IT was the day after we had given up that particular spot in the woods as a trysting place and we were all driving to the village in Bert’s wagon.
We were going for two reasons; Ethel intended buying Minerva a new dress (for out doors), and I was going to find out something about the concert which I proposed giving.
Ethel and I took turns in driving, while James and Minerva sat on the back seat.
Great billows of clouds lapped the shores of blue above us and cast huge shadows on the hillside; shadows that moving changed the entire aspect of the places over which they passed.
Bobolinks launched themselves and their songs at the same time and gave to the day a quality that no other songster is ever able to impart. It was a morning to inspire happiness.
“What a heavenly country this is,” said Ethel; “I’d like to live here until the leaves color.”
“I dare say it would be nice here in the winter time, too.”
“Oof!” shuddered Ethel. “Pretty but dreadful. How can anyone keep warm in the country in the wintertime?”
Her remark had been heard by Minerva, and she said to James:
“Do folks leave here in winter?”
“No, indeed,” said James. “Winter’s the best time of the year up here. I jus’ like the cold. Coastin’ from here to the village, a mile and a half. Everybody does it. And skating! Umm. You ought to stay up here in winter.”
“Oh, lawdy, if it’s so sad in the summer I’d die in the winter. Don’t the wind howl like a dog?”
“Like a thousand dogs, but I like it. You come up here an’ visit my old mother in the winter, an’ I’ll teach you to skate and you’ll never want to go back.”
“Imagine Minerva here in winter,” whispered Ethel to me. “Poor thing. She would die of the horrors. But, do you think she is more contented?”
“I certainly do. She is going to have new clothes—Is that a sheep?”
It turned out to be a rock. “There are no sheep around here,” said Ethel. “Bert said so.”
“I wonder if Minerva would be frightened at sheep?”
“She might be. The most peaceful animals aren’t always the most peaceful looking. I think a cow is much more diabolical than a lion as far as looks go. A lion is kind of benign and I dare say that a lion that has just eaten a man looks sleepy and contented and good-natured as he licks his chops.”
“I think the most dreadful looking beast in the whole menagerie is the goat, although, come to think of it, he is more likely to be found in the back yard than in the menagerie, and I dare say that Minerva knows him like a book. Yes, he has the devil beaten to a pulp, as Harry Banks would say, and yet he never has the bad manners to spit like the—what was that beautiful beast that spit in the face of that pompous little man down at Dreamland?”
“Oh, you mean the llama. Wasn’t that funny? And he did look so innocent. And now that spitting is a misdemeanor and the practice is going out, I suppose the llama will steadily increase in value—”
“Do you mind if we sing. Mr. Vernon?” said James, respectfully.
I thought a minute. If James had been driving and Minerva was by his side on the front seat it would have been perfectly natural for Ethel and me to break out into song on such a perfect day in such a lonely place.
As the conditions were reversed; as I was driving and James and Minerva were on the back seat, it seemed to me perfectly proper that they should be the ones to break out into roundelays, and I told them to break out—couching the permission in other language.
They began, after a whispered consultation, and the song which they sang was as follows:
“Ma-ah ol’ missus said to me
(Gwan to git a-home bime by)
“Whe-en she died she’d set me free
(Gwan to git a-home bime by)
Oh dat watermiyun
(Lamb er goodness you must die)
I’se gwan fer to jine de cont’aban’ chillun
(Gwan ter git a-home bime by).
“Whe-en she died she died so po’
(Gwan ter git a-home bime by).
She lef’ me wuss’n I was befo’
(Gwan ter git a-home bime by).”
They had started the chorus of the second verse, throwing themselves into it with all the abandon of bobolinks—black bobolinks—when we came to a turn in the road and heard a clatter of hoofs and a smart turn-out belonging to summer people from Egerton drove by.
I recognized in the ladies who were leaning languidly back on the cushioned seats two New Yorkers whom we met at a tea last winter and who seemed to take an interest in Ethel, so much so that I told her at the time that if she had had any social ambitions I was sure that here were stepping stones.
But I am quite sure that the stepping stones marveled greatly at the spectacle and the sounds we presented. Driving a chorus out. We looked back after we had passed and found that they were rude enough to be looking at us.
“Do you care, Ethel?”
“Well, I wish they had been some one else. It must have looked silly.”
“Not at all. It looks perfectly business-like. Or it will look so later. When Mrs. Guernsea and her daughter see the announcements of the concert they will realize that we were doing a little preliminary advertising to whet the appetites of the populace. They will come to the concert. Mark my words.”
As we were now within sight of the houses of the village, I told James that I guessed we’d better postpone further melody until our return, as we might be taken for a circus, rather than a concert, and the rest of the way was made in silence.
While Ethel was buying clothes for Minerva, I, by the advice of James, sought out Deacon Fotherby of the Second Congregational Church.
He presided over the destinies of a shoestore, and when I went in he was trying to force a number eight shoe on a number nine foot of a Cinderella of uncertain age, whose face was red—from his exertions.
I waited patiently about until the good deacon got a larger shoe, called it a number seven (may the recording angel pardon him) and slipped it on the foot of Cinderella, who departed simpering.
He came up to me in a business-like way.
“Is this Deacon Fotherby?”
“My name is Fotherby, but I sell shoes week days.”
“Well, Mr. Fotherby, I don’t want to buy any shoes to-day, but I do want to know whether you are interested in the Hurlbert Home.”
The deacon’s manner underwent a remarkable change. Up to that time he had been the attentive salesman. Now his face softened, he motioned me to a seat and sat down beside me.
“Interested? I’m wrapped up in it. What do you want? To help it or be helped by it?”
“Both in a way,” said I, as I thought of what the concert was going to accomplish for me.
“I am in a position to give a concert of negro melodies for the benefit of your home. I control—in a measure—two colored persons who have fine voices, and it occurred to me that the villagers and perhaps the summer people would attend a concert given in your church.”
“Yes, they would,” said he, rubbing his hands. “And we could provide some attractions out of our own ranks. There’s a male quartette in the Sunday School—”
“White?” said I.
“Why, certainly,” said he.
“Well, I’m a person entirely devoid of race prejudice, but you must remember that this is New England, Massachusetts in fact, and if we wish to make a success of this concert we must not mix the two races. I see no reason personally why your white quartette should not sing on the same stage with our colored singers, if they sing as well, but I am quite sure that the public would not patronize the concert if we advertised it as a mixed affair.”
The good deacon rose from his seat and said, “Why, my dear sir, I consider that a colored man has just as white a soul as a white man.”
I also rose and told him that I could not swear as to the color of any soul; that souls might be a delicate pink for all I personally knew to the contrary. I also told him that I would not object to attending a concert of beautiful voices that came out of white and black throats (I was not flippant enough to say that all throats were red) but that I knew my fellow Yankees too well to think that they would care to come to a concert where whites and blacks sang on the same stage.
“It might go in the South,” said I, “where their ideas about such things are different from ours, but up here if you want our colored concert to be a success you must let all the singing be done by colored folks and all the hearing be done by white.”
At this point the talk drifted to the negro question and what a problem it was getting to be and I found that we thought alike on most points, and I finally made him understand that I was acting from diplomatic motives entirely, and because I understood the temper of the New Englanders so well.
“Remember that it was in a town in Connecticut,” said I, “that a colored man was ejected from a white man’s restaurant, and it is in New England that little colored children have a hard time at school, because they are black, and for no other reason. Being in New England, the country of liberty, you must give me the liberty of arranging my concert so that it shall be a success, and therefore (I smiled) there must be no mixture of races on the stage.”
We decided that the early part of September would be a good time to give it, as the haying would by that time have been done and we could count on a larger audience.
On the way home James told me that he had a brother and a little sister, who could be brought into the concert, and that with them he could furnish some very nice quartettes.
Ethel looked at me meaningly, and said,
“Minerva might go there and practise. Do they live at your mother’s?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I realized that it would be better for them to practise at his house than at ours, because, while the practice of music makes perfect, it sometimes also makes maniacs.
“NOW, I’ll tell Mis. Vernon, if you do dem tricks. Stop.”
“Why, he’s perfectly harmless, Minerva. Look, I’m holding him.”
“Don’ you let him get at me. Mah goodness, he has a head like a horse. Ooh, Lawdy, where’s he gone?”
It was raining and Ethel and I were in the sitting room when we heard these loud words and then Minerva burst into the room.
She had her skirts held at a height that would have been all right for ballet dancing, but Minerva is not a ballet dancer and Ethel bade her remember herself.
Now it seemed to me that that was exactly what she was doing. Fright is memory of self as nearly as I can make out, and Minerva was evidently frightened at a new animal that “looked like a horse.”
I had a mental picture of a pony that James had smuggled into the kitchen and then I remembered that New York was not a stranger to ponies and that perhaps in her childhood Minerva might have ridden a pony in Central Park or at Coney Island. No, it must be some other beast.
“What is the matter. Don’t you see that Mr. Vernon is reading to me?”
“But it jumped at me!”
“What jumped at you?” said I sternly. If there is anything that I dislike it is to be interrupted when I am reading. If interruptions ever came in the midst of prosy descriptions I would not mind it at all. I could even stand it in the midst of a digression (like the present one), but interrupters have the uncanny knack of timing their breaks so that just as the author has led up to a brilliant mot and the moment is psychologically perfect, they say their little say and when the reading is resumed the humour or the wit of the sentence has evaporated.
James now appeared in the doorway.
“What jumped at Minerva, James?”
“It was on’y a grasshopper, sir. Never saw anyone afraid of a grasshopper before.”
“Why, Minerva!” said Ethel. “You said it looked like a horse.”
James, with a chuckle, stooped and picked something from the floor. It bent its legs for a spring as he put his hand down and again Minerva screamed. It leaped with a thud against his palm and he held it between thumb and forefinger and said,
“She’s right. It does look like a horse.”
I had never noticed the resemblance before, but there was no gainsaying it, once our attention had been called to it. I imagine that if the head were increased to horse size and the body and legs were in proportion, it would be a more formidable looking beast than the hyena. And if a hyena were reduced to grasshopper size he would be as “cute” as a caterpillar.
“Minerva,” said Ethel, “sit down. You may go, James. I wish you would not scare Minerva.”
“Never thought she’d scare so easy, Mrs. Vernon,” said he respectfully. He was always respectful. He went out into the woodshed to split some kindlings. He had already split enough to last us all of a winter, but it was healthful exercise and I kept him at it when he was not singing or mowing the lawn.
“Minerva, I don’t suppose that there is a more harmless insect in the world than a grasshopper,” said Ethel.
“What are they for?” said Minerva.
“Why—er,” said Ethel, while I held my book up before my face discreetly.
“Why, they are to hop in the grass.”
“Oh,” said Minerva.
“Yes, they can hop many times the length of their own bodies.”
“Oh,” said Minerva.
Ethel made a mental calculation.
“I should say, Minerva,” said she, “that a grasshopper can hop about one hundred and twenty times his own length. How tall are you?”
“I’m five feet three,” was her unexpected answer.
“Well, call it five feet,” said Ethel, with a very serious face. “If you had the power of a grasshopper you could hop six hundred feet. That is to say, you could hop a long city block.”
The idea of Minerva hopping from Seventh Avenue to Eighth (for instance) was too much for me and I began to cough so hard that I had to go up stairs for a trochee.
When I came down Ethel was saying,
“You’ve heard the noises in the grass, haven’t you?”
“’Deed I have,” said Minerva, dismally.
“Did you know that the grasshoppers make a great deal of that noise?”
“No’m,” said Minerva, her mouth wide open.
“They do. And how do you suppose they do it?”
“They blow, I suppose.”
“No, they don’t blow. Do they, Philip?”
“No, very few grasshoppers can blow. They can blow away, but they make that noise by—er—why, they make that noise—”
The words of a college song came into my head, “I can play the fiddle with my left hind leg.”
“They make fiddles of themselves and play, Minerva.”
Minerva looked at me seriously.
“That’s it, Minerva,” said Ethel eagerly. “They scrape their wings in some way and that makes the sound. You don’t know how many things there are to learn about the country and, Minerva, it isn’t half as dangerous as the city. To-morrow if it is pleasant, we’ll go out and try to catch a grasshopper playing his little fiddle. You may go, now, Minerva.”
Minerva went out and closed the kitchen door and the next minute the house shook. I thought of the powder mills at Mildon. Again the house shook.
“It is Minerva hopping,” said Ethel.
“Pretty close to six hundred feet, from the sound,” said I.
