reach the curb and with a little skip spring to the pavement. Then she
came straight toward him; but he could see she was blissfully oblivious
of his nearness. Suddenly an odd wave of emotion surged through his
brain. His heart leaped with primitive savagery of love, and every fibre
in him rebelled fiercely against the decrees and limitations of modern
courtship. He had failed in the game as governed and modified by the
rules of polite society and high finance. The primogenital man-spirit in
him cried out for its inning. Mr. Strumley, as umpire, hearkened to its
clamor.
"Bettina!" he called, as that young lady came calmly abreast of the car,
"wait a moment. I must speak with you."
She started with a half-frightened exclamation; but met his look, at
first defiantly, scornfully, then hesitatingly, faltering as she tried
to take another step onward.
"Bettina!" Mr. Strumley's voice vibrated determinedly, "I said I wished
to speak with you. I can explain--everything."
She halted reluctantly, and partly turned. In a moment he was at her
side, his hand upon her arm. His glance had in it all the compelling
strength of unadulterated, pristine manhood. She seemed to feel its
potency, and without remonstrance suffered him to lead her toward the
machine.
For a moment, for a single moment, Mr. Strumley was exhilaratingly
conscious of being borne aloft on a great wave of victorious gladness.
Then the waters of triumph let him down with a shock.
"Bettina!"
At the word they both pivoted like pieces of automata. Mr. Stokes, large
and severe, was standing between the portals of his financial
fortification.
"Bettina!" His voice was almost irresistible in the force of its
parental summons.
At the sound of it the primeval lover, newly renascent in Mr. Strumley's
breast, cowed before the power of genitorial insistency. Then it came
back into its own exultantly.
"Bettina, my darling, get in," he commanded.
She faltered, turned rebelliously, turned again and obeyed.
"Bettina!" The voice of the childless banker faded off in the distance,
its last echo drowned in the full-throated: "Bettina, we are going to be
married at once," that broke joyously from Mr. Strumley's lips. "I have
followed the example of the Romans, and taken me a wife from the
Sabines."
Bettina peeped up at him from beneath the dark screens of her lashes.
"Then I, like the wise Sabian ladies, shall save the day for peace and
for Rome," she smiled archly.
And the machine laughed "Chug-chug!"
XI
THE JAM GOD
A Tale of Nigeria
By H.M. EGBERT
LIEUTENANT PETERS, of the Royal Nigerian Service, was lying upon the
ground face downward, under a prickly tree. The sun was nearly vertical,
and the little round shadow in which he reclined was interlaced with
streaks of hot light. As the sun moved, Peters rolled into the shade
automatically. His eyes were shut, and he was in that hot borderland
which is the nearest approach to sleep at noontide in Nigeria.
The flies were pestering him, and he was thirsty--not with that thirst
of the mouth which may be quenched with a long draught, but with the
thirst of the throat that sands and sears. He felt thirsty all over. He
had been thirsty, like this, ever since he struck the bend of the Niger.
What made it worse, every night he dreamed of fruits that were snatched
away, like the food of Tantalus, as he approached to grasp them. Two
nights before he had been wandering knee-deep in English strawberry
beds; the night before he had been shaking down limes and oranges from
groves of trees set with green leaves and studded with golden fruit.
Once he had dreamed of a new fruit, a cross between a pear and a
watermelon; but when he cut into it he found nothing but hard, small
seeds, with a pineapple flavor, which he detested.
Peters was dreaming now, for he twined his fingers in the long grass and
tossed uneasily.
"I'll pick them all," he muttered sleepily. "All mixed together, with
ten or twelve pounds of damp, brown sugar, and boiled into jam."
He woke and felt his teeth for the hundredth time, to note whether any
untoward looseness betokened the advent of the dreaded scurvy.
Reassured, he stretched his limbs and rolled over into the shade of the
tree.
"When I get back to a white man's country," he murmured--"when I get
home to England what is it I am going to do? Why, I shall go into a
restaurant and order some rich brown soup. Then I shall have _pate de
foie gras_ sandwiches. Then scrambled eggs, chocolate, and muffins
buttered with whipped cream. Then half a dozen cans of jam. I shall
either begin with strawberry and conclude with apricot, or else I shall
begin with apricot and wind up with raspberry. It doesn't matter much;
any kind of jam will do except pineapple."
He opened his eyes, brushed away the flies that swarmed noisily round
him, took out his hard-tack, and opened a small can of dried beef. He
munched for a while, sipping occasionally from the tepid water in his
canteen. When he had finished he put the can-opener back in the pocket
of his tunic and rose, his face overspread with a look of resolution.
