street, often went there to visit my friends who had remained, stopping
with them from Saturday till Monday, and these visits kept me still in
touch with “Little Knights” and his idol. It seemed strange that Rosie
was quite unspoiled by so much adulation. She was a favorite with all
the neighbors, was polite and obedient outside her own domain, while
within it, an absolute monarch, she ruled with gentlest strength her
idolatrous subjects. Derision or contempt shown to them was swiftly and
sharply resented by her, while the only time she had to sternly exert
her authority was when she made some demand upon the treasury that was
for _their_ benefit instead of hers.
The Knights’ Sunday went like this: When it was time for Sunday-school
the front door opened (mind you, in any other family of like position
in life, that door would have opened for only one of three things--a
wedding, a funeral, or the first visit of the clergyman, so think how
they honored that mere child)--then big Mrs. Knights appeared and
brushed the step over with a cloth and retired from view (a pause),
then little Rosie appeared, balancing a moment on the step like one of
her own pet, white doves, her many short skirts and her white dress
starched to the uttermost limit of rattling stiffness, open-work white
stockings and black slippers, with an ankle strap fastened with a gold
button, a broad, pink sash about her waist, pink ribbon bows on each
long, blond braid, a big leghorn hat secured first by an elastic band,
and over that by broad, pink ribbons tied in a large bow under her
milk-white chin. In her little, mitted hands she held a testament, and
from between its leaves peeped a pink or a rose--a handkerchief the
size of a large postage stamp finished her outfit--and so, gravely and
with great propriety, she came down the narrow path between the “flox”
and “sweet-william,” the “larkspur” and “four o’clocks,” and all the
horde of strong-growing, free-blooming flowers of the poor--herself the
daintiest flower of them all--and at the gate she turned and kissed
her hand to the two heads thrust out at either side of the door--the
fresh-shaven face of her father low down on one side, the broad-smiling
face of her mother high up on the other--then walked sedately on
towards the church, while behind her, the heads gone, the door closed,
seemingly of its own volition--to open no more until the next week.
A few minutes later Mrs. Knights appeared at the side door where there
was a tiny, _tiny_ little platform, with “scarlet-beans” trained
thickly over its morsel of roof. On this porch one chair was carefully
placed on Sunday mornings and occupied by Mrs. Knights, arrayed in a
white petticoat and white bedgown (as the short, loose garment was
called). Her hair was oiled and brushed to a glassy smoothness, a big
horn-comb loomed high above her head, and a pair of gold ear-drops,
that seemed to have been sold by the yard, dangled from her ears. Her
tired, old feet rested in a huge pair of braided list shoes that looked
like boats. Once seated, “Little Knights” trotted out with a Bible of
a size so prodigious one wondered how it ever found a resting place
inside that little bit of a house. Its mighty clasps undone, he placed
it on his wife’s lap, and then made another trip and brought out a
great pair of spectacles, framed in silver, which he solemnly fitted on
her nose, then most carefully and cautiously he adapted himself to such
narrow margin of floor space as was left for him, and their service
began.
It was with a rather wavering, quavering rendering of an old hymn,
after which Mrs. Knights opened the book, and looking over the tops of
her glasses--she could not see a word through them, but she felt they
loaned her a certain dignity as of office--she found the place, and by
the aid of one blunt finger (its stained, cracked nail worn down to the
very quick), she made her way with pathetic slowness across the page
of frenzied Dutch print. Not that they doubted the saving-power of the
English Bible for the English and incidentally for the American sinner,
but they felt that their own sins were so peculiarly Dutch in quality
that nothing short of a Dutch Bible could save them. Wherefore, Mrs.
Knights, each Sunday, with blunt forefinger seemed to dig out words
of Holy-writ from the great book, while her small husband carefully
stored them in the basket of his memory.
After the chapter had come to its laborious close, they both took
breath and wiped their dripping brows, then clasped their hands, bowed
their heads and offered each a silent prayer. I had once come upon them
so, the bees circling about their gray, old heads, while their prayers,
like the perfume of two souls mingling with the perfume of the flowers,
rose through the warm air, straight to that great God who had given
them Rosie.
And that sweet name encompassed all of good his life contained--health
and strength, growing wealth and the respect in which his neighbors
held him, and when he would have offered humble thanks for them,
instead he blessed God for Rosie.
