and was half way up to the house of the Tuttle Four Women, heard him,
and turned back to the bars. She wondered if Mr. Atherton Bell had not
been too harsh. The Bow Meadows looked dim and mournful in the twilight.
Miss Rachel was feeling a trifle sad about herself, too, as she
sometimes did; and the round-cheeked cherub weeping in the wide
shadowy meadows seemed to her something like her own life in the great
world--not very well understood.
“He wath geen!” wailed Bobby, looking up at her, but not allowing his
grief to be interrupted. “He wath my geen bug!”
Miss Rachel melted still further, without knowing why.
“What was green?”
She pulled down a bar and crawled through. She hoped Mr. Atherton Bell
was not looking from a window, for it was difficult to avoid making
one's self amusing to Mr. Atherton Bell. But Bobby was certainly in some
kind of trouble.
“He'th dead!” wailed Bobby again. “He'th thtepped on!”
Miss Rachel bent over him stiffly. It was hard for one so austerely
ladylike as Miss Rachel to seem gracious and compassionate, but she did
pretty well.
“Oh, it's a grasshopper!” Then more severely: “Why did you tie him up?”
Bobby's sobs subsided into hiccoughs.
“It'th a disgace. I put him in disgace, and I forgotted him. He went
down my back.”
“Did you step on him?”
“N-O-O-O!” The hiccoughs rose into sobs again. “He wath the geenest
gasshopper!”
This was not strictly true; there were others just as green; but it was
a generous tribute to the dead and a credit to Bobby Bell that he felt
that way.
Now there was much in all this that Miss Rachel did not understand; but
she understood enough to feel sharp twinges for the wrong that she had
done Bobby Bell, and whatever else may be said of Miss Rachel, up to her
light she was square. In fact, I should say that she had an acute-angled
conscience. It was more than square; it was one of those consciences
that you are always spearing yourself on. She felt very humble, and went
with Bobby Bell to dig a grave for the green grasshopper under the lee
of the wall. She dug it herself with her parasol, thinking how she must
go up with Bobby Bell, what she must say to Mr. Atherton Bell, and how
painful it would be, because Mr. Atherton Bell was so easily amused.
Bobby patted the grave with his chubby palm and cooed contentedly. Then
they went up the hill in the twilight hand in hand.
THE ENEMIES
THE great fluted pillars in Ramoth church were taken away. They
interfered with the view and rental of the pews behind them. Albion Dee
was loud and persuasive for removing them, and Jay Dee secret, shy and
resistant against it. That was their habit and method of hostility.
Then in due season Jay Dee rented the first seat in the pew in front
of Albion's pew. This was thought to be an act of hostility, subtle,
noiseless, far-reaching.
He was a tall man, Jay Dee, and wore a wide flapping coat, had flowing
white hair, and walked with a creeping step; a bachelor, a miser, he
had gathered a property slowly with persistent fingers; a furtive,
meditating, venerable man, with a gentle piping voice. He lived on the
hill in the old house of the Dees, built in the last century by one
“John Griswold Dee, who married Sarah Ballister and begat two sons,”
who respectively begat Jay and Albion Dee; and Albion founded Ironville,
three or four houses in the hollow at the west of Diggory Gorge, and a
bolt and nail factory. He was a red-faced, burly man, with short legs
and thick neck, who sought determined means to ends, stood squarely and
stated opinions.
The beginnings of the feud lay backward in time, little underground
resentments that trickled and collected. In Albion they foamed up and
disappeared. He called himself modern and progressive, and the bolt and
nail factory was thought to be near bankruptcy. He liked to look men in
the eyes. If one could not see the minister, one could not tell if he
meant what he said, or preached shoddy doctrine. As regards all view and
rental behind him, Jay Dee was as bad as one of the old fluted pillars.
Albion could not see the minister. He felt the act to be an act of
hostility.
But he was progressive, and interested at the time in a question of the
service, as respected the choir which sang from the rear gallery. It
seemed to him more determined and effective to hymnal devotion that the
congregation should rise and turn around during the singing, to the end
that congregation and choir might each see that all things were done
decently. He fixed on the idea and found it written as an interlinear to
his gospels, an imperative codicil to the duty of man.
But the congregation was satiated with change. They had still to make
peace between their eyes and the new slender pillars, to convince
themselves by contemplation that the church was still not unstable, not
doctrinally weaker.
