HICKORY DOCK

Used by permission of _Lippincott's Magazine_.

THIS is the story of Hickory Dock, and of a Man and a Girl who trifled

with Time.

Hickory Dock was a clock, and, of course, the Man, being a man, called

it a clock, but the Girl, being a girl, called it a Hickory Dock for no

more legitimate reason than that once upon a time

"Hickory, Dickory, Dock,

A Mouse ran up the Clock."

--Girls are funny things.

The Man and the Girl were very busy collecting a Home--in one room. They

were just as poor as Art and Music could make them, but poverty does not

matter much to lovers. The Man had collected the Girl, a wee diamond

ring, a big Morris chair, two or three green and rose rugs, a shiny

chafing-dish, and various incidentals. The Girl was no less

discriminating. She had accumulated the Man, a Bagdad couch-cover,

half-a-dozen pictures, a huge gilt mirror, three or four bits of fine

china and silver, and a fair-sized boxful of lace and ruffles that

idled under the couch until the Wedding-Day. The room was strikingly

homelike, masculinely homelike, in all its features, but it was by no

means home--yet. No place is home until _two_ people have latch-keys.

The Girl wore _her_ key ostentatiously on a long, fine chain round her

neck, but its mate hung high and dusty on a brass hook over the

fireplace, and the sight of it teased the Man more than anything else

that had ever happened to him in his life. The Girl was easily mistress

of the situation, but the Man, you see, was not yet Master.

It was tacitly understood that if the Wedding-Day _ever_ arrived, the

Girl should slip the extra key into her husband's hand the very first

second that the Minister closed his eyes for the blessing. She would

have chosen to do this openly in exchange for her ring, but the Man

contended that it might not be legal to be married with a

latch-key--some ministers are so particular. It was a joke,

anyway--everything except the Wedding-Day itself. Meanwhile Hickory Dock

kept track of the passing hours.

When the Man first brought Hickory Dock to the Girl, in a mysteriously

pulsating tissue-paper package, the Girl pretended at once that she

thought it was a dynamite bomb, and dropped it precipitously on the

table and sought immediate refuge in the Man's arms, from which

propitious haven she ventured forth at last and picked up the package

gingerly, and rubbed her cheek against it--after the manner of girls

with bombs. Then she began to tug at the string and tear at the paper.

"Why, it's a Hickory Dock!" she exclaimed with delight,--"a real, live

Hickory Dock!" and brandished the gift on high to the imminent peril of

time and chance, and then fled back to the Man's arms with no excuse

whatsoever. She was a bold little lover.

"But it's a _c-l-o-c-k_," remonstrated the Man with whimsical

impatience. He had spent half his month's earnings on the gift. "Why

can't you call it a clock? Why can't you _ever_ call things by their

right names?"

Then the Girl dimpled and blushed and burrowed her head in his shoulder,

and whispered humbly, "Right name? Right names? Call things by their

right names? Would you rather I called _you_ by your right name--Mr.

James Herbert Humphrey Jason?"

_That_ settled the matter--settled it so hard that the Girl had to

whisper the Man's wrong name seven times in his ear before he was

satisfied. No man is practical about everything.

There are a good many things to do when you are in love, but the Girl

did not mean that the _Art of Conversation_ should be altogether lost,

so she plunged for a topic.

"I think it was beautiful of you to give me a Hickory Dock," she

ventured at last.

The Man shifted a trifle uneasily and laughed. "I thought perhaps it

would please you," he stammered. "You see, now I have given you _all my

time_."

The Girl chuckled with amused delight. "Yes--all your time. And it's

nice to have a Hickory Dock that says 'Till he comes! Till he comes!

Till he comes!'"

"Till he comes to--_stay_," persisted the Man. There was no sparkle in

his sentiment. He said things very plainly, but his words drove the Girl

across the room to the window with her face flaming. He jumped and

followed her, and caught her almost roughly by the shoulder and turned

her round.

"Rosalie, Rosalie," he demanded, "will you love me till the _end of

time_?" There was no gallantry in his face but a great, dogged

persistency that frightened the Girl into a flippant answer. She brushed

her fluff of hair across his face and struggled away from him.

"I will love you," she teased, "until--the clock stops."

Then the Man burst out laughing, suddenly and unexpectedly, like a boy,

and romped her back again across the room, and snatched up the clock and

stole away the key.

"Hickory Dock shall _never_ stop!" he cried triumphantly. "I will wind

it till I die. And no one else must ever meddle with it."

"But suppose you forget?" the Girl suggested half wistfully.

