Hedrick Madison, like too many other people, had never thought
seriously about the moon; nor ever had he encouraged it to become
his familiar; and he underwent his first experience of its
incomparable betrayals one brilliant night during the last week of
that hot month. The preface to this romantic evening was
substantial and prosaic: four times during dinner was he copiously
replenished with hash, which occasioned so rich a surfeit within
him that, upon the conclusion of the meal, he found himself in no
condition to retort appropriately to a solicitous warning from
Cora to keep away from the cat. Indeed, it was half an hour later,
and he was sitting--to his own consciousness too heavily--upon the
back fence, when belated inspiration arrived. But there is no
sound where there is no ear to hear, and no repartee, alas! when
the wretch who said the first part has gone, so that Cora remained
unscathed as from his alley solitude Hedrick hurled in the teeth
of the rising moon these bitter words:
"Oh, no; _our_ cat only eats _soft_ meat!"
He renewed a morbid silence, and the moon, with its customary
deliberation, swung clear of a sweeping branch of the big elm in
the front yard and shone full upon him. Nothing warned the fated
youth not to sit there; no shadow of imminent catastrophe tinted
that brightness: no angel whisper came to him, bidding him
begone--and to go in a hurry and as far as possible. No; he sat
upon the fence an inoffensive lad, and--except for still feeling
his hash somewhat, and a gradually dispersing rancour concerning
the cat--at peace. It is for such lulled mortals that the
ever-lurking Furies save their most hideous surprises.
Chin on palms, he looked idly at the moon, and the moon
inscrutably returned his stare. Plausible, bright, bland, it gave
no sign that it was at its awful work. For the bride of night is
like a card-dealer whose fingers move so swiftly through the pack
the trickery goes unseen.
This moon upon which he was placidly gazing, because he had
nothing else to do, betokened nought to Hedrick: to him it was the
moon of any other night, the old moon; certainly no moon of his
delight. Withal, it may never be gazed upon so fixedly and so
protractedly--no matter how languidly--with entire impunity. That
light breeds a bug in the brain. Who can deny how the moon wrought
this thing under the hair of unconscious Hedrick, or doubt its
responsibility for the thing that happened?
"_Little boy_!"
It was a very soft, small voice, silky and queer; and at first
Hedrick had little suspicion that it could be addressing him: the
most rigid self-analysis could have revealed to him no possibility
of his fitting so ignominious a description.
"Oh, little boy!"
He looked over his shoulder and saw, standing in the alley behind
him, a girl of about his own age. She was daintily dressed and had
beautiful hair which was all shining in pale gold.
"Little boy!"
She was smiling up at him, and once more she used that wantonly
inaccurate vocative:
"Little boy!"