think what that meant. And Wickliff had gone. They were examining the
prosecuting witnesses. Miss Mysilla Beaumont took the oath, plainly
frightened. She spoke almost in a whisper. Her evident desire to deal
gently with the Armstrongs was used skilfully by the young attorney
whom John Perley (his uncle) had employed. Behold (he made poor Mysie’s
evidence seem to say) what ear-rending and nerve-shattering sounds these
barbarous organists must have produced to make this amiable lady protest
at law! Mysie fluttered out of the witness-box in a tremor, nor dared to
look where Mrs. Armstrong sat bridling and fanning herself. Next three
Fullers deposed to more or less disturbance from the musical taste of the
Armstrongs, and the Delaney daughter swore, in a clarion voice, that the
playing of the Armstrongs was the worst ever known.
“It ain’t any worse than her scales!” cried Mrs. Armstrong, goaded into
speech. The magistrate darted a warning glance at her.
Miss Henriette Beaumont was called last. Her mourning garments, to
masculine eyes, did not show their age; and her grand manner and
handsome face, with its gray hair and its flashing eyes, caused even
the magistrate’s manner to change. Henriette had a rich voice and a
beautiful articulation. Every softly spoken word reached Mrs. Armstrong,
who writhed in her seat. She recited how she had spent hours of “absolute
torment” under the Armstrong instrumentation, and she described in the
language of the musician the unspeakable iniquities of the Armstrong
technique. Her own lawyer could not understand her, but the magistrate
nodded in sympathy. She said she was unable to sleep nights because of
the “horrible discords played on the organ—”
“I declare we never played it but two nights, and they weren’t discords;
they were nice tunes,” sobbed Mrs. Armstrong.
The justice rapped and frowned. “Silence in der court!” he thundered.
Then he glared on poor Mrs. Armstrong. “Anybody vot calls hisself a laty
ought to behave itself like sooch!” he said, with strong emphasis. The
attorneys present choked and coughed. In fact, the remark passed into
a saying in police-court circles. Miss Henriette stepped with stately
graciousness to her seat.
“Und now der defence,” said the justice—“der Armstrong family. Vot has
you got to say?”
“Let me put some witnesses on first, Judge,” called Wickliff, “to show
the Armstrongs’ character.” He was opening the door, and the hall behind
seemed filled.
“Oh, good land, Ikey, do look!” quavered Mrs. Armstrong; “there’s pa’s
boss, and the Martins that used to live in the same block with us, and
Mrs. O’Toole, and all the neighbors most up to the East End, and—oh,
Ikey! there’s Miss Pauline herself! Our friends ’ain’t deserted us; I
knew perfectly well they _wouldn’t_!”
Ike did look up then—he stood up. His eyes met the eyes of his
sweetheart, and he sat down with his cheeks afire and his head in the air.
“In the first place,” said Wickliff, assuming an easy attitude, with
one hand in a pocket and the other free for oratorical display, “I’ll
call Miss Beaumont, Miss Henriette Beaumont, for the defence.” Miss
Beaumont responded to the call, and turned a defiant stare on the amateur
attorney.
“You say you were disturbed by the Armstrongs’ organ?”
“I was painfully disturbed.”
“Naturally you informed your neighbors, and asked them to desist playing
the organ?”
“I did.”
“How many times?”
“Once.”
“To whom did you speak?”
“I told the boys to tell their mother.”
“Are you passionately fond of music?”
“I am.”
“Are you sensitive to bad music—acutely sensitive?”
“I suppose I am; a lover of music is, of necessity.”
The magistrate nodded and sighed.
“Are you of a particularly patient and forbearing disposition?” Henriette
directed a withering glance at the tall figure of the questioner.
“I am forbearing enough,” she answered. “Do I need to answer questions
that are plainly put to insult me?”
“No, madam,” said the magistrate. “Mr. Wickliff, I rules dot question
out.”
Nothing daunted, Wickliff continued: “When you gave the boys warning,
where were they?”
“In my house.”
“How came they there?”
“They had brought over a bucket of water.”
“Why?”
“Because we had only well-water, they said.”
“That was rather kind on the part of Mrs. Armstrong, don’t you think? In
every respect, besides playing the organ, she was a kind neighbor, wasn’t
she?”
“I don’t complain of her.”
“Wasn’t she rather noted in the neighborhood as a lady of great kindness?
Didn’t she often send in little delicacies—flowers, fruit, and such
things—gifts that often pass between neighbors to different people?”