I HAD strung up a hammock between two trees in front of the house and days when Ethel did not feel like walking she used to lie in it while I sat by her side and read to her. She would have been glad to read to me some times, but if there is anything I dislike it is to be read to. I can never follow what is being said unless I have a book in front of me, and besides as I cannot knit and do not know how to draw it would be time wasted for me to sit still and listen to reading.
We are so built, the most of us, that we consider we are wasting time unless our hands are moving. If a woman sits with her hands in her lap thinking great thoughts she is manifestly idle. But if she sits embroidering tasteless doilies and thinking of nothing, she has found something for her hands to do and Satan is foiled again. How often he is foiled these days.
As I say, I do dislike to be read to, so while Ethel sits and crochets or knits or does fancy sewing, I sit by her side and read, and it is a very pleasant way of passing the time. Her embroidery is worth while, and I think there is to be found no such practice in language as reading aloud.
I recommend it to all lispers and persons with uncertain pronunciations.
While we were reading who should drive up but the Guernseas, the people who had heard our open air concert.
I saw they were about to stop, so I laid down my book and went out to greet them.
“Won’t you come into the house?” said I, and Ethel rising, seconded the invitation.
“Thank you, no it is such a lovely day we’ll sit here. John, you may come back in twenty minutes.”
John was their very elegant driver, and after hitching the horses to the stone post, he touched his hat and walked away.
Ethel and I stood by the carriage and passed the commonplaces of the day for a minute or two and then the absurdity of the situation dawned on me. Here were our two distinguished friends doing us the honour of calling on us, and they were sitting in the most comfortable seats in a very ornate carriage, while my good wife and I stood at their feet as it were and received their call. I prefer sitting at people’s feet, after the manner of the Jews of old, so I went into the house and brought out two dingy hair-cloth chairs, much to Ethel’s mortification, and we sat down on them.
So sitting we were not more than abreast of the floor of the carriage, and we addressed all our remarks to those above who evidently had no sense of humour, for they never smiled at the situation once.
“We want to know,” said Mrs. Guernsea, languidly, “whether you are living this simple life that Charles Wagner preaches.”
“I haven’t read his book, but our life is simple. I think we are both very simple.”
I looked at Ethel and she and I looked up to the perches above us, and I know that she was thinking that we were very simple to allow a thing of this kind to happen, instead of insisting that our grand visitors come at least to the verandah and meet us upon an equal footing.
“Caroline, they are leading the simple life. Fancy! Was that why you went driving with those colored people yesterday?”
Ethel started to tell the facts in the case, but I rudely interrupted and said,
“Mrs. Guernsea, in the simple life all men are equal, but in real life there are many inequalities. The woman you saw on the back seat was Minerva, our estimable cook, while the man was James, our man-of-all-play.”
I pronounced his title quickly and she did not notice the variation.
“This is the land of the free and theoretically all men are free and equal. As a matter of fact, all men are not so, but up here while we lead the simple life we try to make those with whom we come in contact believe that they are so. You met us yesterday, and yesterday I was driving Minerva and James out. Had you met us to-day, James would have been driving Mrs. Vernon and me out.”
Both Mrs. Guernsea and her lackadaisical daughter accepted what I had to say in the spirit in which I wished them to accept it; as a truth of the simple life, and it was so different from their own lives that for the nonce it interested them to hear about it. Therefore, despite Ethel’s reproving brow-liftings, I went on.
“In our life here in this cottage Minerva does all the cooking, because she is the best cook of the four, just as I do all the reading aloud, because I am the best reader; and Mrs. Vernon does all the embroidery, because she is the best embroiderer; and James—well, we have not yet found what James can do best, but there is one thing—his spirits are never depressed and he heartens us all.”
“How curious. And do you believe that such a state of things would be possible in a more complex life, in New York, for instance?”
“Mrs. Guernsea, have you ever tried having Mr. Guernsea take your men and your maids out driving in the Park?”
“Why, no!”
“Try it, when you go back,” said I. “They will be pleased beyond any doubt.”
“But your servants were singing. Did not that annoy you?”
“My dear Mrs. Guernsea, it is one of the first principles of the simple life not to be annoyed. Didn’t you think their voices sweet?”
“Yes, but it seemed so—so unconventional.”
“The simple lifers,” said I, “abhor conventions that already exist. They aim to create new conventions and live up to them. We felt the need of song. Neither Mrs. Vernon nor myself can sing very acceptably. Both Minerva and James are blessed with delightful voices, so they sang for us without a word of demurring.”
“Would they sing now, do you suppose? It was really very lovely.”
“I have no doubt. I’ll go and ask them. But—”
I hesitated. The precious old humbug, so devoid of humour, was condescending toward the simple life during a single ennuied afternoon. I wondered if I could make her become a disciple of it for a few short moments; hence my hesitation. I resolved to risk it, and with an elevation of my eyebrows directed at Ethel which meant “Keep out,” I said:
“In the simple life anything like condescension jars. If Minerva and James consent to sing I must ask that they be allowed to sit in the carriage and that you make one of us on the ground. I will get chairs.”
“Oh, no, we will stand.”
And the daughter said languidly, “We sometimes drive over to the country fairs, and it is awfully jolly to stand alongside the carriage and watch the races. We have done it on the other side, too.”
“Oh, I know they always do it there,” said I, with enthusiasm. “Many’s the picture I’ve seen of it.”
I went in and found Minerva ironing, while James was blacking the stove.
“Will you please tidy yourselves up a bit and come out and sing for two of our friends?” said I. “They are influential city people, and they may not be able to attend the concert. You’re to sit in their carriage and sing.”
They were, of course, delighted, being two children, and I left them tidying up, and hurried back.
Ethel had gone into the house for something, but she soon came out with a bowl of blue berries and two napkins.
“Will you help yourselves?” said she.
Mrs. Guernsea looked at her daughter, and her daughter looked at Mrs. Guernsea. They were too well bred to suggest that anything was missing, but they were evidently thinking of saucers and spoons. I came to the rescue, knowing that Ethel had entered into my madness.
“More simple life, but you don’t have to do it. Still, berries never taste so luscious as when eaten from the hand.”
I held the bowl solemnly before them, they removed their gloves, ate dainty mouthfuls of berries, and their delight in the flavour was very real.
“Oh, I wish that it were possible to do this at home.”
I bowed. “It needs only for Mrs. Guernsea to do it to make it possible everywhere.”
While they were eating Minerva and James came out, and if Minerva was not the best looking woman there, James was the best looking man—by all odds. I was proud of their appearance.
I was a little afraid that the Guernseas would show a certain amount of hauteur, but they were evidently trying to enter into the simple life, and would obey all its rules for the nonce. It was a break in their sadly monotonous lives.
“Minerva and James, these are Mrs. Guernsea and her daughter, Miss Guernsea, and they wish you to sing some of your songs.”
Both Mrs. Guernsea and the daughter smiled very seriously, and I helped them to alight from the carriage.
They took their stand on the green sward, and as I would not have felt comfortable to remain seated with them standing, I left my seat, and so Ethel was the only one who had a seat at the concert.
After a little self conscious giggling on Minerva’s part, a giggling that James reprimanded with native dignity, the pair began “Steal Away.”
“Steal away.”
The richly caparisoned horses, to employ a term that has been faithful to writers these many years, the beautiful Victoria, handsomely japanned, the earnest songsters leaning back on the cushions and singing the plaintive song, while the fashionable Guernseas stood and drank it all in, formed a picture as unusual as it was pleasing—to me.
Midway in the second verse, even as the Guernseas had surprised us the day before, so to-day the pastor of the Second Congregational Church surprised us to-day by driving past in his buggy, accompanied by his wife.
I think he had meant to stop, but when he saw what was going on, he simply opened his mouth; his good wife opened her mouth, and I think the horse opened its mouth, and they drove by.
They had seen the simple life being lived by six persons.
James and Minerva were ready for an encore, but it did not occur to either Mrs. Guernsea or her daughter to applaud. They contented themselves by saying it was very charming.
But I felt that the labourers were worthy of their hire, and still thinking of the simple life and equality, I said to Mrs. Guernsea, in the most matter of course way:
“I wonder if you wouldn’t let James take Minerva out for a short drive in return for their singing? James is an expert driver.”
Mrs. Guernsea was not at all hard, and besides, I believe that she was in a way hypnotised; so with scarce a moment’s hesitation she said:
“Why, certainly. You won’t be gone long, I suppose?”
“Oh, no ma’am. We’ll just drive around the square.”
The “square” was a stretch of country road some two miles in length.
James unhitched the horses and mounted the driver’s seat, but Minerva sprawled luxuriously in the seat in which she had sung. James tightened the reins and the horses started off at what is called a spanking pace by those who know.
What happened thereafter was told me in part by James, and I will give the substance of it.
It seems that he had not gone very far when he met John, the driver.
Naturally enough, when John saw his mistress’s horses coming toward him at a pace considerably above that indulged in by himself (when he was driving for her), he was at first dumbfounded and then angered. To him what had occurred was as plain as the nose on his face. Mrs. Guernsea had been asked into the house by us, and this impudent scamp had seized the opportunity to take his girl out for a ride.
“Here, stop. Get out of that!” he yelled.
James replied by some piece of impertinence that served to increase the coachman’s anger, and picking up a stone he let drive at James, but hit the flank of the nigh horse instead. He, feeling the unwonted sting, plunged forward, communicated his fear to his mate, and the two horses began to run away.
We at the house heard Minerva’s familiar screams, but I set it down to a new animal that had come to her ken, as I knew that James was a capable driver.
As for Mrs. Guernsea, she was telling us something about the evening that the English primate took dinner at her house on Madison Avenue, and she did not notice Minerva’s cries.
James had been familiar with horses from his boyhood, and he would have brought the pair under his control before long, but John was a man of action, and when he saw the horses start on a mad run, and also saw a boy (Bert, in fact,) riding horseback, he yelled to him: “Lend me that horse, boy. My team is being stolen.”
Bert, having just passed the run-a-way, jumped quickly from his mount and John took his place and turning the horse, dashed after James.
The run-a-ways, hearing the clatter of hoofs behind them, ran the harder and Minerva’s screams steadily increased in pitch and volume.
At the first turn James guided the horses to the left and calculated that before the two miles were made they would be winded, for their gait was tremendous.
As John made the turn, crying “Stop thief” at the top of his lungs, he passed the minister who had just passed us and who was going back to our house—for as it turned out, he wished to see me.
He heard the hue and cry, and bidding his wife get out of the carriage and wait for him, he whipped up and started in pursuit.
And Bert, deprived of his horse, but unwilling to be deprived of so much excitement cut across lots, that he might see the race on its last quarter. This much I afterward learned from him.
Through it all James never lost command of the horses, nor Minerva of her voice. Her view halloo echoed over woodland and vale, and came to me from different points of the compass, and I began to feel that something serious was the matter, and now and again I had visions of bills for the repair of a carriage.
When they reached the last quarter I could distinctly hear the “Stop thiefs!” of two voices, and so did Ethel, but both Mrs. Guernsea and her daughter were of those people who can attend to but one thing at a time, and they were busily engaged in talking, the mother to me and the daughter to Ethel.
The way in front of our house is level and commands a view of the country for a considerable distance, and when James started on his last quarter, and had attained a steep hill, from where I sat (for I had insisted on bringing out chairs for us all) I could see Mrs. Guernsea’s delicately made carriage swinging from side to side of the road, James sitting erect, his wrists tight against his chest and Minerva letting out warwhoops on the back seat.
Nearer and nearer they came, and at last Mrs. Guernsea heard the commotion and, putting up her lorgnon gazed in the direction from which the sound came.
“Why he is going too fast!” said she. “He will lather the horses.”
I felt quite sure that the lathering had already been well done, but I did not say so.
“I’m afraid they are running away,” said I.
“No,” said Miss Guernsea, rising to her feet and using her own eyes, “He is running away with them. He is being chased. Hear that? ‘Stop thief!’”
Across the swampy land in front of our house I saw the running figure of a boy. He climbed the stone wall that edges the road, and panting violently rushed up to us.
It was Bert. “Try to head him off,” said he. “He’s trying to steal that turn-out.”
I did not believe it, even then. When I put my confidence in a man I don’t like to have it disturbed, and I won’t disturb it myself as long as there is a shadow of a chance to preserve it. The horses were running away, but it was not James’ fault. I was sure of that.
A minute later the form of a man on horseback was seen cresting the hill, and after a longer interval the minister’s buggy topped the same crest.
The last turn in the road is a few rods north of our house, and James guided the horses skilfully round that turn and stopped them in front of our house. This was partly because Minerva, having fainted, was no longer screaming, and partly because John’s horse had stumbled and thrown him. And the minister came in second, his horse panting.
