THE little boy was afraid to go into the dark room on the other side of
the hall, and the little boy’s father was disgusted with him. “Aren’t
you ashamed of yourself, Ludlum Thomas?” the father called from his seat
by the library lamp. “Eight years old and scared! Scared to step into a
room and turn the light on! Why, when I was your age I used to go out to
the barn after dark in the winter-time, and up into the loft, all by
myself, and pitch hay down to the horse through the chute. You walk
straight into that dining-room, turn on the light, and get what you
want; and don’t let’s have any more fuss about it. You hear me?”
Ludlum disregarded this speech. “Mamma,” he called, plaintively, “I want
you to come and turn the light on for me. _Please_, mamma!”
Mrs. Thomas, across the library table from her husband, looked troubled,
and would have replied, but the head of the house checked her.
“Now let me,” he said. Then he called again: “You going in there and do
what I say, or not?”
“Please come on, mamma,” Ludlum begged. “Mamma, I lef’ my bow-an’-arry
in the dining-room, an’ I want to get it out o’ there so’s I can take it
up to bed with me. Mamma, won’t you please come turn the light on for
me?”
“No, she will not!” Mr. Thomas shouted. “What on earth are you afraid
of?”
“Mamma——”
“Stop calling your mother! She’s not coming. You were sitting in the
dining-room yourself, not more than an hour ago, at dinner, and you
weren’t afraid then, were you?”
Ludlum appeared between the brown curtains of the library doorway—the
sketch of a rather pale child-prince in black velvet. “No, but——” he
said.
“But what?”
“It was all light in there then. Mamma an’ you were in there, too.”
“Now look here!” Mr. Thomas paused, rested his book upon his knee, and
spoke slowly. “You know there’s nothing in that dining-room except the
table and the chairs and the sideboard, don’t you?”
Ludlum’s eyes were not upon his father but upon the graceful figure at
the other side of the table. “Mamma,” he said, “won’t you _please_ come
get my bow-an’-arry for me?”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Yes, sir,” the boy replied, with eyes still pleadingly upon his mother.
“Well, then, what is there to be afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid,” said Ludlum. “It’s dark in there.”
“It won’t be dark if you turn on the light, will it?”
“Mamma——”
“Now, that’s enough!” the father interrupted testily. “It’s after eight.
You go on up to bed.”
Ludlum’s tone began to indicate a mental strain. “I don’t _want_ to go
to bed without my bow-an’-arry!”
“What do you want your bow and arrow when you’re in bed for?”
“I got to have it!”
“See here!” said Mr. Thomas. “You march up to bed and quit talking about
your bow and arrow. You can take them with you if you go in there right
quick and get them; but whether you do that or not you’ll march to bed
inside of one minute from now!”
“I _got_ to have my bow-an’-arry. I got to, to go upstairs _with_.”
“You don’t want your bow and arrow in bed with you, do you?”
“Mamma!” Thus Ludlum persisted in his urgent appeal to that court in
whose clemency he trusted. “Mamma, will you _please_ come get my
bow-an’——”
“No, she won’t.”
“Then will you come upstairs with me, mamma?”
“No, she won’t! You’ll go by yourself, like a man.”
“Mamma——”
Mrs. Thomas intervened cheerily. “Don’t be afraid, dearie,” she said.
“Your papa thinks you ought to begin to learn how to be manly; but the
lights are lit all the way, and I told Annie to turn on the one in your
room. You just go ahead like a good boy, and when you’re all undressed
and ready to jump in bed, then you just whistle for me——”
“I don’t want to whistle,” said Ludlum irritably. “I want my
bow-an’-arry!”
“Look here!” cried his father. “You start for——”
“I got to have my bow-an’——”
“You mean to disobey me?”
“I _got_ to have my——”
Mr. Thomas rose; his look became ominous. “We’ll see about that!” he
said; and he approached his son, whose apprehensions were expressed in a
loud cry.
“_Mamma!_”
“Don’t hurt his feel——” Mrs. Thomas began.
“Something’s got to be done,” her husband said grimly, and his hand fell
upon Ludlum’s shoulder. “You march!”
Ludlum muttered vaguely.
“You march!”
“I got to have my bow-an’-arry! I _can’t_ go to bed ’less mamma comes
with me! She’s _got_ to come with me!”
Suddenly he made a scene. Having started it, he went in for all he was
worth and made it a big one. He shrieked, writhed away from his father’s
hand, darted to his mother, and clung to her with spasmodic violence
throughout the protracted efforts of the sterner parent to detach him.
When these efforts were finally successful, Ludlum plunged upon the
floor, and fastened himself to the leg of a heavy table. Here, for a
considerable time, he proved the superiority of an earnest boy’s wind
and agility over those of a man: as soon as one part of him was
separated from the leg of the table another part of him became attached
to it; and all the while he was vehemently eloquent, though
unrhetorical.
The pain he thus so powerfully expressed was undeniable; and nowadays
few adults are capable of resisting such determined agony. The end of it
was, that when Ludlum retired he was accompanied by both parents, his
father carrying him, and Mrs. Thomas following close behind with the
bow-an’-arry.
