Complete weird tales of.., p.1219
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1219
“What!” interrupted Garland.
“There!” said Tip calmly, “I lied again; lam me one in the snoot, Mister Garland.”
Garland touched the boy lightly on the forehead. “You will try,” he said, trying to conceal the despair in his voice.
“Yes,” cried the child fervently, “I will, Mr. Garland, so help me — I mean, cross my heart!” After a moment he added, “I — I brought you a green worm — here it is—”
“Hello! A Smerinthus, eh? Much obliged, Tip; where did you get it?”
“Sister found it on the piazza, — she said mebbe you’d want it,” replied the child lifting his line again; “say, Mister Garland, Squire Perkins says you’re loony.”
“What,” laughed Garland.
“Solemn,” continued the child, “he says you was once a book agent or a drummer, but you’re loony now and can’t work.”
“The Hon. Hanford Perkins, Tip?” asked Garland, laughing frankly.
“Yep, ole Perkins hisself.”
“To whom did he eulogize me, Tip?”
“What, sir?”
“To whom did he say this?”
“To sister — an’ Celia turned her back on him; I — seen it. Are you loony?”
Garland was laughing but managed to say, no. “That’s what I said,” said Tip, scowling at the water, “and I said you’d kick the hel — you’d kick the stuffins outen him if he said it much more. Will you, Mr. Garland?”
“I — I don’t know,” said Garland, trying to control his mirth, “you mustn’t say that sort of thing, you know, Tip.”
“I know it,” said Tip, resignedly, “I hove ‘n apple through his hat though, — last night.”
Then Garland explained to Tip all about the deference due to age, but so pleasantly that the child listened to every word.
“All right,” he said, “I’ll let the ole man be, — I was plannin’ to bust a window,” he continued, with a trace of regret, “but I won’t!” he cried in a climax of pious resignation.
Garland watched a distant butterfly critically for a moment, then picked up his rod and creel and shook the ashes from his pipe.
“Goin’ to see Cis?” inquired Tip.
“Hem! Hum! I — er — may pass by that way,” replied Garland.
“You won’t tell her that I smashed Bill Timerson?”
“Of course not,” said Garland, “that’s for you to tell her.”
“I won’t,” said the child doggedly.
“Very well,” said Garland, walking away.
Tip watched him, but he did not turn, and the child’s face became troubled.
“I will tell, Mr. Garland!” he called across the meadow.
“All right, Tip,” answered Garland, cheerily.
II.
BEFORE Garland came in sight of the low stone house he caught the fragrance of the lilies. The sun glittered low on the horizon, long luminous shadows stretched over meadow and pasture, and a thin blue haze floated high among the feathery tops of the pines about the house. A white nanny-goat of tender age, tethered on the velvet turf, cried “me — h! me — h!” watching him with soft silly eyes. Except for the kid, and a Maltese cat asleep on the porch, there was no sign of life about the house. Garland turned and looked out over the pastures. A spot of greyish-pink was moving down there. He watched it for a moment, quietly refilling his pipe, then dropped his rod and net upon the turf, and threw himself on the ground beside them. From time to time he raised his eyes from the pages of Wilson on Hybrids to note the progress of the pink spot in the distant pasture.
Wilson was most interesting on hybrids. What Wilson had to say was this: “There can be no doubt that hybrid forms of these two splendid butterflies, Nymphalis Arthemis and Nymphalis Ephestion, exist in the localities frequented by these species. In the little village of Ten Pin Corners, Professor Wormly discovered an unknown hybrid, which, unfortunately, he was unable to capture or describe.”
This was what Wilson had to say on hybrids. This was what Garland thought: “I’d give fifty dollars to capture one of these hybrids; — I wonder what Celia is doing in the pasture? It may not have been a hybrid; it may only have been a variety. Celia is milking the Alderney, that’s what she’s doing. Still Wormly ought to know what he’s about. Celia has finished milking; now it’s the Jersey’s turn. I should like to see a hybrid of Arthemis and — hello! Celia has finished, I fancy.” Then he laid down his book and carefully retied his necktie.
When Celia arrived and placed her milk pail on the porch, Garland jumped to his feet with hypocritical surprise.
