maul!_ Shut up, I mean!” thundered the blond stranger. The
whites around the pupils of his light blue eyes became bloodshot with
anger. “I am master here,” he roared. “_Silence!_ I will have it!”
Two sailors appeared in the doorway behind him. He wheeled about.
“Adolph, you will keep the prisoners covered. Hans, take their weapons
from them. And now,” he continued, when the three lowered their hands
after they had been searched, “you will tell me what names you go by.”
Charlie sprang to his feet and made a stiff, military bow. “The dark
gentleman over yonder,” he said solemnly, “is traveling incognito. So
that you will not be confused by false appearances, I will breathe his
secret. He is no less a personage than His Majesty, George the Fifth!
Beside me on this couch is Mary, the Four-Fifths, and I am Herbert
Hoover!—Oh, Doctor, why so angry? You may call me Herbie if you’re
good!” He finished in falsetto, with rolling eyes toward Bill and
Osceola.
“_Ruhig!_ Silence!” shouted the exasperated officer, while Bill and
Osceola were convulsed with laughter at his fury. “Hans—take this
devil-child on deck and keep him there until I come. If he offers more
insolence, give him a taste of your belt!”
“Gosh, you can’t please the Doctor,” protested Charlie with an air of
injured innocence as he was led forth. “He asked for the go-by, so I
gave it to him.”
The stranger waved him away. “Now, you two will tell me who you are,” he
commanded. “From American children one expects insolence—with you, it is
different. Your names at once, if you please.”
“My name is Bolton.” Bill saw no reason for hiding his identity.
“And I,” said his friend, “am Osceola, Chief of the Seminoles.”
“So,” mused their captor. “The two young fellows that were mixed up in
the Shell Island business. _So!_” He pronounced the last word as though
it were spelled with a Z. Then for a minute or so he appeared lost in
thought. Neither Bill nor Osceola uttered a word.
“So——It shall be done.” Apparently the blond man had arrived at an
important decision. “I am the Baron von Hiemskirk. And remember, both of
you—my word is the law. I am in command. You will earn your keep. _Ja_,
you will be put to work and it will be well to remember that my
discipline is that of the Imperial Navy. You will obey all orders—on the
jump!”
“And the alternative?” Bill rose to his feet.
The baron stuck a single eyeglass in his eye and stared at Bill with an
evil smile on his lips.
“We are now about sixty miles off the coast of North America,” he said
coldly. “It is a long swim, my young friend. Come now—we will go on
deck.”
He strode out of the room, and Bill and Osceola followed him, with a
look of mutual understanding. The sailor brought up the rear.
Charlie called to them from the rail. “Say, look what I’ve found! That’s
what took Mother and Dad and everybody off of here while I was in the
trunk room. Hans says they’re going to take us too. I don’t care what
happens now, I’ll be with Dad and Mother—but it’s pretty tough on you
fellows! Say, you wouldn’t think these Heinies had brains enough to run
one of those things, would you?”
He waved excitedly overside, and the two friends saw the long gray hull
and conning tower of a submarine moored beside the yacht.
The baron, who had stopped to speak to a young officer, walked over to
the boy and caught him roughly by the shoulder.
“Devil-child!” he roared in his deep bass. “I spoke to you regarding
insolence for the last time a short while ago!” He turned to the
officer. “Herr Lieutenant!” he commanded. “Take this boy forward and see
that he is well punished.”
“The whip, Herr Baron?”
“Ten lashes—yes—and at once.”
“_Zum befehl_, Herr Baron!” He grabbed Charlie’s arm and yanked the
struggling youngster along the deck.
Like a flash Bill darted after them. He caught up with the pair at the
gangway, and gripping the young officer by the collar, he jerked him
backward on to the deck. Then, as Charlie made a dash for Osceola, he
bent down and deliberately slapped the lieutenant’s face with the palm
of his open hand.