"I shall _never_ forget," said the Man. "I will wind Hickory Dock every

week as long as I live. I _p-r-o-m-i-s-e_!" His lips shut almost

defiantly.

"But it isn't fair," the Girl insisted. "It isn't fair for me to let you

make such a long promise. You--might--stop--loving me." Her eyes filled

quickly with tears. "Promise me just for one year,"--she stamped her

foot,--"I won't take any other promise."

So, half provoked and half amused, the Man bound himself then and there

for the paltry term of a year. But to fulfil his own sincerity and

seriousness he took the clock and stopped it for a moment that he might

start it up again with the Girl close in his arms. A half-frightened,

half-willing captive, she stood in her prison and looked with furtive

eyes into the little, potential face of Hickory Dock.

"You--and I--for--_all time_," whispered the Man solemnly as he started

the little mechanism throbbing once more on its way, and he stooped

down to seal the pledge with a kiss, but once more the significance of

his word and act startled the Girl, and she clutched at the clock and

ran across the room with it, and set it down very hard on her desk

beside the Man's picture. Then, half ashamed of her flight, she stooped

down suddenly and patted the little, ticking surface of ebony and glass

and silver.

"It's a wonderful little Hickory Dock," she mused softly. "I never saw

one just like it before."

The Man hesitated for a second and drew his mouth into a funny twist. "I

don't believe there _is_ another one like it in all the world," he

acknowledged, half laughingly,--"that is, not _just_ like it. I've had

it fixed so that it won't strike _eleven_. I'm utterly tired of having

you say 'There! it's eleven o'clock and you've _got_ to go home.' _Now_,

after ten o'clock nothing can strike till twelve, and that gives me two

whole hours to use my own judgment in."

The Girl took one eager step towards him, when suddenly over the city

roofs and across the square came the hateful, strident chime of

midnight. Midnight? _Midnight?_ The Girl rushed frantically to her

closet and pulled the Man's coat out from among her fluffy dresses and

thrust it into his hands, and he fled distractedly for his train without

"Good-by."

That was the trouble with having a lover who lived so far away and was

so busy that he could come only one evening a week. Long as you could

make that one evening, something always got crowded out. If you made

love, there was no time to talk. If you talked, there was no time to

make love. If you spent a great time in greetings, it curtailed your

good-by. If you began your good-by any earlier, why, it cut your evening

right in two. So the Girl sat and sulked a sad little while over the

general misery of the situation, until at last, to comfort herself with

the only means at hand, she went over to the closet and opened the door

just wide enough to stick her nose in and sniff ecstatically.

"Oh! O--h!" she crooned. "O--h! What a nice, smoky smell."

Then she took Hickory Dock and went to bed. This method of bunking was

nice for her, but it played sad havoc with Hickory Dock, who lay on his

back and whizzed and whirred and spun around at such a rate that when

morning came he was minutes and hours, not to say days, ahead of time.

This gain in time seemed rather an advantage to the Girl. She felt that

it was a good omen and must in some manner hasten the Wedding-Day, but

when she confided the same to the Man at his next visit he viewed the

fact with righteous scorn, though the fancy itself pleased him

mightily. The Girl learned that night, however, to eschew Hickory Dock

as a rag doll. She did not learn this, though, through any particular

solicitude for Hickory Dock, but rather because she had to stand by

respectfully a whole precious hour and watch the Man's lean, clever

fingers tinker with the little, jeweled mechanism. It was a fearful

waste of time. "You are so kind to _little_ things," she whispered at

last, with a catch in her voice that made the Man drop his work suddenly

and give all his attention to _big_ things. And another evening went,

while Hickory Dock stood up like a hero and refused to strike eleven.

So every Sunday night throughout the Winter and the Spring and the

Summer, the Man came joyously climbing up the long stairs to the Girl's

room, and every Sunday night Hickory Dock was started off on a fresh

round of Time and Love.

Hickory Dock, indeed, became a very precious object, for both Man and

Girl had reached that particular stage of love where they craved the

wonderful sensation of owning some vital thing together. But they were

so busy loving that they did not recognize the instinct. The man looked

upon Hickory Dock as an exceedingly blessed toy. The Girl grew gradually

to cherish the little clock with a certain tender superstition and

tingling reverence that sent her heart pounding every time the Man's

fingers turned to any casual tinkering.

And the Girl grew so exquisitely dear that the Man thought all women

were like her. And the Man grew so sturdily precious that the Girl knew

positively there was no person on earth to be compared with him. Over

this happiness Hickory Dock presided throbbingly, and though he balked

sometimes and bolted or lagged, he never stopped, and he never struck

eleven.

