chest notes, and stomach notes, were poured forth with passionate
ardor, but I never, never learned to distinguish the tenderest love
song from the wail of complete despair, though I was quick to recognize
the gage of battle. I also learned that the bitterness and ferocity of
an engagement was not to be measured so surely by the loss of blood as
by the loss of fur.
But let me stop right here, and not weary the reader with what I
know about cats--tribal, nomadic, domestic; their habits, laws, and
superstitions; their sign-language, being the very same that was
taught to the tail-chasing, sacred kittens of Cheops and the first
Pharaoh--and only state that in the study of feline folklore, I have
known of a student becoming so absorbed that he forgot everything on
earth, even the “lore,” in his mad pursuit of a feline.
Now, one evening, Mr. Tyler brought home an old friend, whom he asked
to dine and pass the night. The old friend had with him a small dog,
who also dined and passed the night. The gentleman was a bachelor then,
and if he is alive and sane, I have the biggest and ugliest silver
dollar in the world to bet against a crooked hair-pin, that he is a
bachelor now. The dog was small, and it had hair--lots of hair--and
judging by sight alone, that was all he had. His master claimed that
he could see a difference between fore and aft, between head and tail.
Well, perhaps he could when the dog was awake, but ’twas base boasting
to make any such claim when he was sleeping. He was named “Bolivar,”
not after the military gentleman, but in memory of his youthful and
almost fatal attempt to swallow whole one of those very large, hard,
round candies boys call “Bolivars.”
This four-legged guest had made that thing adored of men, “a record,”
and it was for killing rats. Now you show me a dog with a record for
killing rats, and I’ll show you a dog who has broken the record killing
cats. It’s perfectly natural; he has to kill the cats or there would
not be rats enough to make a record with.
Bolivar was graciously received by Marie, who knew but little of dogs,
and who asked “why he bit his own back when everybody’s legs were in
his reach,” adding, “If I was a dog I’d bite somebody else every time;”
which was pure and unadulterated truth, I’m sure.
In the forenoon of that day, “Tyler’s pretty devil” had favored us
with one of her wildest tantrums. The servant, Norah, had spilled a
little hot tea over Dinah’s foot, and Marie had gone into a very frenzy
of rage. Seizing Dinah by the legs, she had thrashed the girl out of
the room and the house; had with one sweep of Dinah’s body cleared a
small table of every article it held; had cut her own hand; had held
her breath until she was blue; had indeed furnished her whole family
with healthy but rather unpleasant exercise for both mind and body,
and when she had so stirred her monkeys up that we each chattered our
teeth while we swang madly from our own particular pole, she had
suddenly calmed down and requested me to bandage Dinah’s scalded foot,
and proceed with her to the garden, there to play “sick lady in the
country.”
By some chance there had sprung up, at the very foot of the garden, a
large weed, a most uncommon growth amid such surroundings; a great,
big, coarse-leafed, pinkish-topped thing, a sort of pretty tramp from
the woods or fields; I think it’s called milk-weed, though to Dinah it
was usually an orange orchard, while only occasionally it became a pine
forest in which we lost ourselves and endured great hardships.
I remember it was an orange orchard that day, and after a long play,
when Marie was called to dress for dinner, she advised Dinah to remain
where she was, saying, “When dinner is over I’ll bring you some
dessert.”
So I gave Dinah a book to read, and we left her. We both looked back,
Marie many times, and always kissing her hand. And so I most often see
her in my memory, the “peshous one,” I mean, sitting stiffly against
the trunk of her orange tree, one foot bandaged (without the formality
of first removing her boot), an open almanac on her lap, whose
piteous, gray, old jokes were to entertain her during our absence, her
water-waves trim and neat, her round eye mild and pleasant, her smile
almost meeting behind--so I saw her that last day.
The dinner was over; it had not been what you might call an hilarious
affair. There seems to be something in the blood of wives at enmity
with _uninvited_ guests, and Mrs. Tyler was cold as ice and as bitter
as a black frost.
When dinner was nearly ready, Bolivar sneaked out to the kitchen, where
the cook had given him a large, square meal, feeding him from her own
hand, as she told me afterward in confidence, until “he was that full
his eyes bulged, Miss!” And in that dreadful state he waddled back to
the dining-room, and when dinner was over, sat on end by his master
and laid beseeching, hypocritical paws on his knee, and was fed again,
after which he was in a condition bordering on apoplexy, and quite
unfit to play “soldier,” or “dead-dog,” or do anything in fact, save
retire to the flyless shadows under the piano and there sleep, audibly.