“Before you try to maltreat that boy, perhaps it would be as well to
settle with me,” he said calmly, while along the deck came the click of
the sailors’ rifles. “That is,” he added, “if you’ve got the guts to do
it.”
“_Schweinhund!_” cried the enraged officer, as he sprang to his feet.
Without an instant’s hesitation, he swung for Bill’s head.
The useful art of self-defense is well taught at the Naval Academy, and
Bill had ever been a proficient pupil. He jerked back his head, dodging
the man’s fist by a hair’s breadth. Then as the other overbalanced, he
stepped in with a short-arm jab to his opponent’s kidneys. This he
followed up immediately with a powerful left hook to the point of the
jaw, and the Herr Lieutenant went crashing overside, through the ropes
of the gangway. There came the dull thud of his head as it struck the
metal side of the submarine, and he disappeared down the narrow strip of
water between the vessels. Immediately Bill dived after him.
His lithe body cut the surface with hardly a splash, and he shot into
the cool green depths from his twenty foot dive with eyes wide open. To
right and to left dark blurs of the vessels’ hulls shadowed the
translucent green. No other objects met his searching gaze, so using a
powerful breast stroke, he forged further downward. All at once he saw
something grayish white below. His lungs were bursting with lack of air
and the heavy water pressure at this depth. It grew icy cold, but he
continued to strain onward, backing his muscles with an indomitable
force of will.
The white spot beneath him was taking shape now—surely the linen uniform
of the unlucky lieutenant. Yes, there he was, sinking face down, arms
and legs spread-eagled and useless, the wind knocked out of him by the
double blow of Bill’s fists and the crash against the submarine side.
Bill caught the sprawling, inert figure, with a cupped hand beneath the
chin. Instantly his legs and free arm got into action again, but heading
this time in the opposite direction. Up shot the drowning man and his
rescuer. Bill’s head was whirling, his faculties were leaving him. The
man would sink again if he lost his hold. Slipping the crook of his
elbow beneath the unconscious lieutenant’s chin, he held his head close
to his side. Would they never reach the surface—and air? What if his own
unprotected skull should strike the bulging curve of a vessel’s hull?
Sharp pain stabbed him between the eyes—he knew no more.
Far away—fathoms above him—Bill heard a voice calling his name. He
seemed to be floating upward in a sea-green haze, but there was air at
last—heaven-sent air.
“He’s coming round now,” said the voice, which sounded like Osceola’s,
and much nearer than before. “No wonder he went out—under water nearly
two minutes and a half! How’s the other fellow, Baron?”
“Poor Fritz!” Surely this was the blond commander speaking and his voice
seemed much louder and closer at hand than that of the young chief. And
as the words grew more distinct, their meaning impressed itself on
Bill’s dawning consciousness. “Poor Fritz!” repeated the baron. “We’ve
got the water out of him now and he will live—but it will be a touch and
go for some time. The poor lad has a bad case of concussion. I can’t
tell whether his skull is fractured, but I don’t think so.”
“He got an awful crack on the back of his head, but you can’t hold that
up against Bill Bolton,” returned Osceola.
“Oh, no, my dear chap. I assure you I hold no grudge at all.”
Something has happened, thought Bill, to alter Osceola’s status with the
Baron.
“I wish you to know, my dear Chief, that both Fritz and I are sportsmen.
Blows were struck in fair fight. When Fritz hit the submarine, I could
have killed young Bolton without hesitation. But when he dived after my
cousin—I loved the lad. It was splendid—_colossal_!”
“I’m glad you feel that way,” Osceola remarked. “Things were getting a
bit strained, I thought.”
“Yes, yes, I know that. But I have had a terrible day, my friend. That
devil-child put my temper on edge. And a dozen wildcats are as nothing
to the boy’s mother when she found we’d left him behind. God be thanked,
that is over. I cannot let you and Bolton continue your journey at
present, but at least you will live well, and have an interesting time.
In saving the life of Fritz, you two have rendered me a service. Karl
von Hiemskirk does not forget such favors.”