Thus things went on in the customary way that things do go on with men

and girls--until the Chronic Quarrel happened. The Chronic Quarrel was a

trouble quite distinct from any ordinary lovers' disturbance, and it was

a very silly little thing like this: The Girl had a nature that was

emotionally apprehensive. She was always looking, as it were, for "dead

men in the woods." She was always saying, "Suppose you get tired of me?"

"Suppose I died?" "Suppose I found out that you had a wife living?"

"Suppose you lost all your legs and arms in a railroad accident when you

were coming here some Sunday night?"

And one day the Man had snapped her short with "Suppose? Suppose? What

arrant nonsense! Suppose?--Suppose I fall in love with the Girl in the

Office?"

It seemed to him the most extravagant supposition that he could

possibly imagine, and he was perfectly delighted with its effect on his

Sweetheart. She grew silent at once and very wistful.

After that he met all her apprehensions with "Suppose?--Suppose I fall

in love with the Girl in the Office!"

And one day the Girl looked up at him with hot tears in her eyes and

said tersely, "Well, why don't you fall in love with her if you _want_

to?"

That, of course, made a little trouble, but it was delicious fun making

up, and the "Girl in the Office" became gradually one of those

irresistibly dangerous jokes that always begin with laughter and end

just as invariably with tears. When the Girl was sad or blue the Man was

clumsy enough to try and cheer her with facetious allusions to the "Girl

in the Office," and when the Girl was supremely, radiantly happy she

used to boast, "Why, I'm so happy I don't care a _rap_ about your old

'Girl in the Office.'" But whatever way the joke began, it always ended

disastrously, with bitterness and tears, yet neither Man nor Girl could

bear to formally taboo the subject lest it should look like the first

shirking of their perfect intimacy and freedom of speech. The Man felt

that in love like theirs he ought to be able to say anything he wanted

to, so he kept on saying it, while the Girl claimed an equal if more

caustic liberty of expression, and the Chronic Quarrel began to fester

a little round its edges.

One night in November, when Hickory Dock was nearly a year old in love,

the Chronic Quarrel came to a climax. The Man was very listless that

evening, and absent-minded, and altogether inadequate. The Girl accused

him of indifference. He accused her in return of a shrewish temper. She

suggested that perhaps he regretted his visit. He failed to contradict

her. Then the Girl drew herself up to an absurd height for so small a

creature and said stiffly,--

"You don't have to come next Sunday night if you don't want to."

At her scathing words the Man straightened up very suddenly in his chair

and gazed over at the little clock in a startled sort of way.

"Why, of course I shall come," he retorted impulsively, "Hickory Dock

needs me, if you don't."

"Oh, come and wind the clock by all means," flared the Girl. "I'm glad

_something_ needs you!"

Then the Man followed his own judgment and went home, though it was only

ten o'clock.

"I'm not going to write to him this week," sobbed poor Rosalie. "I think

he's very disagreeable."

But when the next Sunday came and the Man was _late_, it seemed as

though an Eternity had been tacked onto a hundred years. It was fully

quarter-past eight before he came climbing up the stairs.

The Girl looked scornfully at the clock. Her throat ached like a bruise.

"You didn't hurry yourself much, did you?" she asked spitefully.

The Man looked up quickly and bit his lip. "The train was late," he

replied briefly. He did not stop to take off his coat, but walked over

to the table and wound Hickory Dock. Then he hesitated the smallest

possible fraction of a moment, but the Girl made no move, so he picked

up his hat and started for the door.

The Girl's heart sank, but her pride rose proportionally. "Is that all

you came for?" she flushed. "Good! I am very tired to-night."

Then the Man went away. She counted every footfall on the stairs. In the

little hush at the street doorway she felt that he must surely turn and

come running back again, breathless and eager, with outstretched arms

and all the kisses she was starving for. But when she heard the front

door slam with a vicious finality she went and threw herself, sobbing on

the couch. "Fifty miles just to wind a clock!" she raged in grief and

chagrin. "I'll punish him for it if that's all he comes for."

So the next Sunday night she took Hickory Dock with a cruel jerk, and

put him on the floor just outside her door, and left a candle burning so

that the Man could not possibly fail to see what was intended. "If all

he comes for is to wind the clock, just because he _promised_, there's

no earthly use of his coming in," she reasoned, and went into her room

and shut and locked her door, waiting nervously with clutched hands for

the footfall on the stairs. "He loves some one else! He loves some one

else!" she kept prodding herself.

Just at eight o'clock the Man came. She heard him very distinctly on the

creaky board at the head of the stairs, and her heart beat to

suffocation. Then she heard him come close to the door, as though he

stooped down, and then he--laughed.