Marie was so interested in Bolivar and so busy flirting with his master
(she was a coquette at one year), that she actually forgot Dinah, who
still sat in the orange orchard.
The bare idea of a dog sleeping in her house filled Mrs. Tyler with
such indignation that other arrangements had to be hastily made for
Bolivar’s accommodation.
Some former tenants had left a kennel behind them. It was brought from
the wood-house, a bit of old carpet put into it, and the sleepy Bolivar
was hitched to it with a piece of cord. After two or three strangling
efforts to follow his master, kennel and all, into the house, he
finally settled himself, and we all separated for the night.
We were all asleep--and then we were all awake again! No, it was not
the “crack of doom” we heard, but if you were to break one boiler
factory into a foundling asylum and beat them together, you might get
an idea of the kind of noise that aroused us. I murmured “Cats,” and
tried to slip back into the sweet land of “Nod,” but there came a new
noise. It had a wooden sound. What was it? My mother said “Is the
wood-pile falling down?” But it sounded to me as though the shed was
jumping up and down. Suddenly we gasped, “The dog! The kennel!”
Next instant the cord broke and with an ear piercing “ky--i, ky--i!”
Bolivar set out to build up another record. It was fearful! The carnage
was great, but the noise was maddening. Our nearest neighbor came to
his window and made very, _very_ personal remarks about people who
would keep a dog where they knew cats came. This gentleman’s head
was like a large, china egg, for baldness, and I think the extreme
hairiness of Bolivar added bitterness to his words.
Had Bolivar been satisfied to kill his cats once only, his record would
have been bigger, but he had a habit of killing his victims several
times, going back to them and shaking and tossing them and crunching
their spines with his front teeth, and while this habit had the
advantage of making his cats and rats very dead indeed, it lost him a
good deal of time.
I slipped out of bed and went to the window and looked out, just as
the triumphant Bolivar tore around the house, dragging his prey and
kicking up the grave as he ran. Just beneath me he paused to re-kill
his victim, shaking it viciously, tossing it over his head, and with
a goatlike spring catching it again. Then, taking it at the head, he,
with savage growls, began nipping it down its back. At that moment I
heard the stairs creak, and some one softly opened the front door, and
then Mr. Tyler’s friend came into view.
He was dressed, or--that is to say--er--er, well, he wasn’t undressed,
quite. His feet were thrust into a pair of heelless slippers, and I
experienced a feeling of some surprise at the number of strings I could
see dangling from him. There were two broad, white ones hanging down
behind from the waist-line, and at least four pieces of white tape
trailed along behind his bare heels, which looked in the moonlight like
a pair of fine onions--moonlight always has that strange, transforming
power.
Yes, though his dress was careless and simple to a degree, still it
answered quite nicely for two o’clock in the morning, though ten hours
later it would have landed him in the fine, new insane asylum waiting
for gentlemen dressed that way.
He conversed with Bolivar a few moments, and his gestures, while a
trifle angular, were really very impressive and expressive. What he
said seemed to fill Bolivar with utter amazement, and finally with
shame and vexation. I am positive that, had he had a tail, it would
have been but a wagless sagging down, and vanity of vanities. As it
was, he could only bow his head and meekly follow his master, carefully
stepping on all four of the trailing tapes, whenever he could, and
making a snap now and then at the broad, white things dangling from the
waist-line.
Once more was he put into the kennel and tied, this time with a
clothes-line, which might have tried the strength of the best steer
in the cattle market. Once more peace descended upon us. Bolivar had
earned fresh laurels to rest upon. The live cats had gone away, and
the dead cats kept perfectly quiet, which was all one had the right to
expect of them.
It was yet very early morning when I heard Norah at Mrs. Tyler’s door,
knocking, and crying in a tearful voice for her to “get up fur huvvens
sake!”
She also called upon such a very large number of Saints to come to her
help that I am sure the house could not have held them had they laid
aside their symbols and things and answered to her call. I suppose they
felt that everybody’s business was nobody’s business, so none of them
responded.
Mrs. Tyler was unmistakably vexed as she opened the door, and Norah was
unmistakably startled, for Mrs. Tyler not only kept her teeth in a cup
of water over night, but, to make it wave, she plaited her front hair
in many, many tight, little braids (that was before crimping-pins),
which looked like nothing so much as a bunch of nicely cleaned and
neatly tied rats’ tails.