“James,” said I indignantly, “what do you mean by driving those horses at such a gait?”
James, when the horses had stopped, had sprung from the seat and was now at their heads talking in a low voice to them and patting them in order to calm them.
Minerva came to herself, said “Oh Lawdy! Are we back again, already?” and climbed ungracefully out of the carriage.
The horses were white with lather, their tongues lolling out of their mouths; and the wagon was sadly scratched. It was a mortifying moment for a liver of the simple life.
“James, what happened?” said I, sternly.
And then John came limping up, with a flesh wound on his forehead and shaking his fist at James, and with his cockaded hat in his hand said to Mrs. Guernsea, “I met him trying to run away with the horses ma’am, and I tried to stop him. The cheek of him, ma’am!”
James gave a contemptuous grunt, and leaving the horses, who had calmed down wonderfully under his ministrations, he pointed to a cut on the flank of the nigh horse.
“That’s what started the trouble, madam,” said he, “and it was your driver that threw the stone.”
I will say for Mrs. Guernsea, that she behaved like a thoroughbred. She was evidently a woman who reasoned things out, and she knew something of the principles of the simple life, for she said:
“Everybody meant well, I’ve no doubt, and the thing is all over now.”
John was blanketing the sweating horses.
“Don’t let it worry you an instant, Mr. Vernon,” said she. “It was all an accident.”
I tried to get them to come indoors and take some refreshment, for the last few moments had been more strenuous than simple, but they decided that it was better for the horses to exercise them a little more and so they drove slowly home, and Bert went after his horse which had not hurt itself, and the minister went on to pick up his wife whom he had left at the first turn.
“And it was really all your fault,” said Ethel, smilingly, after James and Minerva had departed to the kitchen.
“Well, it gave Minerva something to think about and made life worth living for the Guernseas.”
I AM not quite sure whether I have spoken of it but by profession, trade, occupation, I am a writer. I write short stories under an assumed name and therefore the telling of the events of the summer is in a manner easy for me.
But I not only write stories; I also at times read stories, and I have been known to recite—not in an impassioned way but merely foolishly. The previous winter had been a hard one in more ways than one for both Ethel and myself, but toward the close of it the winning of a prize in a story competition had given me enough money to enable me to knock off work for all summer, and it had seemed wise to take advantage of such a chance to rest and lie fallow.
I did not mention my occupation at the start because I was afraid that readers would say, “Oh, dear, this is a story by a literary man, and nothing will happen in it.” You see now-a-days when men in all walks of life write of what they have done, and make books of their writings, the people who read books have gotten to the point when they look with suspicion on a story that is written by a mere professional writer. They say, “Oh, he has done nothing but write. Let us read the book of the man who has first done and has then written.”
But you who have read thus far may feel in a way friendly to Minerva, and the rest, and so I take you into my confidence and make the pun to you that won for me a rebuke from Ethel. Letters spell livelihood for me.
The Congregational Minister, Egbert Hughson, and his wife returned to us in a few minutes and after the moving accident had been discussed for a certain length of time, he came to the matter that had brought him up.
He was a smooth shaven alert, Western man of about thirty, I should say, and I marked him out as a type of the modern muscular Christian, and this guess proved to have been correct. He was an Iowan who had come East to study, had graduated from Williams and after a year in a small Iowa church had been called to Egerton through the good offices of a former class-mate.
I hope I may not be accused of egotism if I set down plainly what Mr. Hughson said. The denouement is not what an egotist would roll under his tongue. During the narration of the episode let me treat Philip Vernon quite as if he did not press the keys with which I am writing this.
“Mr. Vernon, I did not know until Deacon Fotherby told me, that we had so distinguished a man amongst us. I have read your sketches in the Antarctic Monthly with a great deal of pleasure, and although you use a pen name, still I happened to know that you were the author. I also understand that you sometimes recite.”
I bowed assent. I could have told him the rest. He was going to say: “Now the Y. P. S. C. E. are about to give a little literary entertainment for the benefit of the library and it would add interest to the proceedings if you would do us the great honor of reciting one or more pieces for us, or perhaps read something of your own.”
I guessed right. He said it, allowing for certain unimportant verbal variations. I think it was the Y. M. S. C., instead of the Y. P. S. C. E., and instead of saying “it would add interest to the proceedings,” he said it would “give the affair a literary flavour”—words of the same import.
I told him that Mrs. Vernon had come up to rest, but that did not head him off. I really didn’t suppose it would. I was merely making his task a little difficult, so that he would appreciate me the more. We writers all do things like that. If I had fallen into his arms and had said, “Recite; why I’ll do the whole programme,” while he would have thanked me, he would have felt that he had gotten me so easily that I could not be worth much.
“Well, surely,” said he, “it won’t tire Mrs. Vernon for you to come and talk to us. You’ll be doing a favour to your fellows.”
Ah, now it was time for me to come down gracefully off my perch, and I consented to sing my little song. Altruism is the lesson of the hour, and I think I have learned it. I have been taught it often enough by various committees. Committees believe firmly in altruism. “Altruism,” say they, “is the getting of a man to do something worth something for nothing.” Some define altruism as “Depriving the labourer of his hire for the good of others.”
I would not care to be misunderstood in this matter. I really think that if a man has talents he ought to use them to the benefit of his fellows, but I have known so many poor strugglers in New York who, when they were struggling most frantically, have been asked by complaisant committees to give their services for the entertainment of the Grand-Daughters of Evolution or some other body perfectly capable of paying for their services that I am rather glad of this opportunity of freeing my mind.
Altruism begins at home. If you believe in it, practise it yourself, but until you have learned to think about the needs of the other fellow, don’t ask him to think of your luxuries.
The upshot of the whole matter was that I told Mr. Hughson that I would be glad to come and recite the following Wednesday (a week later), and a week later we hired Bert’s wagon, and with James holding the reins, Minerva by his side (of course we could not leave her at home alone) and Ethel and I on the back seat, we drove down to the Sunday School of the church.
I wish that the good pastor had introduced me. He was a man who had moved among his fellows and who knew life and had a sense of values, while the man who did introduce me, and who shall be nameless, was insincere, shallow, a flatterer and fond of the sound of his own voice.
I can say these things thus plainly, because he is now spending a year or so in State prison for breaking the sixth commandment. (No need to look it up; it is “Thou Shalt Not Steal.”)
To tell the truth, I did not want to be introduced. I had not recited for months, and I was feeling frightfully nervous. So much so that my knees wabbled, my palms were moist and my throat parched.
I would gladly have given the Y. M. S. C. ten dollars to release me, only I didn’t have my check-book with me.
This full-whiskered man, who was the Sunday School superintendent, took his long length up onto the platform and bowing and grimacing said, in a hard, flat voice,
“Ladies and gentlemen, I think that we of Egerton have always been fortunate in securing the summer services of various people who are eminent in the walks of life to which it has pleased God to call them. You may remember that last summer we had the eminent English scientist, Professor Drysden, who did some very clever card tricks for us; the year before we had Rev. Amaziah Barton, who sang a very amusing coon song for us, and I think it was the year before that that the famous Arctic explorer, whose name escapes me, entertained us with ventriloquial tricks. All these men showed in thus—er—doing things that were in a measure outside of the ordinary line of their duties, how manifold are the workings of the human brain.
“To-night we have with us a man whose name is known wherever the English language is spoken; a man whose erudite works are upon every shelf, a man who has reflected lustre upon the language spoken by Chaucer and Spenser—”
(I have never written anything under the name of Philip Vernon, so that my hearers were so far entirely in the dark as to my identity.)
“Mr. Vernon is a frequent contributor to the Antarctic Magazine, and those of us who feel that the month has not been well spent until we have absorbed its contents know Mr. Vernon’s work as we know our Bibles.
“We have been told by a celebrated philosopher that a little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men, and there is a great deal of truth in the remark. I am not above smiling at a joke myself; no one can afford to be so engrossed with the affairs of the world as never to permit a jocose remark to pass his lips.
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and so Mr. Vernon is going to unbend to-night, and will make you shriek with laughter by his card tricks.”
Here he was interrupted by the Rev. Mr. Hughson, who said in a loud whisper, “No, he is going to recite.”
I was boiling. If I had been Mark Twain himself, such an introduction would have made whatever followed in the nature of an anti-climax. As I was to the audience simply an unknown “Mr. Vernon,” it was little less than cruelty to animals.
“Oh, surely. I am sure we are all prepared to laugh heartily at the witticisms and comical actions of Mr. Philip Vernon, the great author whom I now take pleasure in introducing to you.”
Ethel was well in the back of the room. She hates to hear me recite, as she is always afraid that I will go to pieces, a fear that I have often told her was groundless, as whatever else may happen, I always keep control of myself, but this evening the malapropos idiocies of the asinine gentleman on the platform upset me so that I hardly knew what I was doing when I stumbled up alongside of him.
I had chosen a poem that is not humourous in itself, but by means of perverting its written meanings and by the use of uncouth gestures the thing has served to create amusement among my friends and (when I am feeling in the mood for it) even among my enemies. But to-night I was not feeling humourous; only angry.
I bowed to the audience, bowed to the minister, bowed to the idiot who had misintroduced me, and then I began the thing, and to Ethel’s intense relief (for I happened to look at her) the audience burst out into laughter before I had finished the first verse. The second verse caused them to laugh still more, and instead of keeping my wits entirely on the matter in hand I allowed myself to think of both what my audience was doing and what the man had been saying, and the consequence was what it is apt to be if a man loses grip of his work. I lost my lines. I had recited the thing dozens of times, but now not a word would come to me. I smoothed my moustache and coughed in character, and took a step or two around the platform, as if I were leading up to some business and then I bowed suddenly and walked into the cloak room, where I was followed by Ethel, and for the next two minutes I had all I could do to restrain her sobs. She was hysterical.
As for me, I was angry clear through, and when the pastor came in I started to tell him, but he raised his hand and I saw that he understood better than I could say. He grasped my hand and I knew that he was a man of feeling.
“It’s all right,” said he. “The audience is laughing and applauding, and they think you meant to do it. Go back and give them something else.”
It was as if a flash of lightning had shown me a way of escape from a perilous lodgment.
“Do you mean it?” said I.
He opened the door a little and I could hear them clapping their hands.
“Ethel, I’ll go in and tell them that story I wrote for Mazie.”
Back to the platform I went, with my mind full of a nonsense story I had written for my niece.
I was received by enthusiastic applause, and heartened by their kindly feeling I told them the following story, which I called:
“The Mother of Little Maude and Little Maude.”
Once upon a time there was a little girl named Maude, and she went out a-driving in a four-wheeled carriage drawn by two four-legged horses and driven by one two-legged driver. And the dear little girl named Maude sat on the front seat by the two-legged driver and Maude’s dear Mama sat on the back seat by herself, which is not the same as beside herself.
And all of a sudden the horses, which had only been running before, began to run away. And the dear little girl named Maude wished to let her mamma know that they were running away, but she did not wish to alarm her too suddenly, for sometimes shocks are serious.
And the dear little girl named Maude saw a reporterman walking along the sidewalk looking for news for his paper. So she called to the reporterman and said, “I wish to speak to you on business.”
And the reporterman was agile, and he jumped on the step of the carriage, and the little girl said to him, “Please get it into your paper that the horses are running away, and I wish my dear mamma to know it. I am none other than little Maude.”
And the reporterman did not know that the lady on the back seat was the mamma of little Maude, so he raised his cap and jumped from the carriage and nearly fell down in so doing, for the horses were now running madly on eight legs, and the driver was getting nervous and the reporterman went to the newspaper office and wrote: “The horses of the little girl who is none other than little Maude, are running away and it is a pretty serious business, for her mamma does not know it, and there is no telling when the horses will stop.”
And they slapped this news into type, and then it was printed in the newspaper, and a newsboy took the papers and ran into the street, crying “Extry! Extry! Full account of the running away of the horses of the little girl, who is none other than little Maude.”
And Maude’s mamma heard the little boy, and she beckoned to him to bring her a paper. And the newsboy was also agile, and he leaped upon the step and sold a paper to the lady for a cent and then he jumped off again, for he had other papers to sell.
And the mamma of little Maude began to read the news. And when she came to the part that said the horses of little Maude were running away, she looked straight ahead and saw that it was indeed true.
And with great presence of mind she climbed over the back seat and dropped to the ground unhurt. And when little Maude saw that her dear mamma had escaped, she also climbed over the back seat and dropped to the ground unhurt. And when the driver saw that Maude’s mamma and little Maude had escaped, he also climbed over the back seat and dropped to the ground unhurt.
