superintend the removal of her parrots. As she entered the great hall
she perceived the wedding-party waiting to receive her; and her
amazement was such that her toes turned upward and she sat down with
great suddenness in a chair which the Adherent thoughtfully placed
behind her.
"'How do you do, my dear sister-in-law?' said the ex-hermit. 'I do not
wonder you are surprised to see us here, and in order to relieve your
mind I will instantly explain the state of affairs.' Whereupon he
explained them.
"The Dowager then found her voice and her strength. Springing to her
feet, she cried: 'This is a plot! I have been deceived, and the lease is
void. Not one of you has any right in this palace, and I hereby order
you out.'
"The ex-hermit smiled, and drew a paper from his pocket. 'Before we obey
your orders, my dear sister-in-law,' he remarked, 'I wish to call your
attention to a little business matter. You will remember that when I was
here with you, acting as your assistant, you found great difficulty in
paying me my salary. The first year you told me to take it out of the
customs duties. The sum I received was not equal to the amount due me,
but I made no complaint. The second year I was obliged to rely on the
taxes on internal production; but as you required most of the income
from this source, I found myself very short of money at the end of the
year. The third year I was obliged to rely upon the taxes on pew-rents;
and that, as you are aware, yielded me almost nothing. After that you
paid me no salary at all. Here is my bill for the money due me. But if
you cannot conveniently pay me, I will agree, in the presence of these
good friends, to postpone the settlement until the next time I lay my
eyes upon you. If you do not then pay me, I shall then levy upon your
personal possessions.'
"The Dowager glared at the Princess Ferrando, and, having shaken her
long forefinger at that beautiful young lady, she departed, and was
never seen in the palace again."
Here Jonas folded the paper.
"Is that the end?" asked the Daughter of the House.
"That is all there is of it," said Jonas, sententiously.
"I thought," said the Daughter of the House, "that the story would tell
how he governed his rented principality, and if he ever got his own. I
worked it out in my mind like a flash that he would govern so well that
his own people would go to him and beg him to govern them."
"I think," said the Next Neighbor, "that if that principality was
governed at all, it was by that scheming wife."
"There's two ways of ending a story," said Pomona. "One is to wind it
up, and the other is to let it run down. Now when a story is running
down as if it was a clock, it's often a good deal longer than you think
before it stops; so we thought we would wind this one up right there."
Euphemia laughed. "But if you wind it up," she said, "you help it to
keep on going."
For a moment Pomona looked embarrassed; but she quickly recovered
herself. "I don't mean to wind it up like a clock," she said, "but to
wind it up like an old-fashioned clothes-line which isn't wanted again
until you have some more things to hang on it."
The Husband of Euphemia stated it as his opinion that that was an
excellent way to stop a story; but Euphemia did not agree with him. "I
think," she said, "that a story of that kind ought to end with a moral.
They nearly always do."
Pomona now looked at Jonas, and Jonas looked at Pomona.
"Several times, when we was writing the story," said Pomona, "I had a
notion that Jone was trying to squeeze a moral into it here and there;
but he didn't say nothing about it, and I didn't ask him, and if there's
anything more to say about it, it's for him to do it."
Jonas smiled. "My opinion about morals to stories is that the people who
read them ought to work them out for themselves," said he. "Some people
work out one kind of moral, and others work out another kind. It was a
pretty big job to write that story, which I had to do the most of, and I
don't think I ought to be called on to put in any moral, which is a good
deal like being asked to make bread for the man who buys my wheat."
Pomona looked down at the ground, then up to the sky, and then she
remarked:
"If you wouldn't mind hearing a little bit of a story, I'd like to tell
you one." No one had any wish to object, and she began: "Once there was
a young married man who went to his business in a canoe; every morning
he paddled himself down to his business, and every afternoon he paddled
himself back. About half-way down the beautiful stream on which he lived
there was a little point of rocks projecting out into the water, and the
young man was obliged to paddle his canoe very near the opposite shore
in order to get out of the way. This was troublesome, and after a while
he got tired of it. It would be very much pleasanter, he thought, if he
could paddle along the middle of the stream, without thinking about the
rocks. So when, one morning, he was in a great hurry, he said to himself
that he would steer his canoe right straight against that point of rocks
and break it off. After that he would have a clear passage up and down
the stream. So as soon as he got near enough he carried out his plan.
