[Illustration]
MORE “SHORT SIXES.”
[Illustration]
MORE “SHORT SIXES”~
BY H·C·BUNNER~
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATED BY C·J·TAYLOR·
KEPPLER & SCHWARZMANN·PUBLISHERS.
PUCK BUILDING·NEW·YORK·MDCCCXCIV··
[Illustration]
Copyright, 1894, by KEPPLER & SCHWARZMANN.
[Illustration: colophon]
TO
A. L. B.
Contents.
Page.
The Cumbersome Horse 1
Mr. Vincent Egg and the Wage of Sin 22
The Ghoollah 46
Cutwater of Seneca 68
Mr. Wick’s Aunt 84
What Mrs. Fortescue Did 110
“The Man with the Pink Pants” 134
The Third Figure in the Cotillion 156
“Samantha Boom-de-ay” 180
My Dear Mrs. Billington 214
THE CUMBERSOME HORSE.
It is not to be denied that a sense of disappointment pervaded Mr.
Brimmington’s being in the hour of his first acquaintance with the
isolated farm-house which he had just purchased, sight unseen, after
long epistolary negotiations with Mr. Hiram Skinner, postmaster,
carpenter, teamster and real estate agent of Bethel Corners, who was now
driving him to his new domain.
Perhaps the feeling was of a mixed origin. Indian Summer was much colder
up in the Pennsylvania hills than he had expected to find it; and the
hills themselves were much larger and bleaker and barer, and far more
indifferent in their demeanor toward him, than he had expected to find
them. Then Mr. Skinner had been something of a disappointment, himself.
He was too familiar with his big, knobby, red hands; too furtive with
his small, close-set eyes; too profuse of tobacco-juice, and too
raspingly loquacious. And certainly the house itself did not meet his
expectations when he first saw it, standing lonely and desolate in its
ragged meadows of stubble and wild-grass on the unpleasantly steep
mountain-side.
And yet Mr. Skinner had accomplished for him the desire of his heart. He
had always said that when he should come into his money--forty thousand
dollars from a maiden aunt--he would quit forever his toilsome job of
preparing Young Gentlemen for admission to the Larger Colleges and
Universities, and would devote the next few years to writing his
long-projected “History of Prehistoric Man.” And to go about this task
he had always said that he would go and live in perfect solitude--that
is, all by himself and a chorewoman--in a secluded farm-house, situated
upon the southerly slope of some high hill--an old farm-house--a
Revolutionary farm-house, if possible--a delightful, long, low, rambling
farm-house--a farm-house with floors of various levels--a farm-house
with crooked Stairs, and with nooks and corners and quaint
cupboards--this--this had been the desire of Mr. Brimmington’s heart.
[Illustration]
Mr. Brimmington, when he came into his money at the age of forty-five,
fixed on Pike County, Pennsylvania, as a mountainous country of good
report. A postal-guide informed him that Mr. Skinner was the postmaster
of Bethel Corners; so, Mr. Brimmington wrote to Mr. Skinner.
The correspondence between Mr. Brimmington and Mr. Skinner was long
enough and full enough to have settled a treaty between two nations. It
ended by a discovery of a house lonely enough and aged enough to fill
the bill. Several hundred dollars’ worth of repairs were needed to make
it habitable, and Mr. Skinner was employed to make them. Toward the
close of a cold November day, Mr. Brimmington saw his purchase for the
first time.
In spite of his disappointment, he had to admit, as he walked around the
place in the early twilight, that it was just what he had bargained for.
The situation, the dimensions, the exposure, were all exactly what had
been stipulated. About its age there could be no question. Internally,
its irregularity--indeed, its utter failure to conform to any known
rules of domestic architecture--surpassed Mr. Brimmington’s wildest
expectations. It had stairs eighteen inches wide; it had rooms of
strange shapes and sizes; it had strange, shallow cupboards in strange
places; it had no hallways; its windows were of odd design, and whoso
wanted variety in floors could find it there. And along the main wall of
Mr. Brimmington’s study there ran a structure some three feet and a half
high and nearly as deep, which Mr. Skinner confidently assured him was
used in old times as a wall-bench or a dresser, indifferently. “You
might think,” said Mr. Skinner, “that all that space inside there was
jest wasted; but it ain’t so. Them seats is jest filled up inside with
braces so’s that you can set on them good and solid.” And then Mr.
Skinner proudly called attention to the two coats of gray paint spread
over the entire side of the house, walls, ceilings and woodwork,
blending the original portions and the Skinner restorations in one
harmonious, homogenous whole.
[Illustration]
Mr. Skinner might have told him that this variety of gray paint is
highly popular in some rural districts, and is made by mixing lamp-black
and ball-blue with a low grade of white lead. But he did not say it; and
he drove away as soon as he conveniently could, after formally
introducing him to Mrs. Sparhawk, a gaunt, stern-faced, silent, elderly
woman. Mrs. Sparhawk was to take charge of his bachelor establishment
during the day time. Mrs. Sparhawk cooked him a meal for which she very
properly apologized. Then she returned to her kitchen to “clean up.”
Mr. Brimmington went to the front door, partly to look out upon his
property, and partly to turn his back on the gray paint. There were no
steps before the front door, but a newly-graded mound or earthwork about
the size of a half-hogshead. He looked out upon his apple-orchard, which
was further away than he had expected to find it. It had been out of
bearing for ten years, but this Mr. Brimmington did not know. He did
know, however, that the whole outlook was distinctly dreary.