They were thoughtful when they returned to the library.
“I _would_ like to know what got him into such a state,” said the
father, groaning, as he picked up his book from the floor. “He used to
march upstairs like a little man, and he wasn’t afraid of the dark, or
of anything else; but he’s beginning to be afraid of his own shadow.
What’s the matter with him?”
Mrs. Thomas shook her head. “I think it’s his constitution,” she said.
“I don’t believe he’s as strong as we thought he was.”
“‘Strong!’” her husband repeated incredulously. “Have I been dreaming,
or _were_ you looking on when I was trying to pry him loose from that
table-leg?”
“I mean nervously,” she said. “I don’t think his nerves are what they
ought to be at all.”
“His nerve isn’t!” he returned. “That’s what I’m talking about! Why was
he afraid to step into our dining-room—not thirty feet from where we
were sitting?”
“Because it was dark in there. Poor child, he _did_ want his bow and
arrow!”
“Well, he got ’em! What did he want ’em for?”
“To protect himself on the way to bed.”
“To keep off burglars on our lighted stairway?”
“I suppose so,” said Mrs. Thomas. “Burglars or something.”
“Well, where’d he get such ideas _from_?”
“I don’t know. Nearly all children do get them.”
“I know one thing,” Mr. Thomas asserted, “_I_ certainly never was afraid
like that, and none of my brothers was, either. Do you suppose the
children Ludlum plays with tell him things that make him afraid of the
dark?”
“I don’t think so, because he plays with the same children now that he
played with before he got so much this way. Of course he’s always been a
_little_ timid.”
“Well, I’d like to know what’s at the root of it. Something’s got into
his head. That’s certain, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Thomas said musingly. “I believe fear of the dark
is a sort of instinct, don’t you?”
“Then why does he keep having it more and more? Instinct? No, sir! I
don’t know where he gets this silly scaredness from, nor what makes it,
but I know that it won’t do to humour him in it. We’ve got to be firmer
with him after this than we were to-night. I’m not going to have a son
of mine grow up to be afraid!”
“Yes; I suppose we ought to be a _little_ firmer with him,” she said
dreamily.
However, for several days and nights there was no occasion to exercise
this new policy of firmness with Ludlum, one reason being that he was
careful not to leave his trusty bow and arrow in an unlighted room after
dark. Three successive evenings, weapon in hand, he “marched” sturdily
to bed; but on the fourth he was reluctant, even though equipped as
usual.
“Is Annie upstairs?” he inquired querulously, when informed that his
hour had struck.
“I’m not sure, dearie,” said his mother. “I think so. It’s her evening
out, but I don’t think she’s gone.”
Standing in the library doorway, Ludlum sent upward a series of piercing
cries: “Annie! Ann_ee_! Ann-_ee_! Oh, _Ann-nee-ee_!”
“Stop it!” Mr. Thomas commanded fiercely. “You want to break your
mother’s ear-drums?”
“Ann-nee-_eeee_!”
“Stop that noise!”
“Ann——”
“Stop it!” Mr. Thomas made the gesture of rising, and Ludlum,
interrupting himself abruptly, was silent until he perceived that his
father’s threat to rise was only a gesture, whereupon he decided that
his vocalizations might safely be renewed.
“Ann-_nee-ee_!”
“What _is_ the matter with him?”
“Ludlum, dear,” said Mrs. Thomas, “what is it you want Annie for?”
“I want to know if she’s upstairs.”
“But what for?”
Ludlum’s expression became one of determination. “Well, I want to know,”
he replied. “I got to know if Annie’s upstairs.”
“By George!” Mr. Thomas exclaimed suddenly. “I believe _now_ he’s afraid
to go upstairs unless he knows the housemaid’s up there!”
“Martha’s probably upstairs if Annie isn’t,” Mrs. Thomas hurriedly
intervened. “You needn’t worry about whether Annie’s up there, Luddie,
if Martha is. Martha wouldn’t let anything hurt you any more than Annie
would, dear.”
“Great heavens!” her husband cried. “There’s nothing up there that’s
going to hurt him whether a hundred cooks and housemaids are upstairs or
downstairs, or in the house or out of it! _That’s_ no way to talk to
him, Jennie! Ludlum, you march straight——”
“Ann-_nee-ee_!”
“But, dearie,” said Mrs. Thomas, “I told you that Martha wouldn’t let
anything hurt——”
“She isn’t there,” Ludlum declared. “I can hear her chinkin’ tin and
dishes around in the kitchen.” And, again exerting all his vocal powers
of penetration, “_Oh, Ann-ee-ee!_” he bawled.
“By George!” Mr. Thomas exclaimed. “This is awful! It’s just awful!”
“Don’t call any more, darling,” the mother gently urged. “It disturbs
your papa.”