That young man did not go to his office that morning, and the fragments
of his canoe was picked up by a poor family and used for kindling-wood.
Now," she added, looking deliberately at Jonas, "if you can find a good
moral to that story we'd be glad to hear it."
It was very evident to the listeners that Pomona had given a shrewd
guess as to the moral of the story Jonas had read, if, indeed, he had
had in his mind any moral at all--and that her own was an offset to it,
or so intended. So the Next Neighbor came to the rescue.
"I have a great dislike," she announced, "to morals of all sorts. I
prefer never to think of morals. They are very perplexing, and often
worse than useless. But if there are any morals to those two stories, I
should say that the first story has something to do with women who
manage too much; and the second, in some occult manner, deals with men
who try to reform their wives."
Here every one laughed. And then there followed a lively criticism of
the story Jonas had read; but they all agreed that it was worthy of
Pomona and Jonas, and should be published. When they had reached this
conclusion they were summoned to luncheon.
THIS STORY IS TOLD BY
THE DAUGHTER OF THE HOUSE
AND IS CALLED
THE CONSCIOUS AMANDA
VIII
THE CONSCIOUS AMANDA
One morning, as John Gayther was working in the melon-bed, the Daughter
of the House came to him, and greeted him with such a glow on her face
that John knew she had something pleasant to tell him.
"Yes, miss," John replied to her greeting; "it is a beautiful morning,
and I know of something more beautiful than the morning."
"I do not see any very great beauty in muskmelons," said the Daughter of
the House, demurely.
"Muskmelons are not in my mind at this minute," John replied, letting
the hoe fall upon the ground as he looked at her pretty face, all aglow.
"I have something in my mind, John--a very original story. Papa said
yesterday I must tell a story, and I have one all ready. I do not
believe you ever heard one like it. Come to the summer-house; mamma and
papa are already there."
She tripped away, and John followed her, stopping on the way to pick up
a basket of seed-pods. He had just established himself on his stool,
facing the family group, and had taken some pods to shell as he
listened, when his hand was arrested and all the party silenced by a
burst of song from the tall lilac-bushes near the hedge. They could not
see the bird, but it was evident that he was enjoying his own melody.
Such pure, sweet notes--now rippling softly, now with a gay little
quiver of joy, now a tender prolonged note, now a succession of trills,
high and low, that set the air throbbing, and every now and then a great
burst of seraphic music, as if his little heart was so full of happiness
he was compelled to pour it forth to all who chose to listen. Our party
would gladly have listened for a long time, and have omitted the story
altogether; but after some minutes of delicious song the strains
suddenly ceased, and a little whirring noise in the lilacs indicated
that the bird had flown away.
The Daughter of the House gave a deep sigh. "I was afraid to breathe,"
she said, "lest he might fly away."
"I have heard nothing like that this summer," said the Mistress of the
House.
"It is the red thrush," said John Gayther, who had listened rapturously.
"A pair of them were here in the early spring. I wonder why this one has
come back."
"Perhaps," said the Daughter of the House, "it is one of the young ones
come back to visit his birthplace. I am afraid, after that ravishing
performance, that my story will sound tame enough."
"It will be a different sort of melody," said the Mistress of the House,
looking fondly at her daughter.
"My heroine," began the young lady, "cannot appear in the first person,
as if she were telling the story; nor in the second person, as if she
were listening to one; nor in the third person, as if she were
somewhere else; for, in fact, she was not anywhere. And as there is no
such thing as a fourth person in grammar, she cannot be put into any
class at all."
The captain turned and looked at his daughter. "There seems to be
something very foggy about this statement," said he. "I hope the weather
will soon clear up, so we can get our bearings."