And the two horses, who were very intelligent and who had wondered what would be the outcome of their runaway, got into the carriage and they also climbed over the back seat and dropped to the ground unhurt.
The ride home was pleasanter than I had expected it to be. When I had stepped off the platform after my fiasco, I understood how a suicide felt. When I stepped off the second time I felt better.
“I almos’ bus’ laughin’,” said Minerva, as she climbed into the carriage.
“Thank you, Minerva,” said I, fully appreciating both the compliment and her peril.
A WEEK of lovely weather made us forget time. We spent our days in the open air, and Minerva spent her days practising for the concert. It was wonderful with what expedition she cooked our meals and cleaned up afterward. The meals were, if anything, more delicious than formerly. She was happy, and she could not help communicating some of her happiness to her cooking. It was not so much the thing she cooked, as the happy way she cooked it.
James was a sort of Luther Burbank in his power over plants. One afternoon I said to Ethel in his hearing that I thought it was a pity that the Wheelocks had not planted a vine in front of the house, as it would have added greatly to its picturesqueness.
He was oiling his lawn mower at the time, and I noticed that he stood up and looked at the house front and nodded his head and smiled, but I would not have thought of it again had it not been for the fact that two days after, on returning from a drive with Ethel, we both burst out into ejaculations of surprise and delight.
The front of the house, up to the second-story window, was adorned by a most beautiful crimson rambler.
I felt like rubbing my eyes. We must have lost our way. It could not be our house.
But just then Minerva and James came around the corner of the house, hand in hand. As soon as they saw us they let go of hands, and she went back to the kitchen with a guffaw that merely indicated light heartedness.
James looked up at the vine and said,
“Looks pretty nice, don’t it?”
We overwhelmed him with compliments, and found out that he had bought a large potted plant in full bloom and had sunk pot and all in the earth. I had never heard of such a thing being done before, and I looked to see the roses all wither, but they did nothing of the kind. Our place looked a hundred per cent. better than it had done before, and when, a day or so later, I received a bill from a florist at Egerton, I paid it without a murmur. There is nothing like initiative, and it is worth paying for.
As I say, the days went by unheeded. We were too far from any church to attend one, but we tried to be as good on Sunday as we were on week days.
And this, by the way, is a most excellent rule for anyone to follow.
One morning I heard what sounded like pistol shots in the distance, many times repeated, and while we were at breakfast one or two teams passed us headed for Egerton.
“I wonder if haying is over as soon as this?” said Ethel. “I thought that horses were all at work in the fields.”
“Not this morning, evidently,” said I as another team, a two-horse one this time, went by, loaded with children.
“Oh, it’s a picnic,” said I, and then we heard a loud explosion in the opposite quarter from that of the last pistol shot.
I looked at Ethel, and we burst out laughing together.
“Fourth-of-July!”
“Of course! What geese we are. Oh, let’s go down town and see what they are doing!”
“Why, we can hear it up here. That’s all they are doing,” said I.
“No, I’ve always read about Fourth-of-July in the country. Don’t you remember Tom Bailey, in the ‘Story of a Bad Boy’? Let’s go down and join in the fun.”
“Probably Bert’s gone with his family. We’d have to walk.”
“Hello! here’s someone driving up to the post. Why, it’s James with a two-seated wagon!”
Just then Minerva came into the room, dressed up in her Sunday best and with an assortment of colored ribbons that made her look like a fair.
“Will there be anything to do to-day, ma’am? I’ve made lunch.”
“Where do you want to go, Minerva?” said Ethel.
“Why, James is just crazy to take me down to town to see the parade.”
“Who else is going?”
“No one on’y him an’ me. He brought his father’s wagon.”
“I guess there’ll be no objection, Minerva,” said Ethel. “When will you be back?”
“Oh, time for dinner.”
“Yes, you may go Minerva,” said Ethel, and Minerva clapped her hands. “Country ain’t so bad when you know it,” said she.
She went out into the kitchen, and I said,
“I have a kind of notion that James is going to invite us to go down with them. Now that would be extremely simple and would probably strike Mrs. Guernsea as being very original, but I think it will be better if I hire his rig and get him to drive us down and we’ll stay there all day and take dinner at the hotel, and come back by moonlight.”
Ethel took a turn at hand clapping.
“You’re a great deal better than when we came up, aren’t you?” said I.
“Oh, I’m all well now, and perfectly happy.”
I went out and said to James,
“James, can I hire your father’s team for to-day? and then I’d like you to drive us to town and bring us back to-night. We’ll dine at the hotel and you and Minerva can dine where you like.”
Whatever James’ idea may have been, he was not above earning an honest dollar, and I offered him two for the use of his team, and a half hour later we started for town.
His father had raised the horses himself (well-matched and handsome sorrels), and under James’ guidance they made nothing of the three-mile drive.
It was exhilarating to go through the air at such a pace, and we were both glad we had come, although we were both ashamed that we had forgotten what day it was.
Arrived in town, James put the horses up at a stable, and we broke up into groups of two.
I had never seen Minerva in such spirits, and it seemed to me that she clung to James’ arm in a way that signified something approaching an understanding between them. What if he married her? How could we find work for him in New York?
She almost danced along, and his own stride was to a certain extent cake-walkey. We saw them enter an ice cream saloon immediately, and we knew they would be happy all day long.
There was joy in the air and we were happy. There is no question about it; as a people we are beginning to take our holidays less sadly. Everywhere laughing groups were forming on the sidewalks of Main street to wait for the parade, which was to be made up not only of G. A. R. men, but also of representatives from nearly every fire company in the county. Engines and hooks and ladders had been coming in on the railroad all the morning, and, as I said to Ethel, I trembled when I thought of what might happen in their absence. She characteristically advised me not to tremble too much.
Blue coated, peak hatted men jostled slouch hatted veterans of the Civil War and younger men in khaki hurried to headquarters to make part of the parade.
Small boys were firing off lock-jaw pistols and smaller boys were exploding firecrackers and already that morning there had been a delightful fire in a fireworks store. Thanks to the visiting firemen it had been put out before the store was entirely consumed. Every one had been intensely gratified at the excitement excepting the owner who had reckoned on having his fireworks set off in other places than his own store. There was no chance for his rockets to show to advantage. However, he was fully insured and he showed his American spirit by hiring an empty store and doing a good business for the rest of the day in selling wet fireworks at a discount. Small boys found that fifty per cent of the crackers in a package would go off in spite of their exposure to water and as two cents a package was his prevailing price they were willing to buy to the extent of their Fourth-of-July fortunes.
To our city eyes the parade was not very imposing but then again viewed as a spectacle of American manhood it was not without its interest and the company of smoothshaven, tanned cheeked veterans of the Philippine War marching sturdily along provoked tremendous cheers from many who in the nature of things must have been “antis.”
All men are or ought to be expansionists on the Fourth-of-July. It is a day for fine feeling and for feeling fine. Ethel responded to its spirit nobly and she had not looked so well in years.
Once we heard loud laughter from the crowd and I instinctively said “Minerva,” and sure enough they were laughing at our maid. She or James had bought an American flag and she had wrapped it around her shoulders and was rising and falling on the balls of her feet in response to some internal rhythm. All at once she broke out into the singing of Dixie in which she was joined first by James and then by the entire crowd. Those who could not sing cheered and if there were any Southerners present it must have warmed the cockles of their hearts.
There is no doubt that the most popular song in the United States to-day (outside of “America” which is popular by tradition) is Dixie which was composed and written by a Northerner, fused into life by Southerners and now serves to show that we are Americans all.
After the parade those of us who could made our way to the Town Hall where the Declaration of Independence was to be read and where speeches were to be made quite in the old fashioned way.
Ethel had never heard the Declaration of Independence read. Fancy! Neither had I.
It seemed rather long but we liked the sentiments in it and it was read by a man who knew his business; the rector of the Episcopal Church.
Those who had a special pull were admitted to the platform. I worked no wires. In fact Ethel wanted to sit where she could leave the house easily if she felt faint so we were in the rear.
James evidently had a pull for he and Minerva sat on the platform. I was glad to see it because surely the Fourth-of-July is—well it is not necessary to say more.
Most of the speeches were very long and the place was very hot but there was one speech that was full of flowery eloquence that I had supposed had faded from the earth.
I am indebted to the courtesy of the editor of the Egerton Ensign for its text and I give it herewith so that future ages may see that, as late as the year 1903, Demosthenian eloquence had not passed away.
The speaker was a member of the State Legislature and he still clung to Burnside whiskers—or to be more accurate they still clung to him. He had a high forehead that continued unabashed over to his collar.
He rose amid considerable handclapping and advancing to the front of the platform he bowed solemnly to the multitude and then in a voice that was rich and sonorous and musical he said:
“One hundred and twenty-seven years ago to-day a nation was born upon earth.
“Ladies and gentlemen, need I tell you what the name of that Nation was? Need I say to any boy or to any girl or to any man or to any woman in this vast assemblage what the name of that nation was?
“No, ev-er-y boy and ev-er-y girl and ev-er-y man and ev-er-y woman knows that I refer to these free and independent United States of America. (Cheers).
“Born amid the thunder of warring guns (sic) and nursed upon bullets she grew to lusty childhood, advanced to sweet womanhood and in her turn, upon that other day to be held in remembrance—upon Dewey day—she became the mother of a child—a child that it is our duty to cherish and to educate and to uplift and to protect until she is as American as her mother.
“Need I say that I refer to the Philippines?” (Cheers mingled with a few hisses). He had now warmed to his work and his studied eloquence gave way to something more sincere.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, we warred with England in the days of old and I remember the time when it was thought to be unpatriotic for an American to like an Englishman but I say let us be magnanimous. Let us not any longer taunt England with her defeat. Those soldiers that she sent to harry and to bully and to cripple us are dead long ago. They did what they had sworn to do when they took oath under that despicable despot George the Third. When they fought us they were doing their duty as they saw it and their dust has mingled with the free soil of this great country these many years.
“Let us be magnanimous. Why even in those dark days we were not without friends on the other side. The name of William Pitt should ever be spoken with respect by true Americans.
“Let us be magnanimous. Are we likely to go to war with England? (thunders of Nos from all parts of the house).
“No, gentlemen, we are not likely to go to war with that country. Right or wrong she was our mother and we are the greatest credit to her that ever a daughter was to a mother. From the sea-kissed shores of the coast of Maine to the ocean lapped coast of California; from the storm swept areas of the great lakes to the humid waters of the Gulf of Mexico we are the greatest daughter that a mother ever had.
“Was Greece great? We shall be greater.
“Was Rome powerful? We shall be more powerful.
“Were the Middle Ages renowned for their arts? We shall be more renowned.
“Was England strong upon sea or land? We shall be more strong.
“Has England stood for internal fair play? We shall stand for external fair play.
“This country that was mocked and taunted within the memory of men yet living shall become one, who with power to mock does not mock. She shall spread abroad her hand and wars shall cease. The oppressed in all climes shall look to her for protection and she will protect.
“I hear voices borne on the summer wind of this day and they bring good tidings to me. They tell me that the right to work for a fair wage shall belong to each man and each woman who chooses to exercise it. They tell me—these voices—that the right to stop others from working shall be taken from those who think they hold it (Hear, hear) and that the right of the rich to eternally grab is no right.
“These voices tell me that the arts have found in these United States a soil in which they may flourish undisturbed. The blood of the Italians who have come to this country, mixed with the blood of the Poles and cooled by the blood of those of the North lands, tempered still more by the sturdy common sense of the Britons, made buoyant by the wit of the French and made strong and powerful by the blood of the three century old Americans will result in a type of man that shall cause our houses to become beautiful; that shall save our forests from destruction, that shall decorate and color and cause to blossom and run to ripe fruitage all that makes life cultivated, pure, serene and lovable.
“Ladies and gentlemen, let us thank God that we are Americans; that we have been allowed to live to see this day. There are strifes and rumours of strifes in our land but everything tends to betterment, and I firmly believe that at the last we shall be found to be the chosen people of the Lord of All Things by whom all things were made.”
(Cheers, and thunders of applause, in which I am free to say that Ethel and myself joined heartily.)
In fact, although the speech was over flowery, it had in it a good deal that any fair-minded man could say amen to and delivered under the influence of the deep baritone of a natural orator it was stimulating.
And then some one, with no sense of the fitness of things, rose and called on all to sing “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”
The millennium is not as close as all that. We still have the question of the rights of labour and the wrongs of capital with us, and a better hymn might have been selected.
“Onward, Christian Soldiers,” would have been more in the spirit of the time.