“But, Jennie, that isn’t the reason he oughtn’t to call. It does disturb
me, but the real reason he oughtn’t to do it is because he oughtn’t to
be afraid to——”
“_Ann-ee-EE!_”
Mr. Thomas uttered a loud cry of his own, and, dismissing gestures, rose
from his chair prepared to act. But his son briskly disappeared from the
doorway; he had been reassured from the top of the stairs. Annie had
responded, and Ludlum sped upward cheerfully. The episode was
closed—except in meditation.
There was another one during the night, however. At least, Mr. Thomas
thought so, for at the breakfast table he inquired: “Was any one out of
bed about half-past two? Something half woke me, and I thought it
sounded like somebody knocking on a door, and then whispering.”
Mrs. Thomas laughed. “It was only Luddie,” she explained. “He had bad
dreams, and came to my door, so I took him in with me for the rest of
the night. He’s all right, now, aren’t you, Luddie? Mamma didn’t let the
bad dream hurt her little boy, did she?”
“It wasn’t dreams,” said Ludlum. “I was awake. I thought there was
somep’m in my room. I bet there _was_ somep’m in there, las’ night!”
“Oh, murder!” his father lamented. “Boy nine years old got to go and
wake up his _mamma_ in the middle of the night, because he’s scared to
sleep in his own bed with a hall-light shining through the transom! What
on earth were you afraid of?”
Ludlum’s eyes clung to the consoling face of his mother. “I never said I
_was_ afraid. I woke up, an’ I thought I saw somep’m in there.”
“What kind of a ‘something’?”
Ludlum looked resentful. “Well, I guess I know what I’m talkin’ about,”
he said importantly. “I bet there _was_ somep’m, too!”
“I declare I’m ashamed,” Mr. Thomas groaned. “Here’s the boy’s godfather
coming to visit us, and how’s he going to help find out we’re raising a
coward?”
“John!” his wife exclaimed. “The idea of speaking like that just because
Luddie can’t help being a little imaginative!”
“Well, it’s true,” he said. “I’m ashamed for Lucius to find it out.”
Mrs. Thomas laughed, and then, finding the large eyes of Ludlum fixed
upon her hopefully, she shook her head. “Don’t you worry, darling,” she
reassured him. “You needn’t be afraid of what Uncle Lucius will think of
his dear little Luddie.”
“I’m not,” Ludlum returned complacently. “He gave me a dollar las’ time
he was here.”
“Well, he won’t this time,” his father declared crossly. “Not after the
way you’ve been behaving lately. I’ll see to that!”
Ludlum’s lower lip moved pathetically and his eyes became softly
brilliant—manifestations that increased the remarkable beauty he
inherited from his mother.
“John!” cried Mrs. Thomas indignantly.
Ludlum wept at once, and between his gulpings implored his mother to
prevent his father from influencing Uncle Lucius against the giving of
dollars. “Don’t _let_ him, mamma!” he quavered. “An’ ’fif Uncle Lucius
wuw-wants to give me a dollar, he’s got a right to, hasn’t he, mamma?
_Hasn’t_ he got a right to, mamma?”
“There, dearie! Of course!” she comforted him. “Papa won’t tell Uncle
Lucius. Papa is sorry, and only wants you to be happy and not cry any
more.”
Papa’s manner indicated somewhat less sympathy than she implied;
nevertheless, he presently left the house in a condition vaguely
remorseful, which still prevailed, to the extent of a slight
preoccupation, when he met Uncle Lucius at the train at noon.
Uncle Lucius—Lucius Brutus Allen, attorney-at-law of Marlow, Illinois,
population more than three thousand, if you believed him—this Uncle
Lucius was a reassuring sight, even to the eyes of a remorseful father
who had been persecuting the beautiful child of a lovely mother.
Mr. Allen was no legal uncle to Ludlum: he was really Mrs. Thomas’s
second cousin, and, ever since she was eighteen and he twenty-four, had
been her favoured squire. In fact, during her young womanhood, Mrs.
Thomas and others had taken it as a matter of course that Lucius was in
love with her; certainly that appeared to be his condition.
However, with the advent of Mr. John Thomas, Lucius Brutus Allen gave
ground without resistance, and even assisted matters in a way which
might have suggested to an outsider that he was something of a
matchmaker as well as something of a lover. With a bravery that touched
both the bride and bridegroom, he had stood up to the functions of Best
Man without a quaver—and, of course, since the day of Ludlum’s arrival
in the visible world, had been “Uncle Lucius.”
He was thirty-five; of a stoutish, stocky figure; large-headed and
thin-haired; pinkish and cheerful and warm. His warmth was due partly to
the weather, and led to a continuous expectancy on the part of Ludlum,
for it was the habit of Uncle Lucius to keep his handkerchief in a
pocket of his trousers. From the hour of his arrival, every time that
Uncle Lucius put his hand in his pocket and drew forth a handkerchief to
dry his dewy brow, Ludlum suffered a disappointment.
In fact, the air was so sticky that these disappointments were almost
continuous, with the natural result that Ludlum became peevish; for
nobody can be distinctly disappointed a dozen or so times an hour,
during the greater part of an afternoon, and remain buoyantly amiable.