As he stood there and gazed out into the twilight, two forms suddenly
approached him. Around one corner of the house came Mrs. Sparhawk on her
way home. Around the other came an immensely tall, whitish shape,
lumbering forward with a heavy tread. Before he knew it, it had
scrambled up the side of his mound with a clumsy, ponderous rush, and
was thrusting itself directly upon him when he uttered so lusty a cry of
dismay that it fell back startled; and, wheeling about a great long body
that swayed on four misshapen legs, it pounded off in the direction it
had come from, and disappeared around the corner. Mr. Brimmington turned
to Mrs. Sparhawk in disquiet and indignation.
“Mrs. Sparhawk,” he demanded; “what is that?”
“It’s a horse,” said Mrs. Sparhawk, not at all surprised, for she knew
that Mr. Brimmington was from the city. “They hitch ’em to wagons here.”
“I know it is a horse, Mrs. Sparhawk,” Mr. Brimmington rejoined with
some asperity; “but whose horse is it, and what is it doing on my
premises?”
“I don’t rightly know whose horse it _is_,” replied Mrs. Sparhawk; “the
man that used to own it, he’s dead now.”
[Illustration]
“But what,” inquired Mr. Brimmington sternly, “is the animal doing
here?”
“I guess he b’longs here,” Mrs. Sparhawk said. She had a cold, even,
impersonal way of speaking, as though she felt that her safest course in
life was to confine herself strictly to such statements of fact as might
be absolutely required of her.
“But, my good woman,” replied Mr. Brimmington, in bewilderment, “how
can that be? The animal can’t certainly belong on my property unless he
belongs to me, and that animal certainly is not mine.”
Seeing him so much at a loss and so greatly disturbed in mind, Mrs.
Sparhawk relented a little from her strict rule of life, and made an
attempt at explanation.
“He b’longed to the man who owned this place first off; and I don’ know
for sure, but I’ve heard tell that _he_ fixed it some way so’s that the
horse would sort of go with the place.”
Mr. Brimmington felt irritation rising within him.
“But,” he said, “it’s preposterous! There was no such consideration in
the deed. No such thing can be done, Mrs. Sparhawk, without my
acquiescence!”
“I don’t know nothin’ about that,” said Mrs. Sparhawk; “what I do know
is, the place has changed hands often enough since, and the horse has
always went with the place.”
There was an unsettled suggestion in the first part of this statement of
Mrs. Sparhawk that gave a shock to Mr. Brimmington’s nerves. He laughed
uneasily.
“Oh, er, yes! I see. Very probably there’s been some understanding. I
suppose I am to regard the horse as a sort of lien upon the
place--a--a--what do they call it?--an incumbrance! Yes,” he repeated,
more to himself than to Mrs. Sparhawk; “an incumbrance. I’ve got a
gentleman’s country place with a horse incumbrant.”
Mrs. Sparhawk heard him, however.
“It _is_ a sorter cumbersome horse,” she said. And without another word
she gathered her shawl about her shoulders, and strode off into the
darkness.
Mr. Brimmington turned back into the house, and busied himself with a
vain attempt to make his long-cherished furniture look at home in his
new leaden-hued rooms. The ungrateful task gave him the blues; and,
after an hour of it, he went to bed.
He was dreaming leaden-hued dreams, oppressed, uncomfortable dreams,
when a peculiarly weird and uncanny series of thumps on the front of the
house awoke him with a start. The thumps might have been made by a giant
with a weaver’s beam, but he must have been a very drunken giant to
group his thumps in such a disorderly parody of time and sequence.
Mr. Brimmington had too guileless and clean a heart to be the prey of
undefined terrors. He rose, ran to the window and opened it. The
moonlight lit up the raw, frosty landscape with a cold, pale, diffused
radiance, and Mr. Brimmington could plainly see right below him the
cumbersome horse, cumbersomely trying to maintain a footing on the top
of the little mound before the front door. When, for a fleeting instant,
he seemed to think that he had succeeded in this feat, he tried to bolt
through the door. As soon, however, as one of his huge knees smote the
panel, his hind feet lost their grip on the soft earth, and he wabbled
back down the incline, where he stood shaking and quivering, until he
could muster wind enough for another attempt to make a catapult of
himself. The veil like illumination of the night, which turned all
things else to a dim, silvery gray, could not hide the scars and bruises
and worn places that spotted the animal’s great, gaunt, distorted frame.
His knees were as big as a man’s head. His feet were enormous. His
joints stood out from his shriveled carcass like so many pine knots. Mr.
Brimmington gazed at him, fascinated, horrified, until a rush more
desperate and uncertain than the rest threatened to break his front door
in.
[Illustration]
“Hi!” shrieked Mr. Brimmington; “go away!”
It was the horse’s turn to get frightened. He lifted his long,
coffin-shaped head toward Mr. Brimmington’s window, cast a sort of
blind, cross-eyed, ineffectual glance at him, and with a long-drawn,
wheezing, cough-choked whinny he backed down the mound, got himself
about, end for end, with such extreme awkwardness that he hurt one poor
knee on a hitching-post that looked to be ten feet out of his way, and
limped off to the rear of the house.
The sound of that awful, rusty, wind-broken whinny haunted Mr.
Brimmington all the rest of that night. It was like the sound of an
orchestrion run down, or of a man who is utterly tired of the
whooping-cough and doesn’t care who knows it.
