Delphi complete works of.., p.102
Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 102
“Yes,” replied the little man. “We emigrated from Ireland long before the great-great-grandfather of Christopher Columbus ever climbed through a bedroom window.”
“I never knew he did,” said Hunter Hawk.
“Neither do I,” replied the little man, “but I imagine he must have done. Most every man does at one time or another, if it isn’t too far to the ground. Haven’t you?”
“You’re getting a bit personal,” Hawk replied with a grin, “but now you’ve asked me, I’ll say that I never left that way.”
“Then you’ve missed one of life’s most illegitimate thrills,” said the little man, sighing reminiscently. “Also spills, perhaps. I’m disappointed in you, my dear sir. Once at least to every man, you know. But perhaps she wasn’t married?”
“I make a practice of never asking,” Mr. Hawk hastened to assure him. “You get lied to less that way. But were you saying you came over from Ireland?”
“I was saying exactly that,” replied the little man, with a note of sadness in his voice. “The country virtually belonged to us then. We didn’t have to listen to ‘Mother Machree,’ or ‘Come Back to Erin,’ or ‘The Rose of Sharon,’ or to any bum jokes about It Seems There Were Two Irishmen, Pat and Mike. Taking the good with the bad, we were quite happy and contented. In later years the uninterrupted wailing of those songs over on the other side was one of the reasons for our migrating. Of course, we had the Indians here to deal with, but they were an essentially simple-minded lot, and we were soon able to get around them. Everything went along well until the police force came over from Ireland. After that we began to wane. Our magic gradually weakened, until we have only a little left with which to eke out a bare existence. Most of our people have moved away to China or to South America for the revolutions. Many of them just crawled into caves and crevasses in rocks and went to sleep forever. Is there wine in those bottles?”
“There is,” replied Mr. Hawk, thinking the little man deserved at least a drink of wine after his long speech. “Do you want some?”
“Yes,” answered the little man. “I want some, and then some more.”
“So you’re that kind of a little man,” observed Mr. Hawk, eying him with approval. “A regular winebibber.”
“In my time I have bibbed a little,” he modestly admitted.
The quiet of the cornfield was broken by the pop of a cork. A small patch of moonlight was splashed by the spray of the wine.
“It’s a heartening sound,” said the little man.
“One of the sweetest sounds I know,” said Mr. Hawk.
“How does the sound taste?” asked the little man.
“After you,” replied Mr. Hawk with admirable self-control.
The little man accepted the bottle and, tilting back his head, drank long and deeply. Mr. Hawk watched the proceeding with a mixture of admiration and concern. At last the bibber returned the bottle and drew a deep breath. Then he faced about and aggressively eyed the scarecrow.
“I feel like knocking your block off,” he muttered. “You big toff.”
“Let’s give him the bum’s rush,” suggested Mr. Hawk, wiping the tears from his eyes as he set the bottle down in the path. “I can’t bear the sight of that scarecrow.”
The little man shook his head.
“You’re big enough to do it alone,” he said. “Why don’t you reach me down that hat?”
“I will,” replied Mr. Hawk, taking another swig at the bottle. “I’ll strip the devil mother-naked, and you can have all his clothes. How do you go in spats?”
“Oh, thank you so much,” breathed the little man, his hand reaching out for the bottle. “I don’t know. I never went in spats. How do you think I’d go?”
“Dandy,” exclaimed Mr. Hawk ecstatically, and coiling his long body he released some hidden spring suddenly and dived through the air at the scarecrow. For a moment the figure flapped frantically in the moonlight, then toppled among the cornstalks beneath the weight of its assailant’s body.
“Got him!” cried Mr. Hawk, thrashing about among the corn. “Now we’ll undress his nibs. Wonder if he wears drawers?”
“Don’t wear them myself,” said the little man. “I’m much more interested in that hat. Hope you didn’t smash it.”
“Here it is,” announced the man of science, rising triumphantly from the corn with the scarecrow’s coat and trousers. The hat was tilted rakishly over his left eye.
He flung the garments at the Little man, passed him the hat, then dived back in the direction of the scarecrow.