Finally he could bear it no longer. He had followed his parents and
Uncle Lucius out to the comfortable porch, which gave them ampler air
and the pretty sight of Mrs. Thomas’s garden, but no greater coolness;
and here Uncle Lucius, instead of bringing forth from his pocket a
dollar, produced, out of that storage, a fresh handkerchief.
“Goodness me, but you got to wipe your ole face a lot!” said Ludlum in a
voice of pure spitefulness. “I guess why you’re so hot mus’ be you stuff
yourself at meals, an’ got all fat the way you are!”
Wherewith, he emitted a shrill and bitter laugh of self-applause for
wit, while his parents turned to gaze upon him—Mrs. Thomas with
surprise, and Mr. Thomas with dismay. To both of them his rudeness
crackled out of a clear sky; they saw it as an effect detached from
cause; therefore inexplicable.
“Ludlum!” said the father sharply.
“Dearie!” said the mother.
But the visitor looked closely at the vexed face. “What is it you’ve
decided you don’t like about me, Luddie?” he asked.
“You’re too fat!” said Ludlum.
Both parents uttered exclamations of remonstrance, but Mr. Allen
intervened. “I’m not so very fat,” he said. “I’ve just realized what the
trouble between us is, Luddie. I overlooked something entirely, but I’ll
fix it all right when we’re alone together. Now that I’ve explained
about it, you won’t mind how often I take my handkerchief out of my
pocket, will you?”
“What in the world!” Mrs. Thomas exclaimed. “What are you talking
about?”
“It’s all right,” said Lucius.
Ludlum laughed; his face was restored to its serene beauty. Obviously,
he again loved his Uncle Lucius, and a perfect understanding, mysterious
to the parents, now existed between godfather and godson. In
celebration, Ludlum shouted and ran to caper in the garden.
“By George!” said John Thomas. “You seem to understand him! I don’t. I
don’t know what the dickens is in his mind, half the time.”
Mrs. Thomas laughed condescendingly. “No wonder!” she said. “You’re
down-town all the daytime and never see him except at breakfast and in
the evenings.”
“There’s one thing puzzles me about it,” said John. “If you understand
him so well, why don’t you ever tell _me_ how to? What made him so
smart-alecky to Lucius just now?”
Again she laughed with condescension. “Why, Luddie didn’t mean to be
fresh at all. He just spoke without thinking.”
But upon hearing this interpretation, Mr. Allen cast a rueful glance at
his lovely cousin. “Quite so!” he said. “Children can’t tell their
reasons, but they’ve always got ’em!”
“Oh, no, they haven’t,” she laughed. And then she jumped, for there came
a heavy booming of thunder from that part of the sky which the roof of
the porch concealed from them. The sunshine over the pink-speckled
garden vanished; all the blossoms lost colour and grew wan, fluttering
in an ominous breeze; at once a high wind whipped round the house and
the row of straight poplars beyond the garden showed silver sides.
“_Luddie!_” shrieked Mrs. Thomas; and he shrieked in answer; came
running, just ahead of the rain. She seized his hand, and fled with him
into the house.
“You remember how afraid they are of lightning,” said John
apologetically. “Lightning and thunder. I never could understand it, but
I suppose it’s genuine and painful.”
“It’s both,” the visitor remarked. “You wouldn’t think I’m that way,
too, would you?”
“You are?”
“Makes me nervous as a cat.”
“Did you inherit it?”
“I don’t think so,” said Lucius; and he waved his host’s silent offer of
a cigar. “No, thanks. Never want to smoke in a thunder-storm.
I—_Whoo!_” he interrupted himself, as a flare of light and a
catastrophe of sound came simultaneously. “Let’s go in,” he said mildly.
“Not I. I love to watch it.”
“Well——” Lucius paused, but at a renewal of the catastrophe, “Excuse
_me_!” he said, and tarried no longer.
He found Mrs. Thomas and Ludlum in the centre of the darkened
drawing-room. She was sitting in a gilt chair with her feet off the
floor and upon a rung of the chair; and four heavy, flat-bottomed
drinking-glasses were upon the floor, each of them containing the foot
of a leg of the gilt chair. Ludlum was upon her lap.
“Don’t you believe in insulation, Lucius?” she asked anxiously. “As long
as we sit like this, we can’t be struck, can we?”
He put on his glasses and gave her a solemn stare before replying. “I
don’t know about that,” he said. “Of course John is safer out on the
porch than we are in here.”
“Oh, no, no!” she cried. “A porch is the most dangerous place there
_is_!”
“I don’t know whether or not he’s safe from the lightning,” Lucius
explained. “I mean he’s safe from being troubled about it the way we
are.”
“I don’t call that being safe,” his lady-cousin began. “I don’t see
what——”
But she broke off to find place for a subdued shriek, as an admiral’s
salute of great guns jarred the house. Other salutes followed,
interjected, in spite of drawn shades and curtains, with spurts of light
into the room, and at each spurt Mrs. Thomas shivered and said “Oh!” in
a low voice, whereupon Ludlum jumped and said “Ouch!” likewise in a low
voice. Then, at the ensuing crash, Mrs. Thomas emitted a little scream,
and Ludlum emitted a large one.