The next morning was bright and sunshiny, and Mr. Brimmington awoke in a
more cheerful frame of mind than he would naturally have expected to
find himself in after his perturbed night. He found himself inclined to
make the best of his purchase and to view it in as favorable a light as
possible. He went outside and looked at it from various points of view,
trying to find and if possible to dispose of the reason for the vague
sense of disappointment which he felt, having come into possession of
the rambling old farm-house, which he had so much desired.
He decided, after a long and careful inspection, that it was the
_proportions_ of the house that were wrong. They were certainly
peculiar. It was singularly high between joints in the first story, and
singularly low in the second. In spite of its irregularity within, it
was uncompromisingly square on the outside. There was something queer
about the pitch of its roof, and it seemed strange that so modest a
structure with no hallway whatever should have vestibule windows on each
side of its doors, both front and rear.
But here an idea flashed into Mr. Brimmington’s mind that in an instant
changed him from a carping critic to a delighted discoverer. He was
living in a Block House! Yes; that explained--that accounted for all the
strangeness of its architecture. In in instant he found his purchase
invested with a beautiful glamour of adventurous association. Here was
the stout and well-planned refuge to which the grave settlers of an
earlier day had fled to guard themselves against the attack of the
vindictive red-skins. He saw it all. A moat, crossed no doubt by
draw-bridges, had surrounded the building. In the main room below, the
women and children had huddled while their courageous defenders had
poured a leaden hail upon the foe through loop-holes in the upper story.
He walked around the house for some time, looking for loop-holes.
So pleased was Mr. Brimmington at his theory that the morning passed
rapidly away, and when he looked at his watch he was surprised to find
that it was nearly noon. Then he remembered that Mr. Skinner had
promised to call on him at eleven, to make anything right that was not
right. Glancing over the landscape he saw Mr. Skinner approaching by a
circuitous track. He was apparently following the course of a snake
fence which he could readily have climbed. This seemed strange, as his
way across the pasture land was seemingly unimpeded. Thinking of the
pasture land made Mr. Brimmington think of the white horse, and casting
his eyes a little further down the hill he saw that animal slowly and
painfully steering a parallel course to Mr. Skinner, on the other side
of the fence. Mr. Skinner went out of sight behind a clump of trees, and
when he arrived it was not upon the side of the house where Mr.
Brimmington had expected to see him appear.
[Illustration]
As they were about to enter the house Mr. Brimmington noticed the marks
of last night’s attack upon his front door, and he spoke to Mr. Skinner
about the horse.
“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Skinner, with much ingenuousness; “that horse. I was
meaning to speak to you about that horse. Fact is, I’ve kinder got that
horse on my hands, and if it’s no inconvenience to you, I’d like to
leave him where he is for a little while.”
“But it would be very inconvenient, indeed, Mr. Skinner,” said the new
owner of the house. “The animal is a very unpleasant object; and,
moreover, it attempted to break into my front door last night.”
Mr. Skinner’s face darkened. “Sho!” he said; “you don’t mean to tell me
that?”
But Mr. Brimmington did mean to tell him that, and Mr. Skinner listened
with a scowl of unconcealed perplexity and annoyance. He bit his lip
reflectively for a minute or two before he spoke.
[Illustration]
“Too bad you was disturbed,” he said at length. “You’ll have to keep the
bars up to that meadow and then it won’t happen again.”
“But, indeed, it must not happen again,” said Mr. Brimmington; “the
horse must be taken away.”
“Well, you see it’s this way, friend,” returned Mr. Skinner, with a
rather ugly air of decision; “I really ain’t got no choice in the
matter. I’d like to oblige you, and if I’d known as far back that you
would have objected to the animal I’d have had him took somewheres.
But, as it is, there ain’t no such a thing as getting that there horse
off this here place till the frost’s out of the ground. You can see for
yourself that that horse, the condition he’s in now, couldn’t no more go
up nor down this hill than he could fly. Why, I came over here a-foot
this morning on purpose not to take them horses of mine over this road
again. It can’t be done, sir.”
“Very well,” suggested Mr. Brimmington; “kill the horse.”
“I ain’t killin’ no horses,” said Mr. Skinner. “You may if you like; but
I’d advise you not to. There’s them as mightn’t like it.”
“Well, let them come and take their horse away, then,” said Mr.
Brimmington.
“Just so,” assented Mr. Skinner. “It’s they who are concerned in the
horse, and they have a right to take him away. I would if I was any ways
concerned, but I ain’t.” Here he turned suddenly upon Mr. Brimmington.
“Why, look here,” he said, “you ain’t got the heart to turn that there
horse out of that there pasture where he’s been for fifteen years! It
won’t do you no sorter hurt to have him stay there till Spring. Put the
bars up, and he won’t trouble you no more.”
“But,” objected Mr. Brimmington, weakly, “even if the poor creature were
not so unsightly, he could not be left alone all Winter in that pasture
without shelter.”
“That’s just where you’re mistaken,” Mr. Skinner replied, tapping his
interlocutor heavily upon the shoulder; “he don’t mind it not one mite.
See that shed there?” And he pointed to a few wind-racked boards in the
corner of the lot. “There’s hoss-shelter; and as for feed, why there’s
feed enough in that meadow for two such as him.”
In the end, Mr. Brimmington, being utterly ignorant of the nature and
needs of horse-flesh, was over-persuaded, and he consented to let the
unfortunate white horse remain in his pasture lot to be the sport of the
Winter’s chill and bitter cruelty. Then he and Mr. Skinner talked about
some new paint.