We made our way out, and as I was leaving the hall I looked back and saw the orator of the day shaking hands with James. It gave me a choky feeling, so that perhaps I was still under the influence of his speech.
I will acknowledge that I set down the speech in this place in order to make fun of it, but after all it was sincere, and sincerity makes a poor butt for the shafts of ridicule.
During the afternoon we took a drive in James’s wagon, and saw something of the beauty of the surrounding country, going quite a distance on the road to Springfield. We returned to Egerton by the upper road, and I had all I could do to keep the horses under control, as that end of the town was given up to the small boy, and pistols, crackers and bombs were being exploded on every hand.
One of those hideous things that knock the romance out of any spot in which they are placed, a merry-go-round, was revolving to the sound of wheezy organ music, and the horses were of one mind with us as to its being a blot on civilization, and they proceeded to show their distaste for it to such an extent that I stopped them short and let Ethel get out. Then I forced them to stand still and watch the moving picture. They obeyed me for a few seconds and then they tore down the street. I controlled them very soon, however, and when I had stopped them I hitched them to a post on a quiet square and went back to get Ethel.
I found her by a tree, looking with amusement at the carrousel. My eyes followed hers, and the picture presented to them was eminently characteristic.
James was riding on the merry-go-round. He was astride of a small wooden pony that gave his legs a chance to look unduly long, while perched alongside of him sat Minerva astride of a giraffe. She was clinging to the neck of the beast, and for the time being she was in New York (for Coney Island is to all intents and purposes New York and your merry-go-round is the strawberry mark that identifies Coney Island).
Round and round she whirled, her eyes shining ecstatically, and from time to time she reached out her right hand and met James’s left.
“We will have to keep a butler next winter,” said Ethel.
Suddenly Minerva saw us and she waved her hand to us and yelled something that we could not distinguish, but I knew it was an invitation to mount some strange animal and be happy.
We shook our heads. Happiness would not come to us in those questionable shapes. When I want to be sea-sick give me the ocean and a European port as the reward, not merely sickness for sickness’ sake. And Ethel is of the same mind only more so. She goes so far as to say, give her some American port and leave the sea and its sickness out altogether.
The music dwindled, the merry-go-round became less merry, and at last ceased to go round, and then Minerva, settling her ample skirts so as to cover the flanks of the giraffe, said,
“Oh, Mis. Vernon, I ain’t had so much fun this summer. Better come up. It’s jus’ as easy.”
“I’m glad you like it, Minerva,” said Ethel, “but it would make me dizzy. Have you had lunch?”
“Deed we have. Want some peanuts?”
The offer was made with such generosity of spirit that Ethel accepted. It was the Fourth-of-July, and we all ate peanuts together. I don’t think that James liked it. He felt that Minerva had not been well brought up. I am sure that he would not have asked us to eat peanuts, but I don’t see that any harm was done. There was no cloth spread and I have never yet come across a rule that says a lady of color on a giraffe should not offer peanuts to her mistress on the sidewalk of a New England town.
Anyway the peanuts were good and we enjoyed them.
We told James and Minerva to have a good time and to be ready to start for home at half past nine. There was to be a display of fireworks at eight, and I knew they would want to see that. It was somewhere in the neighbourhood of five o’clock when we left them and drove back to the stable.
The fireworks display was beautiful, although not lavish. I listened for Minerva’s rapturous Ah’s, but did not hear them, and as the circle in which we sat was not more than an eighth of a mile in diameter, I judged that for some unaccountable reason she was not there.
After the exhibition, which ended with a flight of a hundred rockets, one of which stove in a plate-glass window and so provided extra amusement for the crowd, we made our way to the stable, expecting to find James there, but he was not.
We found our wagon under a shed and we climbed in and waited, as Ethel was tired of being on her feet.
We waited until ten o’clock and James and Minerva did not come, so I asked a hostler to harness up, and telling him to keep James and Minerva if they came, we went forth to look for them.
I had a theory as to where they were, and I drove to Doncaster street, whereon the merry-go-round stands.
My instinct as to the whereabouts of the couple proved correct. There, under the flare of gasoline torches, whirled the merry-go-round, and now James was astride of an ostrich and Minerva, like Una, was riding a lion by his side and their hands were clasped in a firm, firm clasp.
I caught the eye of James and signalled, and when the music came to an end and the machine stopped, he and his lady love dismounted.
When we were all in the carriage Ethel said to Minerva,
“How did you enjoy the fireworks?”
She threw herself back in the seat with a gasp.
“Lawdy, forgot all ’bout the fireworks.”
“You don’t mean to say, Minerva, that you have been riding ever since we saw you this afternoon.”
“’Deed we have. Rode every beas’ an’ bird there was.”
“And what did you have for supper?”
“Peanuts,” said James, rather shamefacedly.
“IT’S love that makes the world go round,” said I next morning at breakfast.
“What makes the merry-go-round?” said Ethel.
“The answer to that will be found in the May number,” said I. “You ought not to ask conundrums, whose answers have to be thought up. But isn’t it so? Hasn’t Minerva been an angel ever since James came and if she isn’t in love with him what is she?”
“If that’s another conundrum, I give it up, too. Do you suppose that James loves her?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me. Minerva is not bad looking and she has a happy disposition in the main,” said I, as Ethel passed me my coffee.
“My, yes, she’s a different creature from what she was when she first saw these hills. This morning she actually told me that the sunsets up here had more colors in them than they had in New York, and that they were bigger. She’s beginning to take notice. I must give her a nature lesson. Something has always happened to prevent it.”
“I don’t think the need for it exists now that she has James. He’s all the study she needs.”
“Yes, but if we should come up here next summer, and James should not prove constant, it would be something if she loved the country for its own sake.”
Just then Minerva came in with a dish of brains; a present from Bert’s father, who sent the pleasant message that they always threw the stuff away, but he knew that city folks had queer tastes.
“Minerva, what were you going to do this morning?” asked Ethel.
“Nothin’, ma’am,” said she innocently.
“You mean nothing in particular,” said Ethel, knowing that no impertinence was intended. “Suppose you take some of those new kitchen towels to hem and we’ll go out into the fields and I’ll tell you something about the flowers.”
“I got some sewin’ of my own to do if you’ll let me,” said Minerva.
“Why certainly. You know, Minerva, as long as you get your work done each day, I don’t care what you do for yourself.”
“No’m, I know you don’t. I don’t either ma’am.”
I looked up hastily, but Minerva was guiltless of any attempt at repartee. She was simply acquiescing with her mistress.
Having nothing better to do than loaf, I went with Ethel to a place called the wintergreen lot, about a half mile distant, and Minerva followed after with a lot of white stuff that reminded me strongly of the day I was married. I am not up in feminine fabrics, and the thing might have been mosquito netting.
The day was hot and sultry. Hanging over Egerton in the southwest were great black, wicked looking clouds that portended thunder storms. We had so far escaped without one, although we had several times heard distant thunder and had seen a storm following the course of the river in the west.
“Shall we take umbrellas?” said Ethel.
“What’s the use?” said I. “If it rains we’ll probably get wet anyway, and in such hot weather as this a wetting won’t hurt.”
So we went unhampered by umbrellas, and after a walk through a tree-embowered road, whose beauty we were told had been marked for destruction by the brass mill, but of which destruction the happy trees were all ignorant, we reached the wintergreen lot, and Ethel, spreading a shawl, seated herself on the mossy ground, while I perched on a rock until it got too hard, when I changed to another rock.
“Minerva, do you see that little red berry in the grass?” said Ethel.
“Yas’m.”
“Well, pick it and I’ll tell you something about it.”
I sniffed. Ethel’s love of outdoor life is very real, but she is not a botanist. “She knows what she likes” in nature, but she can’t tell why.
She heard the sniff and her lips came together to form a noiseless word that she bestows upon me when she thinks I need it.
Then she smiled at me and took from a little bag she had brought with her Mrs. Dana’s book, “How to Know the Wild Flowers,” which she had evidently found among the Wheelock’s possessions.
“That, Minerva, is the wintergreen berry. Taste it and tell me what it reminds you of.”
Minerva’s wide mouth enveloped the dainty berry and she crushed it with her tongue. Then she beamed.
“Chewin’ gum,” said she. “Wish I had some.”
“Well, I wasn’t thinking of that, but they do flavor chewing gum with it, I believe. But could you get anything in the city as pretty as that?”
“Yas’m.”
“What, Minerva?”
“Cramberries.”
“Yes, but they don’t grow in the city. Now here’s something that I never noticed before. It says in this book that ‘he who seeks the cool shade of the evergreens on a hot July day is likely to discover the nodding wax-like flowers of this little plant.’ Now let’s see if we can find any. It doesn’t seem likely that the fruit and the blossom would be blooming at the same time.”
“They are, though,” said I. “Found that out when I was a boy. I can never taste wintergreen berries without being reminded of a girl that—”
“Wait, Philip, we’ll be back. I want to see if I can get a flower.”
Ethel always cuts me off when I make any references to my lost youth. She calls them my calf love days and takes no interest in them, while I contend that some of the happiest moments in a man’s life are when he roams the fields in retrospect with a girl who is always ten times prettier than anyone he ever met. I once met one of those old-time beauties and the shock was terrific. I tried to restore her features as I gazed at her, but my imagination balked at the task. She was a good woman, the mother of seven good children, but the vision of the lovely, dancing-eyed, pink-cheeked, rosebud-mouthed, shell-like-eared, dimple-chinned naiad of my early youth was gone.
From the way in which she looked at me, I felt that she had suffered a like shock. The tall, lithe-limbed, high-browed, innocent-faced, clear-eyed, light-hearted boy of sixteen no longer stood before her. Thanks be to the conventions of society, neither one of us wished that our tongues could utter the thoughts that arose in us, and we both had the audacity to speak of the jolly days of long ago, and I left her, thinking that I still considered her the little beauty of 1886, while she left me still imagining that I thought she thought me the handsome youth of the same year.
Ethel gave a little cry of delight.
“I’ve found one, Philip. It’s just like the picture in the book.”
“Why, of course,” said I. “You don’t suppose that they make up those pictures and expect the plants to conform to them?”
Not noticing my flippancy, she came over with two of the little flowers and held them up for me to see.
“They look like something very pretty, Minerva. What do they remind you of?”
“A pair of pants,” said Minerva, with a loud laugh.
“Dutchmen’s breeches, do you mean?” said Ethel. “Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, they are like little knickerbockers, but they remind me of Japanese lanterns. Now, Minerva, the woods and the fields are full of plants like these and they all have names and each has a beauty of its own—”
“What’s Dutchmen’s breeches?” interrupted Minerva. She had been to the “Continuous” many times and I think that Dutchmen’s breeches brought to her mind a pair of knockabout comedians.
“Do you think there are any in this field, Philip?” said Ethel.
“You have got me, Ethel. I forget each summer the names of the flowers I learned the summer before. Seems to me Dutchmen’s breeches is an early spring flower.”
“No, I think it comes in the late fall to tell the truth. We’ll look it up.”
She turned to the index, which referred her to the 37th page. Minerva looked over her shoulder in the way she should not have done and no sooner did she see the flower picture than she said,
“Oh, Lawdy, that makes me homesick. I’ve seen that in the park.”
“Oh, surely not,” said Ethel. “Let’s see what it says.”
“Mmmmmm,” she mumbled over the early part of the description and then she came to, ‘The flower when seen explains its two English titles. It is accessible to every New Yorker, for in early April it whitens many of the shaded ledges in the upper part of the Central Park.’ Why, you were right, Minerva. I dare say you know more about such things than I do.”
“Why, Mis. Vernon, I haven’ any grudge aginst country if o’ny city is a few blocks off. My, if I could run down now an’ see my folks I’d bring ’em up here to-morrer. I used to go to the park often my day out, but the city’s all around it an’ up here the country’s so big it—oh, Lawdy, what was that?”
It was a flash of lightning, followed by a clap of thunder that told us a storm was close at hand.
“Ooh, let’s get under the trees,” said Minerva, her face showing abject terror.
“That would be the last thing to do,” said I.
“Well, let’s do it first, then,” said she, all unconscious of the witticism.
The black clouds had been coming swiftly and now in the southwest we heard the noise of rain. We could see it falling on Egerton and could mark its approach up the hills to where we were standing.
The flashes of lightning grew more blinding and the thunder claps followed more and more quickly. We were in for a wetting, that was sure.
Minerva threw herself on her face in the soft moss and began to pray, “Oh, Lawd,” said she; “Don’t send any messengers to take me, out here in the country. Let me go back to the city befo’—Oh, Lawdy.” This break in the prayer was caused by a flash and a peal that were almost simultaneous, and down in a forest of walnuts below us there was a sound of riven wood.
