"A world of fine fabling"
Solon Denney's home, in charge of Mrs. Delia Sullivan, late of Kerry, was four blocks up the shaded street from my own. Within one block of its gate as I approached it that morning, the Sabbath calm was riven by shouts that led me to the back of the house. In the yard next to Solon's, Tobin Crowder, of Crowder & Fancett, Lumber, Coal and Building Supplies, had left a magnificent green wagon-box flat upon the ground, a thing so fine that it was almost a game of itself. An imagination of even the second order could at once render it supremely fascinating. My two babes, collaborating with four small Sullivans, had by child magic, which is the only true magic, transformed this box into a splendid express train. The train now sped across country at such terrific speed that the small Sullivan at the throttle, an artist and a realist, crouched low, with eyes strained upon the track ahead, with one hand tightly holding on his Sunday cap.
Another Sullivan was fireman, fiercely shovelling imaginary coal; still another at the side of the box grasped the handle of the brake as one ready to die at his post if need be. The last Sullivan paced the length of the wagon-box, being thrown from side to side with fine artistry by the train's jolting. He arrogantly demanded tickets from passengers supposedly loth to relinquish these. And in his wake went the official most envied by all the others. With a horse's nose-bag upon his arm my namesake chanted in pleading tones above the din, "Peanuts—freshly buttered popcorn Culver's celebrated double-X cough drops, cool and refreshing!"
But the tragic eminence of the game was occupied by my woman child. Perched in the middle of the high seat, her short legs impotently projecting into space, she was the only passenger on this train—and she for whose sole behoof the ponderous machinery was operated, in whose exclusive service this crew of trained hirelings toiled—she sat aloft indignant, with tear-wet face, her soul revolted by the ignominy of it.
I knew the truth in a glance. There had been clamors for the positions of honor, and she, from weakness of sex, had been overborne. She whose heart cried out for the distinction of train-boy, conductor, engineer, brakeman, or fireman, in the order named, had been forced into the only degrading post in the game—a mere passenger without voice or office in those delicate feats of administration. And she suffered—suffered with a pathetic loyalty, for she knew as well as they that some one had to be the passenger.
I held an accusing eye upon my namesake and the train came to a sudden halt, much embarrassed, though the brakeman, with artistic relish, made a vast ado with his brake and pretended that "she" might start off again any minute.
My namesake poised himself on the foot that had no stone-bruise and began:—
"Now, Uncle Maje, I told her she could be engineer after we got to the next station—"
His tones were those of benevolence that has been ill-requited.
"That was las' station," broke in the aggrieved passenger, "an' they wouldn't stop the train there 'cause they said it was a 'spress train and mustn't stop at such little stations—"
"I tried awful hard to stop her," said the crafty Sullivan at the throttle, "but she got away from me. She did so, now!"
"And I said, 'First to be engineer,'" resumed the passenger, bitterly, "an' they wouldn't let me, an' I said, 'Secon' to be engineer,' an' they never let me, an' I said, 'Las' to be engineer,' an' they never let me."
"She wants to be everything," said my namesake, rendered a little sullen by this concise putting of her case.
"You come with me," I said to the passenger, "and we'll do something better than this—something fine!"
Her face brightened, for she knew that I never made idle promises as do so many grown-ups. She jumped from her seat, even though the first Sullivan tooted a throaty whistle and the second rattled his brake machinery in warning. I helped her over the side of the box, and as we walked away she shouted back to the bereaved express train a consolatory couplet:—
"First the worst, second the same,
Last the best of all the game!"
That superb machinery of travel was silent, and the mechanics and officials, robbed of their passenger, eyed us with disfavor.
"They are terrapin-buzzards!" exclaimed my woman child, with deep conviction.
I shuddered fittingly at the violence of her speech.
Before we had gone far the train-boy deserted his post and came running after us.
"John B. Gough!" he exclaimed bitterly—profanely.
"He's swearing," warned his sister. "Look out, Uncle Maje, or he'll say 'Gamboge' next."