* * * * *
It was the dead waist and middle of Mr. Brimmington’s third night in his
new house, when he was absolutely knocked out of a calm and peaceful
slumber by a crash so appalling that he at first thought that the side
of the mountain had slid down upon his dwelling. This was followed by
other crashes, thumps, the tearing of woodwork and various strange and
grewsome noises. Whatever it might be, Mr. Brimmington felt certain that
it was no secret midnight marauder, and he hastened to the eighteen-inch
stairway without even waiting to put on a dressing-gown. A rush of cold
air came up from below, and he had no choice but to scuttle back for a
bath-robe and a candle while the noises continued, and the cold air
floated all over the house.
There was no difficulty in locating the sounds. Mr. Brimmington
presented himself at the door of the little kitchen, pulled it open,
and, raising the light above his head, looked in. The rush of wind blew
out his light, but not before he had had time to see that it was the
white horse that was in the kitchen, and that he had gone through the
floor.
[Illustration]
Subsequent investigation proved that the horse had come in through the
back door, carrying that and its two vestibule windows with him, and
that he had first trampled and then churned the thin floor into
match-wood. He was now reposing on his stomach, with his legs hanging
down between the joists into the hollow under the house--for there was
no cellar. He looked over his shoulder at his host and emitted his
blood-curdling wail.
“My Gracious!” said Mr. Brimmington.
That night Mr. Brimmington sat up with the horse, both of them wrapped,
as well as Mr. Brimmington could do it, in bed-clothes. There is not
much you can do with a horse when you have to sit up with him under such
circumstances. The thought crossed Mr. Brimmington’s mind of reading to
him, but he dismissed it.
* * * * *
In the interview the next day, between Mr. Brimmington and Mr. Skinner,
the aggressiveness was all on Mr. Brimmington’s side, and Mr. Skinner
was meek and wore an anxious expression. Mr. Brimmington had, however,
changed his point of view. He now realized that sleeping out of Winter
nights might be unpleasant, even painful to an aged and rheumatic horse.
And, although he had cause of legitimate complaint against the creature,
he could no longer bear to think of killing the animal with whom he had
shared that cold and silent vigil. He commissioned Mr. Skinner to build
for the brute a small but commodious lodging, and to provide a proper
stock of provender--commissions which Mr. Skinner gladly and humbly
accepted. As to the undertaking to get the horse out of his immediate
predicament, however, Mr. Skinner absolutely refused to touch the job.
“That horse don’t like me,” said Mr. Skinner; “I know he don’t; I seen
it in his eyes long ago. If you like, I’ll send you two or three men and
a block-and-tackle, and they can get him out; but not me; no, sir!”
Mr. Skinner devoted that day to repairing damages, and promised on the
morrow to begin the building of the little barn. Mr. Brimmington was
glad there was going to be no greater delay, when, early in the evening,
the sociable white horse tried to put his front feet through the study
window.
But of all the noises that startled Mr. Brimmington, in the first week
of his sojourn in the farm-house, the most alarming awakened him about
eight o’clock of the following morning. Hurrying to his study, he gazed
in wonder upon a scene unparalleled even in the History of Prehistoric
Man. The boards had been ripped off the curious structure which was
supposed to have served the hardy settlers for a wall-bench and a
dresser, indifferently. This revealed another structure in the form of a
long crib or bin, within which, apparently trying to back out through
the wall, stood Mr. Skinner, holding his tool-box in front of him as if
to shield himself, and fairly yelping with terror. The front door was
off its hinges, and there stood Mrs. Sparhawk wielding a broom to keep
out the white horse, who was viciously trying to force an entrance. Mr.
Brimmington asked what it all meant; and Mrs. Sparhawk, turning a
desperate face upon him, spoke with the vigor of a woman who has kept
silence too long.
“It means,” she said, “that this here house of yours is this here
horse’s stable; _and the horse knows it_; and that there was the horse’s
manger. This here horse was old Colonel Josh Pincus’s regimental horse,
and so provided for in his will; and this here man Skinner was to have
the caring of him until he should die a natural death, and then he was
to have this stable; and till then the stable was left to the horse. And
now he’s taken the stable away from the horse, and patched it up into a
dwelling-house for a fool from New York City; and the horse don’t like
it; and the horse don’t like Skinner. And when he come back to git that
manger for your barn, the horse sot onto him. And that’s what’s the
matter, Mr. Skimmerton.”
[Illustration]
“Mrs. Sparhawk,” began Mr. Brimmington--
“I _ain’t_ no Sparhawk!” fairly shouted the enraged woman, as with a
furious shove she sent the Cumbersome Horse staggering down the doorway
mound; “this here’s Hiram Skinner, the meanest man in Pike County, and
I’m his wife, let out to do day’s work! You’ve had one week of him--how
would you have liked twenty years?”
MR. VINCENT EGG AND THE WAGE OF SIN.
Mr. Vincent Egg and the daughter of his washerwoman walked out of the
front doorway of Mr. Egg’s lodging-house into the morning sunlight, with
very different expressions upon their two faces.