With a slight trace of that peasant cunning which had been his when
the stocking-foot had been his only bank, he tried to hide, as far as
possible, his increasing prosperity. He had long owned the double lot
and the toy house that made home for him, and it was whispered that
certain lots on the outskirts of the town, used by “Little Knights” for
a truck-garden, were really his, though the wily Jacobus often, perhaps
too often, referred to the fact: “Dat he had paid de rent dem gartens
of!” However, the old neighbors to this day tell a story of “Little
Knights” touching upon his secretiveness about money.
Rosie, who, by the way was Rosie to all the world except her
father--he called her ever and always his Rose or his “Little Rose;”
in babyhood, or in womanhood, “My Rose” was the name he gave his
idol! When his Rose had reached the age of fourteen, she stood before
him one evening, holding a match to his pipe, and when the tobacco
glowed evenly all over, she shut down the perforated silver cover, and
said suddenly: “Father, I wonder if you can be rich enough to buy me
something, an expensive something, too, father?” and the old eyes had
fairly danced, and surely in that moment, Jacobus Knights tasted all
the sweetness of prosperity. Yet, Jacobus was a Dutchman, and therefore
cautious, and so assuming as much doubt as was possible over so
absolutely certain a matter, he inquired as to the nature of “dis ting
vat made such expense mit itself,” and Rosie, with clear eyes on his
face, had answered with a little tremble of anxiety in her voice: “A
piano, father.”
And the small father had crushed back a smile, and averted joyous eyes,
and had basely suggested that an accordeon “might answer youst as well.”
But clever Rosie noticed he said no word about not affording it, so she
instantly assumed a patient look of endurance, saying: “No father, an
accordeon will not do; but never mind, I see you are not rich enough
yet, I can wait!” and he had hastily broken in on this meekness with:
“_You see, you see_, youst noddings, my Rose! How many dimes a hunnert
tollars, makes dem bianos mit demselves, all mit der india-rupper
overcoats on ’em, too, unt lots of dat moosic pieces sphilt all de top
over? All--youst all de nice hair-horse biano stools, too, vat twist
round unt round, and make you sick mit yourself--everyting vat goes dat
biano mit? _Dat_ is, vat I come rich enough to give mit my Rose!”
But imagine the stupefaction of every soul who knew “Little Knights,”
when two weeks later, without a word of his intentions to anyone, he
sent men to lay the foundation of a new house on the next-door lot,
which was vacant; and to the excited inquiries of his neighbors he
_naively_ replied, between puffs of smoke: “Vell, you see now, my Rose,
she vant dat biano, unt--(pause)--unt I have to make first de house to
put him in--don’t you see mit me?” And the laugh that followed rolled
around the town and made him known far and wide as the little, Dutch
gardener who built a house for his daughter’s piano.
A few more prosperous years and “Little Knights,” who began to be
called “Little Old Knights” now, was watching, with proud eyes, the
growing train of Rosie’s lovers. She was a charming girl--clever,
well-read, an excellent musician, a perfect little housekeeper, and,
best of all, tenderly, bravely loyal to her big, illiterate mother and
her short-cut, old father.
She was a milk-white blond--a silvery, flaxen blond, and though tints
of mauve and clear, pure blue found favor in her eyes, she still wore
pink for her old father’s sake. He had used to say of her in baby days:
“My Rose is such a vite, liddle Rose--I like dat she be tied up pink
ribbons mit--alvays mit pink!” So now, tied up “mit pink,” she received
her young friends in that one-time “holy of holies”--the front room;
now termed parlor. With a sort of anguished pride big Mrs. Knights
saw sunlight streaming through only thin lace curtains across the new
carpet--saw other books than the Bible and family album there--saw
flowers and open piano, and oh--oh--the chairs all pulled out from
their nice, straight rows against the wall! But then--ach Gott! Rosie
knew! And the ringing of the doorbell was as music in the ears of the
doting, old pair who sat in the inner room--one knitting, the other
smoking--both nodding and smiling and putting severe restraint upon
themselves to keep from rushing in with refreshments before greetings
were hardly over.
That moment of offering refreshments was a moment of joy and of
torture. They would willingly have effaced themselves from the life
of their “American” daughter (as they proudly called her), but she
had neither friend nor acquaintance who did not know--and through
her introduction--her father and mother. With regard to the latter,
Rosie had worked a miracle. In two years’ time, by faithful and almost
desperate effort, she had taught her mother nine simple English words.
