HIS CHILDREN
It was a week later, and we were sitting on the verandah looking out
across Essex County towards Manhattan. To us, who some five years before
had been shaken from our homestead in San Francisco and hurried
penniless and almost naked across the continent, our location here in
the Garden State, looking eastward towards the Western Ocean and our
native isle, had always appeared as "almost home." We endeavoured to
impress this upon our friends in England, explaining that "we could be
home in four or five days easily"; and what were four or five days?
True, we have never gone so far as to book our passage; but there is
undoubted comfort in the fact that in a week at the outside, we could
walk down Piccadilly. Out on the Pacific Slope we were, both physically
and spiritually, a world away.
It pleased us, too, to detect in the configuration of the district a
certain identity with our own county of Essex, in England, where a
cousin of Bill's had a cottage, and where, some day, we were to have a
cottage too. Our home is called _Wigboro' House_, after the cousin's,
and we have settled it that, just as you catch a glimpse of grey sea
across Mersea Island from Wigborough, so we may catch the glint and
glare of the lights of Manhattan, and, on stormy nights, feel on our
lips the sharpness of the salt wind that blows across Staten Island
from the Atlantic. It is an innocent conceit, and our only critic so far
had been Miss Fraenkel, who had objected to the name, and advocated with
American succinctness the advantage of a number. As Bill had remarked
mournfully, "It wouldn't be so bad if it was number three or four, but
_Five hundred and Eighty-two Van Diemen's Avenue_ is horrible!" We had
given in to Miss Fraenkel of course, save that none of us had the
courage to disillusion Bill's cousin. We still received from him letters
addressed in his sprawling painter's hand "_Wigboro' House, Netley
Heights, N. J., U. S. A._," a mail or so late. We never told him of _Van
Diemen's Avenue_, nor for that matter had we mentioned our neighbours.
Curiously enough, it was he, that painter cousin of Bill's, thousands of
miles away in that other Essex, who told _us_ something that we were
only too quick to appreciate, about our neighbours.
We were talking of him, I remember, that afternoon as we sat on the
stoop, Bill saying he would be writing soon, and Mac raising the vexed
question of the Fourth Chair. You see, we have four rocking-chairs on
our verandah, though there are but three of us, and Bill usually claims
the hammock. It was no answer, I found, to suggest future friends as
occupants for this chair. It grew to be a legend that some day I should
bring home a bride and she should have it. I submitted to this badinage
and even hinted that at first we should need but one chair.... I had
heard ... nay seen, such things in San Francisco, before the earthquake.
In the meantime I had vamped up a very pretty story of the
painter-cousin getting a commission to paint a _prima-donna_ in New York
and coming over to visit us in great state. He might be induced to sit
awhile in the vacant chair. It seemed more probable than Bill's legend,
for I knew Miss F----, anybody I married, say, would want the hammock.
There was one drawback to my dream, and that was the humiliation of
revealing to him Van Diemen's Avenue. He is a university man, and from
his letters and Bill's description I should say he has a rather
embarrassing laugh when he finds a person out in a deception like that.
But so far he had not yet received a commission to paint a _prima-donna_
in New York, and he still pictures our Wigboro' house standing alone on
Netley Heights, looking out across rolling country to the sea. Of course
the photos that we send do not show any other houses near, and the
verandahs make the place look bigger than it really is. He must be
tremendously impressed, too, by Bill's courageous declaration (in
inverted commas) that at the back the land is ours "as far as the eye
can see." It is true, too, though the eye cannot see very far. There is
a "dip," you know, common enough to Triassic regions; and as you stand
at the back door and look westward the sky comes down and touches our
cabbages, fifty yards away. It does, really!
Well, we were talking of him and incidentally of the Fourth Chair, when
the children came round the corner of the house and, finding us there,
stood looking at us.
That is all; just stood staring at us, with feet planted firmly on the
gravel, hands in pockets and an expression of unwinking candour in their
young eyes. It was absurd, of course, that we three grown-ups should
have been so embarrassed by a couple of urchins, but we were. The cool
nerve of it, the unimaginable audacity of it, took our breath away. It
was almost as though they were saying, "Well, and what are you doing
here, hey?" There was something almost indelicate in their merciless
scrutiny. We quailed.
There was, moreover, a deeper reason for our disquietude. We realized,
afterward, that those children, one dark and one fair, had been quite
unconscious of our existence before. Numberless times they had passed
us, even crossing our land on a short cut to the forest road, but
without recognition. And though, in a pause between two absorbing
interests, in a moment of disengagement from the more important matters
of American childhood, they now deigned to favour us with their frank
attention, it was rather disparagement than curiosity they exhibited. We
now know the feelings of a Living Wonder in a show.
"Hello," remarked the elder, the dark one, dispassionately, and we
almost jumped. The other child fixed his eye on my slippers, which were
of carpet and roomy. It seemed to me that the time had come to tell them
of their lack of good manners.