“You are milking early,” he said, “did you just come from the pasture?”
The girl looked at her pail and nodded. The sunlight gilded her arms, bare to the shoulder, and glittered in a fierce halo around her burnished hair. She had her brother’s soft blue eyes, fringed with dark lashes, but the beauty of her mouth was indescribable. Garland, as usual, offered to take the milk pail, and she, as usual, firmly declined.
“You never let me,” he said, “I wanted to bring it up from the pasture, but I knew what you’d say.”
“Then you saw me in the pasture,” she asked.
“Br — er — yes,” he admitted.
“I saw you too,” she said, and sat down in the red sunlight under the pines.
Garland sat down also, and made an idle pass at a white butterfly with his net.
“Have you caught any new butterflies today?” she asked, bending to tie her shoestring.
“No, nothing new,” he answered. She straightened up, brushed a drop or two of milk from the hem of her pink skirt, passed a slim hand over her crumpled apron, and leaned back against the tree trunk, touching her hair lightly with her fingers.
“Last night,” she said, “a great green miller-moth came around the lamp. I caught him for you.”
“A Luna,” he said, “thank you, Celia.”
“Luna,” she repeated gravely, “is he rare?” She had picked up a few phrases from Garland and used them with pretty conscientiousness.
“No,” said Garland, “not very rare — but I will keep this one.”
“I caught some more, too,” she continued, “ a yellow miller—”
“Moth, Celia.”
“Miller-moth—”
“No — a moth—”
“A yellow moth,” she continued serenely, “that had eyes on its wings.”
“Saturnia Io,” said Garland.
“Io,” repeated the girl, softly, “is it rare?”
“It is rare here. I will keep it.”
The Maltese cat lifted its voice and rubbed its arched back against the milk pail. Its name was Julia and Garland called it to him.
“Julia has a saucer of milk on the porch; she is only teasing,” said Celia.
But Julia’s voice was sustained and piercing, and Garland rose laughing and poured a few drops of warm fresh milk into the half-filled saucer. Then Julia exposed the depth of her capriciousness; she sniffed at the milk, walked around it twice, touched the saucer playfully, patted a stray leaf with velvet paw, and then suddenly pretending that she was in danger of instant annihilation from some impending calamity, pranced into the middle of the lawn, crooked her tail, rushed half way up a tree-trunk, slid back, and finally charged on the tethered kid with swollen tail and ears flattened.
Garland went back to his seat on the turf. “It is the way of the world,” he said gaily.
Celia picked up a pine cone and sniffed daintily at the dried apex.
“Julia was not hungry; she only wanted attention,” he added.
“Some people are hungry for attention too, — and never get it,” said Celia.
Garland knew what she meant. It was common gossip among the free-born who congregated about the saliva stricken stove at Uncle Billy’s or sat on musty barrels in the Post Office store.
“But,” said Garland, “you do not want his attention, — now.”
“No,” she said indifferently, “I do not want it now, — it is too late.”
“Then don’t let’s think about it,” said Garland quickly.
“Think! think!” she answered without impatience, “what else can I do?”
“And you think of him?” he asked.
“No, not of him, but of his injustice,” she said quietly.
They had talked sometimes on the subject — he never knew just how it came about. Perhaps his interest in Tip had moved her to the confidence, if it could be called a confidence, for all the free-born were unbidden participants in the secret. The story was commonplace enough. When Celia was sixteen, four years back, she lived with an elect uncle in the manufacturing town of Highfield, forty miles down the river. One day a road company with more repertoire than cash, stranded at Bowles’ Opera House and drifted back by highway and byway toward Boston. One member of the company, however, did not drift back. His name was Clarence Minster and he said he had found salvation, which was true in one sense, for Celia’s elect uncle clawed him into the fold and having cleansed his soul, gave him a job to cleanse the stable at very few dollars a month. Celia was young and simple and pitiful. She also possessed five hundred dollars of her own. So Clarence Minster first ran away with her and then with most of her five hundred dollars. Unfortunately the marriage was legal, and the uncle implacable, so Celia took her brother Tip in one hand, and a thinned-out pocket-book in the other, and went to her dead parent’s home, the stone house at Ten Pin Corners. She sometimes heard of Minster, never from him. He had struck the public taste as “Dick Willard,” the hero of the lachrymose melodrama, “Honour,” and his photographs were occasionally seen in Highfield store windows.