“Ouch! _Ow!_” he vociferated. “Mamma, I want it to stop! Mamma, I can’t
stand it! I can’t _stand_ it!”
“It’s odd,” said Lucius, during an interregnum. “The thunder frightens
us more than the lightning, doesn’t it?”
“They’re both so horrible,” she murmured. “I’m glad they affect you this
way, too, Lucius. It’s comforting. Do you think it’s almost over?”
“I’ll see,” he said; and he went to a window, whither Ludlum, having
jumped down, followed him.
“Don’t open the curtains much,” Mrs. Thomas begged, not leaving her
chair. “Windows are always dangerous. And come away from the window,
Luddie. The lightning might——”
She shrieked at a flash and boom, and Luddie came away from the window.
Voiceless—he was so startled—he scrambled toward his mother, his arms
outstretched, his feet slipping on the polished floor; then, leaping
upon her lap, he clung to her wildly; gulped, choked, and found his
voice. He howled.
“That was about the last, I think,” observed Lucius, from the window.
“It’s beginning to clear already. Nothing but a shower to make things
cooler for us. Let’s go play with old John again. Come on, Luddie.”
But Ludlum clung to his mother, remonstrating. “No!” he cried. “Mamma,
you got to stay in the house. I don’t want to go out there. It might
begin again!”
She laughed soothingly. “But Uncle Lucius says it’s all over now,
darling. Let’s go and——”
“I _d’wawn_’ to! I won’t go out of the house. You tell me a story.”
“Well,” she began, “once upon a time there was a good fairy and there
was a bad fairy——”
“Where’d they live?”
“Oh, in a town—under some flowers in a garden in the town.”
“Like our garden?”
“I suppose so,” she assented. “And the good fairy——”
“Listen, mamma,” said Ludlum. “If they lived in the garden like those
fairies you were tellin’ me about yesterday, they could come in the
windows of the house where the pretty little boy lived, couldn’t they?”
“I suppose so.”
At this Ludlum’s expression became apprehensive and his voice peevish.
“Well, then,” he complained, “if there was a window open at night, or
just maybe through a crack under the door, the bad fairy could slip up
behind the pretty little boy, or into the pretty little boy’s bedroom,
an’——”
“No, no!” his mother laughed, stroking his head. “You see, the good
fairy would always be watching, too, and the good fairy wouldn’t let the
bad fairy hurt the pretty little boy.”
The apprehensive expression was not altogether soothed from the pretty
little boy’s face. However, he said: “Go on. Tell what happened. Did the
pretty little boy——”
“Lucius!” Mrs. Thomas exclaimed, “don’t stay here to be bored by Luddie
and me. I’ve got to tell him this story——”
“Yes,” Ludlum eagerly agreed. “An’ then afterward she has to read me a
chapter in our book.”
“So you go and make John tell _you_ a story, Lucius. I have to be polite
to Luddie because he’s had such a fright, poor blessed child!”
Lucius was obedient: he rejoined John upon the porch, and the two men
chatted for a time.
“What book is Jennie reading to the boy?” Mr. Allen inquired, after a
subsequent interval of silence.
“I don’t know just now. Classic fiction of some sort, probably. She’s
great on preparing his mind to be literary; reads an hour to him every
day, and sometimes longer—translations—mythology—everything. All
about gods and goddesses appearing out of the air to heroes, and Medusa
heads and what not. Then standard works: Cooper, Bulwer, Scott,
Hugo—some of the great romances.”
“I see,” said Lucius. “She always did go at things thoroughly. I
remember,” he went on, with a musing chuckle, “I remember how I got hold
of Bulwer’s ‘Zanoni’ and ‘Strange Story’ when I was about ten years old.
By George! I’ve been afraid to go home in the dark ever since!”
“You have?” John smiled; then sent a serious and inquiring glance at the
visitor, who remained placid. “Of course Jennie doesn’t read ‘Zanoni’ to
Ludlum.”
“No, she wouldn’t,” said Lucius. “Not till he’s older. She’d read him
much less disturbing things at his age, of course.”
His host made no additional comment upon the subject, but appeared to
sit in some perplexity.
Mr. Allen observed him calmly; then, after a time, went into the
house—to get a cigar of his own, he said.
In the hall he paused, listening. From the library came Mrs. Thomas’s
voice, reading with fine dramatic fire:
“‘What! thou frontless dastard, thou—thou who didst wait for opened
gate and lowered bridge, when Conrad Horst forced his way over moat and
wall, must _thou_ be malapert? Knit him up to the stanchions of the
hall-window! He shall beat time with his feet while we drink a cup to
his safe passage to the devil!’
“‘The doom was scarce sooner pronounced than accomplished; and in a
moment the wretch wrestled out his last agonies, suspended from the iron
bars. His body still hung there when our young hero entered the hall,
and, intercepting the pale moonbeam, threw on the castle-floor an
uncertain shadow, which dubiously yet fearfully intimated the nature of
the substance which produced it.