"I don't care," retorted the indignant follower; "you can't have a train without any passenger—it's silly. I don't care if I do say Gamboge. There! Gamboge it!"
I turned upon him. I had endured "terrapin-buzzards," hurled at the group by my woman child, perceiving need of relief for her pent-up passion. I had, moreover, for the same reason, permitted my namesake to roll under his tongue the formidable and satisfying expletive, "John B. Gough!" But I felt that the line must be drawn at Gamboge. Terrapin-buzzards was bad enough, though it was true that this might be used innocently, as in a moment of mild dismay, or as an exclamation of mere astonishment without sinister import. But Gamboge!—and ripped out brazenly as it had been?—No! A thousand times No!
"Calvin," I said sternly, "aren't you ashamed to use such language—before me—and before your little sister?"
But here the little sister sank beneath her true woman's level by saying:—
"I know worse than that—Dut!"
With a look of deadly coldness I sought to chill the pride that shone in her eyes as she achieved this new enormity.
"What is 'Dut'?" I asked severely.
"Dut is—is a Dut," she answered, somewhat abashed by my want of enthusiasm.
"A Dut is a baddix—a regular baddix," volunteered her brother. Following a device familiar to philologists, he submitted concrete examples.
"Two of those Sullivans are Duts, and so's Mrs. Sullivan sometimes when she makes me split kindling and let the cat alone and—"
"That will do," I said; "that's enough of such talk. Come right into the house."
"It ain't a baddix to say 'O Crackers!'" he observed tentatively, as he followed us.
"It may not be for some people," I answered. "Nice people might say that once in a great while, on week-days, if they never said any other baddixes; but it's just as bad as any of them if you say all the others—especially that horrible one—"
"Gamboge," he reminded me, brightly.
"Never mind saying it again!"
Then came a new uproar from the wagon-box. We perceived that the train had moved off again, manned now entirely by Sullivans. They sought, I detected, to produce in our minds an impression that the thing was going better than ever. The toots of the Sullivan-throated whistle were louder and more frequent, and the voice of the largest could be plainly heard. He had combined the two offices of train-boy and conductor. We heard him alternately demanding "Tickets!" and urging "Peanuts, cakes, and candies!" If the intention had been to lure us back to witness a Sullivan triumph, it failed. We shut our lips tightly and moved around to the front porch.
The foiled Sullivans presently followed us here. They made a group at the base of a maple on the lawn and, affecting not to notice us, talked in a large, loud way so that we must overhear and be made envious,—even awe-struck; for they had all secured jobs on the real railroad, it appeared. They would have to begin to-morrow, probably. They didn't know for sure, but they thought it would be tomorrow. It would be fine, riding off on the big train. Probably they would never come back to this town, but sleep on their big engine every night; and every day, from the toothsome dainties of the train-boy Sullivan's basket, they would "eat all they could hold." The elder Sullivan, aged eight, he of the artistic temperament, here soared dizzily into the farthest ether of romance. He had his uniform at home, at that very moment, and a cap with "gold reading" on it—it read "Conductor" on one side, and "Candy" on the other. Only—this veritably smacked of genius—the blue coat with the gold buttons had been made too small for him, and he'd have to wait until they sent him a larger size—"a No. 12," he said, with a careless, unseeing glance at our group. This was a stroke that had nearly done for one of us—but a moment's resistance and another of sober reflection saved him. He flashed to me a look of scorn for the clumsy fabrication.
There was still a brakeman needed, it appeared,—a good brakeman. The Sullivans consulted importantly, wondering if "a good man" could by any chance be found "around here." They named and rejected several possible candidates—other boys that we knew. And they wondered again. No—probably every one around here was afraid to leave home or wouldn't be strong enough.
I held my breath, perceiving at once the villany on foot. They were trying to lure one of us into a trap. They wished one of us to leap forward with a glad, eager, artless shout "I'll be the other brakeman!" At once they would jeer coarsely, slapping one another's backs and affecting the utmost merriment that this one of us should have been equal to so monstrous a pretension. This would last a long time. They would take up other matters only for the sake of coining back to it with sudden explosions of contemptuous mirth.