This was Celia’s story — part of it. The other part began as she began to listen to Garland, and to bring him delicate winged moths that sought her chamber lamp as she bent over Tip’s patched clothes. Something also was beginning for Garland; he felt it growing as he moved among the lilies in the dusk while Celia held the bullseye lantern, and the great sphinx moths hovered over the pinks. He felt it in the crystal clear mornings when sleepy butterflies clung to the late lilacs, and Celia moved far afield through raspberries and yellow buttercups. He felt it now, as he lay beside her among level shadows and gilt-tipped verdure — he felt it and wondered whether it was love. Perhaps Celia could have told him, I don’t know, but it was plain enough to the tethered kid and the Maltese cat, to the drifting swallows, and the orioles in the linden tree besides the well-sweep. It was simple and self-evident to the Alderney, lowing at the bars, to the Jersey staring stolidly at Celia, to the robins, the hedge birds — yes, to the tireless crickets chirping from every tussock.
Now whether or not it was equally plain to Tip as he came trudging up the gravel walk, I do not know.
He said, “Hello, Cis,” and came and kissed her — a thing he did not often do voluntarily. “I smashed Bill Timerson in the jaw,” he continued, “and he told the teacher, and I dasn’t go back.” Then he glanced humbly at Garland.
Celia had tears in her eyes, and she also turned instinctively to Garland. “Speak to him, please,” she said, “I can do nothing.”
“Yes you can,” said Tip— “you and Mr. Garland together. I’ve told him.”
“Tip will go back to school to-morrow,” said Garland, “and take his thrashing.”
Tip looked doubtful.
“And,” continued Garland, “as Bill Timerson is older and stronger than Tip, Tip will continue to punch him whenever assaulted.”
“Oh — no!” pleaded Celia.
“Let him,” said Garland, smiling. Tip threw his arms around his sister’s neck and kissed her again, and she held him tightly to her milk-stained apron.
“Mr. Garland knows,” she whispered, “my darling, try to be good.”
III.
GARLAND leaned back in his chair in the dingy bar-room of the Constitution Hotel. His abstracted gaze wandered from Uncle Billy to a framed chromo on the wall, a faithful reproduction of some catchup bottles, a boiled lobster and a platter of uninviting oysters. The Hon. Hanford Perkins was speaking — he had been speaking for half an hour. For years, like Peffer, he had been telling the Government what to do, but his patience, unlike Peffer’s, was exhausted, and now he had decided to let the country go to the devil. He wrote no more letters to the Highfield Banner, he sulked, and au ungrateful country never even knew it At times, however, under the kindly stimulus of Uncle Billy’s “j’y-full juice,” he condescended to address the freeborn in the bar-room of the Constitution Hotel. He was doing it now. He had touched upon silver with the elephantine dexterity of a Populist, he had settled the tariff to the satisfaction of Ten Pin Corners, he spoke of the folly of maintaining a navy, and dismissed the army with a masterly sarcasm in which the phrase, “fuss ‘n feathers” was dwelt upon. Uncle Billy, in the popular attitude of a cherub, elbows on the bar, gazed at him with undisguised admiration. Cy Pettingil, fearful that he was not on an equality with the drummer in the corner, spat upon the stove until he was. Then the drummer told an unclean story which was a success, but the Hon. Hanford Perkins, feeling slighted at the loss of attention, told a scandalous bit of gossip which threw the drummer’s story into the shade.
Garland stirred restlessly, and opened Wilson on Hybrids again. He had been reading for a moment or two when a name caught his ear, and he closed his book and raised his eyes.
The Hon. Hanford Perkins was speaking, and Garland leaned over and touched his coat sleeve.
“You are speaking of a woman,” he said, “that is not the tone to use nor is this the place to discuss any woman.”
“Hey?” said the Hon. Hanford, with a laugh, and winked at Uncle Billy.