“Dear, I wish we were home,” said Ethel, drawing a long breath and coming close to me.
“Well, we are probably safer here than at home. It’ll be over soon.”
And now the rain came down in sheets. We were wet to the skin in two minutes. Minerva in a heap on the ground moaned and prayed and ejaculated and Ethel clung to me and shuddered at each awful peal and each blinding flash. My clothes hung in bags about me and leaked at a dozen points.
The display was magnificent, but I did not see the beauty in it that I saw when I was a boy. Then I was not frightened. Now each summer the storms seem to be worse and more awe-inspiring, and to tell the truth, so many of our friends have suffered loss from thunder storms that I would be perfectly willing to forego them in future.
The storm departed suddenly, even as it had come, and when the rumbling grew fainter Minerva rose to her feet.
A call came to us from the road. We looked up and saw James, also soaked to the skin, sitting in Bert’s buggy.
At the sound of his voice Minerva gave a glad cry and started to run to him.
He made a trumpet of his hands and said, “Mrs. Vernon, you and Mr. Vernon drive and Minerva and me’ll walk.”
I considered a minute and then thinking that Ethel ran a greater risk of catching cold if she rode than if she walked, I shook my head and told Minerva to run along.
We took one or two steps in the sloppy moss and our shoes spurted water.
“Let’s go barefoot,” said I. “It will be much more comfortable.”
We took off our shoes and stockings, and for the first time in many years we walked the country barefoot. Perhaps it was Ethel’s first experience of the joy. To judge from her face it was. But we picked out soft places and by the time we reached the house we were already somewhat dried, nor did we get any ill effects.
“Ethel,” said I, “what was that white thing Minerva brought to sew on?”
“A wedding veil,” said Ethel.
ETHEL was out in the little orchard south of the house with Minerva, looking for “queen’s lace.” She had two purposes in mind. To teach Minerva something more of nature and to make a conventionalized design of the ground plan of the flower for use in her everlasting embroidery.
“Mis. Vernon.”
“What is it, Minerva?”
“Don’t the apples we have in the city come from the country?”
“Why, yes,” said Ethel.
She told me of the conversation later, I being at the time fishing for trout (in all innocence) with James (who knew the law).
“Well, then, how come that apples here is so little and city apples is so big?”
“Why,” said Ethel, “these haven’t grown yet.”
“Do they grow on the tree?” said Minerva.
“Why, certainly. You surely didn’t suppose that they grew after they were picked.”
“But the stems is so little that I wouldn’t think they’d hold apples like I see in the grocery stores.”
“Why, but the stems grow, too.”
“Oh,” said Minerva.
Minerva’s ignorance of common things was a never-ending marvel.
“Who do you pay for these apples, Mis. Vernon,” she went on.
“Why, nobody. They go with the house.”
And then Minerva gave utterance to a wise remark.
“Ain’t it queer, Mis. Vernon, that in the country, where you don’t have to pay for apples, every man has apple trees of his own, and in the city, where you do have to pay, nobody has any?”
“Just what do you mean?” said Ethel, wishing (as she told me) to draw out Minerva’s thought.
“Why, I mean poor people in the city has to pay for apples, an’ in the country people don’t have to pay for ’em, but it don’t do no good, because they have their own trees.”
“Well, but if they didn’t have their own trees, they would have to pay for them,” said Ethel, puzzled.
“Yas’m, but people in the city, if they had trees,—I mean poor people, then they wouldn’t have to pay for apples and they could use their money for somethin’ else, and people in the country has more money than poor people in the city, and they don’t have to spend it on apples, because they have ’em on their own trees.”
“Oh, I see,” said Ethel. “You mean that it doesn’t seem fair that poor people in the city, who would appreciate apples on their own trees, if they had them, have to pay for apples, while in the country people who could afford to pay for apples don’t have to, but can go out and pick them.”
“Yas’m,” said Minerva. “I guess that’s what I meant.”
“Yes,” said Ethel. “That must have been just what you meant. There are a great many things that we can’t understand about those things, but you know that farmers sell their apples to the people in the city, and that’s one of the ways they make their money.”
Minerva thought a minute. “Apples on the stands in the city sells for five cents, and I’ve seen rows of trees up here full of apples.”
“They call them orchards,” said Ethel.
“Why don’t they call them apples?” asked Minerva.
“No, no, the rows of trees are called orchards, and if the farmers could sell the apples for five cents apiece they would make a great deal of money, but they sell them to other men, who sell them to others, and they sell them to the men who keep the apple stands. The farmers don’t get a cent apiece for them.”
Minerva’s mind must have been in good working order that day, for she now said,
“If the poor people in the city knew they could get them for nothing they would all come to the country. An’, Mis. Vernon,” said she, with a characteristic chuckle, “If the farmers knew they sold for five cents in the city they’d take ’em down theirselves and sell ’em.”
Even Minerva felt that the middle man was an excrescence.
They were still hunting for the queen’s lace when I returned with what was for me a fine string of trout. James had taken his string home.
“Oh, what beauties. Did James catch them for you?” said Ethel. “We’ll have them for lunch.” Minerva took the forked stick that held the half dozen, not one less than eight inches in length, and as soon as she had left, Ethel told me of her thoughtful conversation. She also told me that she despaired of getting any queen’s lace.
“I must send to the seedsman for some seeds and sprinkle it in the grass so that we may have some next year.”
“Do so,” said I with the tone that fits superior knowledge. “Do so, and help fill the cell of a model Massachusetts prison. Don’t you know that that’s wild carrot and it’s counted as big a nuisance as the Canada thistle. Don’t you know we’d be fined?”
“Well, certainly farmers don’t know a beautiful thing when they see it,” said Ethel jumping to an illogical conclusion. “Are you sure that it is a nuisance? It grew all over the grass in Barnham.”
“Yes, and they were shiftless people in that place. Here, give me your nature book.” I took it and soon found the page. “Here it is: ‘This is, perhaps, the “peskiest” of all the weeds with which he has to contend.’ The farmer may think it’s beautiful, but it isn’t beauty so much as a living that he is after. We have to obey the laws in a civilized state like Massachusetts. It’s a punishable offence to let it grow.”
“Well, I don’t see how it could harm just on this place. Nobody farms it very near us.”
“No, but the wind has a way of carrying seeds, Ethel,” said I, sarcastically. “It was the way of the wind with a seed that first suggested rural delivery, I have no doubt. Who is that talking to Minerva?”
It was a man who, driving by, had stopped and hailed her, and had now left his horse in the middle of the road and had gone over to her.
We could not hear what he said, but we saw her suddenly put her two hands behind her back as if to conceal her string of fish.
I hurried over to the man, followed by Ethel.
“Are those trout,” said the man, carelessly.
“No, they’re fishes,” said Minerva, in a tone of contempt for his ignorance.
“Yes, they’re trout?” said I. “Why do you want to know?”
There was something in his manner that I did not like.
“Who caught those trout,” said he.
I felt like saying, “I, said the fly with my hook and eye,” but I really did say “I caught them. Have you any objections?”
“Decidedly,” said he, his manner becoming stern and official. “I am the game warden, and this is the middle of July. The law went on on July 1st. I can arrest you.”
There seemed to be something cockily pompous about this man, who was not above five feet high, but whose erectness of bearing and awesome manner made him seem (to himself) at least six feet two in his stocking feet.
So when he said “I can arrest you,” I said, “And will you?” and felt quite Shakespearean as I said it. It recalled the scene between Arthur and Hubert de Burgh.
“Well,” said he, seeing that I stirred not, “Perhaps it can be settled out of court. As game warden I can sell you the right to have caught those fish.”
“Oh, that’s it, is it?” said I, “Bribery and corruption. And in Massachusetts. Well, I don’t believe I care to buy the right. I went out fishing this morning not knowing of the law. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, I know that, but the point is, that if I have got to pay out money I prefer to pay it in a fine than to pay it to you for a right you can’t give me. The law makes no distinction, if I know anything about laws” (and I know precious little) “and if I mustn’t catch trout out of season, I mustn’t catch ’em, that’s all. Lead me to prison.”
I said this in mock heroics and he in his turn said,
“Well, of course, I didn’t mean to take a bribe. You misunderstood me. As game warden I own the fish. I represent the state and the state owns the fish, therefore I own them. Now you have caught some of my fish. I can’t sell you the right to catch them, very true, but I can sell you the fish now that they are caught.”
Minerva’s hands had fallen to her sides and he now took the string from her, while she was off her guard, and said:
“There are six of them. This season of the year they are worth fifty cents apiece for the males and a dollar for the females.”
I laughed in his face.
“My dear man, if you think I am going to pay anywhere from three to six dollars for a fish lunch you are mistaken. I’d rather throw away the fish and pay my fine like a man.”
“You can’t throw them away,” said he, defiantly; “I have the fish and possession is nine points of the law. Did you have an aider and abettor?”
“I refuse to answer,” said I.
He turned quickly on Minerva. “Did your master go out with anyone?”
“I didn’t see him go out,” said Minerva, sullenly. It was plain to be seen that her sympathies were not with the myrmidon of the law.
“I am not afraid of this law,” said I. “I fished innocently and I am willing to pay the fine. I will also consider it my duty to tell the judge that you attempted to compromise with me on a money basis.”
His manner changed in a twinkling. “See here,” said he. “You’re a stranger up here and you’re from the city. It’s easy to see that. I’ll tell you what I’ll do.”
He walked slowly over to his wagon, holding the string of fish in front of him, while he gazed at them thoughtfully. He climbed into the wagon and seemed to be hunting for something under the seat. He soon found it. It was the whip. He applied it to the horse and the animal responded in a spurt of speed that took him out of sight before we realized what had happened.
Our fish lunch was gone.
“I’m glad it ended that way,” said Ethel. I looked at her and saw that she was rather pale. “It would have been dreadful if he had arrested you.”
“I think I’d like to be the game warden,” said I, “if people generally are innocent of the law. But he was afraid of my bribery talk.”
It may have been five minutes later that Bert drove over to the house on his way to town. He had with him another dish of brains.
“Bert,” said I, “When does the law on trout go on?”
“First of July,” said he.
“What’s the name of the game warden?”
“Why, father. Been fishin’?” said he, with a laugh.
“Yes, but that wasn’t your father that you must have just passed.”
“No,” said he. “That’s Cy Holden.” He laughed reminiscently. “Cy’s a great boy.”
“How is he great?”
“Oh, he’s always playing practical jokes,” said he.
“Much obliged for the brains,” said I. “We’ll have them for lunch.”
I SUPPOSE that there are prettier places in the world than western Massachusetts, although I should consider it a profitless task to try to find them, but whether it arose from the beauty of the scenery or the witchery of the mountain air, certain it is that we have never stayed at a country place that exercised such a charm over us as did the rolling hills and valleys around Clover Lodge. Ethel was not less under its influence than I, and we have seen how Minerva, coming there with an evident and pronounced disgust for it, was now coming to look on it as home.
All the events connected with that summer resolved themselves in the retrospect into something agreeable. The visits in turn of the burglar, the sheriff, and the “game warden” furnished us food for pleasant talk, and our early and frantic attempts to keep Minerva satisfied did not seem as tragic when looked at from the latter end of July as they did in the happening.
It was a few days after our loss of the delicious trout lunch that we received an unexpected call from a neighbour.
It was an unusually hot night for Clover Lodge. Ordinarily a blanket was not too much, no matter how warm the day, and there were nights in July when two blankets were necessary, but this night was breathless, and so hot that a sheet would have felt like hot metal.
We had retired to rest, but found that rest was impossible. It was a night in which to deplore good circulation and wish for cold feet.
It may have been twelve o’clock; it may have been much later—we had no striking clock in the house—when we heard uncertain steps on the graveled walk. They came nearer and nearer, and at last a foot slid along the floor of the porch, followed by a reluctant mate, a heavy hand fell against the door and an over-mellow voice called out,
“You ’wake, papa?”
I was only too wide awake, but I had no children, so I did not think it necessary to answer his question.
A muttering arose and then a louder query as to whether “papa” was awake.
“Who can it be?” said Ethel.
“Some one who believes in local option. I wish he’d go away.”
“Papa. Papa. It’s on’y me. I wan’ a borrer mash.”
“What does he want?” said Ethel.
“He wants a match.”
“Oh, tell him to go away. He’ll set the house afire.”
“How can he set the house afire if he hasn’t a match? It rests with me whether he sets anything afire.”
