MR. PINDAR
Tommy Candy was about to reenter the house, when something seemed to
attract his attention. He gazed keenly through the soft darkness at the
house opposite; then he uttered a low whistle, and, leaning on his stick
(for Miss Penny was right; poor Tommy was very lame, and had climbed his
last steeple), made his way down the garden-path to the gate. "Annie
Lizzie, is that you?" he asked, in a low tone.
"Hush!" the answer came in a soft voice. "Yes, Tommy. How you scared me!
I didn't think there was any one up. Ma thought she heard something,
and wanted I should look out and see if there was any one round."
"You tell her the Sheriff has come to get Isaac," said Tommy, "and he's
stopping with us overnight. He'll be over in the morning, tell her, with
the handcuffs, bright and early."
"Oh, hush, Tommy! you hadn't ought to talk so!" said the soft voice, and
a slender figure slipped across the road in the dark, and came to the
gate. "Honest, Tommy, I wish you wouldn't talk so about Isaac and the
rest of 'em. It don't seem right."
"Annie Lizzie," said Tommy, "I never said a word against ary one of 'em,
so long as I thought they was your kin; but since I found out that you
was only adopted, why, I don't see no reason why or wherefore I
shouldn't give 'em as good as they deserve, now I don't."
"Well, they did adopt me," said Annie Lizzie. "Don't, Tommy, please! Ma
says--"
"She ain't your Ma!" interrupted Tommy; "and I don't want you should
call her so, Annie Lizzie; there!"
"Well, she says I would have gone on the town only for them," the soft
voice went on. "You wouldn't want I should be ungrateful, would you,
Tommy?"
"No, I wouldn't," said Tommy, grimly. "I'm willing you should be
grateful for all the chance you've had to wash and scrub and take care
of them Weight brats. But this ain't what I called you over for, Annie
Lizzie. Say, there did some one come just now; Mr. Homer's brother!"
"I want to know!" said Annie Lizzie. In the darkness, Tommy could almost
see her glow with gentle wonder and curiosity. "What is he like, Tommy?
I didn't know Mr. Homer had a brother, nor any one belongin' to him
nearer than Mis' Strong."
"No more did I," said Tommy. "But here he is, as like Mr. Homer as two
peas, only he's a black one."
"For gracious' sake, Tommy Candy! you don't mean a colored man?"
"No, no! I mean dark-complected, with black eyes. You make an errand
over to-morrow, and you'll see him. He looks to be a queer one, I tell
you!"
"If he's as good as Mr. Homer," said Annie Lizzie, "I shouldn't care how
queer he was."
"No more should I," cried Tommy, warmly; "but he'd have to work pretty
hard to ketch up with Mr. Homer in goodness. Say, Annie Lizzie, come a
mite nearer, can't you?"
"I can't, Tommy. I must go home this minute; Ma will be wonderin' where
I am. There! do let me go, Tommy!"
A window was raised in the house opposite, and the wheezy voice of Mrs.
Weight was heard:
"Annie Lizzie, where are you? Don't you l'iter there now, and me
ketchin' my everlastin' hollerin' for you. Come in this minute, do you
hear?"
There was a soft sound that was not a voice; and Annie Lizzie slipped
back like a shadow across the road.
"I'm comin', Ma!" she said. "It's real warm and pleasant out, but I'm
comin' right in."
"Do you see any one round?" asked the Deacon's widow.
Annie Lizzie shut her eyes tight, for she was a truthful girl. "No'm,"
she said; "I don't."
In the Captain's room, Mr. Homer's favorite apartment, the two brothers
stood and looked each other in the face. As Tommy said, the likeness was
intimate, spite of the difference in color: the same figure, the same
gestures, the same general effect of waviness in outline, of flutter in
motion; yet, to speak in paradox, with a difference in the very
likeness. There was an abruptness of address in the newcomer, foreign to
the gentle ambiguous flow of Mr. Homer's speech; where Mr. Homer waved,
Mr. Pindar jerked; where Mr. Homer fluttered feebly, his brother
fluttered vivaciously. They fluttered now, both of them, as they stood
facing each other. For a moment neither found words, but it was Mr.
Pindar who spoke first.
"I have surprised you, brother!" he cried; "confess it! Surprise, chief
tidbit at the Feast of Life! Alarums and excursions! enter King Henry,
with forces marching. You did not expect to see the Wanderer?"