“She may have. I am not acquainted with her.”
“Hasn’t she sent in things at different times to _you_?”
Henriette’s throat began to form the word no; then she remembered the
shortcake, she remembered the roses, she remembered her oath, and she
choked. “I don’t know much about it; perhaps she may have,” said she.
“That will do,” said Wickliff. “Call Miss Mysilla Beaumont.” Wickliff’s
respectful bearing reassured the agitated spinster. He wouldn’t detain
her a moment. He only wanted to know had neighborly courtesies passed
between the two houses. Yes? Had Mrs. Armstrong been a kind and
unobtrusive neighbor?
“Oh yes, sir; yes, indeed,” cried poor Mysie.
“Were you yourself much disturbed by the organ?”
“No, sir,” gasped Mysie, with one tragic glance at her sister’s stony
features. She knew now what Jeanie Deans must have suffered.
“That will do,” said Wickliff.
Then a procession of witnesses filed into the narrow space before the
railing. First the employer of the elder Armstrong gave his high praise
of his foreman as a man and a citizen; then came the neighbors, declaring
the Armstrong virtues—from Mrs. Martin, who deposed with tears that Mrs.
Armstrong’s courage and good nursing had saved her little Willy’s life
when he was burned, to Mrs. O’Toole, an aged little Irish woman, who
recited how the brave young Peter had rescued her dog from a band of
young torturers. “And they had a tin can filled with fire-crackers, yer
Honor (an’ they was lighted), tied to the poor stoompy tail of him; but
Petey he pulled it aff, and he throwed it ferninst them, and he made them
sorry that day, he did, for it bursted. He’s a foine bye, and belongs to
a foine family!”
“Aren’t you a little prejudiced in favor of the Armstrongs, Mrs.
O’Toole?” asked the prosecuting attorney, as Wickliff smilingly bade him
“take the witness.”
“Yes, sor, I am,” cried Mrs. O’Toole, huddling her shawl closer about her
wiry little frame. “I am that, sor, praise God! They paid the rint for me
whin me bye was in throuble, and they got him wur-rk, and he’s doin’ well
this day, and been for three year. And there’s many a hot bite passed
betwane us whin we was neighbors. Prejudeeced! I’d not be wuth the crow’s
pickin’s if I wasn’t; and the back of me hand and the sowl of me fut to
thim that’s persecuting of thim this day!”
“Call Miss Pauline Beaumont,” said Wickliff. “That will do, grandma.”
Pauline’s evidence was very concise, but to the point. She did not
consider the Armstrong organ a nuisance. She believed the Armstrongs, if
instructed, would learn to play the organ. If the window were shut the
noise could not disturb any one. She had the highest respect and regard
for the Armstrongs.
“There’s my case, your Honor,” said Wickliff, “and I’ve confidence
enough in it and in this court to leave it in your hands. Say the
same, Johnny?”—to the young lawyer. Perley laughed; he was beginning
to suspect that not all the case appeared on the surface. Perhaps the
Beaumont family peace would fare all the better if he kept his hands off.
He said that he had no evidence to offer in rebuttal, and would leave the
case confidently to the wisdom of the court.
“And I’ll bet you a hat on one thing, Amos,” he observed in an undertone
to the amateur attorney on the other side, “Fritz’s decision on this case
may be good sense, but it will be awful queer law.”
“Fritz has got good sense,” said Amos.
The magistrate announced his decision. He had deep sympathy, he said, for
the complainant, a gifted and estimable lady. He knew that the musical
temperament was sensitive as the violin—yes. But it also appeared from
the evidence that the Armstrong family were a good, a worthy family,
lacking only a knowledge of music to make them acceptable neighbors.
Therefore he decided that the Armstrong family should hire a competent
teacher, and that, until able to play without giving offence to the
neighbors, they should close the window. With that understanding he would
find the defendants not guilty; and each party must pay its own costs.
Perley glanced at Amos, who grinned and repeated, “Fritz has got good
sense.”
[Illustration: “‘THEY HAVE ENGAGED _ME_’”]
“I’d have won my hat,” said Perley, “but I’m not kicking. Just look at
Miss Beaumont, though.”
Henriette had listened in stony calm. She did not once look at Pauline,
who was standing at the other side of the room. “Come, sister,” she said
to Mysie. Mysie turned a scared face on Henriette. She drew her aside.
“Did you hear what he said?” she whispered. “Oh, Henriette, _what_ shall
we do? We shall have to pay the costs—”
“The Armstrongs will have to pay them too,” said Henriette, grimly.