"Oh, very well," thought the Girl. "So he thinks it's funny, does he? He

has no business to laugh while I am crying, even if he does love some

one else.--I _hate him_!"

The Man knocked on the door very softly, and the Girl gripped tight hold

of her chair for fear she should jump up and let him in. He knocked

again, and she heard him give a strange little gasp of surprise. Then he

tried the door-handle. It turned fatuously, but the door would not open.

He pushed his weight against it,--she could almost feel the soft whirr

of his coat on the wood,--but the door would not yield.--Then he turned

very suddenly and went away.

The Girl got up with a sort of gloating look, as though she liked her

pain. "Next Sunday night is the last Sunday night of his year's

promise," she brooded; "then everything will be over. He will see how

wise I was not to let him promise forever and ever. I will send Hickory

Dock to him by express to save his coming for the final ceremony." Then

she went out and got Hickory Dock and brought him in and shook him, but

Hickory Dock continued to tick, "Till he comes! Till he comes! Till he

comes!"

It was a very tedious week. It is perfectly absurd to measure a week by

the fact that seven days make it--some days are longer than others. By

Wednesday the Girl's proud little heart had capitulated utterly, and she

decided not to send Hickory Dock away by express, but to let things take

their natural course. And every time she thought of the "natural course"

her heart began to pound with expectation. Of course, she would not

acknowledge that she really expected the Man to come after her cruel

treatment of him the previous week. "Everything is over. Everything is

over," she kept preaching to herself with many gestures and

illustrations; but next to God she put her faith in promises, and hadn't

the Man promised a great, sacred lover's promise that he would come

every Sunday for a year? So when the final Sunday actually came she went

to her wedding-box and took out her "second best" of everything, silk

and ruffles and laces, and dressed herself up for sheer pride and joy,

with tingling thoughts of the night when she should wear her "first

best" things. She put on a soft, little, white Summer dress that the Man

liked better than anything else, and stuck a pink bow in her hair, and

big rosettes on her slippers, and drew the big Morris chair towards the

fire, and brought the Man's pipe and tobacco-box from behind the gilt

mirror. Then she took Hickory Dock very tenderly and put him outside the

door, with two pink candles flaming beside him, and a huge pink rose

over his left ear. She thought the Man could smell the rose the second

he opened the street door. Then she went back to her room, and left her

door a wee crack open, and crouched down on the floor close to it, like

a happy, wounded thing, and _waited_--

But the Man did not come. Eight o'clock, nine o'clock, ten o'clock,

eleven o'clock, twelve o'clock, she waited, cramped and cold, hoping

against hope, fearing against fear. Every creak on the stairs thrilled

her. Every fresh disappointment chilled her right through to her heart.

She sat and rocked herself in a huddled heap of pain, she taunted

herself with lack of spirit, she goaded herself with intricate

remorse--but she never left her bitter vigil until half-past two. Then

some clatter of milkmen in the street roused her to the realization of a

new day, and she got up dazed and icy, like one in a dream, and limped

over to her couch and threw herself down to sleep like a drunken person.

Late the next morning she woke heavily with a vague, dull sense of loss

which she could not immediately explain. She lay and looked with

astonishment at the wrinkled folds of the white mull dress that bound

her limbs like a shroud. She clutched at the tightness of her collar,

and fingered with surprise the pink bow in her hair. Then slowly, one by

one, the events of the previous night came back to her in all their

significance, and with a muffled scream of heartbreak she buried her

face in the pillow. She cried till her heart felt like a clenched fist

within her, and then, with her passion exhausted, she got up like a

little, cold, rumpled ghost and pattered out to the hall in her

silk-stockinged feet, and picked up Hickory Dock with his wilted pink

rose and brought him in and put him back on her desk. Then she brought

in the mussy, pink-smooched candlesticks and stowed them far away in her

closet behind everything else. The faintest possible scent of

tobacco-smoke came to her from the closet depths, and as she reached

instinctively to take a sad little whiff she became suddenly conscious

that there was a strange, uncanny _hush_ in the room, as though a soul

had left its body. She turned back quickly and cried out with a

smothered cry. Hickory Dock had stopped!

"Until--the--end--of--Time," she gasped, and staggered hard against the

closet-door. Then in a flash she burst out laughing stridently, and

rushed for Hickory Dock and grabbed him by his little silver handle,

opened the window with a bang, and threw him with all her might and main

down into the brick alley four stories below, where he fell with a

sickening crash among a wee handful of scattered rose petals.