"I certainly did not, my dear brother!" cried Mr. Homer, the tears
standing in his mild eyes. "I have not even felt sure, Pindar, of your
being alive in these latter years. Why, why have you kept this silence,
my dear fellow? think how many years it is since I have heard a word
from you!"
Mr. Pindar fluttered vivaciously; he was certainly more like a bat than
the Flying Dutchman. "I apologize!" he cried. "I have been at fault,
Homer, I admit it. To own him wrong, the haughty spirit bows--no more of
it! The past"--he swept it away with one wing--"is buried. This night
its obsequies! Hung be the heavens with black; a pickaxe and a spade, a
spade; other remarks of a similar nature. Homer, our cousin Marcia loved
me not!" (it was true. "I can stand a beetle," Mrs. Tree was used to
say, "or I can stand a bat; but a bat-beetle, and a dancing one at that,
is more than I can abide. Cat's foot! don't talk to me!").
"Yet when I heard--through the medium of the public prints--that she was
no more, I felt a pang, sir, a pang. I would have assisted at the
funeral solemnities; it would have been a pleasure to me to compose a
dirge; the first strophe even suggested itself to me. 'Ta-ta, tarum,
tarum' (muffled drums); 'ta tee, ta tidol' (trombones); but these things
require time, sir, time."
"Surely!" said Mr. Homer, with a meek bow; "surely; and indeed,
Pindar, the ceremonies were of the simplest description, in accordance
with the wishes of our revered and deceased relative. But sit
down, my dear brother; sit down, and let me procure some
refreshment;--a--sustenance;--a--bodily pabulum, for you. Have you come
far, may I ask?"
"From the metropolis, sir; from New York!" replied Mr. Pindar, seating
himself and throwing back his little batlike cloak.
"By rail to the Junction; the evening stage, a jolt, a rattle, and a
crawl,--behold me! A crust, Homer, a crust! no disturbance of domestic
equilibrium. A consort lurks within?"
"I beg your pardon, Brother!" said Mr. Homer, with a bewildered look.
"A wife, sir, a wife!" said Mr. Pindar. "Are you married, Homer?"
"Oh, no; no, indeed, my dear brother!" said Mr. Homer, hastily, and
blushing very red. "Nothing of the kind, I assure you. And you?"
"Perish the thought!" said Mr. Pindar; and he waved the Sex out of
existence.
Mr. Homer looked troubled, but hastened out of the room, and, after some
ineffective appeals to Tommy, who, as we know, was talking with Annie
Lizzie at the gate, foraged for himself, and returned with crackers and
cheese, doughnuts and cider. Seated together at this simple feast, the
two brothers looked at each other once more, and both rubbed their hands
with precisely the same gesture.
"Food!" cried Mr. Pindar, vivaciously; "and drink! necessities, base if
you will, but grateful, sir, grateful! Brother, I pledge you!"
"Brother, I drink to you!" cried Mr. Homer, filling his glass with a
trembling hand. "To our reunion, sir! the--the rekindling of--of
affection's torch, my dear brother. Long may it--"
"Blaze!" cried Mr. Pindar, with a sudden skip in his chair. "Snap!
crackle! flame! crepitate! Pindar to Homer shall, bright glass to
glass--enough!" He ceased suddenly, and fell upon the crackers and
cheese with excellent appetite.
Mr. Homer watched him in anxious and bewildered silence: once or twice
he opened his lips as if about to speak, but closed them each time with
a sigh and a shake of the head. The visitor was the first to speak,
beginning, when the last cracker had disappeared, as suddenly as he had
left off.
"Brother," he said, "why am I here?"
Mr. Homer repeated the words vaguely: "Why are you here, my dear
brother? I doubt not that affection's call, the--voice of sympathy,
of--a--brotherhood, of--consanguinity,--a--sounded in your ears--"
"Trumpets!" Mr. Pindar struck a sonorous note, and nodded thrice with
great solemnity. "Alarums and excursions; enter long-lost brother,
centre. You are right, Homer; but this was not all. The Dramatic Moment,
sir, had struck."
With these words, he folded his arms, and, dropping his head on his
breast, gazed up through his eyebrows in a manner which Mr. Homer found
highly disconcerting.
"Oh, indeed!" said Mr. Homer, with vague politeness.