“What is the meaning of all this to-do?” asked the lady.
“Oh, Mu’m, its all that divil’s own dog’s doin’s! Him that I fed with
me own two hands, last night, till his shape was gone intirely! And now
she’s tored to pieces! The Saints be good to us!”
“Do you know,” cried Mrs. Tyler, “what you are saying!”
“I do the same!” replied Norah. “I’m a’saying that that dog ‘Bullinger’
has tored her to pieces, and she’s as dead as any mack’rel!”
“Who is dead, Norah?”
“Why, Miss Dinah, poor thing!”
“What!” Mrs. Tyler stepped outside and quickly closed the door behind
her. She took Norah by the wrist, gave her a shake, and asked in a low
tone: “What’s that about Dinah?”
With a burst of excited tears, Norah repeated: “She’s dead, M’um, as
dead as any of them nasty cats down there! And I thought I’d come and
tell you, M’um, and if you please, M’um, before the young lady finds
it out, I’ll just be leavin’ me place! No M’um, you needn’t give me no
character! I’ll just be goin’ peaceable-like, without any character at
all!”
And long and earnest were Mrs. Tyler’s entreaties, and many were the
promises she made of protection from the wrath to come, ere Norah could
be induced to light the kitchen fire, her first unwilling step toward
getting breakfast ready.
Then, white and trembling, Mrs. Tyler called my mother. They went
forth and saw Norah had told the truth. They returned and held a
consultation. Mrs. Tyler was for mad haste and another Dinah! Mother
was positive the deception could not be carried out on such short
notice, and a discovered attempt would add fury to the storm.
But Mrs. Tyler insisted, and together the two women worked wildly, in
the hope of recreating Dinah. With dripping brows and trembling fingers
they were fastening on her boots, when shrill and clear came the cry of
“Dinah! Where’s my peshous Dinah? I want her!”
Truly we all wanted her at that moment!
I was scrambling into my clothes as fast as I could, when through the
open door I caught a glimpse of little Marie; the next instant there
was a cry of indignation, followed by the words: “What’s that? What
ugly fool thing’s that--dressed up just like my Dinah? Who’s been here
already?”
And Mrs. Tyler tremulously cooed that “No one has been here,
darling--it is not even time for breakfast yet.”
Marie, with curled-up, contemptuous lips, held the intended deceiver
out at arm’s length and slowly and derisively put out her spiteful,
red tongue at her--then suddenly caught her by the heels and hurled
her out of the window, remarking: “You nasty, little, ugly beast! I
hope the ’hoppers and the ants’ll get all over you, and fleas in your
stockin-legs, too! And who ever brought you here shall be pinched, all
black! So there! Now, where’s Dinah?”
A pretended search followed, till suddenly Marie remembered she had
left Dinah out in the garden. “Oh, Cawie! Cawie!” she cried, “I
forgotted her, my own, peshous Dinah, and she’s been reading all
night, without her dinner! Oh, Dinah! Dinah!” and away she started
to the porch, on her way to rescue her beloved. And then the old
struggle, between mother and child was renewed. In her foolish endeavor
to deceive Marie a little longer, Mrs. Tyler told falsehood after
falsehood. Now it was a curious thing about the vixen, that she was
utterly truthful, for her mother was a prolific, though inconsequential
liar--her lies so utterly lacking cohesive power that they never were
known to sustain one another, and Marie often berated her mother for
her wrong-doing.
Now nearly distracted, the child suddenly turned to me, asking: “Cawie,
Cawie, has my Dinah fallen down the well?”
I shook my head, and answered, “No, Marie, dear,” while in the same
moment Mrs. Tyler quickly exclaimed: “Yes, my sweet, she is in the
well, but the man will get her out, and to-morrow you shall have her in
all new things!”
Marie glared at her a few seconds, then stamping her foot, cried, “How
dare you, you so wicked mamma! Stop, now! Stop, I say; you make lies
every day, you do. Go do your hair up right, and sit in the parlor and
make lies, and let me find my dear Dinah. Cawie, will help me!” and as
she got through the door and into the dew-wet garden, Mrs. Tyler cried
out: “She’s all right, she is in--in--the oven getting dry. You can
have her soon, only my angel, come and get dressed now!”