"I believe," he cried, "I believe that I could eat even a can of
pineapple!"
He rose, the light of his illusion still in his eyes, and began
staggering weakly under the blazing sun in the direction of his camp. He
was weaker than he had thought, and when he reached the shelter of his
tent he sank down exhausted upon the bed. Through the open flap he could
see, five hundred yards away, the round, beehive-shaped huts of the
native village and, in their centre, the square palace of King
Mtetanyanga, built of sticks and Niger mud, surrounded by its stockade,
the royal flag, a Turkish bath-towel stained yellow and blue, floating
proudly above.
Lieutenant Peters had been sent by the Nigerian Government along the
upper Niger to conclude treaties with the different kings and sweep them
within the British sphere of interest. The French were out upon a
similar errand, for in this region the two nations possessed only a
vague and very indeterminate boundary line. Peters had been successful
until he came to the village of King Mtetanyanga, who had balked at
affixing his cross to the piece of mysterious parchment on the ground
that it was unlawful to do so during the festival of the great Ju-Ju,
whose worshipers could be heard wailing and beating tom-toms nightly in
some unknown part of the jungle. What this Ju-Ju fetish was nobody could
tell; it had come into the village recently, from the coast, men
whispered; it possessed awful and mysterious potency; was guarded
zealously by some score of priests, who veiled its awful vision; and it
was the greatest Ju-Ju for hundreds of miles along the Niger, tribes
from distant regions frequently arriving to sacrifice pigs to it.
However, Lieutenant Raguet, the French commissioner, had been equally
unsuccessful in inducing the dusky monarch to affix his signature to the
French treaty, and the ambassadors of the rival nations were both
encamped near the village, waiting for the Ju-Ju festivities to reach
their plethoric conclusion before the king sobered up and attended to
business.
Raguet, strolling into his rival's camp that evening, found Peters in
his tent, flushed, and breathing heavily.
"Tcht! tcht! you are seeck," said the Frenchman sympathetically. "That
ees too bad. Have you quinine?"
"Quinine be hanged," cried Peters huskily. "I've taken the stuff until
I've floated in it. There's only one thing can cure me, Raguet. I've
been living on crackers and canned beef for over a month, and I'm pining
for jam. Have you got any jam?"
"Dsham, dsham?" repeated Raguet with a puzzled expression.
"Yes, les preserves--le fruit et le sugar, bouilli--you know what I
mean."
"Ah, ze preserve!" said the Frenchman, with an expression of
enlightenment. "Ze preserve, I have him not."
"I tell you what, Raguet," said Peters irritably, "I've got to get some
jam somewhere or I shall kick the bucket. I'm craving for it, man. If I
had one can of the stuff it would put me upon my feet instantly, I can
feel it. Now it's ten to one I'll be too sick to see the king after the
ceremonies are over, and he'll sign your treaty instead of mine. And
I've given him three opera hats, a phonograph, and a gallon of rum,
curse the luck! What did you give him, Raguet?"
"Me? I give him a umbrella with ze gold embroider," the Frenchman
answered.
"My government won't let me give the little kings umbrellas," said
Peters in vexation. "It makes the big chiefs jealous. I say, Raguet," he
rambled on, sitting up dizzily, "what is this Ju-Ju idol of theirs?"
"I know not," said the French lieutenant. "Only ze king and ze priests
have seen him. If zey tell, zey die--ze idol keel zem."
"I suppose they'll be keeping up these infernal tom-toms for another
week," grumbled the sick man, lying back and half closing his eyes from
weariness. "Well, I'll have to try to get well in time."
The Frenchman resisted the impulse to leap back in surprise, but his
eyes narrowed till they were slits in his face. So! This Englishman did
not know that this had been the last day of the sacrifices, that at
midnight a hecatomb of pigs was to be killed and eaten in the bush in
honor of the Ju-Ju. Nor that the king, when he had broached and drunk
the cask of rum, would be in a mood to discuss the treaty. Peters
evidently was unaware how much his majesty had been affronted by his
failure to present him with an umbrella. La! la! Fortune was evidently
upon his side. All this flashed through the Frenchman's mind in an
instant. A solitary chuckle escaped him, but he turned it into an
exclamation of grief, sighed deeply, seated himself upon the bed, and
kissed Peters affectionately on either cheek.