“Thanks for dragging me in,” laughed Osceola. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Hah! You dived in after them while my men looked on like half-wits!”
bridled the Baron. “You brought these two unconscious fellows to the
surface! I call that a very great deal.”
Bill heard him sigh, but although he was now fully awake, he kept his
eyes closed and listened attentively to the Baron’s next words.
“The thing of great importance that is worrying me is that Fritz was
first pilot of my command. I, myself, am an aviator, a combat flyer, who
had the great honor to be a member of what you call the circus of the
unsurpassed Graf von Richthofen, of glorious memory.”
Bill opened his eyes to find himself on the _Merrymaid’s_ deck. He sat
up and began to speak rapidly. “Richthofen was undoubtedly the greatest
air strategean who ever flew,” he declared, “they tell me that his
combat formations and the battle manoeuvers of his famous circus have
never been improved upon. Sorry I wasn’t old enough then to take a crack
at you myself—you must be a humdinger, Baron, when it comes to this
flying game! If you want to use my bus and friend Fritz is temporarily
out of the picture—why not fly her yourself?”
Osceola put his arm about Bill’s shoulders, and the Baron bowed from the
waist.
“Thank you, indeed, my dear young friend,” he said formally, “both for
your eulogy of my long-time-dead friend von Richthofen, and because,
after stunning my cousin, you had the courage and graciousness to save
his life at risk of your own.”
“Oh, please don’t.” Bill colored a dusky red. “Or I shall have to pass
out a second time.” With the chief’s help he rose and held out his hand.
The Baron shook it heartily.
“We will let our has-beens be never-wases.”
“I couldn’t help overhearing what you said to Osceola when I was
regaining consciousness,” went on Bill. “So as long as you can’t see
your way clear to letting us go, I’ll do my best to be peaceable in the
future.”
“Say nothing more about it, my boy.” The Baron fairly oozed urbanity.
“_Es tut mer sehr leid_, I mean, it makes me very sorry to have to
detail you chaps, but it is the fate of war.”
Bill and Osceola looked their surprise. “War?”
“I have to inform you that my command is at war with society. I can not
allow my liking for individuals to deter me from my aim.”
“And what is that?” inquired Osceola.
“We will talk of that later. Now, there is work to be done. Too much
time has been wasted already. I need an airplane pilot, Bolton, because
with my multitudinous duties, it is impossible for me always to handle
the controls. I will make you two what you Americans call a proposition.
You will fly where and when I tell you, Bolton. You will give me your
word of honor to do that and no more. The chief here will also be given
congenial duties. Obey my commands and you need not give your
parole—there is no escape except by air and that will be circumnavigated
by your word!”
“And you can sure use big words, Baron,” observed a much subdued
Charlie, who had been silently taking in the conversation.
“Perhaps,” the Baron smiled, “but if you will take my advice, such
things are better left unsaid. Your tongue has already got you and a
number of others into trouble today.” He turned again to Bill. “I am
awaiting your decision,” he said.
“And—the alternative in this case?”
“You and the chief will be kept prisoners until such time as I can
negotiate your ransoms.”
Bill looked at Osceola, who nodded slightly. “All right, then, Baron, I
promise to fly your planes as you dictate, but I suspect that your war
is nothing more than hijacking on a big scale. And I’m hanged if I have
anything to do with that!”
The Baron bowed. “It is a bargain. I will now conclude my work on this
vessel. Fritz has already been taken aboard the other craft, and when I
am through here, Chief Osceola will go in her with me and my men. You,
Bolton, will follow us with Charlie, in your amphibian.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” returned Bill with Naval Academy crispness, now that he
had recognized the baron as his superior officer. “You will keep above
surface, I suppose, otherwise, I am likely to loose your ship.”
“Oh, no, we won’t,” broke in Charlie the irrepressible. “He’s going in
the air!”