"We shall see about that," said the young lady. "This heroine of mine,
Miss Amanda, never went to sleep. To be sure, she sank into slumber
about as often as most people; but when she spoke of having done so
she always said she had 'lost consciousness.' She was very methodical
about going to sleep and waking up; and at night, just as she was
about to lose consciousness, she always said to herself, 'Seven
o'clock, seven o'clock, seven o'clock,' over and over again until she
was really asleep; and in the morning she woke up at seven precisely.
She was not married, and so she was able to live her own life much
more independently than if the case had been different. She liked to
be independent; and she liked to know as much as she could about
everything. In these two things she was generally very successful. But
you must not think she was prying or too inquisitive; she was really a
very good woman, and very fond of her family, which was composed
entirely of brothers and sisters and nephews and nieces.
"She was a very active person, but she was not very strong; and when she
was nearly forty years old something happened to her lungs, and her
health gave way more and more, until at last there was no hope for her,
and she knew she must die."
"Oh, this is an awful way to begin a story!" said the captain. "I don't
like it. You ought not to kill your heroine just as you begin."
"If you want to make any remarks about this story, papa," said the
Daughter of the House, "which shall be worth anything, you ought to wait
until you hear more of it and begin to understand it. When Miss Amanda
found she had a very little while to live, she composed herself
comfortably, and began to repeat to herself the words, 'Fifty years,
fifty years, fifty years,' over and over again. This she did until at
last she died; and then there was her funeral; and she was buried; and
there was a stone put up over her head with her name on it."
John Gayther smiled with approbation. He felt sure he was going to hear
a story to his liking. The captain smoked steadily. As he had been
advised, he would wait until he felt firm ground beneath him before he
made any further remarks. As for the Mistress of the House, she looked
at her daughter, and wondered. The story continued:
"All this happened a few years before the middle of a century, and a few
years before the end of a century Miss Amanda regained consciousness.
That is to say, she woke up at the end of fifty years, exactly as she
had been in the habit of waking up at seven o'clock in the morning. But
although she was conscious she did not understand how it was possible
she should be so. She did not see; she did not hear; she did not feel.
She had no body; no hands or feet; no eyes or ears: she had nothing; and
she knew she had nothing. She simply was conscious, and that was all
there was about it. She was not surprised; she seemed to take her state
and condition as a matter of course, and, to a certain degree, she
comprehended it. She remembered perfectly well that she had lost
consciousness as she was saying 'Fifty years, fifty years, fifty years'
over and over again; and now she knew that, as she had regained
consciousness, the fifty years must have passed; so, instead of
wondering how things had come to be as they were, she, or rather her
consciousness, set itself to work to observe everything around it and
about it. This had always been Miss Amanda's habit of mind.
"Now I want to explain," said the young lady, "that in one way it will
be troublesome for me to express myself exactly as I tell this story. Of
course Miss Amanda did not exist; it was only her consciousness which
observed things: but I think it will be a great deal less awkward for me
if I speak of that consciousness as Miss Amanda. None of us really
understands consciousnesses with their outsides all hulled off as John
is doing with those seeds which he drops into the basin. Each one of
those little seeds has within it a power which we do not understand. And
that is the way with Miss Amanda's consciousness."
"There," said the captain; "I agree with you. Nobody can object to
that."
"The first thing of which Miss Amanda became conscious was the smell of
sweet peas. She had always been very fond of these flowers. The air was
soft and warm, and that, too, was pleasant to her. She observed a good
many other things, such as trees and grass; but she did not know where
she was, and she did not see anything she could recognize. You must not
forget that when I say she saw anything, I mean she became conscious of
it. Presently, however, she did perceive something that was familiar,
and if such a thing had been possible her face would have flushed with
pleasure. This familiar object was a sun-dial in the middle of a wide
grass-mound. The sun-dial was of brass. It was very old, and some of the
figures on the round plate were nearly obliterated by time and weather;
but Miss Amanda recognized it. It was the same sun-dial she had always
known in the home where she had been born. But it was not mounted on a
round brick pillar, as when she had known it: now it rested on a
handsome stone pedestal; but it was the same sun-dial. She could see the
place where the upright part had been mended after her nephew John, then
only fourteen, had thrown a stone at it, being jealous of it because it
would never do any work in bad weather, whereas he had to go to school,
rain or shine.