So it came about that Albion Dee stood up sternly and faced the choir
alone, with the old red, fearless, Protestant face one knows of Luther
and Cromwell. The congregation thought him within his rights there
to bear witness to his conviction. Sabbaths came and went in Ramoth
peacefully, milestones of the passing time, and all seemed well.
Pseudo-classic architecture is a pale, inhuman allegory of forgotten
meaning. If buildings like Ramoth church could in some plastic way
assimilate their communicants, what gargoyles would be about the
cornices, what wall paintings of patient saints, mystical and realistic.
On one of the roof cornices of an old church in France is the carved
stone face of a demon with horns and a forked tongue, and around its
eyes a wrinkled smile of immense kindness. And within the church is the
mural painting of a saint, some Beata Ursula or Catherine, with upturned
eyes; a likeable girl, capable of her saintship, of turning up her eyes
with sincerity because it fell to her to see a celestial vision;
as capable of a blush and twittering laugh, and the better for her
capabilities.
It is not stated what Albion symbolized. He stood overtopping the
bonnets and the gray heads of deacons, respected by the pews, popular
with the choir, protesting his conviction.
And all the while secretly, with haunch and elbow, he nudged, bumped
and rubbed the shoulders and silvery head of Jay Dee. It is here
claimed that he stood there in the conviction that it was his duty so
to testify. It is not denied that he so bumped and squatted against Jay
Dee, cautiously, but with relish and pleasure.
In the bowed silver head, behind the shy, persistent eyes of Jay Dee,
what were his thoughts, his purposes, coiling and constricting? None
but the two were aware of the locked throat grip of the spirit. In the
droning Sabbath peace the congregation pursued the minister through
the subdivisions of his text, and dragged the hymn behind the dragging
choir.
It was a June day and the orioles gurgled their warm nesting notes in
the maples. The boys in the gallery searched the surface of the quiet
assembly for points of interest; only here and there nodding heads,
wavering fans, glazed, abstracted eyes. They twisted and yawned. What to
them were brethren in unity, or the exegesis of a text, as if one were
to count and classify, prickle by prickle, to no purpose the irritating
points of a chestnut burr? The sermon drowsed to its close. The choir
and Albion rose. It was an outworn sight now, little more curious than
Monday morning. The sunlight shone through the side windows, slanting
down over the young, worldly and impatient, and one selected ray fell on
Jay Dee's hair with spiritual radiance, and on Albion's red face, turned
choirward for a testimony.
Suddenly Albion gave a guttural shout. He turned, he grasped Jay Dee's
collar, dragged him headlong into the aisle, and shook him to and fro,
protesting, “You stuck me! I'll teach you!”
His red face worked with passion; Jay Dee's venerable head bobbed,
helpless, mild, piteous. The choir broke down. The minister rose with
lifted hands and open mouth, the gallery in revelry, the body of
the church in exclamatory confusion. Albion saw outstretched hands
approaching, left his enemy, and hat in hand strode down the aisle with
red, glowering face, testifying, “He stuck me.”
Jay Dee sat on the floor, his meek head swaying dizzily.
On Monday morning Albion set out for Hamilton down the narrow valley
of the Pilgrim River. The sudden hills hid him and his purposes from
Ramoth. He came in time to sit in the office of Simeon Ballister, and
Simeon's eyes gleamed. He took notes and snuffed the battle afar.
“Ha! Witnesses to pin protruding from coat in region adjoining haunch.
Hum! Affidavits to actual puncture of inflamed character, arguing
possibly venom of pin. Ha! Hum! Motive of concurrent animosity. A very
respectable case. I will come up and see your witnesses--Ha!--in a day
or two. Good morning.”
Ballister was a shining light in the county courts in those days,
but few speak of him now. Yet he wrote a Life of Byron, a History of
Hamilton County, and talked a half century with unflagging charm. Those
who remember will have in mind his long white beard and inflamed and
swollen nose, his voice of varied melody. Alien whiskey and natural
indolence kept his fame local. His voice is silent forever that once
rose in the court-rooms like a fountain shot with rainbow fancies, in
musical enchantment, in liquid cadence. “I have laid open, gentlemen,
the secret of a human heart, shadowed and mourning, to the illumination
of your justice. You are the repository and temple of that sacred light.