“Theirs won’t be so much, because none of their witnesses will take a
cent; but the Fullers and Miss Delaney want their fees, and it’s a dollar
and a half, and there’s—”
“We shall have to borrow it from John Perley,” said Henriette.
“But he isn’t here, and maybe they’ll put us in jail if we don’t pay. Oh,
Henriette, why did you—”
This, Mysie’s first and last reproach of her sovereign, was cut short by
the approach of Pauline.
At her side walked young Armstrong. And Pauline, who used to be so timid,
presented him without a tremor.
“I wanted to tell you, Miss Beaumont,” said Ike, “that I did not
understand that we were disturbing you so much when you were sick. Not
being musical, we could not appreciate what we were making you suffer.
But I beg you to believe, ma’am, that we are all very sorry. And I didn’t
think it no more than right that I should pay all the costs of this
case—which I have done gladly. I hope you will forgive us, and that we
may all of us live as good neighbors in future. We will try not to annoy
you, and we have engaged a very fine music-teacher.”
“They have engaged _me_,” said Pauline. And as she spoke she let the
young man very gently draw her hand into his arm.
HIS DUTY
HIS DUTY
Amos Wickliff little suspected himself riding, that sunny afternoon,
towards the ghastliest adventure of an adventurous life. Nevertheless,
he was ill at ease. His horse was too light for his big muscles and his
six feet two of bone. Being a merciful man to beasts, he could not ride
beyond a jog-trot, and his soul was fretted by the delay. He cast a scowl
down the dejected neck of the pony to its mournful, mismated ears, and
from thence back at his own long legs, which nearly scraped the ground.
“O Lord! ain’t I a mark on this horse!” he groaned. “We could make money
in a circus!” With a gurgle of disgust he looked about him at the glaring
blue sky, at the measureless, melancholy sweep of purple and dun prairie.
“Well, give _me_ Iowa!” said Amos.
For a long while he rode in silence, but his thoughts were distinct
enough for words. “What an amusing little scamp it was!”—thus they ran—“I
believe he could mimic anything on earth. He used to give a cat and puppy
fighting that I laughed myself nearly into a fit over. When I think of
that I hate this job. Now why? You never saw the fellow to speak to him
more than twice. Duty, Amos, duty. But if he is as decent as he’s got
the name of being here, it’s rough—Hullo! River? Trees?” The river might
be no more than the lightening rim of the horizon behind the foliage,
but there was no mistake about the trees; and when Wickliff turned the
field-glass, which he habitually carried, on them he could make out not
only the river and the willows, but the walls of a cabin and the lovely
undulations of a green field of corn. Half an hour’s riding brought him
to the house and a humble little garden of sweet-pease and hollyhocks.
Amos groaned. “How cursed decent it all looks! And flowers too! I have
no doubt that his wife’s a nice woman, and the baby has a clean face.
Everything certainly does combine to ball me up on this job! There she
is; and she’s nice!”
A woman in a clean print gown, with a child pulling at her skirt, had run
to the gate. She looked young. Her freckled face was not exactly pretty,
but there was something engaging in the flash of her white teeth and her
soft, black-lashed, dark eyes. She held the gate wide open, with the
hospitality of the West. “Won’t you ’light, stranger?” she called.
“I’m bound for here,” replied Amos, telling his prepared tale glibly.
“This is Mr. Brown’s, the photographer’s, ain’t it? I want him to come to
the settlement with me and take me standing on a deer.”
“Yes, sir.” The woman spoke in mellow Southern accents, and she began to
look interested, as suspecting a romance under this vain-glory. “Yes,
sir. Deer you shot, I reckon. I’ll send Johnny D. for him. Oh, Johnny D.!”
A lath of a boy of ten, with sunburnt white hair and bright eyes, vaulted
over a fence and ran to her, receiving her directions to go find uncle
after he had cared for the gentleman’s horse.
“Your nephew, madam?” said Amos, as the lad’s bare soles twinkled in the
air.
“Well, no, sir, not born nephew,” she said, smiling; “he’s a little
neighbor boy. His folks live three miles further down the river; but I
reckon we all think jest as much of him as if he was our born kin. Won’t
you come in, sir?”
By this time she had passed under the luxuriant arbor of honeysuckle
that shaded the porch, and she threw wide the door. The room was large.
It was very tidy. The furniture was of the sort that can be easily
transported where railways have to be pieced out with mule trails.