Mr. Vincent Egg, although he was old and stout and red-nosed and shabby
in his attire, wore a look that was at once timorous, fatuous, and
weakly mendacious; a look that tried to tell the possible passer-by that
his red nose and watery eyes bloomed and blinked in the smiles of
Virginie. Virginie, although she was young and pretty and also thin of
face and poverty-stricken of garb, wore a look which told you plainly
and most honestly beyond a question, that she had no smiles for Mr. Egg
or for any one else. They walked down the middle of the street side by
side, but _that_ they could not very well help doing, for the street was
both narrow and dirty, and the edges of the stone gutter down its midway
offered the only clean foothold in its entire breadth. As they walked on
together, Mr. Egg made a few poor-spirited attempts to start up a
gallant conversation with the girl; but she made no response whatever to
his remarks, and strode on in dark-faced silence, her empty wash-basket
poised between her lank right hip and her thin right elbow. Mr. Egg
hemmed and cleared a husky throat, and employed both his unsteady hands
in setting his tall, shabby silk hat upon his head in such a manner that
its broad brim might keep the sunlight out of his eyes.
[Illustration]
Mr. Vincent Egg was in the little city of Drignan on business. His
lodgings were in the rue des Quatres Mulets, because they were the
cheapest lodgings he could find. There are prettier towns than Drignan,
and even in Drignan there are many better streets than the rue des
Quatres Mulets. But it was much the same to Mr. Egg. He took his shabby
lodgings, the rebuffs of the fair, the sunlight of other men’s fortunes
dazzling his weak eyes--all these things he took with an easy
indifference of mind so long as life gave him the little he asked of it,
namely: a periodic indulgence in alcoholic unconsciousness. A simple
drunk, once a month, of at least a week’s duration, was what Mr. Egg’s
soul most craved and desired; but if his fluctuating means made the
period of intoxication briefer or the period of sobriety longer, he bore
either event with a certain simple heroism. He wanted no “spree,” no
“toot,” no “tear;” a modest spell of sodden, dreamy, tearfully happy
soaking in the back-room of some cheap wine-shop where he and his ways
were known--this was all that remained of ambition and aspiration in Mr.
Egg’s life; which had been, for the rest, a long life, a harmless life
(except in the stern moralist’s sense), and a life that was decidedly a
round, complete and total failure in spite of an exceptional allotment
of abilities and opportunities. Mr. Egg had been many things in the
course of that long and varied life--lawyer, doctor, newspaper-man,
speculator, actor, manager, horse-dealer and racetrack gamester,
croupier (and courier, even, after a fashion)--and heaven knows what
else beside, of things avowable and unavowable. Just at present, he was
supplying an English firm of Tourist-Excursion Managers with a
guide-book of their various routes, at the rate of eighteen-pence per
page of small type, and his traveling expenses--third-class. He had just
finished “doing up” the district last allotted to him; and, after two
weeks’ of traveling about, he had spent another fortnight in writing up
his notes in a dingy little lodging-house room in the rue des Quatres
Mulets. He knew his ground thoroughly, and that was the cheapest place.
[Illustration]
Such was Mr. Vincent Egg, after a half-century of struggle with the
world; and something of an imposing figure he made, too, in his defeat
and degradation. His nose was red, his cheeks were puffed and veined,
there were bags under his bloodshot eyes, his close-cropped hair was
thin, his stubby little gray moustache, desperately waxed at the ends,
gave an incongruously foreign touch to his decidedly Anglo-Saxon
face--and his clothes were shockingly shabby. But then he _wore_ his
clothes, as few men in our day can wear clothes; and they were _his_
clothes; his very own, and not another’s. People often spoke of him,
after seeing him once, as “that big, soldierly-looking old man in the
white hat.” But he did not wear a white hat. His hat, which was one of
the largest, one of the jauntiest and one of the oldest ever seen, had
also been, in its time, one of the blackest. It was his coat that gave
people an idea of his having something about him that suggested white.
It was a tightly-buttoned frock-coat of an indescribable light-dirty
color. Most hopelessly shabby men cling to some standard of taste in
dress that was _the_ standard in their last-remembered days of
prosperity. That coat--if it were one coat and not only one of a
long-lived family--marked the fact that the last season of prosperity
Mr. Egg had enjoyed was a season, now some twenty years gone, when the
London “swells” or “nobs,” or whatever they called them then, wore
frock-coats of certain fashionable light shades of fawn and mouse-color,
then known, I believe, as “London Smoke” and “French Gray.” While it can
not be said that Mr. Egg’s coat was familiar in every quarter of Europe
(for it rarely staid long enough in any one place), it had certainly
been seen in all. And more than one Austrian officer, after passing Mr.
Egg in that garment of pallid, dubious and puzzling hue, had turned
sharply around to satisfy himself that it was not a uniform-coat in a
condition of profanation. A certain state and dignity that still clung
to this coat, and the startling cleanness of his well-scissored cuffs
and collars were all that remained to give Mr. Egg a hold upon exterior
respectability.
With such a history, Mr. Egg was naturally well versed in the
freemasonry of poverty and need. As his eyes became accustomed to the
sun, he looked at the girl’s pinched face, and his tones suddenly
changed. Vincent Egg spoke several languages, and he knew all their
social dialects and variations. It was in friendly and familiar speech
that he addressed the girl, and asked her--What was the matter? and, Was
the business going ill?
[Illustration]
If Virginie had been the poor girl you meet with in the stories written
by English ladies of a mildly religious turn of mind, she would have
dropped a little curtsey and said with a single tear, “Indeed, sir, I
had not meant to speak, but you have hit upon the truth. The business
goes very ill, indeed, and without help I do not see how my poor mother
can survive the Winter.” But Virginie, obeying the instincts of her
nature and her education, responded to Mr. Egg with a single coarse
French adjective which is only to be rendered in English, I am afraid,
by the word “stinking.”