"My Peters, my poor friend," he began, "you must not theenk of leaving
your tent for ze next two, t'ree days. Ze fever, he is very bad onless
you receive him in bed. I shall take care of you."
"You're a good fellow, Raguet," said Peters, wiping his face
surreptitiously with the backs of his hands. When his visitor had left
he turned over and sank into a half-delirious doze that lasted until the
sun sank with appalling suddenness, and night rushed over the land.
Tossing upon his bed, all through the velvet darkness he was dimly
conscious, through his delirious dreams, of tom-toms beaten in the bush.
His throat was parched, and in his dreams he drank greedily from his
canteen; but each time that he awoke he saw it hanging empty from the
tent flap. Presently a large, bright, yellow object rose up in front of
him. Greedily he set his teeth into it; and even as he did so it
disappeared, and he awoke, gasping and choking under the broiling
blackness.
"I'll have to take that canteen down to the stream and fill it," he
muttered, rising unsteadily and proceeding toward the bank. To his
surprise he found that rain had fallen. He was treading in ooze, which
rose higher and higher until it clogged his footsteps. He struggled, but
now it held him fast, and he was sinking slowly, but persistently, now
to the waist, now to the shoulders. Frantically he thrust his hands
downward to free himself, and withdrew them sticky with--jam! He scooped
up great handsful greedily; and even as he raised it to his mouth it
vanished, and he awoke once more in his tent.
He flung himself out of bed with an oath, took down his canteen, and
started toward the river. The noise of the tom-toms was louder than
ever, proceeding, apparently, from some point in the bush a little to
the left of the king's palace. Scrambling and struggling through the
thorn thickets, he reached the sandy bed of the stream, filled his
water-bottle at a pool, and drank greedily.
It was that still hour of night when the many-voiced clamor of the bush
grows hushed, because the lions are coming down to drink at the waters.
The rising moon threw a pale light over the land. The tom-toms were
still resounding in the bush, but to Peters's distorted mind they took
on the sound of ripe mangoes falling to the ground and bursting open as
they struck the soil. He counted, "one, two, three," and waited. He
counted again. There must be thousands of them. Peters began to edge
his way through the reeds in the direction of the sound. After a while
he came to a wall of rocks perpendicular and almost insurmountable. He
paused and considered, licking his lips greedily as the thud, thud
continued, now, apparently, directly in front of him. All at once his
eyes, curiously sensitive to external impressions, discovered a little,
secret trail between two boulders. He followed it; a great stone
revolved at his touch, and he found himself inside the sacred groves. He
went on, gulping greedily in anticipation of the feast which awaited
him.
Suddenly he stopped short. He had seen something that brought back to
him with a rush the realization of his whereabouts. Seated in the
shelter of a cactus tree, not fifty yards away, was King Mtetanyanga,
wearing his three opera hats, one upon another, in the form of a triple
crown, and drinking his own rum with Raguet, under the shade of Raguet's
umbrella. Prone at their feet crouched Tom, the interpreter.
"His Majesty say, 'How you fix him Ju-Ju?'" translated Tom.
"Tell His Majesty, my Ju-Ju stronger than the Englishman's Ju-Ju,"
answered the Frenchman. "My Ju-Ju eat up his Ju-Ju. He very sick. If I
choose, he die."
"Ugh!" grunted the king, when this explanation was vouchsafed,
apparently impressed.
"Tell His Majesty my Ju-Ju stronger than his own Ju-Ju. If he no sign
treaty, eat up his Ju-Ju," Raguet went on.
A flow of language came from the king's lips.
"His Majesty say, he bring his Ju-Ju, see whose greater," said the
interpreter.
Vaguely aware that treachery was impending, but crazed now by the
falling mangoes, Peters left them palavering and followed the trail. All
at once he emerged into a tiny clearing and stood blinking at a fire,
round which a group of men--priests, as he knew, from their buffalo
horns and crane feathers--were reclining, hammering upon tom-toms and
shouting in various stages of intoxication. The firelight blinded their
eyes. Peters stood still uncertainly. Then his eyes fell upon a
sawed-off tree-trunk, in the hollow of which lay something wrapped in a
white cloth, surrounded with snake-skins. He had come by this secret
road into the actual presence of the great Ju-Ju.
Curiously he inserted his hand, lifted the object out, and examined it.
Inside was something of a strange, yet familiar shape, oval, and
flattened at the ends. He lifted it out of its wrappings, and there, in
his hand, he saw a can, bearing the legend:
GREENAWAY'S BEST JAM.