But it was hardly the ordinary pioneer cabin. Not because there was a
sewing-machine in one corner, for the sewing-machine follows hard on the
heels of the plough; perhaps because of the white curtains at the two
windows (curtains darned and worn thin by washing, tied back with ribbons
faded by the same ministry of neatness), or the square of pretty though
cheap carpet on the floor, or the magazines and the bunch of sweet-pease
on the table, but most because of the multitude of photographs on
the clumsy walls. They were on cards, all of the same size (not more
than 8 by 10 inches), protected by glass, and framed in mossy twigs.
Some of the pictures were scenes of the country, many of them bits of
landscape near the house, all chosen with a marvellous elimination of
the usual grotesque freaks of the camera, and with such an unerring eye
for subject and for light and shade that the artist’s visions of the
flat, commonplace country were not only picturesque but poetic. In the
prints also were an extraordinary richness and range of tone. It did
not seem possible that mere black and white could give such an effect
of brilliancy and depth of color. An artist looking over this obscure
photographer’s workmanship might feel a thrill like that which crinkles a
flower-lover’s nerves when he sees a mass of azaleas in fresh bloom.
Amos was not an artist, but he had a camera at home, and he gave a
gulp of admiration. “Well, he _is_ great!” he sighed. “That beats any
photographic work I ever saw.”
The wife’s eyes were luminous. “Ain’t he!” said she. “It ’most seems
wicked for him to be farming when he can do things like that—”
“Why does he farm?”
“It’s his health. He caynt stand the climate East.”
“You are from the South yourself, I take it?”
“Yes, sir, Arkansas, though I don’t see how ever you guessed it. I met
Mist’ Brown there, down in old Lawrence. I was teaching school then,
and went to have my picture taken in his wagon. Went with my father,
and he was so pleasant and polite to paw I liked him from the start. He
nursed paw during his last sickness. Then we were married and came out
here—You’re looking at that picture of little Davy at the well? I like
that the best of all the ten; his little dress looks so cute, and he has
such a sweet smile; and it’s the only one has his hair smooth. I tell
Mist’ Brown I do believe he musses that child’s hair himself—”
“Papa make Baby’s hair pitty for picture!” cried the child, delighted to
have understood some of the conversation.
“He’s a very pretty boy,” said Amos. “’Fraid to come to me, young feller?”
But the child saw too few to be shy, and happily perched himself on the
tall man’s shoulder, while he studied the pictures. The mother appeared
as often as the child.
“He’s got her at the best every time,” mused the observer; “best side
of her face, best light on her nose. Never misses. That’s the way a man
looks at his girl; always twists his eyes a little so as to get the best
view. Plainly she’s in love with him, and looks remarkably like he was in
love with her, damn him!” Then, with great civility, he asked Mrs. Brown
what developer her husband used, and listened attentively, while she
showed him the tiny dark room leading out of the apartment, and exhibited
the meagre stock of drugs.
“I keep them up high and locked up in that cupboard with the key on top,
for fear Baby might git at them,” she explained. She evidently thought
them a rare and creditable collection. “I ain’t a bit afraid of Johnny
D.; he’s sensible, and, besides, he minds every word Mist’ Brown tells
him. He sets the world by Mist’ Brown; always has ever since the day
Mist’ Brown saved him from drowning in the eddy.”
“How was that?”
“Why, you see, he was out fishing, and climbed out on a log and slipped
someway. It’s about two miles further down the river, between his
parents’ farm and ours; and by a God’s mercy we were riding by, Dave and
the baby and I—the baby wasn’t out of long-clothes then—and we heard
the scream. Dave jumped out and ran, peeling his clothes as he ran. I
only waited to throw the weight out of the wagon to hold the horses, and
ran after him. I could see him plain in the water. Oh, it surely was a
dreadful sight! I dream of it nights sometimes yet; and he’s there in the
water, with his wet hair streaming over his eyes, and his eyes sticking
out, and his lips blue, fighting the current with one hand, and drifting
off, off, inch by inch, all the time. And I wake up with the same longing
on me to cry out, ‘Let the boy go! Swim! _Swim!_’”
“Well, _did_ you cry that?” says Amos.
“Oh no, sir. I went in to him. I pushed a log along and climbed out on it
and held out a branch to him, and someway we all got ashore—”
“What did you do with the baby?”