“The air? Don’t be silly, kid—”
“I’m not the silly one—” retorted the youngster. “I’m right, ain’t I,
Baron?”
“That submarine is an invention of my own,” declared the commander. “The
boy speaks correctly. I shall _fly_ her.”
Chapter IV
VANDALS OF THE HIGH SEAS
An hour later, Charlie sat aboard Bill’s amphibian which now lay moored
to a sea-anchor a quarter of a mile to leeward of the _Merrymaid_. A
hundred yards from the plane, the gray submarine rocked gently to a long
Atlantic ground swell. Charlie, a pair of field glasses glued to his
eyes, focussed them alternately on the yacht and on the deck of the
submarine which was crowded with men.
The object of all this interest was a group of three aboard the
_Merrymaid_—three men and a youth. Left on board the vessel with a boat
wherewith to make their escape, these men were to open the seacocks of
the fated ship.
In the side of every vessel, somewhat below the waterline is a large
circular manhole, two or more feet in diameter into which fits a steel
plate or plug. The plate is fastened to the reinforced sides of the ship
by means of bolts arranged at intervals of a few inches around the
circumference of the hole. Into this plate fit large pipes which,
communicating with the sea, form an intake for salt water. This plug and
its manhole are together called the ship’s seacocks.
Opening a ship’s seacocks is a feat of not a little skill and danger.
The nuts of the bolts which fasten the plate to its manhole must be
unscrewed in such a manner that the plate loosens suddenly and not
gradually, so that the sailor who opens it may work until the last
minute and then escape from the inrushing water. To do this, special
strategy is necessary.
The men from the submarine went about the operation in the following
way: Early that morning when the _Merrymaid_ was first captured, some
men were sent down into her hold to begin preliminary work on the
seacocks. Two of these men carefully unscrewed one rusty nut at a time,
thoroughly greased its threads, and then screwed it back into place
again before loosening the next. While this was being done, the other
men unbolted the pipes leading into the seacock and removed all
obstructions in the way of hasty escape from its neighborhood.
This preliminary work of greasing and loosening was done merely in order
that the seacocks might be in readiness for immediate opening without
loss of time should an enemy appear or other emergency require hasty
action. The seacocks thus greased and disencumbered of pipes and
impediments were then left in place, and the men returned to the
submarine.
The men who had accomplished this work were now aboard the fated yacht
once more to finish the opening of her seacocks. With them were Bill
Bolton and the Baron. Bill, who had had never witnessed this particular
operation before, though heartily condoning the act, was deeply
interested. Knowing that he was a midshipman on summer leave from the
United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Baron von Hiemskirk permitted
him to remain as a responsible party.
The Baron, a sailor and Bill stood on deck while another seaman named
Muller, a strong, heavy-faced fellow who made a specialty of this work,
climbed down to the seacock, equipped with a monkey wrench and a sledge
hammer. Around his waist was tied a rope, the other end of which was
held by the three above for use in emergency.
Muller, under direction of the Baron, took off the nuts from every
second bolt in the circle. Being recently loosened and greased, this was
easily done. After he had gone completely around the circumference of
the plate, the plug was being held by only half its former number of
bolts. Beginning once more, the adroit seaman again removed every second
nut, from the remaining bolts. The plate was now held by only one-fourth
the original number of bolts. This process of halving was continued
until the plug was finally being held by only two bolts on diametrically
opposite sides of the circumference of the seacock. By this time, the
pressure of the water outside was meeting with so little resistance that
the plate was bending slightly inward, letting water spurt between the
rubber packing and the steel plate up into the hold.
Muller, sweating in every pore, now thrust his wrench into his overalls
pocket, picked up his sledge, and called out: “Ready!”
At his signal, the men on deck took in the slack of the rope so that if
necessary they could hoist the imperilled seaman up out of danger.