"Hello, little boy," I replied. I decided to approach the subject of
manners circuitously.
"You ain't so very big yerself," said the elder boy, quite without
emotion and merely as a stated fact. I admit freely that this, in the
jargon of the streets, was "one on me." My general diminutiveness of
person has always been more than compensated, I think, by a
corresponding magnitude of mind; but one is none the less sensitive to
wayside ribaldry. I have never been able to quench a certain
satisfaction in the fact that the children who mocked the prophet were
devoured by bears. An occasional example is certainly wholesome, if only
to bring young people to their senses.
"You mustn't speak like that," I said, gently. "What is your name?"
"What yo' want to know for?" came the answer, and he joined his brother
in examining my slippers. The baffling thing was that there was really
nothing intentionally rude about these two rather pretty little fellows.
They were merely exhibiting, in a somewhat disconcerting fashion, it is
true, the influence of republican freedom upon natures unwarped by
feudal traditions of courtesy and _noblesse oblige_. It was baffling, as
I say, but encouraging for all that. I felt that if the others could
restrain their indignation and I could school myself to pursue the
catechism, I should eventually discover some avenue of inquiry that
might lead to fresh knowledge of the _menage_ next door. I tried again.
"Well, you see," I explained, "we would like to get acquainted with you.
You tell us your names and we'll tell you ours. Eh?"
"I know your name, I do," he said, glancing at my face for a moment. I
put out my hand to calm Bill's restlessness. It appeared afterwards
that she "thought she was going to choke."
"Gee! you do? Well then, you can tell me yours," I went on.
"Giuseppe Mazzini Carville," he returned, and before we fully realized
the stupendous possibilities which this implied the younger child raised
his eyes to our faces.
"Want to know my name too?" he queried, not a quiver of an eyelid to
show any self-consciousness.
"Of course," I said; "what is it?" We waited an instant, breathlessly.
"Benvenuto Cellini Carville," he pronounced carefully, and added as an
afterthought, "I'm Ben; he's Beppo."
"Fancy giving a child a name like that!" muttered Bill, compassionately.
"I call it a shame!" And she leaned over towards the two children. "Do
you know my name then?" she asked.
The clear, steady eyes rested for a moment upon her face, and a slight
smile curved the lips of the elder as he answered.
"Ma calls you the woman with two husbands," he remarked.
"Oh!" said Bill, and fell back into the hammock.
"Say, Kiddo," said Mac, reaching out a long arm and capturing them,
"what do they teach you down in that old school anyway, eh?"
They squirmed.
"It is useless to try and force anything out of them," I warned.
"Remember the school-teacher is forbidden by law even to touch them."
They slipped away from his knee, and stood as before.
"Listen," I continued. "Got a father, Beppo?"
He surveyed me with some slight astonishment.
"Sure," he replied. "Of course I got a father, silly."
"Well, where is he?"
They looked at each other, their arms folded behind them, their toes
digging the gravel.
"At sea," said Beppo, and Mac slapped his knee.
"Eh?" I said, blankly, for I had not caught the phrase.
"We are a lot of duffers!" muttered Mac. "The man is a sailor and he's
at sea."
"Oh!" I said, and for a moment I felt downcast at the tame ending of our
investigation. "When is he coming home, Beppo?"
"I dunno," he answered, indifferently. "What do you want to know for?"
Here was a quandary. I was caught fairly and squarely prying into
another person's business. I don't know why, but these two little chaps,
with their clean-cut unembarrassed features, their relentless stare and
their matter-of-fact outlook upon life, seemed to have in a supreme
degree the faculty of inspiring and snubbing curiosity. I think the
others, since I had borne the brunt of the ordeal, sympathized with me,
for they were silent. I stared at our visitors in some perplexity; and
then in the most exasperating manner they turned away and ran across our
ground to a huge hollow stump near the forest path and began to play.
"Pretty tough, eh?" murmured Mac, rocking himself. I began to wonder
whether I ought to have been more indignant about that reflection upon
my height. Bill looked up and twisted round so that she could see what
they were doing.
"What are they playing?" she whispered. No one answered. I was thinking.
Sailor--sixty dollars a month rent--Italian wife--letters from New York.
"I will see," I said, and stepping down I walked across to the stump.
I was fully resolved to sift the matter as far as I could to the bottom.
I was aware of the disadvantage of being a small man, for I saw that I
should be compelled to climb up to look into the stump. But with small
stature is often joined a certain tenacious, terrier-like fortitude. I
advanced with firmness.
Ben was nowhere to be seen. Beppo, a stick on his shoulder, stood in a
statuesque pose in front of the stump.
"G'way!" he hissed, as I came up.
"What's the game?" I whispered.
"Indians. I'm on guard. G'way!" he whispered back.