"Struck!" repeated Mr. Pindar, nodding solemnly. "Sounded. Knelled--no!
tolled--not precisely! larumed, sir, larumed!"
"'Larumed' is a fine word," said Mr. Homer, meekly, "but I fail to
apprehend your precise meaning, Brother Pindar."
"You know what 'dramatic' means, I suppose, Homer," replied Mr. Pindar,
testily, "though you never had an atom of the quality in your
composition. And you know what a moment is. The Dramatic Moment--I
repeat it--in your life and the life of this village--has larumed, sir.
Listen to it, Homer; look upon it, sir; grasp it! The old order--gone!"
he swept it away. "The new--its foot upon the threshold!" he beckoned
toward the door, and Mr. Homer looked round nervously. "Usher it in, to
sound of trump and drum. We must celebrate, Homer, celebrate. To that
end, behold me!"
Mr. Homer passed his hand across his brow and sighed wearily. "My dear
brother," he said, "you must excuse me if I do not yet altogether
understand,--a--comprehend,--a--accord the hospitality of the intellect,
to--to the idea that you desire to convey. I feel little if any
resemblance at this moment to a watcher of the skies--Keats, as I need
not remind you; but I cannot feel that this is a time for rejoicing,
Pindar."
"For celebration, sir! for celebration!" cried Mr. Pindar, eagerly.
"The words are not synonymous, as you are no doubt aware. Let the
mysteries be solemn, if you will, the sable scarf of cinerary pomp, the
muffled drum, and wail of deep bassoon; but this was my idea, sir; thus
the vision rose before my mind's eye, Horatio,--I would say, Homer. A
procession, sir. Maidens, white-clad, flower-crowned, scattering roses;
matrons, in kirtle and gown, twirling the distaff; village elders,
in--in--our native costume is ill adapted, I confess, but suitable robes
might be obtained at trifling cost, sir, at trifling cost. You in the
midst, crowned with bays, the poet's robe your manly limbs enfolding.
Following,--or preceding, as you will,--musicians, with brass
instruments. You write an ode, I set it to music. Rhymes will readily
suggest themselves: 'jog,' no! 'clog;' hardly! 'agog;' precisely!
"Ta-ta, ta-ta, with joy agog;
Quahaug! (bang!) Quahaug! (bang!) Quahaug!
Kettledrums, you understand; cymbals; superb effect! You see it, Homer?
you take it in?"
He paused, and gazed on his brother with kindling eyes, his arms
extended, the little cloak fluttering from them; certainly nothing human
ever looked so like a bat.
"A goblin!" said Mr. Homer to himself. "My only brother is a goblin!"
He sighed again, yet more wearily, and once more passed his hand across
his brow.
"My dear brother," he said, "the hour is late. I find myself incapable
of--of thought. The weary pinion of the brain--I find myself incapable
even of metaphor, sir. You must excuse me. To-morrow--"
"To fresh fields and pastures new!" cried Mr. Pindar, rising with a
batlike wave. "Precisely! Enter attendants with torches. The minion
waits without?"
"Oh!" said Mr. Homer, "not exactly, Pindar. Direxia Hawkes
has--a--retired to rest; has--a--sought the sleep which--which--"
"Knits up the ravelled sleeve of care!" suggested Mr. Pindar.
"Oh, very much so!" cried Mr. Homer. "You surely remember Direxia,
brother, and will no doubt agree with me that the term 'minion' cannot
properly be applied to Cousin Marcia's old and faithful retainer.
And--the youth who--who admitted you, is Thomas Candy, my friend and
fellow trustee. Thomas is an invaluable person, Pindar; he is like a son
to me, I assure you. You will, I am sure, value Thomas. I will suggest
to him the advisability of bringing candles. Oh, here he is! Thomas,
this is my brother Pindar, my only brother, returned after the lapse of
many years to--to his native heath, if I may so express myself. Thomas
Candy, my dear brother!"
"Son of Silas?" cried Mr. Pindar. "Ha! 'tis well. Stripling, thy hand!
lives yet thy father, ha?"
Tommy grinned, and rumpled his hair with an elfish look eminently
unfitting a trustee.
"You are the one he used to play ghost with, and scare the Weightses,"
he said. "I've heard of you, sir. Father isn't livin', but Mis' Tree
told me about it. Glad to see you, sir!"