Stump of cigar, as I am, I have a history that is interwoven with that
of human beings. When I was in the form of seed I was safely housed in a
nice glass jar in a large seed store. For some reason or other I was
given the best shelf in the show window.
One day a beautiful young lady came into the store and priced me.
"Why," said the clerk, "that is----"
"Never mind," said she, "what it is. I simply want to know the price."
He told her; she paid it, and bore me off gracefully.
"Ah," said I to myself, "I shall never again see the young man who comes
every day and stops opposite the show-window." One windy day, as he
stood in his usual place, a lady's hat came rolling along the pavement.
What immediately followed this will be told further on.
As I said before, the lady bore me off gracefully. It was night when she
entered her well-lighted apartment. "She will examine me," thought I,
"and sniff me. Then how I will worship the tears that fall from her
eyes."
However, I received no such attention as I had anticipated, for the
young lady simply placed me in the center of a large table, sounded a
bell, and began to talk, as if addressing someone present.
"You were there, weren't you? You will take me at my word, will you?
Let's see. This is how it will go." She then walked to the middle of the
floor and acted out a little play that will be given further on. As she
finished, she turned to a young woman who was standing in the door and
said harshly: "What do you want?"
"The bell sounded," replied the young woman.
"That was not for you," said she. "That was for the devil." She threw a
glass at the young woman and left the room. Several times during the
night I heard her say: "That was not for you. It was for the devil."
At eight the next morning the servants put breakfast on the table,
leaving me still in the middle. At ten minutes past eight my mistress,
whom I shall call Ladybug, came into the room and addressed a little
speech to me that I did not understand until matters grew much more
serious. You could not understand it at this point, so it will not be
given now. Five minutes later the young woman who had been chased out of
the room the night before, came in. For the sake of convenience I shall
call her Butterfly. I was astonished to see Ladybug embrace Butterfly
and kiss her twenty times on the forehead. I thought this a bit of
amusing comedy. I afterwards found it stern tragedy.
They sat opposite each other at the table and remained about thirty
minutes. They spent the time talking and smiling. They did not eat in
the common acceptation of the term.
Ladybug rolled her chicken into nicely rounded balls and tossed them
down her throat. Butterfly soaked her chicken and bread in milk and
drank the milk.
They finished this unusual task together, and started to leave the room,
hand in hand, when Ladybug, glancing at the clock, whispered to
Butterfly: "I must go; it is time for me to test his heroism and
devotion."
Coming to where I rested, Ladybug picked me up, pressed me closely to
her heart, and left the room, carrying me with her. She went straight to
a nearby lake, and entered a little boat, in which sat a lone
individual. It was the young man who had stood so often opposite the
show-window. Ladybug took a seat in the boat, and in silence the young
man rowed across the waters.
Two hours on the lake were we, and no words were spoken. Then rising,
still in silence, Ladybug hurled me upon the bosom of the lake. Twenty
times I was thrown into the water, and nineteen times rescued by the
young man. The twentieth time? It was fate and heroism. Ladybug pressed
me closely and began to rock from side to side. This she did twenty
times, each time more and more violently. Her great black eyes seemed to
burn into his all the while.
She then once again tossed me into the water--and leaped after me. This
was the action of the play she rehearsed out in her room that night when
first I came. The young man followed Ladybug in her mad plunge, and at
length succeeded in bringing her to their craft. Ten minutes later she
was stretched out upon a boat, alive but unconscious. The young man was
flesh for the fish, and I was in possession of a countryman.
When Ladybug regained consciousness and learned that the young man had
been drowned, she said: "My lover is free. Hell cannot hold him. Human
blood and water have atoned for his crime." This is the little speech
she addressed to me that first morning. Then it had been put in the
future tense.
Twelve months later a beggar gave Butterfly a hand of tobacco for his
supper. While he ate she rolled the best leaf into me, placed me between
her teeth, and left the room. Soon Ladybug entered, sounded a bell, as
was her nightly custom, and waited.
In a few minutes a hideous form entered, smoking me.
"I am the devil," said the shape.
"I am his mistress," said Ladybug, and seized the shape by the throat.
The beggar, whom Ladybug had not seen, and whom Butterfly had forgotten,
was present, and tried to separate them. In so doing he caused me to get
entangled in the laces worn by the woman, communicating my fire to the
flimsy garments. Now, the hideous form was Butterfly. Soon the clothing
of both was ablaze, when they were darting about the room, the beggar
trying to help first one and then the other. Both fell across the piano
about the same time, and began to reach out, as if to clamber from the
flames. In this way they played, as it were, their own dirge. When the
sounds ceased they were dead. A mystery? Yes! No!
* * * * *
On the morning of the wedding-day a groom-to-be sailed out upon the
lake. Said he to himself: "Christian people say that he who provides not
for his household is worse than an infidel, and that a millstone had
better be placed about his neck and be sunk into the sea. What have I
for wife and children? Prosperity has passed me by. Friends are not
friends. Fate is my executioner."
Three days after this his body was recovered and buried.
The preacher said to the people: "Suicide is an unpardonable sin. The
young man, therefore, who was of noble birth and parentage, who was
chaste in life and honorable in business, is in hell."
Ladybug, the dead man's fiancée, believed the rash-judging preacher. She
soon lost her reason. Then came upon her the hallucinations that wrought
the other tragedies. She believed that if her lover's twin brother, the
young man of the fatal boat ride, would stand opposite the seed store
for twenty days, and then perish as described in the boat ride, her
lover would be released from hell and returned to her. Ladybug, among
other hallucinations, believed that the number twenty held potent
virtues; hence, the twenty days, twenty kisses, and the like. The lover
was twenty years old, hence Ladybug's counting by twenties. The twin
brother out of pity consented to humor her whim, not thinking it would
cost him his life.
Ladybug passed the seed store every day to see if he was true to his
pact. As she passed the twentieth day, her hat blew off. He started to
get it, but she said: "Let it be. Some of my troubles may roll away with
it. I will be at the boat to-morrow morning with a charm. Then my lover
shall live again. Blood and water shall atone for his crimes."
She immediately bought me of the clerk. There was no logic in this part
of the affair. She simply thought the first thing her eyes fell upon
would serve her purpose.
To make sure of her lover's return, she would also practice upon
Butterfly, her sister. Butterfly, too, submitted to humor her whim.
The embraces and twenty kisses were the beginning of this.
Butterfly of her own accord had dressed and acted the devil on the fatal
night, in the hope that the appearance of the devil would act as a
counter-shock, and restore Ladybug's reason again. The presence of the
beggar was a mere accident. The hand of tobacco out of which I was made
was ground from the jar of seed left with the countryman.
As I lay upon the floor that dreadful night and saw Ladybug and
Butterfly lying dead across the piano, I said to myself: "Stump of
cigar, as I am, I have a history."