They were evidently selected by the astute Rosie with a view to future
social requirements. So now Mrs. Knights could, with portentous gasps
and moistening brow, say: “How do-do?” “Com’ again!” “Good-bye!”
“Ver’ glad!” “Ver’ sorry!” and “My!” And when the moment came for
the long-necked bottles of sparkling German wine--the fruit--the
sandwiches--the cream-cheese, etc., to appear, the old pair, rejoicing
in their hospitality, swelling with pride in Rosie and Rosie’s
popularity, yet nearly crushed by embarrassment, appeared, too. And
Mrs. Knights--“How do-do?” all round--wilted into a big chair in
the corner, from whence she smiled most happily and cast a “My!” of
excellent pronunciation into the general conversation now and then, for
which her Rosie gave her a dozen kisses afterward.
The bright, laughing girl saw that her father had the prettiest
visitor in the room to sit by, and that her own choice of the young
men should wait upon her mother, and so, with wonderful tact, she led
them into her brighter life, instead of shutting them out into the
shamed solitude known to so many lowly parents. Rosie was nineteen
when she made her choice. Young Randall had been a child of wealth
until, at twenty, his father tried to “corner” something and had been
cornered himself and ruined. Then the boy went to work and had been
working for six years when he fell in love with Rosie. Never had there
been such excitement in a Dutchman’s life before! Little Old Knights
was a house-building, present-buying, hand-rubbing, amiable, little
lunatic! His wife smiled in her very sleep at night, and lived in her
Dutch receipt-book all day, while Rosie had to watch the pair with the
eyes of an affectionate lynx to prevent them from buying horse-hair
furniture for her future parlor, and large chunks of amethyst or big,
diamond-set things for ornaments.
But she managed so well that only a few atrocities crept in among her
gifts, and her little home was charming. Many thought that now, as
Rosie entertained a good deal and had new friends in her new home,
she would ignore the old folks. Not she! Whenever she had anything
“on,” from a “coffee-drinking” to an “evening party,” she flew down
to the old home and laced her mother into shape, crowding her into a
stiff, silk gown, that creaked at each labored breath of its wearer,
and when she was in full panoply of war, and Little Old Knights had
been turned about and looked over as if he were a boy getting ready
for Sunday-school, Rosie kissed them both and took them off to her
own home, and set them down in two big chairs with a little table
between them, for their spectacles and handkerchiefs and other small
belongings--and there, like an old pair of children, they sat and
enjoyed all that went on; and when there was dancing, “Old Knights”
never failed to indulge in one waltz with his ancient wife--the memory
of whose youth must have gone into her feet to make her so light on
them still. And while Rosie joined in the laughter this waltz always
aroused, there would be a tremor in her voice and she would hold her
young husband’s hand close and whisper: “Will you love _me_ like that,
Hal, when I have grown old?”
So on radiant wings time flew by, until one morning neighbors heard
laughing in “Little Knights’” garden--laughing that continued and
continued, and when they went over, “Little Knights” was doing
the laughing, with tears running down his cheeks and falling on
the prodigious Bible open on his short knees. When questioned, he
exclaimed: “She has kom’--all safe, she has kom’! I seen her mit mine
eyes--I have tooched her mit dese fingers! De liddle daughter of mine
own Rose! Ach, de Almighty Gott is a most goot Gott!” and then he bowed
his white head and muttered: “Now let Thy servant depart mit peace!”
And so poor, “Little Old Knights” found his cup of joy full to the brim!
And what happens to any cup held in human hands if filled to the
brim? It runs over--and there is cruel loss! And so it came to pass
that Rosie’s little one stayed with them just long enough to smile a
recognition of her girlish mother’s face, and then some sweet, strong
call came from the “beyond” that baby had heard and answered--and they
were left to wonder at the awful void that small absence made in all
their lives.
Poor, Old Knights! Tight in his arms he held the tiny, coffined
dead--moaning over and over: “My liddle pud--my Rose’s liddle
pud!”--until that sad moment when, by sheer force, they took the wee,
dead thing from him, to hide it away beneath the flowers and the
grasses.
Time passed slowly now. Rosie, very gentle--very tender of others--was
sad, so sad. That was not natural to her--so all rejoiced when hope
once more shone in her face--and all was thankful when Little Old
Knights trotted from door to door with the news that his Rose had
“anodder liddle daughter--so like--ach Gott! so like de first--as never
yet dey saw!”