Mr. Egg was not in the least shocked. He cast his blinking eyes about
him at the filthy roadway, at the narrow old stone houses that crowded
both sides of the street with the peaked roofs of their over-hanging
upper-stories, almost shutting out the sky above his head, at the
countless century-old stains of damp and rust and shameful soilure upon
their dull faces, and he said simply:
“Fichu locale!”
Thereby he amply expressed to his hearer his opinion that if the
business deserved the adjective she had accorded it, the explanation was
to be found in its unfortunate location. This opened the flood gates of
Virginie’s speech. She told Mr. Egg that he was entirely right about the
location, and gave him a few casual corroborative details which showed
him that she knew what she was talking about. She also confided to him
enough of her family affairs to account for the bitterness of her spirit
and her contempt for mirthful dalliance. It was nothing but the old
endless story of poverty in one of its innumerable variants. This time
the father, a jobbing stone-mason, had not only broken his leg in
Marseilles, but on coming out of the hospital had got drunk, assaulted a
gend’arme, made a compound fracture of it, and laid himself up for
several months. This time the mother had a rheumatic swelling of one
arm, which hindered her in her washing. This time the eldest boy had got
himself into some trouble in trying to evade the performance of his term
of military duty. This time the youngest child had some torturing
disease of the spine that necessitated--or rather needed--an operation.
And, of course, as at all times, there were five or six hungry mouths,
associated with as many pairs of comparatively helpless hands, between
Virginie and that youngest. And as to business, that was certainly bad.
It was particularly bad of late--although it was always bad in Drignan.
Virginie told Mr. Egg that he was “rudement propre,” or “blazing
clean”--clean as they were not in Drignan, she assured him. In fact, it
appeared, this strange English gentleman, who had paid as high as a
franc-and-a-half a week for his washing, had been accepted by Virginie’s
family as designed in the mercy of Divine Providence to tide them over
their period of distress. His departure at the end of two weeks was a
sore disappointment in a financial point of view.
[Illustration]
Vincent Egg was a very kind-hearted man, and he listened to this
recital, and uttered sympathetic ejaculations in the right places. He
was sorry about the youngest child, very sorry; he had known a case
like it. Perhaps, he suggested, business might pick up. Messrs. Sculry &
Co., the great English managers of Tourists’ Excursions, were going to
make Drignan a stopping-place for their excursions on the way to
Avignon. It was going to be a stopping-place of only a few hours, but,
perhaps, it might bring some business. Who knew? Virginie brightened up
when she heard this, and said that was so. Those English, she remarked,
were always washing--no disrespect intended to the gentleman.
“And here,” she said, as they came abreast of a narrow gateway on the
other side of the street from Mr. Egg’s lodging-house, “is where I live.
It is on the ground floor. Will Monsieur come in and see the baby?” And
her eyes lit up for the first time with a real interest--the interest,
half-proud, and half-morbid, of a poor, simple creature who longs to
exhibit to the world the affliction of monstrosity which sets her poor
household apart from others of its kind.
Now, Mr. Egg had not the slightest desire to see the baby, and he had no
intention whatever of going in; but, glancing through the narrow
doorway, he saw a succession of arches in the courtyard beyond, and some
old bits of mediæval masonry, which excited his curiosity. If this were
the remains of some old monastery that had escaped his notice, it might
mean a half-page more--nine-pence--in his guide-book. He strolled in by
Virginie’s side, heedless of her chatter. No; it was not the ruin
[Illustration]
of an ecclesiastical structure. The courtyard was only a part of an old
stable and blacksmith-shop; old, but no older probably than the rest of
that old street, which might have been standing at the time of Louis
XIV--though it probably wasn’t. From its proximity to a canal that
marked the line of an old moat, Mr. Egg made a safe guess that it was a
small remnant of the stables and farriery attached to the barracks of
the original fortifications of the town.
At any rate, it was no fish for the net of Messrs. Sculry & Co.’s
guide-book compiler; and he was turning to go, when Virginie, who had
supposed that he was merely following in her lead, to feast his eyes
upon the sick baby, said simply, as she pushed open a door, “This way,
Monsieur,” and, before he knew it, he had entered his washerwoman’s
room.
Although it was a ground-floor room, damp, dark and old, it was clean
with a curious sort of cleanness that seems to belong to the Latin
races--a cleanness that gives one the impression of having been achieved
without the use of soap and water: as if everything had been scraped
clean instead of being washed clean. Virginie’s mother was clean, too,
in spite of her swollen and helpless arm, and the three or four children
who were playing on the stone floor were no dirtier than healthy
children ought to be between washes. But Mr. Egg had hardly had time to
take more than cursory note of these facts before his attention was
riveted by the sick child in the French woman’s arms--so pitiful a
little piece of suffering childhood that a much harder-hearted man than
Mr. Vincent Egg might readily have been shocked at the sight of it. As
for Mr. Egg, he simply dropped into a seated posture upon a convenient
bench, and stared in the fascination of pity and horror.
Mr. Egg knew little of children and less of their diseases. In the
ordinary course of things, such matters were not often brought to his
attention; and, to tell the truth, had he known what he was to see
there, no persuasion would have induced him to enter that poor little
room. Now that he did see it, however, he could not move his eyes: the
spectacle had for him a hideous attraction of novelty. Virginie and her
mother exhibited the poor little misshapen thing, and rattled over the
history of the case with a volubility which showed that it was no new
tale. For fifteen minutes their visitor sat and stared in horrified
silence; and, when at last he made his way back to the street, he found
that his mind was in a more disturbed state than he had known it to be
in many years.