“I guess he can say what he dam pleases in my house,” said Uncle Billy, expectorating; “the girl’s not yourn.”
“The girl,” added Cy Pettingil, “is a damned little—”
Then Garland took Cy Pettingil by the throat, swung him around the room twice, and kicked him headlong into the billiard-table, under which Pettingil hastily scrambled.
“Now,” said Garland to the Honourable Hanford Perkins, “do you want to follow Pettingil? If you do, just wag that bunch of whiskers on your chin again.”
The drummer in the corner smiled uneasily, picked up his sample case and key, and said goodnight in an uncertain voice to Garland. Uncle Billy’s eyes were fixed upon Garland with a fascinated stare, and his jaw slowly dropped. The Hon. Hanford Perkins cast one amazed glance at Pettingil, another at Uncle Billy, and waddled majestically out into the street.
When Garland had picked up his book and left the hotel, Cy Pettingil crawled from beneath the billard-table and approached Uncle Billy. He expectorated and leaned on the bar, but no amount of ejected saliva could re-establish him in his own estimation — he felt this bitterly.
“I’ll git the law on him,” he said after a moist silence, and rubbed his red hand over his chin. “I’ll hev the law onto him,” he repeated; but Uncle Billy was non-committal.
“Gimme a little bug-juice,” said Cy, after an uncomfortable silence, and tossed a quarter upon the bar, with ostentatious carelessness,— “I’m dry, Billy.”
“Yew be?” said Uncle Billy, “wall, yew don’t git no bug-juice nor nawthin’ here.”
“Hey!” said Pettingil.
“Naw,” said Uncle Billy, scornfully, and retired to the depths of the bar.
Garland walked slowly down the road in the twilight, switching the grass with the bamboo staff of his butterfly-net, angry with himself and nauseated with the free-born. And as he walked he was aware of a light touch on his arm, and a lighter footstep by his side. It was Tip.
“I — I was in the hallway of the hotel,” said Tip, eagerly, “‘n’ I seen what you done to Cy Pettingil—”
“What were you doing there?” said Garland sharply.
“Buyin’ salt for Cis, — oh! I just love you, Mister Garland!” And before Garland could raise his eyes, Tip had flung himself into his arms sobbing: “I ain’t big enough to lick all the loafers in town, but I lick all their sons, and Cis says I am growin’ fast. Oh, you do love me and Cis, don’t you, Mister Garland?”
“Yes,” said Garland, gravely, and kissed his wet face. Then he took him by the hand and told him how low and mean a bar-room fight was, and that he must never tell Celia what had happened. He tried to explain to him what was necessary to resent, and what was not; he spoke sympathetically as he always did, and Tip absorbed every word.
“Now let us forget it,” said Garland, “Tip, your grammar is very uncertain. Why do you not try to speak as your sister does?”
“The boys I play with don’t speak that way,” said Tip.
“Neither does Cy Pettingil, — he speaks as you do,” said Garland.
Tip’s hand trembled and clasped Garland’s tighter. “Learn me what to say, Mister Garland,” he said after a silence.
“I will,” replied Garland, “how would you like to go to school in Boston?”
“When?”
“Next winter.”
“Can Cis come too?”
“I — hadn’t thought, — you can’t leave her, can you, Tip?”
“No,” said Tip.
“Well — we’ll see — you need not speak of this to your sister; I will — er — discuss the question with her later,” said Garland.
Celia was standing under the pines as they walked up the gravel path. She knew his footsteps and came up on the verandah to greet him.
“Why, you are all over white!” she said; “has Tip spilled the salt on you?”
“Tip and I hugged each other to the detriment of the salt,” said Garland laughing and brushing the white grains from his coat.
“Tip, dear, have you been naughty?” asked Celia.
“Nope,” said Tip so promptly that even Celia laughed, and Tip retired to bed, glowing with virtuous resolves. Celia went up to his room and waited until he had said his prayers. She was troubled by the fervency of his prayer for Garland, but joined faintly in the Amen, and covered Tip with the white sheets.
“Mr. Garland says he loves you, Cis,” said Tip, holding up his lips to be kissed. Celia caught her breath and laid one hand on the bedpost.
“Tip,” she faltered.