Happily, the one of us most liable to this ignominy remained unbelieving to the bitter end; even did he pretend to a yawning sort of interest in a book carelessly picked up. The Sullivans had been foiled at every turn, and now we were relieved from the covert but not less pointed insult of their presence.
Mrs. Delia, her morning's work done, came out dressed for church, bidding me a briskly sad little "Good marnin', Major!" I responded pleasantly, for in a way I liked Mrs. Sullivan, who came each day from her bare little house under the hill to make a home for Solon and our children. At least she was kind to them and kept them plump. That she remained dismal under circumstances that seemed to me not to warrant it was a detail of minor consequence. Terry Sullivan had been no good husband to her. Beating her and the lesser Sullivans had been his serious aim when in liquor and his diversion when out. But he fell from a gracious scaffolding with a bucket of azure paint one day and fractured his stout neck, a thing which in the general opinion of Little Arcady Heaven had meant to be consummated under more formal auspices.
But when they took Terry home and laid him on her bed, she had wailed absurdly for the lost lover in him. Through the night her cry had been, "Ah, Terry, Terry,—ye gev me manny a haird blow, darlin', but ye kep' th' hairdest til th' last!"
It was not possible to avoid being irritated a little by such a woman, but I always tried to conceal this from her. I suppose she had a right to her own play-world. She was dressed now in a limp black of many rusty ruffles that sagged close to her and glistened in spots through its rust. Both the dress and the spiritless silk bonnet that circled her keen little face seemed to have been cried over a long time—to be always damp with her tears.
With parting injunctions to my namesake to let the cat alone, not to "track up" the kitchen, and not to play with matches, the little woman lovingly cuffed the conspiring lesser Sullivans into a decorous line behind her and marched them off to church. There, I knew, she would give from her poor wage that the soul of dead Terry should be the sooner prayed out of a place which, it would seem, might have been created with an eye single to his just needs.
Thinking of woman's love,—that, like the peace of God it passeth all understanding,—I officiated absently as one of two guests at a "tea-party." My fellow-guest was a large doll braced stiffly in its chair; a doll whose waxen face had been gouged by vandal nails. That was an old tragedy, though a sickening one at the time. The doll had been my Christmas offering to the woman child, and in the dusk of that joyous day my namesake had craved of its proud mother the boon of holding it a little while. Relinquished trustingly to him, he had sat with it by a cheerful fire—without evil intent, I do truly believe. Surely it was by chance that he found its waxen face softening under the stove's glow—and has Heaven affixed nails to any boy of seven that, in a dusky room at a quiet moment, would have behaved with more restraint? I trow not. One surprised dig and all was lost. Of that fair surface of rounded cheek, fattened chin, and noble brow not a square inch was left ungouged. It was indeed a face of evil suggestion that the unsuspecting mother took back.
That was the evening when the Crowders, living next door, had rushed over in the belief that my woman child was being murdered. The criminal had never been able to advance the shadow of a reason or excuse for his mad act. He seemed to be as honestly puzzled by it as the rest of us, though I rejoice to say that he was not left without reason to deplore it.
But the mother—the true mother—had thereafter loved the disfigured thing but the more. She promptly divested it of all its splendid garments, as a precaution against further vandalism, and the naked thing with its scarred face was ever an honored guest at our functions.
"You really must get some clothes for Irene," I said. "That's not quite the right thing, you know, having her sit there without any."
In much annoyance she rebuked me, whispering, for this thoughtless lapse from my rôle as guest. At our parties Irene was no longer Irene, but "Mrs. Judge Robinson," and justly sensitive about her faulty complexion and lack of clothes.
"Besides," came the whisper again, "I am going to make her some clothes—a lovely veil to go over her face."