[Illustration]
It is the people who most avoid the sight of human suffering who very
often are the most sharply shocked by it when that sight is obtruded
upon them. Your professional nurse soon learns to succor without
lamentation: it is the person who “really has no faculty for nursing”
who goes into spasms of sensibility over the sight of a finger caught in
a cog-wheel, and runs about clamoring for new laws for the suppression
of all machinery not constructed of India-rubber. Up to half an hour
before, Mr. Egg had never wasted many thoughts upon the millions of
suffering babies in this world; and now he could not turn his thoughts
to anything except the particular baby that he had just seen.
And yet, as he had told Virginie, he had known of a similar case before,
though it belonged to a time so long ago that it had practically faded
from his mind. It was the case of his own brother, who had died in
infancy of some such trouble, one of the earliest victims of an
operation at that time in its earliest experimental stages. That was
more than half a century ago, and Vincent Egg had no remembrance
whatever of the little brother. But he did remember his first childish
impression of a visit to the hospital where the little one lay--of the
smell of the disinfectants and the chill of the whitewashed walls.
The heart of Mr. Egg was touched, and he felt himself moved with a
strong desire to extend some help to these people who were so much worse
off than he was. Yet Mr. Egg’s intellectual parts told him that there
was no possibility of his doing anything of the sort. He knew, beyond
any chance of fond delusion, his present position and his future
prospects. He had his ticket back to Lyons, where the local branch of
Messrs. Sculry & Co. had its office; he had in his valise at his
lodgings just enough money for his necessary sustenance upon his
journey. And not one other penny, not one soumarkee would he have until,
at Messrs. Sculry & Co.’s office, his work had been measured down to the
last syllable, and he had received therefor as many times eighteen-pence
as he had produced pages. That would be, it was true, quite a neat
little sum, but--and here came in the big BUT of Mr. Egg’s existence.
[Illustration]
For Mr. Egg knew exactly what was going to become of that money. To draw
it at all, he would have to present himself at the office in a condition
of sobriety, which would be the last effort of a period of abstinence
that he was beginning to find very trying. Then, so much of it must go
to buying himself back into the three or four attenuated credits by
grace of which he lived his poor life at Lyons; and just enough would be
left to give him that fortnight of drunken stupor for which he had
worked so long and so hard.
Mr. Egg needed an effort rather of the memory than of the imagination to
forecast the recurrence of that familiar stupor. He could see himself
leaving the spick-and-span, highly respectable office of the Lyons
agency of Messrs. Sculry & Co., and hurrying off upon the few bits of
business that must be attended to before he could present himself at
“his” wine-shop, which was a very dirty one, indeed, kept by a certain
M. and Mme. Louis Morel, in an appropriately unclean back street. There
he knew just what to expect in the way of noisy, ready-handed,
false-faced welcome. Then would come the tantalizingly-prolonged
bargaining over the score to be settled and the score to be begun, and
at last he would be free to take possession of that dark, ill-ventilated
little back room which was always reserved for the periodical
retirements of this regular patron of the house. It was a little room
like a ship’s stateroom, hardly large enough to contain its dirty red
velvet divan, its round table and its two chairs; yet for a week or a
fortnight it would be his, and behind it, in the hallway, was a bed on
which he could stretch himself in the hours when he felt the need of
deeper slumber than the hard cushions of the divan permitted. There his
few friends, outcasts and adventurers like himself, would drop in to see
him, one or two at a time, to help him on his murky way with challenges
to bouts of brandy-drinking, in which he would always pay for two
glasses to the other man’s one. Then, as the procession of callers went
on, it would grow dim and dimmer and vague and yet more vague, until it
was lost in a hazy, wavering dream, wherein familiar faces of men and
women stared at him from out of days so long gone by that in his dream
he could fancy them happy.
That was what lay before him. Mr. Vincent Egg knew it as well as he knew
that the calendar months would go on in their regular order, and the
tides in the sea would continue to rise and fall. Under these
circumstances, nothing was more certain than that the unfortunate
family of Mr. Egg’s washerwoman need look for no help whatever from Mr.
Egg’s prospective earnings. “It’s a damned shame!” said Mr. Egg to
himself, slapping his thigh. And it was a shame. But there it was.
[Illustration]
Suddenly a great thought struck Mr. Egg--a thought so great and so
forcible in the blow that it dealt his mental apprehension that for
three minutes he stood stock-still in the gutter in the middle of the
rue des Quatre Mulets. Then somebody poured a pail of water out of a
door-way and drowned him out, but he went on his way, quite indifferent
to wet feet.
Mr. Vincent Egg went to his lodgings, and there extracted from his
valise the very small sum of money which he had laid aside for his
necessary sustenance on his trip to Lyons. This he took to a
sign-painter on the outskirts of Drignan, to whom he paid the whole of
it for the execution of a small but conspicuous sign-board, which he
carried away with him under his arm.