“I was fixing to lay him down in a soft spot when I saw a man was on the
bank. He was jumping up and down and yelling: ‘I caynt swim a stroke! I
caynt swim a stroke!’ ‘Then you hold the baby,’ says I; and I dumped poor
Davy into his arms. When we got the boy up the bank he looked plumb dead;
but Dave said: ‘He ain’t dead! He caynt be dead! I won’t have him dead!’
wild like, and began rubbing him. I ran to the man. If you please, there
that unfortunate man was, in the same place, holding Baby as far away
from him as he could get, as if he was a dynamite bomb that might go off
at any minute. ‘Give me your pipe,’ says I. ‘You will have to fish it out
of my pocket yourself,’ says he; ‘I don’t dast loose a hand from this
here baby!’ And he did look funny! But you may imagine I didn’t notice
that then. I ran back quick’s I could, and we rubbed that boy and worked
his arms and, you may say, blowed the breath of life into him. We worked
more’n a hour—that poor man holding the baby the enduring time: I reckon
_his_ arms were stiff’s ours!—and I’d have given him up: it seemed awful
to be rumpling up a corpse that way. But Dave, he only set his teeth and
cried, ‘Keep on, I _will_ save him!’”
“And you _did_ save him?”
“_He_ did,” flashed the wife; “he’d be in his grave but for Dave. I’d
given him up. And his mother knows it. And she said that if that child
was not named Johnny ayfter his paw, she’d name him David ayfter Mist’
Brown; but seeing he was named, she’d do next best, give him David for
a middle. And as calling him Johnny David seemed too long, they always
call him Johnny D. But won’t you rest your hat on the bed and sit down,
Mister—”
“Wickliff,” finished Amos; but he added no information regarding his
dwelling-place or his walk in life, and, being a Southerner, she did not
ask it. By this time she was getting supper ready for the guest. Amos
was sure she was a good cook the instant his glance lighted on her snowy
and shapely rolls. He perceived that he was to have a much daintier meal
than he had ever had before in the “Nation,” yet he frowned at the wall.
All the innocent, laborious, happy existence of the pair was clear to him
as she talked, pleased with so good a listener. The dominant impression
which her unconscious confidences made on him was her content.
“I reckon I am a natural-born farmer,” she laughed. “I fairly crave to
make things grow, and I love the very smell of the earth and the grass.
It’s beautiful out here.”
“But aren’t you ever lonesome?”
“Why, we’ve lots of neighbors, and they’re all such nice folks. The Robys
are awful kind people, and only four miles, and the Atwills are only
three, on the other side. And then the Indians drop in, but though I try
to be good to them, it’s hard to like anybody so dirty. Dave says Red
Horse and his band are not fair samples, for they are all young bucks
that their fathers won’t be responsible for, and they certainly do steal.
I don’t think they ever stole anything from us, ’cept one hog and three
chickens and a jug of whiskey; but we always feed them well, and it’s a
little trying, though maybe you’ll think I’m inhospitable to say so, to
have half a dozen of them drop in and eat up a whole batch of light bread
and all the meat you’ve saved for next day and a plumb jug of molasses at
a sitting. That Red Horse is crazy for whiskey, and awful mean when he’s
drunk; but he’s always been civil to us—There’s Mist’ Brown now!”
Wickliff’s first glance at the man in the doorway showed him the same
undersized, fair-skinned, handsome young fellow that he remembered; he
wanted to shrug his shoulders and exclaim, “The identical little tough!”
but Brown turned his head, and then Amos was aware that the recklessness
and the youth both were gone out of the face. At that moment it went to
the hue of cigar ashes.
“Here’s the gentleman, David; my husband, Mist’ Wickliff,” said the wife.
“Papa! papa!” joyously screamed the child, pattering across the floor.
Brown caught the little thing up and kissed it passionately; and he held
his face for a second against its tiny shoulder before he spoke (in a
good round voice), welcoming his guest. He was too busy with his boy, it
may be, to offer his hand. Neither did Amos move his arm from his side.
He repeated his errand.
Brown moistened his blue lips; a faint glitter kindled in his haggard
eyes, which went full at the speaker.
“_That’s_ what you want, is it?”
“Well, if I want anything more, I’ll explain it on the way,” said Amos,
unsmilingly.
Brown swallowed something in his throat. “All right; I guess I can go,”
said he. “To-morrow, that is. We can’t take pictures by moonlight; and
the road’s better by daylight. Won’t you come out with me while I do my
chores? We can—can talk it over.” In spite of his forced laugh there was
undisguised entreaty in his look, and relief when Amos assented. He went
first, saying under his breath, “I suppose this is how you want.”