“No. No drawers,” he called out. “I’m afraid you’ll have to do without drawers, but here’s his shoes and spats and necktie.”
“You will insist on my wearing drawers,” the little man replied, “when all the time I keep telling you that the Little People wear no drawers.”
“Not even the little ladies?” asked the cornfield.
“They least of all. Couldn’t get a pair on ’em.”
“Then they’re not such little ladies.”
“And they don’t pretend to be. That’s why they’re superior to your brand of women.”
“I should say so,” Mr. Hawk replied, emerging from the cornfield with the last shreds of the scarecrow’s wearing apparel. “He’s as clean as a whistle now.”
“Half a minute,” replied the little man. “Thanks a lot. I’ll be ready before you know it.”
Rapidly he divested himself of his tattered clothing, and Mr. Hawk discovered to his amusement that his companion of the cornfield had spoken no less than the truth. The little man wore no drawers. In almost less than half a minute he was fully attired in what had once been perhaps the most fashionable scarecrow that had ever given a crow a raucous, ribald laugh.
“How do I look?” asked the little man. “Are the spats on right?”
“Splendid!” cried Mr. Hawk. “Perfectly right, only they’re on backwards.”
“Necktie, too?”
“A neat knot.”
“I’m so pleased,” murmured the little man. “My daughter will be quite surprised.”
“Have you a daughter?” asked Mr. Hawk.
“A howling hell of a daughter,” replied the other. “She was born in this country, so of course she’s much larger than the native-born Little People. And she’s taken up American ways. Dresses and talks like the modern young girl, but in spite of all that she can still turn a pretty trick of magic when she has a mind to.”
“How old is this daughter of yours, this howling hell of a daughter?” Mr. Hawk inquired in a casual voice.
“Not more than nine hundred years, I should say. The exact date I don’t rightly remember, but she’s still just a girl.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Hawk a little blankly. “I see. A mere flapper. Shall we open the other bottle?”
“You practically took the words out of my mouth,” said the little man admiringly.
“I hope I won’t have to do the same with the bottle,” Mr. Hawk said without any attempt to disguise his meaning. “You almost inhaled the bottom out of the last one.”
“I was afraid you might think I didn’t like it.”
“You may dismiss all such qualms now,” said the scientist, most unscientifically fumbling with the cork of the second bottle. “I’m convinced that the stuff doesn’t revolt you.”
“Far from it,” said the little man. “I am very fond of your wine. I shall probably steal your wine now that I know you have it. You must understand, sir, we live by stealing. It’s our only recourse. Although I wouldn’t touch that scarecrow, I’d steal the eyeteeth out of your head.”
“Thanks for your frankness,” said Hunter Hawk. “Would you like my eyeteeth now?”
“I do not need eyeteeth,” replied the little man.
“Well, any time you’d like to have a couple of eyeteeth — or are there four of them? — I’ll have them packed up and sent around to you. ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ I’ll do even better than that. I’ll give you all my teeth — the whole damn set — and not ask for even an eye.”
“Any gold in them?” the other asked.
“Filled with gold,” replied Mr. Hawk, and collapsed in such a surge of laughter that the night became alive with the cacophony of his mirth.
“That wasn’t so funny,” said the little man when Mr. Hawk had pulled himself together.
“No? Wasn’t it?” he replied weakly. “Well, I’ll get much funnier later on. Wait and see.”
“And not laugh,” said the little man.
“Oh, all right,” replied Mr. Hawk. “Have it your way. Entirely your own way.”
Once more the pop of a vigorous cork ricocheted against the astonished cornstalks and once more the venerable bubbles renewed their youth as for a brief moment they lent grace to the moonlight before falling in foam to the soil.
“The call to arms,” said Mr. Hawk. “By the way, just what is your name?”
“Name?” replied the little man. “I used to have lots of names — Lim, Shawn, Angus, and Mehal. There’s safety in having a change of names. Since the World War I’ve rather fancied Ludwig Turner.”
“Sounds extremely un-Irish to me.”