Not merely as a plaintiff, a petitioner, my client comes; but as a
worshipper, in reverence of your function, he approaches the balm and
radiance of that steadfast torch and vestal fire of civilization, an
intelligent jury.” Such was Ballister's inspired manner, such his habit
of rhythm and climax, whenever he found twenty-four eyes fixed on his
swollen nose, the fiery mesmeric core of his oratory beaconing juries to
follow it and discover truth.
But the Case of Dee v. Dee came only before a justice of the peace, in
the Town Hall of Ramoth, and Justice Kernegan was but a stout man with
hairy ears and round, spectacled, benevolent eyes. Jay Dee brought no
advocate. His silvery hair floated about his head. His pale eyes gazed
in mild terror at Ballister. He said it must have been a wasp stung
Albion.
“A wasp, sir! Your Honor, does a wasp carry for penetration, for
puncture, for malignant attack or justifiable defence, for any purpose
whatsoever, a brass pin of palpable human manufacture, drawn, headed and
pointed by machinery, such as was inserted in my client's person? Does
the defendant wish your Honor to infer that wasps carry papers of brass
pins in their anatomies? I will ask the defendant, whose venerable
though dishonored head bears witness to his age, if, in his long
experience, he has ever met a wasp of such military outfit and arsenal?
Not a wasp, your Honor, but a serpent; a serpent in human form.”
Jay Dee had no answer to all this. He murmured--
“Sat on me.”
“I didn't catch your remark, sir.”
“Why, you see,” explained the Justice, “Jay says Albion's been squatting
on him, Mr. Ballister, every Sunday for six months. You see, Albion gets
up when the choir sings, and watches 'em sharp to see they sing correct,
because his ear ain't well tuned, but his eye's all right.”
The Justice's round eyes blinked pleasantly. The court-room murmured
with approval, and Albion started to his feet.
“Now don't interrupt the Court,” continued the Justice. “You see, Mr.
Ballister, sometimes Jay says it was a wasp and sometimes he says it
was because Albion squatted on him, don't you see, bumped him on the
ear with his elbow. You see, Jay sets just in front of Albion. Now, you
see--”
“Then, does it not appear to your Honor that a witness who voluntarily
offers to swear to two contradictory explanations; first, that the
operation in question, the puncture or insertion, was performed by a
wasp; secondly, that, though he did it himself with a pin and in his
haste allowed that pin in damnatory evidence to remain, it was because,
he alleges, of my client's posture toward, and intermittent contact
with him--does it not seem to your Honor that such a witness is to be
discredited in any statement he may make?”
“Well, really, Mr. Ballister, but you see Albion oughtn't to've squatted
on him.”
“I find myself in a singular position. It has not been usual in my
experience to find the Court a pleader in opposition. I came hoping to
inform and persuade your Honor regarding this case. I find myself in
the position of being informed and persuaded. I hope the Court sees
no discourtesy in the remark, but if the Court is prepared already to
discuss the case there seems little for me to do.”
The Justice looked alarmed. He felt his popularity trembling. It would
not do to balk the public interest in Ballister's oratory. Doubtless Jay
Dee had stuck a pin into Albion, but maybe Albion had mussed Jay's hair
and jabbed his ear, had dragged and shaken him in the aisle at least.
The rights of it did not seem difficult. They ought not to have acted
that way. No man has the right to sit on another man's head from the
standpoint or advantage of his own religious conviction. Nor has a man
a right to use another man for a pincushion whenever, as it may be,
he finds something about him in a way that's like a pincushion. But
Ballister's oratory was critical and important.
“Why,” said Kemegan hastily, “this Court is in a mighty uncertain state
of mind. It couldn't make it up without hearing what you were going to
say.”
Again the Court murmured with approval. Ballister rose.
“This case presents singular features. The secret and sunless caverns,
where human motives lie concealed, it is the function of justice to lay
open to vivifying light. Not only evil or good intentions are moving
forces of apparent action, but mistakes and misjudgments.
I conclude that your Honor puts down the defendant's fanciful and
predatory wasp to the defendant's neglect of legal advice, to his feeble
and guilty inepitude. I am willing to leave it there. I assume that he
confesses the assault on my client's person with a pin, an insidious and
lawless pin, pointed with cruelty and propelled with spite; I infer
and understand that he offers in defence a certain alleged provocation,
certain insertions of my client's elbow into the defendant's ear,
certain trespasses and disturbance of the defendant's hair, finally,
certain approximations and contacts between my client's adjacent quarter
and the defendant's shoulders, denominated by him--and here we demur or
object--as an act of sitting or squatting, whereby the defendant alleges
himself to have been touched, grieved and annoyed. In the defendant's
parsimonious neglect of counsel we generously supply him with a fair
statement of his case. I return to my client.