“‘When the syndic——’”
Ludlum interrupted. “Mamma, what’s a stanchion?” His voice was low and a
little husky.
“It’s a kind of an iron bar, or something, I think,” Mrs. Thomas
answered. “I’m not sure.”
“Well, does it mean—mamma, what does it mean when it says ‘he wrested
out his last annogies?’”
“‘Agonies,’ dear. It doesn’t mean anything that little boys ought to
think about. This is a very unpleasant part of the book, and we’ll hurry
on to where it’s all about knights and ladies, and pennons fluttering in
the sunshine and——”
“No; I don’t want you to hurry. I like to hear this part, too. It’s
nice. Go on, mamma.”
She continued, and between the curtains at the door, Lucius caught a
glimpse of them. Sunlight touched them through a window; she sat in a
high-backed chair; the dark-curled boy, upon a stool, huddling to her
knee; and, as they sat thus, reading “Quentin Durward,” they were like a
mother and son in stained glass—or like a Countess, in an old romance,
reading to the Young Heir. And Lucius Brutus Allen had the curious
impression that, however dimly, both of them were conscious of some such
picturesque resemblance.
Unseen, he withdrew from the renewed sound of the reading, and again
went out to sit with John upon the porch, but Mrs. Thomas and Ludlum did
not rejoin them until the announcement of dinner. When the meal was
over, Lucius and his hostess played cribbage in the library; something
they did at all their reunions—a commemoration of an evening habit of
old days. But to-night their game was interrupted, a whispering in the
hall becoming more and more audible as it increased in virility; while
protests on the part of a party of the second part punctuated and
accented the whispering:
“I _d’wawn_’ to!” . . . “I won’t!” . . . “I _will_ ast mama!” . . .
“Leggo!”
The whispering became a bass staccato, though subdued, under the breath;
protests became monosyllabic, but increased in passion; short-clipped
squealings and infantile grunts were heard—and then suddenly, yet
almost deliberately, a wide-mouthed roar of human agony dismayed the
echoing walls.
The cavern whence issued the horrid sound was the most conspicuous thing
in the little world of that house, as Ludlum dashed into the library.
Even in her stress of sympathy, the mother could not forbear to cry:
“Don’t, Luddie! Don’t stretch your mouth like that! You’ll spoil the
shape of it.”
But Ludlum cared nothing for shape. Open to all the winds, he plunged
toward his mother; and cribbage-board, counters, and cards went to the
floor.
“Darling!” she implored. “What has hurt mamma’s little boy so awfully?
Tell mamma!”
In her arms, his inclement eyes salting his cheeks, the vocal pitch of
his despair rose higher and higher like the voice of a reluctant pump.
“_Papa twissud my wrist!_” he finally became coherent enough to declare.
“What!”
“He did!” All in falsetto Ludlum sobbed his version of things. “He—he
suss-said I had to gug-go up to bed all—all alone. He grabbed me! He
hurt! He said I couldn’t interrup’ your ole gug-game! ’N’ he said, ‘I’ll
show you!’ ’N’ then—then—then—he _twissud_ my _wrist_!”
At that she gathered him closer to her, and rose, holding him in her
arms. Her face was deeply flushed, and her shining eyes avoided her
husband, who stood near the doorway.
“Put him down, Jennie,” he said mildly. “I——”
Straightway she strode by him, carrying her child. She did not pause,
nor speak aloud, yet Lucius and John both heard the whispered word that
crumpled the latter as the curtains waved with the angry breeze of her
passing. “Shame!”
Meanwhile, Lucius, on his knees—for he never regarded his trousers
seriously—began to collect dispersed cards and pegs. “What say?” he
inquired, upon some gaspings of his unfortunate friend, John.
“She believed it!” (These stricken words came from a deep chair in the
shadows.) “She thought I actually did twist his wrist!”
“Oh, no,” said Lucius. “She didn’t believe anything of the kind. Darn
that peg!” With face to the floor and in an attitude of Oriental
devotion, he appeared to be worshipping the darkness under a divan. “She
was merely reacting to the bellow of her offspring. She knew he invented
it, as well as you did.”
“It’s incredible!” said John. “The cold-blooded cunning of it! He was
bound to have his way, and make her go up with him; and I’d turned him
toward the stairway by his shoulders, and he tried to hold himself back
by catching at one of those big chairs in the hall. I caught his wrist
to keep him from holding to the chair—and I held him a second or two,
not moving. The little pirate decided on the thing then and there, in
his mind. He understood perfectly well he could make it all the more
horrible because you were here, visiting us. I swear it appals me! What
sort of a nature _is_ that?”
“Oh,” said Lucius, “just natural nature. Same as you and me.”
“I’d hate to believe that!”
“You and I got ashamed long ago of the tricks that came in our minds to
play,” said Lucius, groping under the divan. “We got ashamed so often
that they don’t come any more.”
“Yes, but it ought to be time they stopped coming into that boy’s mind.
He was eight last month.”