Resuming her company voice, and with the aplomb of a perfect hostess who has rectified the gaucherie of an awkward guest, she pressed upon me another cup of the custard coffee, and tactfully inquired of the supposedly embarrassed Mrs. Judge Robinson if she did not think this was very warm weather for this time of year.
The proprieties being thus mended, our hostess raised her voice and bade Mrs. Sullivan, within doors, to hurry with the next course, which, I was charmed to learn, would be lemon soup and frosted cake. Mrs. Sullivan's response, though audible only to her mistress, who was compelled to cock an intent ear toward the kitchen, seemed to be in some manner shuffling or evasive.
"What's that?" she exclaimed sharply, listening again. Then, with dignity, "Well, if you don't hurry, I'll have to come right in there and see to you this minute!"
The threat happily availed, and the feast went forward, a phantom and duly apologetic Mrs. Sullivan serving us with every delicacy which our imaginations afforded. When we had eaten to repletion, of and from the checkers which were our plates and food as well, Mrs. Judge Robinson suddenly became Irene, who had eaten too much and had to be scolded and put to bed. The lights were out, the revelry done.
"Going walking now?" asked my namesake. He did not know how to behave at tea-parties, and, sitting at a little distance from us, he had been aiming an imaginary gun at every fat robin that mined the lawn for sustenance.
"Ask your father if you may go," I said. I had heard Solon pacing his room—forever cogitating the imminent Potts. I did not enter the house oftener than I could help, for always in those rooms I felt a troubled presence, a homesick thing that pushed two frail white hands against an intangible but sufficing curtain that held it from those it sickened for. I could not long be easy there.
It was a day poised and serene, with white brush-dabs of cloud on a wonderful canvas of blue,—a day when I longed for the honeyed fragrance of the woods warming from the last night's rain.
But this was not to be my walk. Not for me the shaded arches of the wood where glad birds piped, nor the velvet hillsides tufted with green and yellow and brown, nor eke the quiet lane running between walls of foliage, where simple rabbits scampered, amazed but not yet taught their fullest fear.
The butterflies we must chase hovered rather along urban ways. That of the woman child was social. Ahead of us she flounced. Strangely, she was herself Mrs. Judge Robinson now. I understood that she was decked in a gown of royal purple, whose sweeping velvet train gave her no little trouble. But she paid her calls. At each gate she stopped, and it seemed that persons met her there, for she began:—
"Why, how do you do? Yes, it's lovely weather we're having. Are your children got the scarlet fever? That's too bad. So has mine. I'm afraid they'll die. Well, I must be going now. Good day!"
Sometimes she ran back to say, "Now do come over some day and bring your work!"
The butterflies pursued by my namesake were various, and some of them were more secret.
For one he made me stand with him while he gazed long into the drug-store window. I divined at last that those giant chalices, one of green and one of ruby liquor, were the objects of his worship. He could not have told me this, but I knew that in his mind these were compounds of unparalleled richness, potent with Heaven knows what wondrous charms. It was not that he dreamed ever of securing any of the stuff; the spell endured only while they must stand there, remote, splendid, inaccessible.
Then we strolled down the quiet street to a road that went close to the railway. And there, with beating hearts, we beheld the two-twenty Eastern freight rattle superbly by us. From the cab of its inspiring locomotive one of fortune's favorites rang a priceless gold bell with an air of indifference which we believed in our hearts was assumed to impress us. And notwithstanding our suspicion, we were impressed, for did we not know that he could reach up his other hand and blow the splendid whistle if he happened to feel like it?
After the locomotive came the closed and mysterious box-cars, important with big numbers and initials in cabalistic sequence, indicating a wide and exciting range of travels. Then came stock cars, from between the slats of which strange and envied cattle looked out on their way to a wondrous city; and there was a car of squealing pigs, who seemed not to want to ride on a real train; and some cars of sheep that were stupidly indifferent about the whole thing. At the last was a palatial "caboose," and toward this, over the tops of the moving cars, a happy brakeman made his exciting progress, not having to hold on, or anything. He casually waved an arm at us, a salute that one of our number, in acknowledging, sought to imitate, for the cool, indifferent flourish of its arm, as if it were a common enough thing for us to be noticed by the mighty from their eminences.