Muller now lifted his sledge hammer, took accurate aim, and with a
single vigorous blow, smashed one of the two protruding bolts through
its nut and hole. As the plate did not fly loose, he let the heavy
hammer fall again, throwing all his strength into the blow, this time
upon the remaining bolt. With a dull explosion, the whole two-foot plate
flew loose, and a geyser of sea water gushed upward into the hold.
Muller at once leaped for the ladder and, still holding the sledge,
clambered to safety. Had he slipped, or been washed away by the force of
the water, his comrades on deck would have fished him up by means of the
rope.
By this time the yacht was rapidly filling. As the doors through all
compartments had previously been opened, the water coming through this
one seacock at once began flowing to all parts of the hold. The men on
deck were now in real danger, for a sudden listing of the vessel, or its
unexpectedly rapid sinking might mean their death.
All, therefore, at once scrambled overside to their boat, the Baron last
of all, and pulled away as quickly as possible, lest they be sucked into
the vortex of the sinking ship.
For a short space the _Merrymaid_ settled rapidly, giving the watchers
reason to expect her to go to the bottom within fifteen or twenty
minutes. Their expectations, however, were not realized, for the ship
soon began to rest at the same level.
The Baron turned to Bill. “Doubtless air has lodged in the tops of
compartments and is imprisoned elsewhere. She must ultimately go down,
of course, but there is no telling how long it will take—and I am in a
hurry to get away.”
“What are you going to do, use dynamite?”
“Yes. We’ve got sufficient here in the boat, for such an emergency.
We’ll row back now, and get busy.”
Dynamite was presently placed at the base of the ship’s two masts and
amidships, and the fuses lit. They then rowed swiftly away, and had
hardly reached a position where they would be out of danger, when the
explosion came. Three crashes, one after the other, shattered the sides
and decks of the vessel. The _Merrymaid_ was sinking rapidly. First her
bow filled; then the gallant yacht stood perpendicularly on her prow,
and slid with a rush out of sight.
At the instant her funnel plunged under, a final tremendous explosion
took place, throwing a cloud of steam and water high into the air. A
moment later, only a vortex of oily, tossing water gave evidence that a
million dollar yacht had gone to the bottom.
“It’s a dirty shame!” Bill spat the words without caring whether the
Baron took umbrage or not.
“It is indeed,” that blond giant answered seriously. “But this is war,
remember. I cannot use her, still less can I afford to have her
discovered. Yes, it is a shame. Vandalism, if you like, but none the
less, a necessity.” The Baron shook his head, then went on pompously:
“An hour ago that splendid little ship might have been of great service
to mankind. Now she is no more. Let it be her epitaph that she was
fulfilling her destiny, with work well done. May the world say the same
of me when I have gone to the eternal reward.”
Bill kept silent and managed to conceal his disgust. He did not
appreciate such philosophizing. Neither could he agree with the Baron’s
estimate of his own worth. His work might be well done, but in itself
piracy on the high seas could hardly be called more than a disgraceful
profession. Bill began to realize that the commander’s brain, although
active enough, was more than slightly warped.
They rowed over the spot where the _Merrymaid_ had gone down, and looked
about for any stray bits of wreckage which might have floated to the
surface. They found none, so made for the amphibian at once.
“You will wait until you see us take off before you do the same, Mr.
Bolton,” directed the Baron with a return of his superior-officer
manner, as Bill boarded the plane.
“Aye, aye, sir. Any further orders?” Bill returned the military manner
with interest.
“Yes. You will follow my craft as though you were number two of a
patrol. Land when I land, and taxi over for further instructions.”
“Very good, sir.”
“A pleasant flight, Bolton.”
“Thank you, Baron. The same to you, sir.”
The boat moved off in the direction of the submarine and Bill climbed
into his fore cockpit. Charlie was already in his place in the rear
cockpit, and Bill noticed that he seemed strangely quiet, almost sullen.
“What’s eating you, old boy?” Bill turned round to face him, then added
kindly, “I don’t blame you for feeling low. It’s hard lines about the
_Merrymaid_. Made me feel rotten myself. Nastier piece of vandalism was
never committed. But you mustn’t take it out on me.”