“Your Honor, what nobler quality is there in our defective nature than
that which enables the earnest man, whether as a citizen or in divine
worship, whether in civil matters or religious, to abide steadfastly by
his conscience and convictions. He stands a pillar of principle, a rock
in the midst of uncertain waters. The feeble look up to him and are
encouraged, the false and shifty are ashamed. His eye is fixed on the
future. Posterity shall judge him. Small matters of his environment
escape his notice. His mind is on higher things.
“I am not prepared to forecast the judgment of posterity on that point
of ritualistic devotion to which my client is so devoted an advocate.
Neither am I anxious or troubled to seek opinion whether my client
inserted his elbow into the defendant's ear, or the defendant,
maliciously or inadvertently, by some rotatory motion, applied, bumped
or banged his ear against my client's elbow; whether the defendant
rubbed or impinged with his head on the appendant coat tails of
my client, or the reverse. I am uninterested in the alternative,
indifferent to the whole matter. It seems to me an academic question. If
the defendant so acted, it is not the action of which we complain. If
my client once, twice, or even at sundry times, in his stern absorption,
did not observe what may in casual accident have taken place behind,
what then? I ask your Honor, what then? Did the defendant by a slight
removal, by suggestion, by courteous remonstrance, attempt to obviate
the difficulty? No! Did he remember those considerate virtues enjoined
in Scripture, or the sacred place and ceremony in which he shared? No!
Like a serpent, he coiled and waited. He hid his hypocrisy in white
hairs, his venomous purpose in attitudes of reverence. He darkened his
morbid malice till it festered, corroded, corrupted. He brooded over his
fancied injury and developed his base design. Resolved and prepared,
he watched his opportunity. With brazen and gangrened pin of malicious
point and incensed propulsion, with averted eye and perfidious hand,
with sudden, secret, backward thrust, with all the force of accumulated,
diseased, despicable spite, he darted like a serpent's fang this
misapplied instrument into the unprotected posterior, a sensitive
portion, most outlying and exposed, of my client's person.
“This action, your Honor, I conceive to be in intent and performance a
felonious, injurious and sufficient assault. For this injury, for
pain, indignity and insult, for the vindication of justice in state and
community, for the protection of the citizen from bold or treacherous
attack, anterior or posterior, vanguard or rear, I ask your Honor that
damages be given my client adequate to that injury, adequate to that
vindication and protection.”
So much and more Ballister spoke. Mr. Kernegan took off his spectacles
and rubbed his forehead.
“Well,” he said, “I guess Mr. Ballister'll charge Albion about forty
dollars--”
Ballister started up.
“Don't interrupt the Court. It's worth all that. Albion and Jay haven't
been acting right and they ought to pay for it between 'em. The Court
decides Jay Dee shall pay twenty dollars damages and costs.”
The court-room murmured with approval.
* * * * *
The twilight was gathering as Albion drove across the old covered bridge
and turned into the road that leads to Ironville through a gloomy gorge
of hemlock trees and low-browed rocks. The road keeps to the left above
Diggory Brook, which murmurs in recesses below and waves little ghostly
white garments over its waterfalls. Such is this murmur and the soft
noise of the wind in the hemlocks, that the gorge is ever filled with
a sound of low complaint. Twilight in the open sky is night below the
hemlocks. At either end of the avenue you note where the light still
glows fadingly. There lie the hopes and possibilities of a worldly day,
skies, fields and market-places, to-days, to-morrows and yesterdays,
and men walking about with confidence in their footing. But here the
hemlocks stand beside in black order of pillars and whisper together
distrustfully. The man who passes you is a nameless shadow with an
intrusive, heavy footfall. Low voices float up from the pit of the
gorge, intimations, regrets, discouragements, temptations.
A house and mill once stood at the lower end of it, and there, a century
ago, was a wild crime done on a certain night; the dead bodies of the
miller and his children lay on the floor, except one child, who hid and
crept out in the grass; little trickles of blood stole along the cracks;
house and mill blazed and fell down into darkness; a maniac cast his
dripping axe into Diggory Brook and fled away yelling among the hills.