Rosie’s joy was great, but it was not the laughing, unthinking joy of
other days. She felt anxieties and fears. She dreaded this and that,
but her silvery blond baby was so strong and well, and grew so fast,
and “crowed” and laughed, and romped with father and grandfather, and
stood so strong upon her little legs that fears had to give way to
confidence, and her heart bounded with triumph when she heard the baby
voice, cry imperatively; “Ma--ma! ma--ma!”
One day in particular Rosie always remembered--she had toiled for a
good hour at training baby to say: “Pa--pa,” when the father had come
from the office--and when he came the baby had stretched out her arms
to him, looked back roguishly at Rosie, and then fairly screamed:
“Ma--ma! ma--ma!” and they had all laughed and laughed! Good God! how
easy it is for a baby to fill a happy home with merriment! And that
very night “croup” had clutched with murderous fingers the little
throat that was used to swell with laughter as a bird’s throat swells
with song--and darkness and silence came upon the house.
Little Knights--poor, broken, Little Knights--like a small, gray
shadow, flitted back and forth between the two stricken homes. At one
moment he had blasphemed in his misery. His Rose had been lying on his
breast and she had wrung her hands and lifted her tortured eyes to his
and cried: “Father, what have I done? Think back--think hard! What
wickedness did I do, that God should punish me so cruelly? Did I lie?
Did I bear false witness against anyone? Think father--think for me,
dear!”
And then he had lifted up his voice against Almighty God and cursed his
work--and now he remembered his words and shivered, for, with creeping
horror, he felt that there was something approaching him more terrible
even than the loss of the second little bud of love and hope--Rose!
Rose--his worshiped Rose--who wept not--who thought no more for others’
comforts--who sat motionless for long hours at a time, had been taken
possession of by a grotesquely horrible idea that the husband she loved
so was trying to put her legally away, because her children died! And
she would hold his hands and beg piteously that he should wait for her
to die!--that she would not be long about it now! And the poor husband
would kneel at her feet and pour out his love and grief, but all in
vain!
Then she would lay her head on “Little Knights’” breast and tell him
to take her away before the new wife came! He felt what was coming,
and believed _his_ blasphemy had brought destruction upon her when his
Rose became quite mad! At first he tried to take his life, but Mrs.
Knights seemed to have eyes all over--he could not escape them. Then,
suddenly, he cast himself--helpless, hopeless, almost heartbroken, at
the “Blessed Feet,” asking nothing for himself, but entreating mercy
for his Rose!--so innocent, so good! Bye and bye he ceased to bargain
with the Lord, and bowed his head, and with grief-shaken voice, said
simply: “Thy will, not mine, O Gott!” and straight a gleam of sunlight
came back into his life. Rose--his beloved Rose--had recovered her
reason! “Little Knights” held her in his arms and kissed the weary eyes
and drooping lips--and blessed God for her! but knew in his heart he
would never again see his white Rose “tied up mit pink ribbons.”
And time goes on and on, and Rose, gentle, kind, a very angel of
mercy to the poor, devoted to her husband and her parents--rarely
smiling--never laughing--shivers at the sight of a blond baby. Four
years had passed after her second loss, and her silence was deceiving
them all. I think, when one Sunday in church a strange, little,
restless creature in her pew crept along the seat and put its baby hand
on hers, and poor Rosie at that touch had fainted dead away, after that
they understood.
One day I saw “Little Knights” standing uncovered at the side of two
tiny graves. A small white stone at their head had carved upon it two
rosebuds and beneath, three words, clear and plain: “Our little buds!”
I murmured the words half aloud, and “Little Knights,” with tears on
his cheeks, said: “Yays, yays--youst liddle puds--but, oh, whad sweet,
liddle puds dey were! Gott give me youst von Rose--full bloomed unt
perfect--but dese puds? _No! no!_ He say dey may not bloom here!”
He looked up into the clear, far, far blue, and smiled and nodded, and
said, very low: “Oop dere--I think He make ’em bloom out full--dem
puds! I like I can see dat! I don’t want to leaf my Rose--I stay here
as long as she stay--but I vant so much to see my liddle puds bloom!”
and then he placed on each wee grave a beautiful rosebud, and trotted
away home to his good, old wife and his adored Rosie!