"'Now,' thought Miss Amanda, 'if this is the old sun-dial, and if this
is the mound in front of our house, although it is so much smaller than
I remember it, the dear old house must be just behind it.' But when she
became conscious in that direction, the dear old house was not there.
There was a house, but it looked new and handsome. It had marble steps,
with railings and a portico, but it was another house altogether, and
everything seemed to be something else except the sun-dial, and even
that did not rest on the old brick pillar with projections at the
bottom, on which she used to stand, when she was a little girl, in order
to see what time it was.
"Now Miss Amanda felt lonely, and a little frightened. She had never
been accustomed to finding herself in places entirely strange to her.
She felt, too, that she was there in that place, and could not be
anywhere else even if she wanted to, and this produced in her a
condition which, half a century before, would have been nervousness. But
suddenly she perceived something which, although strange, was very
pleasant. It was a young girl upon a bicycle coming swiftly toward her
over a wide, smooth driveway. Miss Amanda had never been conscious of a
bicycle; and as the girl swept rapidly on, it seemed as if she were
skimming over the earth without support. At the foot of the marble steps
the girl stopped and seemed to fall to the ground; but she had not
fallen: she had only stepped lightly from the machine, which she leaned
against a post, and then walked rapidly toward the place where the sweet
peas grew.
"Miss Amanda greatly admired this girl. She was dressed in an extremely
pretty fashion, with a straw hat and short skirts, something like the
peasants in southern Europe. She began to pick the sweet-pea blossoms,
and soon had a large bunch of them. Now steps were heard coming round
the house, and the girl, turning her head, called out: 'Oh, grandpa,
wait a minute. I am picking these flowers for you.' From around one end
of the house, which was a large one, Miss Amanda saw approaching an
elderly gentleman who was small, with short gray hair and a round, ruddy
face. He walked briskly, and with a light switch, which he carried in
his hand, he made strokes at the heads of a few fluffy dandelions which
appeared here and there; but he never hit any of them.
"Instantly Miss Amanda knew him: it was her nephew John--the same boy
who had broken the sun-dial! No matter what his age might happen to be,
he had the same bright eyes, and the same habit of striking at things
without hitting them. Yes, it was John. There could be no possible
mistake about it. It was that harum-scarum young scapegrace John. If
Miss Amanda had had a heart, it would have gone out to that dear old
boy; if she had had eyes they would have been filled with tears of
affection as she gazed on him. Of all her family he had been most dear
to her, although, as he had often told her, there was no one in the
world who found so much fault with him.
"The old gentleman sat down on a rustic seat beneath a walnut-tree, and
his granddaughter came running to him, filling the air with the odor of
sweet peas. She seated herself at the other end of the bench, and let
the flowers drop into her lap. 'Grandpa,' said she, 'these are for you,
but I am only going to give you one of them now for your buttonhole. The
rest I will put in a vase in your study. But I wanted you to stop here
anyway, for I have something to tell you.'
"'Tell on,' said he, when the girl had put a spray bearing three
blossoms into his buttonhole. 'Is it anything you want me to do this
afternoon?'
"'It isn't anything I want you to do ever,' she said. 'It is about
something I must do, and it is just this: grandpa, there are two
gentlemen who are about to propose to me, and I think they will do it
very soon.'
"'How in the world do you know that?' he exclaimed. 'Have they sent you
printed notices?'
"'How is it that anybody knows such a thing?' she answered. 'We feel
it, and we can't be expected to explain it. You must have felt such
things when you were young, for I have been told you were often in
love.'
"'Never in my life,' said her grandfather, 'have I felt that a young
woman was about to propose to me.'
"'Oh, nonsense!' said the girl, laughing. 'But you could feel that she
would like you to propose to her. That's the way it would be in your
case.'
"Miss Amanda listened with the most eager and overpowering attention.
Often in love! That young scapegrace John! But she had no doubt of it.