* * * * *
The usual afternoon wind was blowing in Drignan, chill and raw, with a
depressing flavor of a spoilt ocean about it. The sky was overcast, and
everything was dismal in the dismal little town. Dismalest of all,
perhaps, was a wretched little corner of waste land, between the old
barrack-wall and the dirty canal behind it. A few sick, stunted, faded
olive and orange trees in the lee of a mean stone wall showed that the
place had at one time been a garden or courtyard. Heaps of rubbish here
and there showed also that it had long outlived its usefulness. Here
sat, one on each side of a tiny fire of twigs, a shabby,
soldierly-looking old gentleman and a sallow, lanky young girl with a
sullenly pretty face. Right in the sluggish smoke of the fire, the old
man held a small sign-board still fresh from the painter’s hand, and the
more the smoke took the brightness out of the new colors, the more he
gazed at it with thoughtful approval. The girl said nothing; but sat and
stared at the fire and listened with an air of weary and indifferent
toleration while the old man repeated over and over what sounded like a
monotonous narrative recitation. From time to time she nodded her head;
and, at last, she began to repeat after the old man in a listless,
mechanical way. It was late in the afternoon before they rose and
scrambled over the heaps of rubbish to the street, where the old
gentleman bade the girl good-by with what were evidently words of
earnest admonition. His iteration seemed to annoy her, for finally she
let slip, in a tone of anger, a specimen of the speech of the people
which wasn’t exactly this; though at this we will let it go:
[Illustration]
“Vous savez, mons vieux, je m’en fiche bien de votre
Pé--Pé--Pétrarque--et de votre Laure aussi--”
Then she as quickly dropped back into her natural tone of hopeless
submission to all who were less wretched than herself, and said, with
something like gratitude in her voice:
“All the same, it is very kind of you, sir, I will try to do as you have
told me.”
And they parted, she entering a near-by passage-way, and he going to the
railroad station.
* * * * *
Mr. Vincent Egg stood in the private office of the Lyons branch of
Messrs. Sculry & Co., the great Excursion Managers. He was, for him,
unusually smart as to his clothes--to those who knew him, a sign that he
had reached the end of his period of abstinence. The Manager of the
Branch, a thin, raw, red-faced little Englishman with sandy whiskers,
was looking over the proofs of the guide-book pages set up from Mr.
Egg’s copy.
“Oh, ah, yes, Egg!” he said; “I knew there was something particular I
wanted to speak to you about. Here it is.” And he slowly read aloud:
* * * * *
“Another and perhaps the principal attraction of Drignan is the
ruin, pathetic in its dignity, of the mansion of the Conte dei
Canale, the exiled Venetian, where the immortal poet Petrarch and
the no less immortal lady of his love, whom he has celebrated in
undying verse, met secretly, in the year 1337, to bid each other a
long and chaste farewell. News of the lovers’ design having reached
the ears of de Sade, the husband of the beauteous Laura, his base
mind suspected an elopement, and he dispatched his liveried minions
to separate the pair, and, if possible, to immolate on the altar of
his vengeance the gentle and talented poet. It is supposed to be in
consequence of injuries received in the resultant
[Illustration]
struggle that Petrarch went into retirement for three years at
Vaucluse (a spot which no holder of Messrs. Sculry & Co.’s 7-9
extra-trip coupon should fail to see). This exquisite chapter in
the lives of the lovers over whom so many tears of sentiment have
been shed, has been strangely neglected by the historians; but
survives undimmed in local tradition. A full account will be found
on page 329. The house is now 47 _bis_ rue des Quatres Mulets.
Behind it may still be seen what remains of the magnificent
orangery and olive-garden of the Conte dei Canale. Access to this
is gained from the second gateway from the corner of the Passage
des Porcs, and should not be confounded with the entrance to the
Jardin de Perse, a resort of somewhat frivolous character,
situated on the second crossing below, rue Clément V.”--
Here the Manager raised his head. “I suppose that’s for the men?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Egg; “that’s for the men.”
“Well,” said the Manager, “what about this other attraction, this
Petrarch and Laura place?”
“Well,” said Mr. Egg, blinking at him, for it was still early in the
morning; “there it is, as large as life, with a sign on the door that
looks as if it had been there fifty years; and I’ll give it to you as my
opinion that if you don’t work that attraction, the Novelty Excursion
Company will jump in and work it for you.”
“Ay, ay!” said the Manager, irritably; “that’s all very well; but how
about the fees? That excursion goes by way of Drignan to save money. The
London office won’t thank me if I give them any extra fees to pay.”
“Oh!” said Mr. Egg, pleasantly; “is that all? Here, give me that proof.”
And, taking the sheets from the manager, he wrote as follows, on the
margin:
“The mansion is at present owned by a respectable family who also
do trustworthy washing. A polite, well-informed attendant is always
ready to show the premises on payment of a moderate fee of 35
centimes, (3½ d.) Although no part of the regular excursion, the
liberal time allowed by Messrs. Sculry & Co., for rest and
refreshment in Drignan, will enable excursionists to visit this
shrine of deathless romance.”
The Manager took the amended proof back, and read it admiringly.
“By Jove, Egg!” he said; “that does it to the Queen’s taste! An
attraction like that, and not a penny’s expense to the concern! I
suppose, of course, really and truly, it’s all Tommy-rot?”
[Illustration]
“I suppose so,” said Mr. Egg, pleasantly.
“Never was any such business, I suppose,” went on the Manager.
“I don’t believe it, myself,” said Mr. Egg, shaking his head sagely.
“Well,” said the Manager, “it’s all right for business, so far as the
Avignon tour is concerned. And, oh! I say, Egg, I don’t suppose you
_could_ keep permanently straight, could you?”
“At my time of life,” said Mr. Egg, blandly, “a gentleman’s habits are
apt to be fixed.”