--The days that followed were like horrid dreams, the nights, like

hideous realities. The fire would not burn. The sun and moon would not

shine, and life itself settled down like a pall. Every detail of that

Sunday night stamped and re stamped itself upon her mind. Back of her

outraged love was the crueller pain of her outraged faith. The Man of

his own free will had made a sacred promise and broken it! She realized

now for the first time in her life why men went to the devil because

women had failed them--not disappointed them, but _failed_ them! She

could even imagine how poor mothers felt when fathers shirked their

fatherhood. She tasted in one week's imagination all possible woman

sorrows of the world.

At the end of the second week she began to realize the depth of

isolation into which her engagement had thrown her. For a year and a

half she had thought nothing, dreamed nothing, cared for nothing except

the Man. Now, with the Man swept away, there was no place to turn either

for comfort or amusement.

At the end of the third week, when no word came, she began to gather

together all the Man's little personal effects, and consigned them to a

box out of sight--the pipe and tobacco, a favorite book, his soft

Turkish slippers, his best gloves, and even a little poem which he had

written for her to set to music. It was a pretty little love-song that

they had made together, but as she hummed it over now for the last time

she wondered if, after all, _woman's music_ did not do more than man's

words to make love Singable.

When a month was up she began to strip the room of everything that the

Man had brought towards the making of their Home. It was like stripping

tendons. She had never realized before how thoroughly the Man's

personality had dominated her room as well as her life. When she had

crowded his books, his pictures, his college trophies, his Morris chair,

his rugs, into one corner of her room and covered them with two big

sheets, her little, paltry, feminine possessions looked like chiffon in

a desert.

While she was pondering what to do next her rent fell due. The month's

idling had completely emptied her pewter savings-bank that she had been

keeping as a sort of precious joke for the Honeymoon. The rent-bill

startled her into spasmodic efforts at composition. She had been quite

busy for a year writing songs for some Educational people, but how could

one make harmony with a heart full of discord and all life off the key.

A single week convinced her of the utter futility of these efforts. In

one high-strung, wakeful night she decided all at once to give up the

whole struggle and go back to her little country village, where at least

she would find free food and shelter until she could get her grip again.

For three days she struggled heroically with burlap and packing-boxes.

She felt as though every nail she pounded was hurting the Man as well as

herself, and she pounded just as hard as she possibly could.

When the room was stripped of every atom of personality except her

couch, and the duplicate latch-key, which still hung high and dusty, a

deliciously cruel thought came to the Girl, and the irony of it set her

eyes flashing. On the night before her intended departure she took the

key and put it into a pretty little box and sent it to the Man.

"He'll know by that token," she said, "that there's no more 'Home' for

him and me. He will get his furniture a few days later, and then he will

see that everything is scattered and shattered. Even if he's married by

this time, the key will hurt him, for his wife will want to know what it

means, and he never can tell her."

Then she cried so hard that her overwrought, half-starved little body

collapsed, and she crept into her bed and was sick all night and all the

next day, so that there was no possible thought or chance of packing or

traveling. But towards the second evening she struggled up to get

herself a taste of food and wine from her cupboard, and, wrapping

herself in her pink kimono, huddled over the fire to try and find a

little blaze and cheer.

Just as the flames commenced to flush her cheeks the lock clicked. She

started up in alarm. The door opened abruptly, and the Man strode in

with a very determined, husbandly look on his haggard face. For the

fraction of a second he stood and looked at her pitifully frightened and

disheveled little figure.

"Forgive me," he cried, "but I _had_ to come like this." Then he took

one mighty stride and caught her up in his arms and carried her back to

her open bed and tucked her in like a child while she clung to his neck

laughing and sobbing and crying as though her brain was turned. He

smoothed her hair, he kissed her eyes, he rubbed his rough cheek

confidently against her soft one, and finally, when her convulsive

tremors quieted a little, he reached down into his great overcoat pocket

and took out poor, battered, mutilated Hickory Dock.

"I found him down in the Janitor's office just now," he explained, and

his mouth twitched just the merest trifle at the corners.

"Don't smile," said the Girl, sitting up suddenly very straight and

stiff. "Don't smile till you know the whole truth. _I_ broke Hickory

Dock. I threw him _purposely_ four stories down into the brick alley!"

The Man began to examine Hickory Dock very carefully.

"I should judge that it was a _brick_ alley," he remarked with an odd

twist of his lips, as he tossed the shattered little clock over to the

burlap-covered armchair.

Then he took the Girl very quietly and tenderly in his arms again, and

gazed down into her eyes with a look that was new to him.

"Rosalie," he whispered, "I will mend Hickory Dock for you if it takes

a thousand years,"--his voice choked,--"but I wish to God I could mend

my broken promise as easily!"