I called out in as stentorian a tone as my lungs would allow me to muster, “Go away. Go home.”
My voice was encouragement to the tired wayfarer.
“Oh, papa. Was ’frai’ you was ’sleep. Papa, ’blizh me wi’ a mash. Mine wen’ out, wan’a ligh’ a pipe.”
I got out of bed. The moon had about ended its lighting services for the night, but I could see the form of a man sitting on the porch seat, his head swaying from side to side and as I looked he again lifted up his voice and said,
“Papa, don’ you hear me? Be neighbourly, papa.”
“I don’t find any matches,” said, I with a fine Puritanical regard for the letter of the truth. I found none because I did not look for them.
My denial of his request worked on the sensibilities of my unknown neighbour to such an extent that he was moved to tears. Amid his maudlin sobs he said,
“Pa’a, if you came to my house in dea’ night an’ as’ me for mash I’d leshu have one. I’m kin’ hearted, pa’a. On’y one mash I as’ an’ pa’a refuses. My pipe’ gone out an’ pa’a has box’s mashes an’ he can’ fin’ one.”
It did seem a little like a disobliging spirit and I moved to the bureau to get one, but Ethel said,
“Don’t give him one. He’ll set himself on fire or else set fire to the grass. Tell him to go away.”
Ethel has a horror of drunken gentlemen or even drunken men, who are not gentlemen, and I could do no more than respect her wishes.
I leaned out of the window and said in very much the tone one would assume in talking to a wilful little dog,
“Now go home. Go right home. You may catch cold if you stay here. I can’t let you have a match.”
“Papa, if I caught cold ni’ like this I’d know wha’ do with it. Mos’ hot ’nough to ligh’ my pipe. Goo’ bye, papa. Mos’ unneighbourly, papa.” He rose from his seat and swayed down the walk until he came to the gate.
“Papa, I shut your gate for you. No har’ feelin’s, papa. Mos’ unneighbourly, but I shu’ your gate.”
And muttering and stumbling, he went along to his home.
Ethel, with an absence of logic that must have been due to the heat, lay awake for an hour in fear that the matchless man would set fire to the house in revenge, but we did not hear from him again.
Next morning I found a pipe in the grass not far from the gate. I said nothing about it to Ethel, but when opportunity offered I showed it to James and asked him if he knew whose it was.
“Looks like Sam Adams’s,” said he. “Yes, there’s S. A. scratched on the bowl.”
I knew Sam Adams (fictitious name) to be a hard working farmer of some thirty years of age, a young married man with an adoring wife and pretty baby and with a lack of tact that I have never ceased to wonder at I resolved to restore the pipe to him. I learned from Bert that once in a while he would go down to Grange Meeting and would stop on the way back for beverages that he did not need.
The opportunity soon offered itself. I was out walking by myself one Sunday afternoon and I came on him inspecting some buckwheat that was coming along finely.
I leaned on the fence that separated us and passed the time of day with him.
He was cordial, as he always was.
“Nice hay weather,” said I, a phrase that I had picked up very easily and worked a good deal.
“Yes, if it wasn’t the Sabbath,” said he, “or if my grass land was a leetle further away.”
“Mr. Adams,” said I, “I picked something up the other day that I think belongs to you.”
His manner, which had been warm, became frigid as he said, “I guess not. I haven’t missed anything.”
“Isn’t this yours?” said I, producing the pipe.
He looked me coldly in the eye and said, “I never saw that before.”
I, on my part, saw something that I had not seen before. I put the pipe into my pocket, feeling that I had put my foot in it.
Anxious to make amends, I pulled out a cigar and said, “Have one.”
Relaxing, he accepted it and biting off the end he put it in his mouth.
“Got a match,” said I without thinking.
“Thank you, yes,” said he turning away his head.
I lighted a cigar and we puffed silently for a minute or two.
“Weather’s been hot enough lately, to drive a man to drink,” said I. “Better take your pipe and think no more about it.”
“Thank you,” said he, as he put it into his pocket. And we became good friends from that hour.
AS matters were now running so swimmingly with us, Ethel invited an old school friend of hers to come and pay us a visit.
Miss Paxton, “Cherry,” as most of her friends call her, is an unusually talented woman. She can draw very well indeed, and she can play the piano in an almost professional way. Tall and slender, with a facial animation that is almost beauty, she is a general favorite by virtue of her buoyant spirits and readiness for whatever is going on.
When Minerva heard that she was coming up she clapped her hands and said,
“My-oh-my! I’m glad to hear she’s comin’. Now we will have music.”
She meant piano music, for Miss Paxton did not sing. But we had no piano.
I had not thought it worth while to get one, because Ethel, while very fond of music and with a cultivated taste for it, is not able to play. Her father thought that so many people now-a-days play the piano badly, that it was just as well not to play it at all, and he would never hear of her taking lessons.
As Miss Paxton was only going to be up a week, it did not seem to be worth while sending to Springfield for a piano. I did not know at the time that there was a wareroom in Egerton.
We talked it over, Ethel and I, and we came to the conclusion that we would help Cherry to enjoy herself without music—unless she should show an unexpected predilection for the accordeon, in which case we had no doubt that Minerva would lend her her instrument.
Cherry was coming on a Saturday, and we were to drive to Egerton to meet her.
Friday afternoon we went to call on Mrs. Hartlett, an old lady, who was in her hundredth year, and in almost complete possession of her faculties.
I feel that I owe it to Mrs. Hartlett to give some account of our visit to her, although the real object of this chapter is to tell what was happening during our absence from home.
Mrs. Hartlett was a widow, her husband having died eighty-one years before.
“Just think of it, Philip,” said Ethel, as we began to descend the little hill at the foot of which Mrs. Hartlett lived with a granddaughter, a woman verging on sixty years, and almost as old looking as her grandmother.
“Just think of it; for the best part of her life Mrs. Hartlett has had a young husband.”
“What do you mean?” said I, not at once seeing her drift.
“Why, the memory of her husband is that of a young man. They said he was only twenty-two when he died, and for over eighty years she has had that picture in her memory.”
“It’s probably kept her young,” said I.
We found her sitting outside of her door under a grape arbour, knitting. Her face was thin and her cheek bones high and the skin was drawn tightly, but its colour had a reminiscence of the rosy shade that had (so tradition said) made her a beauty “in the days when Madison was president.”
She was erect, and despite a slight trembling of her frame, she looked strong.
“We thought we’d come and see you and bring you some sweet peas,” said Ethel.
“It is very good of you,” said she, in a voice which though cracked had a pleasant ring of sincerity in it. “You are the Vernons, are you not?”
I was surprised that so old a soul should be enough interested in things to know who transient summer people were, but I suppose it was that very interest in things that had kept her faculties unimpaired.
As I looked at her I felt proud of New England. Perfectly self-possessed, abundantly able to hold her own in conversation, respected by all and self-respecting, she was a type of that native cultivation that made the hill towns a source of strength to the nation, before the coming of steam cars that drew the young men and maidens from the hills and sent them forth to carry New England traditions to the West.
“Yes, so you’ve heard of us.”
“Oh, yes, the young people come in and keep me informed of all passing matters,” said she, talking slowly and evidently choosing her words with care.
“Pray be seated,” said she quaintly, and we took seats under the pleasant grape arbour.
Suddenly a canary, whose cage hung in the centre of the arbour, burst into a roulade that had something of the bubbling ecstacy of a bobolink’s note.
Mrs. Hartlett looked up at him and smiled.
“He is a source of comfort to me,” said she. “He sings as long as the sun shines. Last winter he was mute for upwards of a week, and I feared that I was going to lose him, but it was only that he was moulting. When his new coat had come he began singing again and in spite of the fact that he has no mate he is happy.”
Two mateless creatures and both of them happy. It’s all in the temperament.
“How do you like it up on these hills?” said Mrs. Hartlett.
“Very much,” said Ethel. “It is so quiet and there are so few houses that it’s a pleasant contrast to our noisy, busy New York life.”
“Child, I remember when this was a busy community, too,” said the old lady. “When I was a young lady of eighteen, we had a singing school here and Dr. Lowell Mason used to come from Boston every two weeks to teach us, and there were two hundred young people of both sexes who gathered in the seminary to learn of him.”
“You had a seminary here?” said I, astonished, for the district school of the present day is the only school in the neighbourhood, and it does not accommodate more than twenty-five.
“Indeed we did; a seminary and a college for chirurgeons. Dr. Hadley was the best chirurgeon of his time and young men from all over New England used to come here to learn of him. Times have changed, but if the houses have fallen away and the people gone the country has grown more beautiful.”
“How do you pass the time?”
“With my magazines and my young friends. I have taken Littell’s Living Age and the Atlantic ever since they started, and they keep me abreast of the times, and the young people are very good. Two years ago they clubbed together and gave me a cabinet organ. I cannot play it myself; my fingers are too stiff, but the young folks come in and play me the old tunes I knew when I was a girl—‘Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes,’ and many others that are never heard now, I suspect. Mr. and Mrs. Hayden are especially kind in coming to sing to me but all the young people are very thoughtful.”
It was not until later that I realized that the “young people” she had specified were considerably over fifty. But she was right. Youth is a relative term.
“Do you walk about much?”
“When my rheumatism permits of walking. My knees are somewhat rheumatic but it is no more than I might reasonably expect at my great age. I shall be one hundred years old on the 16th of September next if the Lord spares me.”
There was a gleam of pride in her eyes as she said this. She was striving for a goal.
We rose to go soon after, fearing that we might tire her if we stayed too long.
“Oh, don’t go yet,” said she, half rising and putting out her mitted hand. “You have barely come. I want that you should see my cat. I am quite proud of my cat. She was given to me by a play actor who spent last summer here. I was brought up to consider play acting an abomination to the Lord but we live and learn and this gentleman was an honest, God-fearing man although he has been a play actor ever since his youth. I cannot recall his name. Names have a way of going from one. It is one of the defects of age with which we must be patient.
“Pussy, pussy,” said she, calling in falsetto.
Whether in answer to the call or merely because Her Independence decided that it was time for her to come out and stroll about I cannot say but at that minute a most magnificent Angora jumped heavily from a chair in the sitting room (as I saw from my seat under the arbour) and walked out to us. She walked over to Ethel and sniffed her dress and passed her by. Then she came to me and sniffed my trouser leg and arching her back she rubbed against me and began to purr in tremendous fashion, quite like a young lion.
The old lady laughed cheerily.
“She always shows a penchant for gentlemen,” said she. “You never will guess her name. The play actor named her.”
“Lady Macbeth?” said I, quite at a venture.
“Why, my sakes,” said Mrs. Hartlett. “You are right. You must be a Yankee. You know we are said to be able to guess almost anything.”
“Well, if I’m not a Yankee born I’m one in spirit. My ancestors came from Connecticut.”
“The ‘land of steady habits.’ Stop, Macbeth. Don’t let her sharpen her claws in that fashion. I call her Macbeth half the time although she has a much better character than Macbeth had.”
“So you read Shakespeare?” said I.
“I never did until in recent years. The pastor we had a few years back, in ’65, I think it was, told me that there was much in him that would repay me and I have found it so. I sometimes think that we of the last century were narrow. It came about from our isolation. The easier modes of getting about have made us better acquainted with our world neighbours.”
I signalled to Ethel and we again rose.
“Do you feel that you must go?” said Mrs. Hartlett. “I thank you for coming and I am sorry that I cannot offer you something in the way of refreshment but my granddaughter has gone to town and I find that it does not do for me to try to handle cups and saucers and glasses for my old wrists are tired of service and they play me strange tricks.”
We shook hands with the old lady and as we came away she said:
“When you can find nothing better worth doing come and see me.”
“Well, she is the real thing,” said I as we got out of hearing.
“Ninety-nine years young and growing younger every year. Think of her hobnobbing with a play actor. I wonder who he was.”
“Why, but aren’t actors all right?” asked Ethel.
“Yes, they are if they are, but you don’t know what it meant for her, brought up as she had been, to acknowledge that an actor might be a good man. It showed great independence of mind.”
“What poise she had,” said Ethel.
“She could stand before kings.”
“And the kings might well feel honoured.”
We walked slowly back as Ethel was trying to see how many kinds of wild flowers she could pick. Mrs. Dana’s book had had an effect upon her she had not anticipated and I was afraid that she was going to become a botanist and talk about pistils and stamens, and things.
I believe she had picked twenty-five different “weeds,” as the farmers thereabouts called them, when she stopped and stood erect and listened.
“Where’s that piano?”
“Is it a piano,” said I, not willing to believe the evidence of my ears. We were about ten rods from our house and there is not another house nearer than a quarter of a mile and no piano within a half mile.