But, with a cry of delight, her angel tore out of her hands and darted
into the kitchen, and before Mrs. Tyler could signal, much less speak
to Norah, Marie cried: “Norah, what’s in the oven?” and that honest
bond-maiden answered, “Nothin’, Miss, its not hot enough for biscuit,
see!” and she threw open the door, and into its black maw disappeared
the child’s bright hopes. She stood quite still, and looked first at
one and then at another. I was crying quietly, but I watched her and
saw her face growing paler and paler. At last she took a fold of my
mother’s dress in her hand and said: “Auntie, is my Dinah dead?”
Before she could lift her bent head to answer, Norah, with a mighty
roar, burst forth: “She is, Miss, she’s dead and killed, and all tored
up, and there’s nothing left of her!”
Poor, little soul! Both hands clasped convulsively. That curious quiver
came to her eyelids, and the movement in her slender throat showed that
she swallowed dryly at something--sorrow is always so hard to swallow!
Then she flung out her arms, and giving a cry that pierced like a
knife, she flung herself out of the kitchen, and, of all, places in
the house, made straight for the dark store-room, off the dining-room;
she who feared but two things, lightning and utter darkness, now sought
the latter, and closed the door behind her, where we heard her little
hands feeling for some catch or bolt to fasten it, but luckily, there
was none. Mrs. Tyler was nearly wild; the pantry was very small,
utterly dark, and nearly airless. In it were kept barrels of flour and
sugar, boxes of tea and bags of coffee, and closed, it was black as
night. She prayed, pleaded, flattered, promised, and to each prayer
came a kick at the door, and the threat, “If you touch the door, I’ll
make me dead! I will! I will!”
Everyone stood helpless before this small child’s power to harm
herself. Mrs. Tyler denounced Norah for telling. Other members of the
family begged at the door to speak to Marie a moment, just a moment, in
vain; yet her voice was distinctly weaker, and all were frightened.
“I must bring her out by force!” declared Mr. Tyler.
And then, for the last time, I was called upon to play “lightning-rod.”
The uncle said, “Let Carrie try,” and then all hands were on my
shoulder, pushing me forward, and before I knew it I was alone. I on
one side of the door, stupid and idealess, and Marie on the other side,
heartbroken and relentless. I was quite a big girl then, but I’m afraid
I had my finger in my mouth.
I tried to think, but I didn’t; on the contrary, I discovered a little
nail-hole in the door that had been filled up with putty, and then,
faint and low, almost in a whisper, I heard, “Oh, Cawie, Cawie! Oh, my
Dinah!”
And I sprang to the door, opened it, and went in, and the next instant
I was sitting on a bag of salt, and poor Marie was across my knees,
sobbing as though her heart would break. I had left the door part way
open, and as I heard some one cautiously approaching, I wildly waved my
half-laced boots at them to keep away. I had not said a word; I only
sat smoothing her silky, auburn hair, while she cried, and cried, and
cried, and every now and then gasped, “She’s gone, all gone, every bit
of her! Oh, my Dinah!”
But when she once added, “and I can’t do anything for her in the
world,” my idea at last arrived, hurried, out of breath and belated,
but still an idea, and I eagerly said, “Oh, Marie, dear, there’s a
little of her left, enough to make a beautiful funeral!”
She shook her head, saying, “Got to have their bodies to make funerals.”
“But,” I went on, “don’t you remember the poor men your papa saw all
blowed up by the engine? There wasn’t much left of them, but they had
funerals, every one of them.”
She turned her tear-wet face toward me, and asked, dully, “How much was
left?”
“Oh,” I replied, with an airy assumption of knowledge worthy of my
elders, “bits of skin, and little bones like teeth, you know, and
broken ‘spenders.’”
“But,” objected Marie, “Dinah’s teef hadn’t _growed_ yet, and she
didn’t _wear_ spenders,” and her sobs broke forth anew.
I reassured her by telling her there was quite a large piece of Dinah’s
flannel petticoat left, and over half of her face (including all of her
indestructible smile), and perhaps we might find some more bits if we
looked, and we could put them all in a little, white sheet, in a true
box (a wooden box), and truly bury her just like any other person.
The poor, little vixen sat up and put her hair from her eyes and
listened--she began to be interested--then the tears slipping down her
wan cheeks, she stole her arm about my neck and whispered: “Cawie,
where has the _inside_ Dinah gone?--the--the now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep
Dinah?”