Not that this had made the gorge any darker, or that its whispers are
supposed to relate to any such memories. The brook comes from swamps
and meadows like other brooks, and runs into the Pilgrim River. It is
shallow and rapid, though several have contrived to fall and be drowned
in it. One wonders how it could have happened. The old highway leading
from Ramoth village to the valley has been grass-grown for generations,
but that is because the other road is more direct to the Valley
settlement and the station. The water of the brook is clear and pleasant
enough. Much trillium, with its leaves like dark red splashes, a plant
of sullen color and solitary station, used to grow there, but does so no
more. Slender birches now creep down almost to the mouth of the gorge,
and stand with white stems and shrinking, trembling leaves. But birches
grow nearly everywhere.
Albion drove steadily up the darkened road, till his horse dropped
into a walk behind an indistinguishable object that crept in front with
creaking wheels. He shouted for passage and turned into the ditch on the
side away from the gorge. The shadowy vehicle drifted slantingly aside.
Albion started his horse; the front wheels of the two clicked, grated,
slid inside each other and locked. Albion spoke impatiently. He was ever
for quick decisions. He backed his horse, and the lock became hopeless.
The unknown made no comment, no noise. The hemlocks whispered, the
brook muttered in its pit and shook the little white garments of its
waterfalls.
“Crank your wheel a trifle now.”
The other did not move.
“Who are you? Can't ye speak?”
No answer.
Albion leaned over his wheel, felt the seat rail of the other vehicle,
and brought his face close to something white--white hair about the
approximate outline of a face. By the hair crossed by the falling hat
brim, by the shoulders seen vaguely to be bent forward, by the loose
creaking wheels of the buck-board he knew Jay Dee. The two stood
close and breathless, face to face, but featureless and apart by the
unmeasured distance of obscurity.
Albion felt a sudden uneasy thrill and drew back. He dreaded to hear
Jay Dee's spiritless complaining voice, too much in the nature of that
dusky, uncanny place. He felt as if something cold, damp and impalpable
were drawing closer to him, whispering, calling his attention to the
gorge, how black and steep! to the presence of Jay Dee, how near! to
the close secret hemlocks covering the sky. This was not agreeable to a
positive man, a man without fancies. Jay Dee sighed at last, softly, and
spoke, piping, thin, half-moaning:
“You're following me. Let me alone!”
“I'm not following you,” said Albion hoarsely. “Crank your wheel!”
“You're following me. I'm an old man. You're only fifty.”
Albion breathed hard in the darkness. He did not understand either Jay
Dee or himself. After a silence Jay Dee went on:
“I haven't any kin but you, Albion, except Stephen Ballister and the
Winslows. They're only fourth cousins.”
Albion growled.
“What do you mean?”
“Without my making a will it'd come to you, wouldn't it? Seems to me as
if you oughtn't to pester me, being my nearest kin, and me, I ain't made
any will. I got a little property, though it ain't much. 'Twould clear
your mortgage and make you easy.”
“What d'you mean?”
“Twenty dollars and costs,” moaned Jay Dee. “And me an old man, getting
ready for his latter end soon. I ain't made my will, either. I ought
to've done it.”
What could Jay Dee mean? If he made no will his property would come to
Albion. No will made yet. A hinted intention to make one in favor of
Stephen Ballister or the Winslows. The foundry was mortgaged.--Jay
was worth sixty thousand. Diggory Gorge was a dark whispering place
of ancient crime, of more than one unexplained accident. The hemlocks
whispered, the brook gurgled and glimmered. Such darkness might well
cloak and cover the sunny instincts that look upwards, scruples of the
social daylight. Would Jay Dee trap him to his ruin? Jay Dee would not
expect to enjoy it if he were dead himself. But accidents befall, and
men not seldom meet sudden deaths, and an open, free-speaking neighbor
is not suspected. Success lies before him in the broad road.
It rushed through Albion's mind, a flood, sudden, stupefying--thoughts
that he could not master, push back, or stamp down.
He started and roused himself; his hands were cold and shaking. He
sprang from his buggy and cried angrily:
“What d'ye mean by all that? Tempt me, a God-fearing man? Throw ye off'n
the gorge! Break your old neck! I've good notion to it, if I wasn't a
God-fearing man. Crank your wheel there!”