He looked at it in solemn and holy meditation; then, sitting down, he
drew the can-opener from his tunic and wiped it clean upon his sleeve.
After awhile a babel of sound broke in upon his ears. Men had come
running up, brandishing spears, stopped, flung themselves upon the
ground prostrate in front of him. The priests were there, frantically
abasing themselves; Mtetanyanga, his opera hats rolling, unheeded, on
the ground. Their cries ceased; they veiled their eyes. Then from the
dust came the feeble tones of the interpreter.
"His Majesty say, you eat him Ju-Ju--yours greatest Ju-Ju, he want to
sign treaty."
But Peters, waving the empty can over his head, shouted:
"I've eaten jam, I've eaten jam! It's pineapple--and I don't care!"
XII
WHEN FATHER WORKED
A Suburban Story
By CHARLTON LAWRENCE EDHOLM
"H'everybody works but Fadher,
H'and 'e sets 'round h'all diy----"
THUS in chorus shrilled the infant Cadges like the morning stars singing
together, but still more like the transplanted little cockneys they
were.
The placid brow of Mr. Thomas Cadge was darkened with disapproval, he
shifted his stubby brier pipe to the other corner of his mouth, edged a
little from his seat on the sunny front stoop and, craning his neck
around the corner of his house, revealed an unwashed area extending from
collarbone to left ear.
"Shet up, you kids!" he barked. "Wot for? Becos I say so, that's why. I
don't like that song, 'taint fit for Sunday."
With a soothing consciousness that he had upheld the sacred character of
the Sabbath, Mr. Cadge settled back to the comfort of his sun-bath and
smoke. But he had scarcely emitted three puffs before the piping voice
of Arabella Cadge was again wafted to his ears. She sang solo this time,
and the selection was of a semi-devotional nature, more in keeping with
the day:
"Oh fadher, dear fadher, come 'ome wid me now,
De clock on de steeple strikes----"
"Shet up, drat you!" again commanded her parent. "If I has to get up and
go arter you----"
The balance of this direful threat may never be known, for at that
moment Mr. Job Snavely, garbed in the black broadcloth which he wore one
day out of seven, paused in front of Mr. Cadge's door and bade him good
morning.
"Mornin'," responded the ruffled father.
"Your little girl is quite a song bird," continued Mr. Snavely, with his
usual facility in making well-meant small-talk more irritating than a
hurled brick.
"She sings too much," commented Mr. Cadge, shortly, "I likes people wot
knows when to 'old their tongues."
"Very true, very true!" amiably replied Mr. Snavely, "but for all that,
there is nothing sweeter than the artless babble of babes; I declare it
almost brought the tears to my eyes when I heard them prattling,
'Everybody works but father,' it is so very, very appro----"
Mr. Snavely checked himself abruptly, for the light in the small, green
eyes of Thomas Cadge was baleful, and his square jaw protruded
menacingly. The kindly critic of music had a vague feeling that the
subject might be changed to advantage.
"Been to church this morning, I suppose?" he inquired briskly with the
assurance of a man just returning from that duty.
"No I 'asn't," retorted Cadge, "and wot's more the old woman 'asn't, and
the kids 'asn't neither. 'Cos why? 'Cos in this 'ere free country of
yours, a laboring man can't make a living for 'is family, workin' 'ard
as I does, Sundays, nights, and h'all the time. The missus and the kids
stays from church 'cos their duds ain't fit, and I stays 'ome 'cos I've
got to work like a slave to pay you for seven dollars' worth of spoiled
vegetables and mouldy groceries. That's the reason I works on Sundays,
if you've got to know."
"Work on Sundays!" gasped the grocer. "Work! work?" and he stared at the
reclining figure of Mr. Cadge in unfeigned astonishment.
"Yes, work. This 'ere construction company wot's doing the job of
grading this vacant block, employs me to sort of look after things,
their shovels, scoops, and the like. A kind of private police officer,
I am," he concluded, drawing himself up a little and puffing into the
air.
"And when are you on duty?" asked Mr. Snavely.
"Nights," replied Cadge, "nights and Sundays, when the tools ain't in
use."
"I hope they pay you well for it?"
"Ah, but they don't. 'Ow much do you think I get for stayin' awake
nights and doin' without my church on Sunday? Three measly dollars a
week and the rent of this 'ere 'ouse, if you can call it a 'ouse."