“Yes—darn that peg!—there seems to be something in what you say. But
of course Luddie thought he was in a fix that was just as bad to him as
it would be to me if somebody were trying to make me walk into Pancho
Villa’s camp all alone. _I’d_ make a fuss about that, if the fuss would
bring up the whole United States Army to go with me. That’s what it
amounted to with Luddie.”
“I suppose so,” groaned the father. “It all comes down to his being a
coward.”
“It all comes down to the air being full of queer things when he’s
alone,” said Lucius.
“Well, I’d like to know what makes it full of queer things. Where does
his foolishness come _from_?”
“And echo answers——” Lucius added, managing to get his head and
shoulders under the divan, and thrusting with arms and legs to get more
of himself under.
But a chime of laughter from the doorway answered in place of echo.
“What are you doing, Lucius?” Mrs. Thomas inquired. “Swimming lessons? I
never saw anything——” And laughter so overcame her that she could
speak no further, but dropped into a chair, her handkerchief to her
mouth.
Lucius emerged crabwise, and placed a cribbage-peg upon the table, but
made no motion to continue the game. Instead he dusted himself
uselessly, lit a cigar, and sat.
“Luddie’s all right,” said the lady, having recovered her calmness. “I
think probably something he ate at dinner upset him a little. Anyhow, he
was all right as soon as he got upstairs. Annie’s sitting with him and
telling him stories.”
“I wonder if that lightning struck anything this afternoon,” Lucius said
absently. “Some of it seemed mighty near.”
“It was awful.”
“Do you remember,” Lucius asked her, “when you first began to be nervous
about it?”
“Oh, I’ve always been that way, ever since I was a little child. I
haven’t the faintest idea how it got hold of me. Children just get
afraid of certain things, it seems to me, and that’s all there is to it.
You know how Luddie is about lightning, John.”
John admitted that he knew how Luddie was about lightning. “I do,” was
all he said.
Mrs. Thomas’s expression became charmingly fond, even a little
complacent. “I suppose he inherits it from me,” she said.
“My mother has that fear to this day,” Lucius remarked. “And I have it,
too, but I didn’t inherit it from her.”
“How do you know?” his cousin asked quickly. “What makes you think you
didn’t inherit it?”
“Because my father used to tell me that when I was three and four years
old he would sit out on the porch during a thunder-storm, and hold me in
his lap, and every time the thunder came both of us would laugh, and
shout ‘Boom!’ Children naturally like a big noise. But when I got a
little bit older and more imaginative, and began to draw absurd
conclusions from things, I found that my mother was frightened during
thunder-storms—though she tried her best to conceal it—and, of course,
seeing _her_ frightened, I thought something pretty bad must be the
matter. So the fear got fastened on me, and I can’t shake it off though
I’m thirty-five years old. Curious thing it is!”
Mrs. Thomas’s brilliant eyes were fixed upon her cousin throughout this
narrative with an expression at first perplexed, then reproachful,
finally hostile. A change, not subtle but simple and vivid, came upon
her face, while its habitual mobility departed, leaving it radiantly
still, with a fierce smoldering just underneath. How deep and fast her
breathing became, was too easily visible.
“Everything’s curious, though, for the matter o’ that,” Lucius added.
And without looking at his cousin—without needing to look at her, to
understand the deadliness of her silence—he smoked unconcernedly. “Yes,
sir, it’s all curious; and _we’re_ all curious,” he continued,
permitting himself the indulgence of a reminiscent chuckle. “You know I
believe my father and mother got to be rather at outs about me—one
thing and another, goodness knows what!—and it was years before they
came together and found a real sympathy between them again. Truth is, I
suspect where people aren’t careful, their children have about twice as
much to do with driving ’em apart as with drawing ’em
together—especially in the case of an only child. I really do think
that if _I_ hadn’t been an only child my father and mother might have
been——”
A sibilant breath, not a word and not quite a hiss, caused Lucius to
pause for a moment, though not to glance in the direction of the lips
whence came the sound. He appeared to forget the sentence he had left
incomplete; at all events he neglected to finish it. However, he went
on, composedly:
“Some of my aunts tell me I was the worst nuisance they ever knew. In
fact, some of ’em go out of their way to tell me that, even yet. They
never could figure out what was the matter with me—except that I was
spoiled; but I never meet Aunt Mira Hooper on the street at home, to
this day, that she doesn’t stop to tell me she hasn’t learned to like
me, because she got such a set against me when I was a child—and I meet
her three or four times a week! She claims there was _some_ kind of a
little tragedy over me, in our house, every day or so, for years and
years. She blames _me_ for it, but Lord knows it wasn’t my fault. For
instance, a lot of it was my father’s.”
“What did he do?” asked John.