“Well, I thought you and the chief were my friends,” began Charlie
aggrievedly.
“But we are—what makes you think we’re not?”
“Oh, I know you saved me a hiding—and risked your life for that pirate.
That was a bully thing to do, but now you and Chief Osceola have joined
up with them and—”
“How come—joined up with them?”
“Why, didn’t I hear you, myself, tell the Baron you would work for
him—do exactly what he told you to do?”
“So that’s it.” Bill’s laugh was without humor. “There’s no good reason
why I should explain my actions to you, but I like you, Charlie, and I’m
sorry for you into the bargain. Now, pin back your ears—”
“Well, I’m listening!”
“But, before I tell you what’s what, I want your promise to keep your
mouth shut!”
Charlie produced a packet of gum. He tossed Bill a stick and began to
munch another. “Okay,” he said earnestly, his eyes on the older lad’s,
“let’s have it.”
“I should think you might have guessed it—but neither Osceola nor myself
have gone in with these pirates. I gave the Baron my word to obey
orders—but only so far as they have to do with driving his planes. It
was either that or being locked up—and cutting out any chance there
might be to escape. It’s the same with Osceola. He saw my scheme quick
as winking—which is more than you did—but then, you’re just a kid, of
course.” Bill’s eyes twinkled as he saw the boy’s discomfiture, but he
went on more seriously. “The Baron is so sure of himself and his strong
organization that he has no fear that we two can do anything to hinder
his plans. But unless we’re allowed some freedom, don’t you see, Osceola
and I might just as well have given up before we started?”
Charlie was profoundly interested and ashamed of himself. “Gee, I was a
pill, all right. But, Bill—do you really think the three of us could
break up the gang?”
“Well, you never can tell till you try,” Bill answered. “First of all,
we must pretend to work in with this bunch of sea bandits—do our best
not to arouse their suspicions, you know. Then, when we learn more about
them and their ways of doing business, it will be time enough to start
planning on our own account.”
“That’s right. And don’t you worry. I’ll keep quiet. I wouldn’t breathe
a word!”
“You mustn’t, kid—not even to your dad and mother when you see them.”
“Cross my heart—hope to die if I do, Bill.”
“That’s all right, then. And always remember that it’s the three of us
against a great big organization. A single slip on our part—and well, so
far as we’re concerned, it would be just too bad.”
“I’ll keep my promise, Bill. Any idea where these pirates have their
hangout? Where we are bound for now?”
“I have not. Why?”
“Some hideout on the coast, I suppose. Shouldn’t wonder if maybe it was
somewhere in Pamlico or Albemarle Sound. There used to be lots of
pirates in those waters long ago, before the Revolution, I mean. There’s
a book at home, tells all about them.”
“Times have changed a lot since then,” mused Bill, “and piracy, too, I
reckon.”
“Then you don’t think they’ve a base of some kind over there?”
Bill was facing forward now, staring steadily out over the water.
“Something quite different, Charlie,” he muttered; and then in a sharp
tone that made the boy start—“So that’s the way they work it!”
“Gee whiz!” Charlie craned his neck and gazed in the same direction.
“The submarine’s sprouting wings!”
Chapter V
THE TRANSFORMATION OF A SEA MONSTER
The two lads, Bill and Charlie, stared with undivided attention at the
astonishing spectacle. Two large fins which evidently had been lying
close to the submarine’s sides, were rising into the air. With a speed
that seemed remarkable these fins reached a vertical position. For a
moment they remained pointing straight toward the high blue arc of the
heavens. Then they swung outward, lowering horizontally from the ship’s
sides, to come to rest when level with the deck, and about five feet
above the surface of the water—a complete set of airplane wings.
“Gosh, she’s a monoplane now!” exclaimed Charlie.
“Wonder how they’ll produce a tail unit?”
“You mean a rudder?”
“Yes. That,
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