“It is. It does. Where were we? Oh, yes, the wine. Let’s drink it. My name saves a lot of nationalistic, or should I say racial, singing. No one knows where I come from, what I am, or who I am. I once knew an English barmaid — —”
“Not interested in low memoirs of a personal nature,” proclaimed Mr. Hawk. “Don’t want to hear about your English barmaids. Have you ever gone through an explosion?”
“On and off for two dozen centuries as time is inaccurately reckoned by mortals, I’ve been a married man,” said Ludwig Turner. “Most of them were explosive. All were explosive. One after the other exploded herself into premature ugliness. I have no wife now. Only one spawn. She is on the explosive side also, but it seems to do her good. It damn well agrees with her. More beautiful every day.”
“Well, I’ve just been through a most thorough explosion,” said Mr. Hawk, not without pride. “A real one. The seventh. I’m still a little bit dazed. Not sure of anything. Not sure of you or the night or this cornfield full of cornstalks — —”
“What would a cornfield be full of?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me if it was full of azaleas,” said Hunter Hawk. “It might not be real at all. Nothing seems real. Nothing quite is.”
“If you don’t pass me that bottle there’ll be another explosion,” the other one remarked. “That will be real enough.”
Mr. Hawk absently passed the bottle to his small companion.
The scientist had spoken truly. Nothing seemed real to him. And perhaps on that strange night nothing was quite real. Otherwise there seems to be no rational explanation for all the things that took place. Certainly this little man could not be real. Obviously. Wrapped opulently in the drapery of much wine Hunter Hawk no longer cared to question the reality of things. He had a strong impression that he was sitting in a cornfield drinking wine with a little man in a top hat who declared that he was twenty-four centuries old. It was a great age to Mr. Hawk, but not an impossible one. He chose to believe the little old man. Had not he himself just achieved the impossible? Had not he accomplished a miracle of science? Perhaps the impossible came to those who did the impossible. Perhaps not. Or maybe it was the other way round. Anyway, the little man’s spats were on backward. That fact, assuming the reality of the wearer, was as plain as the nose on his face. Mr. Hawk would establish reality on the backwardness of his friend’s spats. That was something if not much. He reached out and seized the bottle from the avid Mr. Turner. The wine tasted real enough, though perhaps that also was just a little too marvelous to be real. Anyhow, what did it matter? What did matter was that he wanted to sing. In fact, he would sing. But what song? Try as he would, Mr. Hawk, what with the wine and the moonlight and the natural perverseness of a man’s mind, could think of no song save “Mother Machree.” It would have to be that song. He began to sing it not well but willingly.
“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t sing that!” exclaimed the little man, rising.
Mr. Hawk stopped and looked impatiently at his friend.
“Then what shall I sing?” he demanded.
“Almost anything but that.”
“I’ve tried to, but I can’t think of anything but that at the moment,” Mr. Hawk explained. “Won’t you sit down?”
The little man sat and thought, and the scientist sat and thought, and presently the little man looked up brightly.
“I have it,” he announced. “The very song. Heard it the other night when I was stealing vegetables from your garden. I remembered it because it’s the most non-partisan song I ever heard. The most impartial. It means nothing and it goes: Boop-Boop-a-Doop. I love it.”
“Sounds like a motor boat lulling its young to sleep,” said Mr. Hawk, “but I’ll try it if only because you heard it on my radio while stealing my vegetables from my garden.”
“We’ll both sing it,” said the other, and they did just that.
A late stroller suffering from insomnia heard the strange noise issuing from the heart of the cornfield. It had a salutary effect on him. He no longer was a late stroller, but became a man of actions, a man of single purpose. So briskly did he return to his home and jump into bed that the exhaustion caused by his exertion speedily brought the sleep that had eluded him.
Unaware of the favor they had done the man, Messrs. Hawk and Turner back in the cornfield blissfully continued Boop-Boop-a-Dooping until the bottle of Burgundy was no longer able to lubricate their hard-working throats. It was drained to the last drop. The scientist lifted the empty bottle and held it between his eyes and the moonlight.
“All gone,” said the little man.
CHAPTER V
A Furious Reception
“DOESN’T SOUND SO good without wine, does it?” observed Mr. Hawk at length, stopping to replenish his exhausted lungs.