It would have been difficult to determine just what name to give the
residence of Mr. Thomas Cadge. It would hardly be called a cottage,
though not because it was more spacious than the name implied; nor was
it a piano-box, in spite of the fact that a piano would have fitted
snugly within its walls, for no manufacturer would have trusted a
valuable instrument in so flimsy a shell. It was not a real-estate
office, as the sign which decorated its entire front proclaimed it to
be, for through a jagged hole in the window facing the street projected
a rusty iron stovepipe, which was wired to the facade of the building,
and emitted the sooty smoke that had almost totally obscured and
canceled the legend, "Suburban Star Realty Syndicate."
Moreover, a litter of tin cans, impartially distributed at the front and
back doors, indicated the domestic use to which this temporary office
had been put. A smell of steaming suds that pervaded the place likewise
indicated the manner in which Mrs. Cadge eked out her lord's stipend.
This impression was confirmed by the chorus of irrepressible little
Cadges proclaiming:
"Mother tikes in washin',
H'and so does sister h'Ann,
H'everybody works at our 'ouse,
But my old----"
--a burst of melody which was abruptly checked with a tomato can hurled
like a hand-grenade by their unmusical father.
"Look here, Cadge," said Mr. Snavely, with the air of proprietorship one
adopts to hopeless debtors, "three dollars a week is not going to keep
your family, to say nothing of paying up that seven dollars. I can't
carry you forever, you know. Why don't you get a daylight job?"
"Ah, that is easy enough said," protested that injured individual.
"'Aven't I tramped the streets day after day, lookin' for work?"
"Them as 'as a good paying business don't know wot it means to look for
a job," pursued Cadge bitterly.
"Yes they do," asserted the grocer cheerfully. "I was given work at
sweeping floors in the very store I now own. The fact is, I am sorry for
you, Cadge, and I have been looking around to get you a job."
Mr. Cadge seemed depressed.
"And I am glad to say," chirruped Mr. Snavely, "that I have found a
small piece of work for you, which will be worth a dollar and a half a
day."
Cadge's brow was still gloomy.
"Of course, it is real work," added his kind-hearted creditor, briskly,
"no sitting in the sun and watching other people's shovels; but a
customer of mine, a widow lady, that lives along Catnip Creek, wants a
man to pile up a wall of loose stones to keep her land from washing away
in high water."
Thomas Cadge shook his head with the air of Caesar virtuously refusing
the crown.
"No, no, Snavely, it wouldn't do," he said. "I can see that it would
interfere with my present h'occupation, and I can't afford to risk
losing this 'ere job. Supposin' my family was to be turned out of
doors!"
"Nonsense! It will only take you about four days to build the wall, and
at one-fifty per day, that will be six dollars, twice your week's wages
right there, and almost enough to pay what you owe me."
"I am afraid it can't be done, Snavely; the company might not like it;
you see, I would be competing with them, that's their line."
"They wouldn't handle so small a job. You know that, Cadge."
"Yes, but a man can't draw pay for two positions at once; 't ain't
honest."
"Why, this is not a regular situation," protested the upright Snavely,
who saw his bill still unpaid; "you could work on it at odd times if you
like. She'll pay you by the piece, I am pretty sure, and you will get
your six dollars cash when the wall is done."
The furtive eyes of the hunter of work avoided those of his benefactor.
He was pondering a new excuse when he happened to notice Master Cadge,
aged nine, Thomas Cadge, Jr., aged eight, and Arabella Cadge, whose
years were six, busily constructing a fort of cobblestones, and an idea
struck him.
"Very well," he said, loftily waving his pipe, "I'll drop in Monday and
talk this over with you, Snavely. Then if the job suits me I may take
it. I don't like to talk business on Sunday, you know."
Thus rebuked, Mr. Snavely resumed his homeward way.
The following Monday Cadge overslept; Tuesday found him with a headache
as a result, which by Wednesday had settled in a tooth; Thursday he felt
so much better that he feared to do anything which might check his
convalescence; Friday was an unlucky day, but so desirous was he of work
that he manfully conquered his superstitious qualms and strolled over to
the little shop where Mr. Job Snavely dealt in groceries and vegetables.
The details regarding the work were furnished with cheerful alacrity,
the tradesman going so far as to accompany his protege to the home of
their patron, Mrs. Pipkin, a withered little lady who lived with her
cats on the bank of the creek.
The work to be performed demanded more brawn than brain and no vast
amount of either. All that was required was to pile up the boulders and
cobblestones which littered the bed of the stream, as a rough,
unmortared wall, along the sloping bank of Mrs. Pipkin's property.