"Is this the fort?" I searched for a foothold.
"Yep. This is the middle-watch. What'd you butt in for?"
I scrambled up and looked. Just below me, lying on a soft bed of
mouldering tinder wood and leaves, was Benvenuto Cellini Carville,
simulating profound slumber. As I clung there, a somewhat undignified
figure, he opened one eye.
"Let me play too?" I pleaded.
"Can you follow a trail?" said Beppo's voice at my side.
"Sure."
"Well, you go down there," he pointed to Bill's cabbage patch, "and be a
hostile, see?"
I saw. As I slipped down and hastened away as directed (avoiding the
cabbages), it seemed to me absurdly paradoxical that the only way to be
friendly with these precocious beings was to be a "hostile." I looked
round. Beppo stood at rigid attention, and at the studio back window I
saw two grinning heads surveying my performance. I was not at all clear
in my mind how a hostile should act; it was thirty years since I had
read "Deerslayer." Should I drop on my knees and crawl through the long
grass, snooping round the beanpoles and taking the devoted block-house
in flank? I swallowed my stiff-necked English pride and began to crawl.
Then I saw a better plan. I slipped through the sparse line of dwarf
oaks smothered with crimson poison-ivy that bordered the forest path and
crept as silently as I could towards the street until I was abreast of
the stump. As I paused Beppo was making his round of the fort and espied
me. Instantly crying "Hostiles!" he presented his stick, banged,
reloaded, banged again, reloaded and banged yet again. I took up a stick
and presented it--bang! With amazing verisimilitude Beppo rolled
over--shot through the heart. Really, for a moment I had a mad
apprehension that in some occult way, some freak of hypnotic
suggestion, I had actually wrought the child harm. I stood there
breathlessly triumphant and wondering whether it was now my business to
rush in and scalp the defenceless prisoners. I became aware of a head
and a stick above the stump.
"Bang!" said the garrison. Obviously I was shot. I fell, desperately
wounded, and endeavoured to drag myself away into the forest of dwarf
oaks, when the garrison hailed me.
"Surrender!" he called, presenting his piece. I put up my hands. He
climbed down nimbly.
"Now you help me bring in the dead and wounded," he ordered, and
together we, the victorious garrison, dragged the slain warrior into the
shadow of the stump. All at once he became alive, jumped up and danced
gleefully.
"Say, that's bully!" he chanted. "You play some Indian!"
I looked down modestly and blushed I fear, for I knew that the grinning
heads were still at the studio window.
"Well," I said, picking the thistle burrs off my trousers, "let us sit
down for a spell, shall we?" To my surprise, they consented. We went
round to the stoop and I took a big rocker. For a moment they stared, as
though considering me in the new light of a perfect "hostile."
"Say," began Beppo, "what you doin' in there?" and he pointed to the
house.
"What do you want to know for?" I retorted, humorously, stroking his
dark head. I am fond of children in a way, especially boys. He twisted
his head away, but without ill-temper, and looked at me gravely.
"Don't you work?" he demanded.
"A little, sometimes," I replied earnestly, feeling for my cigarettes.
"What sort of work?" said Benvenuto, standing in front of me.
"We make pictures," I said, evasively. I have a silly reluctance to talk
of literature as work.
"Huh!" they remarked, and surveyed me afresh.
"What does your father work at?" I asked, cautiously.
"He's at sea," said Beppo.
And that was all they knew. I tried the question in many ways, but they
had no other answer. Evidently they had grown up with that phrase in
their ears, "at sea," and were satisfied.
"Don't you want to see him?" I suggested. They "supposed so." I left
that subject.
"How old are you?"
"Seven," said Beppo. "Ben's six."
"You are very precocious," I remarked, to myself chiefly.
"How?"
"Precocious," I repeated, rising to meet the postman. He handed me
several business letters and one for Bill with an English stamp, a fat
package.
"Who's that from?" asked Beppo, and I was pulling his ear gently as Bill
came out with a rush. The postman went along to the next house.
At this moment my perceptions became blurred. I remember handing the
letters to Bill and Mac. I remember the quick scuffle of the two
children as they hastened toward their own home. All this is blurred.
What stands out sharply in my memory is the figure of Mrs. Carville, her
waist pressed hard against the fence, a long envelope in her hand,
gesticulating to the children as they went towards her. I saw her wave
them peremptorily indoors and then remain by the fence, regarding me
with profound distrust. I made a step forward to speak, for I should
have had to shout at that distance, but she turned and swung up the
steps of her porch and slammed the door.
"A letter from Cecil," said Bill as I took my seat, a little downcast
at the encounter. Cecil is the painter-cousin, at Wigborough, Essex,
England.
"What does he say?" I inquired.
"Read it to us," said she, and handed me a dozen sheets of tracing paper
pinned together.
I began to read.