“Let me see,” I added, “this is Saturday--is it not? Well, to-morrow,
before four o’clock in the afternoon, should you go to W---- Cemetery,
you would see the ‘little hop o’ my thumb’ I pointed out to you
a while ago come trotting in, holding two beautiful, exquisitely
beautiful, rosebuds in his hand; would see him make his way to those
two tiny graves, and without shame, fall on his knees, and with one
arm stretched across the graves, humbly pray. Then kissing both buds,
he would place one on each grave--then, with falling tears, leave the
cemetery--and that has been done and will be done, winter as well as
summer, by this poor, faithful ‘Little Old Knights.’”
I glanced at my companion and was amazed to see her eyes were brimming,
and as she dashed the tears away, the shameless little turncoat
cried--“And do you now tell me you can’t see poetry in life--when
you have known a man like that? Why, there is all the poetry of
‘fatherhood’ right before your eyes!”
And to this day she wonders why I laughed so long and heartily.
The Ambition of MacIlhenny
The Ambition of MacIlhenny
After mentioning that last name it seems like rank waste of time to say
his first name was Sandy. He couldn’t help it, his parents couldn’t
help it, no one could help it; one name follows the other naturally.
Well, then, being Sandy MacIlhenny, of course he was Scotch. I mention
it for mere form’s sake, as you knew it beforehand, just as you knew
what his first name was. But, fortunately for us all, he had lived in
America so many years that he had lost or thrown away his dialect, and
the only thing in his speech that could suggest his native heath was
the marked preference for the letter “u” instead of “i” in whisky, (and
I think, myself, “whusky” has a more filling sound) and a “burring,” a
b’r’r’r to his “r’s,” as though a very large, bewildered “bumble-bee”
were blundering about the end of his broad tongue, and then bumping
back to the roof of his mouth.
Poor MacIlhenny’s life was a tragedy, and yet it was played, to
the very last act, to an accompaniment of jeers and laughter--not
malicious, not bitter, but simple, thoughtless laughter.
A description of his personal appearance might, I think, go a good
way toward explaining the cause of that general laughter. Had he been
simply ugly, all had been well--there’s nothing injurious in ugliness;
it may even be a power. He was worse than that. In our English
language there is a word that may have been created at the very moment
of Sandy’s birth, for the express use of those wishing to describe him
perfectly but briefly--that word is “grotesque.”
He was tall, very tall, with a sudden, rounding droop of the shoulders
that gave him the look of a button-hook or interrogation point, while
his thickness through the body was about that of a choice, salt
codfish. If he was furnished with the usual number of internal organs
they must have been pressed like autumn leaves in a dictionary, or else
he did not wear them all at one time; that’s how thin he was. Then he
was the only tall man I ever saw pacing through life on bowed-legs.
No, not knock-kneed! Sandy’s legs were bowed to a roundness that let
one see, at a glance, just how a picture of certain portions of the
landscape would look in a perfectly round frame. No man on earth could
command respect while standing on a pair of legs like Sandy’s, unless
they were concealed beneath the protecting petticoat of church or
college. He had very high cheek-bones, across which the skin was drawn
so tightly that they looked like a pair of unexpected knuckles. His
chin was long and straight, without the slightest indentation or curve
about it. His nose shared in the general lengthiness and was thin and
pointed, while, owing to the narrowness of his entire structural plan,
each small, greenish-blue eye turned inwardly and gazed with fixed
resentment at the intervening bridge that seemed to be crowding them.
And these cruelly crossed eyes made MacIlhenny a veritable joy to the
street boys, who would follow him, performing warlike dances, and then
rush before him and wait at street corners with ostentatiously crossed
forefingers between which they gravely spat to avert the ill-luck his
glance might put upon them.
Poor man! In no limb, no feature had he been spared--so that the final
touch of common, coarse ugliness was found in the shining baldness of
the top of his head, and the little flounce of brick-red hair with
which he seemed to be modestly trying to cover its startling nudity.
With such a body to dwell in, one can hardly wonder that his mind
should become distorted and develop only in one direction, as it were,
and such a direction, for the ambition of MacIlhenny, this poor,
cross-eyed, bowlegged Scotchman of the lower laboring class--this
excellent cutter of stone, was to be the greatest _tragic-actor_ of his
day!