“It certainly is a piano and in our house,” said she.
What we had heard were preliminary chords and now to a bang-bang accompaniment we heard the pleasing lyric, “Hannah, Won’t You Open That Door,” and recognized the voice as that of James.
“First a crimson rambler and now a piano,” said I. “I suppose he planted a few keys and the piano sprang up quickly.”
“Well, what does it mean?”
“It means,” said I, “that, however it may have happened, we have a piano in the house and Cherry can play when she comes.”
We now noticed wheel tracks, some of them on our lawn and we knew that James had not worked a miracle but that the piano had come to the house by very human agencies. A broken plant showed where a horse’s hoof had toyed with it.
Our appearance on the path was the signal for the music to stop and Minerva came to the door perfectly radiant.
“It’s come, ma’am. The pianner has come,” said she, her eyes dancing with delight.
“Well, who sent it?” said I.
James had come out.
“Where did the piano come from, James?”
“I do’no’, sir,” said he. “I found it here when I come up to the house.”
“Why, it come in a wagon,” said Minerva.
She looked me in the eye and then she gave one of her chuckles.
“Say, Mist. Vernon, didn’ you order it?”
“No,” said I.
She clapped her hands rapturously. “Then you can thank me for it, Mist. Vernon and we’ll have music when Miss Cherry comes. I half knowed he didn’t mean it for here but I wanted it.”
“What do you mean, Minerva? Tell us what happened.”
“Why, it was this way. I was moppin’ de kitchen an’ I see a man pass the winder, an’ I thought maybe it was tramps, an’ I clinched the mop an’ got ready to run, an’ a man comes to the back-kitchen door an’ asks where he’s to put the pianner.
“‘What pianner?’ says I. ‘Why, the on’y pianner we’ve brought,’ says he, ‘for Mr. Werner.’”
“‘Vernon,’ says I. ‘Well, Vernon,’ says he, ‘Where’ll I put it,’ says he, and I says, ‘Right in the parlour,’ and I walked thoo to show him, and he went out to the other man an’ they unstrapped it an’ like to ha’ broke the porch floor gettin’ it in, an’ they set it up an’ unlocked it an’ then they gev me the recippy to sign an’ it was written on it, ‘Mr. H. Werner,’ but I thought as long as the pianner was up an’ you’d like it I wouldn’t tell ’em they’d made a mistake, an’ I signed the recippy an’ they drove off.”
I looked at Ethel.
“It’s fate,” said she.
“Do you know where it came from?” said I to Minerva.
“No, sir. From that away.”
“Oh, there’s only one place,” spoke up James: “It came from Hill’s in Egerton. He rents ’em.”
It was a time when quick thought would be a good thing. “James,” said I, “you go right down to Hill’s and tell him that he sent a piano to me by mistake but that I want to keep it, and that he’d better send another to the Werner’s before they make a kick about it.”
“Won’t we have fun when Cherry comes?” said Ethel after the others had gone and we stood looking at the case that had the potentiality of so much pleasure in it.
“Minerva is a treasure,” said I.
I HAVE made mention of the fact that during the haying season horses were difficult to get. We generally relied on Bert, but he was not always able to supply us with a means of conveyance to town. I had counted on him to bring Miss Paxton up, but I had neglected to say anything to him about it and our telepathic communication was out of kilter, for he never felt my desire, and so it fell out that when at four o’clock of Saturday afternoon I realized this and Ethel and I went down to his father’s to get him to harness up, we learned that he and his father were over in the “east lot” getting in some valuable hay—the weather threatening thunder storms—and that we could not possibly have either of the horses.
Here was a pretty how-de-do.
It was ten minutes after four and the train came to Egerton, three miles away, at 4:58. We might walk down and hire a livery team but even at that it would require speed.
In my dilemma Bert’s mother suggested that we try Pat Casey.
“He lives in the little red house beyond the ruins of the old church,” said she, “and you may be able to hire his horse.”
Across the fields to the little red house we hurried. A short, lithe, nimble-footed man was tossing hay in front of his house. We climbed the last fence and stood before him.
He looked up and greeted us pleasantly, his eyes twinkling with what looked like suppressed mischief.
“Is this Mr. Casey?”
“I’m Pat Casey. Divil a hair I care about the Misther,” said he, leaning on his rake and bobbing his head at us.
“Well,” said I, hurriedly, “We want to go down to Egerton to meet a friend who is coming on the 4:58. Can you let us hire your team?”
He threw back his head and laughed.
“Is it hire? Divil a hire. If ye dare trust your legs in me caart you’re welkim to use me ould scut of a harse—bad scran to her.”
The “bad scran” was delivered with a laugh that robbed it of all animosity and setting his rake against a tree he led the way to a tumble down barn that sheltered a more tumble down dirt cart, and a yet more tumble down horse. It certainly was an “ould scut,” whatever that is. It was blind in one eye; its back seemed trying to show Hogarth’s line of beauty in the form of a deep curve, and its four legs stood not under its body but at obtuse angles to it, as if it had been staggering with a heavy weight long enough and was now about to break in two in the middle.
And yet when Pat slapped the animal on the flank and spoke a word or two to it the horse whinnied and pricked up its ears and looked intelligently out of its only seeing eye, and I judged that it would not be cruelty to animals to take it.
But when I saw the harness, which was eked out by strings and ropes, when I saw that the cart was literally a dirt cart and that we would have to sit in hay, I decided that we would use the horse only to get us down there
“Th’ ould Scut.”
and that I would then hire a livery team to bring Cherry up and would pay Pat to go back in it and get his horse.
“You’re sure the horse will be able to pull us down?” said I to Pat.
“Hell, yes,” said he, genially, looking at Ethel as he spoke. “Sure ’tis gentle as a kitten. Ther’ wife there’d make a pet of um if she had him. Not afred of the trolley caars. Egorry when he was a colt there was not wan finer annywhere. He’d be a hell of a fine harse now, sorr, on’y fer a shlight weakness in his back. He’s the bye’ll carry you down on time. Don’t be afraid of the whip, on’y let him see it before you use it an’ thin he’ll know what to expect.”
All the time he was talking he was harnessing the “scut,” as he chose to designate it, and I, to save time, ran the cart out.
“Don’t you want to go back, Ethel?”
“No, it’ll be loads of fun to go down this way,” laughed Ethel, and immediately Pat gave her an encouraging nod of the head and said, “Me leddy, take life as it comes. It’s a dam site betther’n flndin’ fault.”
I would have resented these strong words addressed to Mrs. Vernon if he had been somebody else, but his oaths were as harmless and void of offense as the ejaculations of a sunny tempered child. I am not sure that he would have understood the nature of an oath.
He helped Ethel in with Irish politeness, handed me the dreadful looking reins, and taking off his hat he said:
“Don’t spare um. He’s strarng as a—as a harse, th’ould scut.”
Then he slapped the horse again on the flank and with a “To hell wid ye,” addressed to the animal, he went back to his haying and we started on our journey to town.
The horse could go but I soon learned that he did not regard the whip as anything at all. I showed it to him before using and he pricked his ears each time I showed it, but that was merely as much as to say, “I understand what you mean, but I’m doing my best as it is.”
The cart was not easy, but Ethel was out for a lark and she considered our passage in this vehicle in the nature of a lark. For my part I was ashamed of the rig.
“Remember that you are to dress for dinner,” said she.
“Does this look like dressing for dinner?” said I with a look at the impossible beast in front of me.
“Well, but Cherry won’t see him, and I am sure that she is always used to seeing men dressed for dinner.”
“If I know Cherry Paxton at all she will be glad to be free from all conventions for a short time. I will take her into our room and I will show her my suit all laid out on the bed and I’ll ask her to try to realize how I’d look if I wore it, and I will be comfortable in an outing shirt and sack coat as usual.”
Further conversation along these lines was stopped at that moment because the beast stepped on its foot, or did something equally absurd, that caused it to limp along on three legs for a few yards and then stop.
I got out and looked at its hoof—somewhat gingerly, for I am not used to horses. It did not seem to be suffering pain but it looked at me out of its well eye and seemed to say, “This is where I stop.”
I climbed into the cart and I tightened the reins and clucked and applied the whip, but to no purpose. The horse looked around at me in a languid way, but he refused to budge.
“Nice,” said I, looking at my watch. “Quarter to five, and we’ve got at least two miles to go yet. I wonder how Pat starts him.”
“He used languages,” said Ethel suggestively.
“Thanks. So he did.”
Once more I pulled on the reins, clucked and plupped and whipped (not viciously, but ticklingly) and once more the horse did not move.
“To hell wid ye,” said I suddenly, and it worked like a charm. The old beast took up his ungraceful trot, and we jolted along to the station.
I had meant to hitch the horse on the outskirts of Egerton and walk up to the station in style, but as we neared the Congregational Church I saw that it lacked but two minutes of train time, and so setting aside pride, in my anxiety to meet our guest, I whipped him up the incline that leads to the station, and just as we drove up to the platform the train pulled in, and out of the drawing-room car came Cherry, pretty and pink and smiling. She waved to us and then, when she saw our equipage, she shook her own hands in a manner indicative of delight, and not waiting for me to come and help her, she ran down the steps of the car and hastened over to us.
“How lovely,” said she, kissing Ethel, but refraining from kissing me. “Are we to go up in it?”
“Hell, yes,” said I, thinking of Pat.
Ethel frowned at me and explained to Cherry the bad influence under which we had been.
“No, we’re going to get a team to take us up. We only took this because we would have missed the train if we had walked.”
“Don’t do any such thing,” said Cherry. “It will be perfectly delicious to ride up in a cart, and in that lovely new-mown hay. Mmh, how sweet it smells.”
“No evening clothes for me,” thought I, and I was right. Cherry had come up to have a good time and to forget that such a place as New York and its exactions ever existed, and when she had settled herself in the hay with her traps all about her and her trunk for her to lean her back against, we started out for the return trip, while Ethel told her of our good luck with the piano.
I will confess that the inhabitants of Egerton eyed us curiously, for Ethel did not look like a carter, and Cherry was very modish, and I was not in the costume of a teamster. And we had to stop at the grocery store to get lemons and things.
Altogether these were not pleasant moments, and I was glad when we turned our backs on Egerton and began the ascent of the hills.
“Th’ ould scut” was a good walker and he went up the hills as if he smelt his dinner ahead of him.
“Think of it,” said Ethel. “The harness hasn’t broken yet!”
“How perfectly delicious to think of it,” said Cherry. “It really looks as if each moment would be its next. How was he ever ingenious enough to tie it all together in that fascinating way? He must be a character. I do wish the horse would stop. So you could start him again.”
“No, you mustn’t wish that, for my profanity is really wicked, while Pat’s is as natural to him as leaves are to trees. It’s part of his growth. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll go down and hear him swear after dinner.”
We had come to a level place about a quarter of a mile in extent. The view of the town from which we had left was well worth looking at, and I was just on the point of stopping the horse that we might see the little city perched on the side of a hill and surrounded by green farms and wide expanses of woodland, when “th’ ould scut” stopped of its own accord, began to tremble violently and then broke into a gallop. So quickly did he start that we were all pitched out. By great good fortune not one of us was seriously hurt, although Ethel scraped her wrist, and Cherry bumped her head. I escaped unscathed, and telling the others to follow I started after the horse.
I soon gave up the chase, however, and sitting down on a bank I waited for the others.
“What shall we do? Go back and get a team, or walk. It’s a mile or more,” said I, when they came up.
“Oh, it’s perfectly lovely to walk,” said Cherry, and as Ethel said she felt able, walk we did.
We had gone perhaps two-thirds of the way, looking at every turn for a wrecked cart and a broken legged horse, when we heard the rattle of wheels and saw the horse coming back after us, guided by Pat, himself.
“Oh, ’tis the devil’s own pity, sure it is,” said he when he saw us. “Sure, he had the blind staggers. Why didn’t ye bleed him?” said he.
“How could I bleed him when he ran away?”
“Oh, well, that’s arl he needed,” said Pat. “He come runnin’ in the door yaard, an’ me woman says, ‘they’re kilt,’ says she. And I whips out me knife an’ cuts his mout’, an’ he’s arl right. Ye’d oughter have bled him. Ah, it’s a hell of a bad job that it happened ye. Were ye hurrted?”
We assured him that it was all right, and would have continued on foot, but he said the horse had needed bleeding and that she was as fresh as a colt now, and he helped the ladies in, gave me the reins, slapped the animal’s flanks as before, with the same command as to his destination, and we drove home in triumph, leaving him to walk.