Lucius chuckled again. “The worst he did was to tell me stories about
Indians and pioneer days. Sounds harmless enough, but father was a good
story-teller, and that was the trouble. You see, the foundation of
nearly all romance, whether it’s Indian stories or fairy-stories—it’s
all hero and villain. Something evil is always just going to jump out of
somewhere at the hero, and the reader or the listener is always the
hero. Why, _I_ got so I wouldn’t go into a darkened room, even in the
daytime! As we grow older we forget the horrible visions we had when we
were children; and what’s worse, we forget there’s no need for children
to have ’em. Children ought to be raised in the _real_ world, not the
dream one. Yes, sir, I lay all my Aunt Mira Hooper’s grudge against me
to my father’s telling me stories so well and encouraging me to read the
classics and——”
“Lucius,” Mrs. Thomas spoke in a low voice, but in a tone that checked
him abruptly.
“Yes, Jennie?”
“Don’t you think that’s enough?”
“I suppose it is tiresome,” he said. “Too much autobiography. I was just
rambling on about——”
“You meant me!” she cried.
“You, Jennie?”
“You did! And you meant Ludlum was a ‘nuisance’; not you. And I don’t
think it’s very nice! Do you?”
“Why, I nev——”
But his cousin’s emotions were no longer to be controlled. She rose,
trembling. “What a fool I was this afternoon!” she exclaimed bitterly.
“I didn’t suspect you; yet I never remembered your being nervous in a
thunder-storm before. I thought you were sympathetic, and all the time
you were thinking these cruel, wicked things about Luddie and me!”
Lucius rose, too. “You know what I think about you, all the time,
Jennie,” he said genially. “John, if you can remember where you put my
umbrella when we came in, it’s about time for me to be catching a
street-car down to the station.”
She opposed him with a passionate gesture. “No!” she cried fiercely.
“You can’t say such things to me and then slip out like that! You tell
me I’ve taught my child to be a coward and that I’ve made a spoilt brat
of him——”
“Jennie!” he protested. “I was talking about _me_!”
“Shame on you to pretend!” she said. “You think I’m making John _hate_
Luddie——”
“_Jennie!_” he shouted in genuine astonishment.
“You do! And you come here pretending to be such a considerate,
sympathetic friend—and every minute you’re criticizing and condemning
me in your heart for all my little stories to my child—all
because—because—” suddenly she uttered a dry sob—“because I want to
raise my boy to be a—a poet!”
“John,” said Lucius desperately, “_do_ you think you can find that
umbrella?”
With almost startling alacrity John rose and vanished from the room, and
Lucius would have followed, but the distressed lady detained him. She
caught a sagging pocket of his coat, and he found it necessary to remain
until she should release him.
“You sha’n’t!” she cried. “Not till you’ve taken back that accusation.”
“But what accusa——”
“Shame on you! Ah, I didn’t think you’d ever come here and do such a
thing to me. And this morning I was looking forward to a happy day! It’s
a good thing you’re a bachelor!”
With which final insult she hurled his pocket from her—at least that
was the expression of her gesture—and sank into a chair, weeping
heart-brokenly. “You don’t understand!” she sobbed. “How could any man
understand—or any woman not a mother! You think these hard things of
me, but—but John doesn’t always love Luddie. Don’t you get even a
little glimpse of what that means to me? There are times when John
doesn’t even _like_ Luddie!”
“Take care,” said Lucius gently. “Take care that those times don’t come
oftener.”
She gasped, and would have spoken, but for a moment she could not, and
was able only to gaze at him fiercely through her tears. Yet there was a
hint of fear behind the anger.
“You dare to say such a thing as that to a mother?” she said, when she
could speak.
Lucius’s eyes twinkled genially; he touched her upon the shoulder, and
she suffered him. “Mother,” he said lightly, “have pity on your child!”
Somehow, he managed to put more solemnity into this parting prayer of
his than if he had spoken it solemnly; and she was silent.
Then he left the room, and, on his way, stumbled over a chair, as he
usually did at the dramatic moments in his life.
John was standing in the open doorway, Lucius’s umbrella in his hand. “I
think I hear a car coming, old fellow,” he said.
“Got to get my hat,” Mr. Allen muttered. He had been reminded of
something; a small straw hat, with a blue ribbon round it, was upon the
table, and he fumbled with it a moment before seizing his own and
rushing for the door at the increasing warning of a brass gong in the
near distance. Thus, when he had gone, a silver dollar was pocketed
within the inside band of the small straw hat with the blue ribbon.
. . . John Thomas, returning in sharp trepidation to the lovely,
miserable figure in the library, encountered one of the many surprises
of his life.
“He never could tell the truth to save his life!” she said. “He doesn’t
know what truth _means_! Did you hear him sitting up there and telling
us he was ‘an only child’? He has a brother and four sisters living, and
I don’t know how many dead!”
“You don’t mean it!” said John, astounded. “That certainly was pecu——”
He lost his breath at that moment. She rose and threw her arms round him
with the utmost heartiness. “He’s such an old smart Aleck!” she cried,
still weeping. “That’s why I married you instead of him. I love you for
not being one! If you want to spank Luddie for telling that story about
his wrist I wish you’d go and wake him up and do it!”
“No,” said John. “Lucius called to me as he was running for the car that
he’s going to be married next week. I’ll wait and spank one of his
children. They’ll be the worst spoiled children in the world!”