When she had last known him he was not yet eighteen, and he had had
several love-scrapes. Of course he must have married, for here was his
granddaughter; and who in the world could he have taken to wife? Could
it have been that Rebecca Hendricks--that bold, black-eyed girl, who, as
everybody knew, had tried so hard to get him? With all the strength of
her consciousness Miss Amanda hoped it had not been Rebecca. There was
another girl, Mildred Winchester, a sweet young thing, and in every way
desirable, whom Miss Amanda had picked out for him when he should be old
enough to think about such things, which at that time he wasn't. Rebecca
Hendricks ought to have been ashamed of herself. Now she did hope most
earnestly that she would hear something which would let her know he had
married Mildred Winchester.
"'Well,' said the old gentleman, 'if they do propose, as you seem to
have some occult reason for suspecting, have you made up your mind which
of them you are going to take?'
"'That is the trouble,' said the girl, a very serious look coming over
her face. 'I have not made up my mind what I ought to do. I know I ought
to be prepared to give the proper answer to the one who speaks first,
whichever one he may be; but I cannot come to a decision which satisfies
me, and that is the reason, grandpa, I wanted to talk to you about it.
Of course you know who they are--George and Mr. Berkeley.'
"'My dear Mildred,' said the old gentleman, turning quickly around so
that he could face her, 'just listen to me.'
"'Mildred, Mildred!' thought Miss Amanda, and her consciousness was
pervaded by a joyful thankfulness which knew no limits. 'She must have
been named after her grandmother. He surely married Mildred.' And Miss
Amanda gazed on the scapegrace John with more affection than she had
ever known before. But in the midst of her joy she could not help
wondering who it was that that Rebecca Hendricks had finally succeeded
in getting. That she got somebody Miss Amanda had not the slightest
doubt.
"'Mildred,' said the old gentleman, 'just listen to me. This is a most
important thing you have told me, and I have only this to say about it:
if you can't make up your mind which one of those young men you will
take when they propose, make up your mind now, this minute, not to have
either of them. If you love either one of them as you ought to love the
man who shall be your husband, you will have no difficulty in deciding.
Therefore, if you have a difficulty, you do not really love either of
them.'
"For a few minutes the girl sat quietly looking down at the flowers
in her lap, and then she said: 'But, grandpa, suppose I do not
understand myself properly? Perhaps after a while I might come to a--'
[Illustration: Miss Amanda listened with the most eager and overpowering
attention.]
"'After a while,' interrupted her grandfather. 'That will not do. You
want to understand yourself before a lover proposes to you, not
afterwards.'"
The captain sat up straight in his chair. "Now look here," he said;
but he addressed the Mistress of the House, not the story-teller. "How
does this daughter of ours come to know all these things about lovers,
and the weather-signs which indicate proposals of marriage, and all
that? Has she been going about in society, making investigations into
the rudiments of matrimony, during my last cruise? And would you
mind telling me if any young men have been giving her lessons in
love-affairs? John Gayther, have you seen any stray lovers prowling
about your garden of late?"
The gardener smiled, and said he had seen no such persons. But he said
nothing about a very true friend of the Daughter of the House, who lived
in a small house in the garden, and who would have been very well
pleased to break the head of any stray lover who should wander into his
precincts.
"You don't know girls, my dear," said the Mistress of the House, "and
you don't know what comes to them naturally, and how much they have to
learn. So please let the story go on."
"'Of course,' said the old gentleman, 'I know who they are. Considering
how often they have been here of late, I could not well make a mistake
about that; and although I am not in favor of anything of the sort,
and feel very much inclined to put up a sign, "No lovering on these
premises," still, I am a reasonable person' ('You must have changed
very much if you are, you dear boy!' thought Miss Amanda), 'and know
what is due to young people, and I am obliged to admit that these young
men are good enough as young men go. But the making a choice! That is
what I object to. I would advise you, my dear, not to think anything
more about it until the time shall come when you feel there is no need
of making a choice because the thing has settled itself.'
"'But, grandpa,' she said, 'what am I to say if they ask me? I am bound
to say something.'