This was my namesake's most beautiful of butterflies. Any one could understand that. As the train lost itself in smoke I knew well what he felt. I knew that that smoke of soft coal was so delicious, so wonderful of portent in his nostrils, that throughout his life it would bring up the wander-bidding in him—always a strange sweet passion of starting. Even now the journey-wonder was in his eyes. I knew that he saw himself jauntily stepping the perilous tops of cars, clad in a coat of padded shoulders bound with wide braid, a lantern on his arm, coal dust smudging the back of his neck, and two fingers felicitously gone from his left hand.
I coughed, to recall him from visions. He looked up at me, a little shyly, debating but why should it not be told?
"Uncle Maje—when I grow up, I'm going off to be a brakeman."
"I know it," I said quietly.
"Won't it be just fine!"
"It's the very finest life in all the world. I hoped for it myself once, but I was disappointed."
He gave me a quick look of sympathy.
"Wouldn't they let you?"
"Well, they were afraid I'd be hurt—only I knew I wouldn't be—anything to speak of—a couple of fingers, perhaps—"
"Off the left hand," he suggested understandingly.
"Of course,—off the left hand."
"That brakeman on No. 3 has got two off his left hand," was the final comment.
We retraced our steps; but there was yet another butterfly of my namesake's. He led us to a by-path that followed the river bank up to the bridge, running far ahead of us. When we reached him he was seated, dumb with yearning, before a newly painted sign,
"Go to Budd's for an Up-to-Date 25 ct. Dinner."
He was obliged to limp that day, for his stone-bruise was coming on finely; but he had gone half a mile out of his way to worship at this wayside shrine. Again he was dreaming. In the days of his opulence he saw himself going to Budd's. Fortunately for his illusions the price was now prohibitive. I had been to Budd's myself.
"Have you ever been there? " I asked of the dreamer.
"I've been in his store, in the front part, where the candy is—and if you go round when he's freezing ice cream, he'll give you a whole ten-cent dish just for turning the freezer; but Pop won't let me stay out of school to do it, and Budd don't freeze Saturdays. But some day—" he paused. Then, with seemingly another idea:—
"He's got an awful funny sign up over the counter."
He would not tell me what the sign was, though. He shuffled and talked of other things. I entered Budd's on the morrow, purposely to read it, and I knew that my namesake had quailed before it. The sign was in white, frosted letters, on a blue ground, and it ran:—
To Trust is to Bust
To Bust is Hell
No Trust, No Bust, No Hell.
Its syllogistic hardness was repellant, but I dare say it preserved a gorgeous butterfly from utter extinction.
Home again at early twilight, we ate of a cold supper set out for us by Mrs. Sullivan. And here I reflected that good days often end badly, for my namesake betrayed extreme dissatisfaction with the food.
"Why don't we have that pudding oftener—with lather on top of it?" was his first outbreak. And at last he felt obliged to declare bitterly, "We don't have a thing that's fit to eat!"
"Calvin," said his father, "if I have to whip, it will hurt you worse than it does me."
Whereupon the complainer was wisely silent, but later I heard him asserting, between catches of his breath, and out of his father's hearing:—
"I don't care—(a sniff)—when I'm rich, I'll go to Budd's for an up-to-date dinner, you bet—(a snuffle)—I'll probably go there every day of my life—(two snuffles)—yes, sir—Sundays and all!"
I cheered him as best I could.
His sister had saved her day to a happy end, babbling off to bed with the distressing Irene, to whom she would show a book of pictures until sleep shut off her little world.
A wise old man—I believe he was a bishop—once said he knew "that outside the real world is a world of fine fabling."
I had stolen a day from that world. Now I hurried through the gloom of the hall, past the poor striving hands, to sit with Solon Denney and tell him of a peculiar thing I had observed during the afternoon's walk.