I was silent; and I could feel the trembling of her body increase as
she waited for an answer. Then she wailed: “Oh, Cawie! tell me! tell
me!”
Poor baby! who wanted her doll to be immortal as herself! I dared not
say she was in Heaven, so without an idea of what Paradise meant, I
calmly told her that “Dinah was in dolls’ Paradise”--and that was the
only time I ever knew her to be called a doll.
“What’s that?” asked Marie, eagerly.
“Why,” I answered, “it’s a lovely, clean, sweet place, where dead
dolls wait till their owners get dead too, and call for them on their
way to Heaven.”
May I be forgiven--but I certainly had a fine, able-bodied imagination
in my youth.
“Oh,” cried Marie, and she put her little lips to mine and kissed me
sweetly, “Oh, Cawie! I’se glad, and I do hope she won’t get out and get
lost--she gets lost very easy, you know--before I get dead and go for
her,” and she took my hand and we came forth from the store-closet, and
at sunset, in a deal-box with brass hinges and lock (from the young
uncle), in a white, silk handkerchief (from Papa), Dinah’s scrappy
remains were buried at the foot of the orange tree--buried with flowers
from every one, and passionate tears from Marie, and many promises, as
she kissed the box, not to forget to stop at Paradise for her.
She had not allowed any “grown-ups” to do anything except look on; she
and I did all. The mother, wishing to please her, said: “Should we move
from here, dear one, we will take up Dinah and keep her with us.”
But Marie, with frowning brows, rejected this offer. “No!” she said,
“if her now-I-lay-me part got lost out of Paradise, she could come
right here and find her old self in her home. If the box was moved, she
would be lost everywhere!”
And she went back alone, and I looked and saw her pat the grave gently,
and heard her say: “My peshous Dinah!”
Life’s Aftermath
Life’s Aftermath
“_The grave of all things hath its violet._”
It was in mellow, many-hued October. It was a Sunday--sunny and still.
There was the _feel_ of Sunday in the air. Three years had passed since
the Great Soldier’s prayer, “Let us have peace!” had been answered
with blesséd acquiescence. But when, for any reason, the people came
together in a crowd, it was sad to see how many still wore mourning.
And when the wearer was old or middle-aged, there was something in the
deadly composure of manner that said as plain as words: “This will be
my garb as long as life shall last!”
One woman there was who watched with envious eye those who passed
her wearing “deep mourning.” Envious, because she was herself denied
the sad satisfaction of this outward expression of her great grief.
Her husband--her dearer self--had simply abhorred the custom--the
“social bondage,” as he called it--of mourning! The wrapping up of the
strained and shaken body in black garments, and then the shutting out
of every breath of pure air, every ray of God’s sunlight with yards on
yards of the most hideous product of the manufacturing world--black
_crêpe_--was, he declared, detrimental to good health when worn
willingly, and when worn _unwillingly_, it was hypocrisy as vulgar as
it was cruel. And he had exacted a solemn promise from her, that in
the approaching hour of her loss, she would wear no _crêpe_ at all,
and black only for the briefest possible time; a concession made to
save her from the wondering and satirical comments of her friends and
neighbors.
Now suddenly the church bells, the chimes, burst forth and tossed high
their ringing notes into the pellucid air, sweet reminders to the
Great-All Father that His children, sinning, bewildered, yet loving,
trusting still, were gathering from afar to kneel and humbly pray
together; remembering well those words big with promise: “When two or
three are gathered together in my name!”
And among the moving multitude, two women from opposite sides of the
city were approaching the same church. Both were middle-aged, and
both felt that, in the better sense, their lives were over. Both were
victims of the war; both had lost their nearest and dearest; and one,
her home as well. And now, among strangers, she wore her rusty _crêpe_
with a dignified, almost haughty carriage of body, which, nevertheless,
said plainly: “Here is the poverty which is so cruel to the well-bred
and refined!” She worked to eke out her small pittance of an income,
but there was no sweetness, no savor in her work. She knew she was
growing hard and bitter in her sorrow and loneliness, but what did
it matter now; there was no dear one to be wounded by her sarcastic
speech. “A childless widow!” she murmured, “why do I encumber the
earth? There is no living thing that needs me, that is glad of my
coming,” and she shuddered in her thin, black garments as she thought
of the years that, dull and cold, might be waiting her, and then saw
the church, and tried to bring her thoughts under control.