“No,” admitted the little man gloomily, “nor feel so good, either. Let’s go to your house and get some more.”
“Don’t you live anywhere?” Hawk demanded. “No home?”
“Oh, yes,” replied the little man. “I have a home of sorts.”
“Then why don’t you go there and take me with you?”
“We might do that,” was the skeptical reply. “Only applejack there, and not so much of that.”
“Let Providence take a turn,” said Mr. Hawk. “After what you’ve got is all gone we’ll think of something else.”
“And I know just what we’ll think of,” returned the other. “We’ll think of me struggling through the dark in search of more drink.”
“Your daughter, perhaps?”
“She might — if she’s in a good humor, which she seldom is. Still, she might. Anyway, we’ll try that. Sure you won’t go to your house?”
“Not now. Later, perhaps.”
“Then I guess we’ll have to go to mine. Rightly speaking, it isn’t a house at all, but you’ll see for yourself. I hope you’ll not be sorry.”
“Sorry? Why should I be sorry?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the little man evasively. “There might be many reasons.”
There were, but no one will ever know if Hunter Hawk at any time seriously regretted his visit to the abode of his casual little friend of the cornfield. Certain it is that many a more intrepid soul, foreseeing the remarkable results of that visit, would have bade the little man good-night on the spot and returned to the safe, sane, and familiar surroundings of his own home. And, of course, it will never be ascertained now whether or not Mr. Hawk would have turned back or even hesitated, had he been able to read the meaning of the little man’s prophetic words. Perhaps that appointment had already been made for him by some unseen, unknown secretary who, without consulting our preferences, makes all our important appointments, including the final one. Perhaps Hunter Hawk, even had he tried, would have been unable to avoid this one. The answer to these minor questions will never be known. Their answers do not matter. What is known and what does matter is the simple fact that on a certain night in August, Hunter Hawk, three sheets in the wind, accompanied an exceedingly small and queerly garbed creature to his home, and that there he met one Meg or Megaera, and that forever after he was never quite a free man. At times he even kissed the chains that shackled him. And rumor has it, he went a great deal farther than that.
The way was mostly moonlight and lurches. There were trees and a world of bushes, dense, aggressive bushes. There were patches of moon glow and tunnels of utter darkness. There was the sound of much sincere cursing and always the thrashing of leaves being crunched under foot. Both sounds were made by Mr. Hawk. The little man did his lurching with surprising silence and deftness. And he knew every twist in the mystifying way. Hawk was never able to return to the spot alone. Finally and most amazingly he found himself in a murmurous grotto — a secret pocket in the earth, remote from the world of men.
From the roof of this grotto a tiny stream splashed to the floor, and running through the center of the chamber, disappeared with a whisper through a small, bush-concealed opening. Straddling this strand of water was a rough table, and only those who were adepts could sit at the table without getting their feet wet. But few ever sat at that table now, although many had in the past. On either side of the table were two long benches, and somewhere in the remote shadows there was the suggestion of bunks made from the boughs of trees. And in this chamber there were the smell of moist earth and drenched bushes and the everlasting splash and murmur of falling water. And in this chamber, there was a small girl — or woman — one of the smallest and most furious-looking creatures Hunter Hawk remembered ever having seen.
Great eyes were hers, great black, fuming eyes, astir with sullen lights, eyes ready to blaze and flame, but seldom to caress. A dark skin. Short, straight, blue-black hair. A beautiful mouth and the appealing features of a delicate child. It was a face of confusing contradictions. And when this girl arose from the table at their entrance, Mr. Hawk needed only one glance at her slim but delightfully developed figure to appreciate the fact that here was a woman to deal with, not a child, not even a slip of a girl. This small thing with the hostile eyes, the child’s face, and the provocative breasts of a well formed woman, could, he more than half suspected, be a highly diverting companion on certain auspicious occasions. It was only too immediately apparent that this was not going to be one of those occasions, for at the mere sight of the two strangely matched gentlemen she sprang from the table and words entirely unpleasant fairly sizzled off her tongue.
