Finding that I had still some leisure before me, I got a book from my
room and repaired to the bench in the garden. But I did not read; I had
but opened the book when my attention was arrested by sounds from the
other side of the high fence--low and tremulous croonings of distinctly
African derivation:
“Ah met mah sistuh in a-mawnin',
She 'uz a-waggin' up de hill SO slow!
'Sistuh, you mus' git a rastle in doo time,
B'fo de hevumly do's cloze--iz!'”
It was the voice of an aged negro; and the simultaneous slight creaking
of a small hub and axle seemed to indicate that he was pushing or
pulling a child's wagon or perambulator up and down the walk from the
kitchen door to the stable. Whiles, he proffered soothing music: over
and over he repeated the chant, though with variations; encountering in
turn his brother, his daughter, each of his parents, his uncle, his
cousin, and his second-cousin, one after the other ascending the same
slope with the same perilous leisure.
“Lay still, honey.” He interrupted his injunctions to the second-cousin.
“Des keep on a-nappin' an' a-breavin' de f'esh air. Dass wha's go' mek
you good an' well agin.”
Then there spoke the strangest voice that ever fell upon my ear; it was
not like a child's, neither was it like a very old person's voice; it
might have been a grasshopper's, it was so thin and little, and made of
such tiny wavers and quavers and creakings.
“I--want--” said this elfin voice, “I--want--Bill--Hammersley!”
The shabby phaeton which had passed my cousin's house was drawing up to
the curb near Beasley's gate. Evidently the old negro saw it.
“Hi dar!” he exclaimed. “Look at dat! Hain' Bill a comin' yonnah des
edzacly on de dot an' to de vey spot an' instink when you 'quiah fo'
'im, honey? Dar come Mist' Dave, right on de minute, an' you kin bet yo'
las hunnud dollahs he got dat Bill Hammersley wif 'im! Come along,
honey-chile! Ah's go' to pull you 'roun in de side yod fo' to meet 'em.”
The small wagon creaked away, the chant resuming as it went.
Mr. Dowden jumped out of the phaeton with a wave of his hand to the
driver, Beasley himself, who clucked to the horse and drove through his
open carriage-gates and down the drive on the other side of the house,
where he was lost to my view.
Dowden, entering our own gate, nodded in a friendly fashion to me, and I
advanced to meet him.
“Some day I want to take you over next door,” he said, cordially, as I
came up. “You ought to know Beasley, especially as I hear you're doing
some political reporting. Dave Beasley's going to be the next governor
of this state, you know.” He laughed, offered me a cigar, and we sat
down together on the front steps.
“From all I hear,” I rejoined, “YOU ought to know who'll get it.” (It
was said in town that Dowden would “come pretty near having the
nomination in his pocket.”)
“I expect you thought I shifted the subject pretty briskly the other
day?” He glanced at me quizzically from under the brim of his black felt
hat. “I meant to tell you about that, but the opportunity didn't occur.
You see--”
“I understand,” I interrupted. “I've heard the story. You thought it
might be embarrassing to Miss Apperthwaite.”
“I expect I was pretty clumsy about it,” said Dowden, cheerfully. “Well,
well--” he flicked his cigar with a smothered ejaculation that was half
a sigh and half a laugh; “it's a mighty strange case. Here they keep on
living next door to each other, year after year, each going on alone
when they might just as well--” He left the sentence unfinished, save
for a vocal click of compassion. “They bow when they happen to meet, but
they haven't exchanged a word since the night she sent him away, long
ago.” He shook his head, then his countenance cleared and he chuckled.
“Well, sir, Dave's got something at home to keep him busy enough, these
days, I expect!”
“Do you mind telling me?” I inquired. “Is its name 'Simpledoria'?”
Mr. Dowden threw back his head and laughed loudly. “Lord, no! What on
earth made you think that?”
I told him. It was my second success with this narrative; however, there
was a difference: my former auditor listened with flushed and breathless
excitement, whereas the present one laughed consumedly throughout.
Especially he laughed with a great laughter at the picture of Beasley's
coming down at four in the morning to open the door for nothing on sea
or land or in the waters under the earth. I gave account, also, of the
miraculous jumping contest (though I did not mention Miss Apperthwaite's
having been with me), and of the elfin voice I had just now overheard
demanding “Bill Hammersley.”
“So I expect you must have decided,” he chuckled, when I concluded,
“that David Beasley has gone just plain, plum insane.”
“Not a bit of it. Nobody could look at him and not know better than
that.”
“You're right THERE!” said Dowden, heartily. “And now I'll tell you all
there is TO it. You see, Dave grew up with a cousin of his named
Hamilton Swift; they were boys together; went to the same school, and
then to college. I don't believe there was ever a high word spoken
between them. Nobody in this life ever got a quarrel out of Dave
Beasley, and Hamilton Swift was a mighty good sort of a fellow, too. He
went East to live, after they got out of college, yet they always
managed to get together once a year, generally about Christmas-time; you
couldn't pass them on the street without hearing their laughter ringing
out louder than the sleigh-bells, maybe over some old joke between them,
or some fool thing they did, perhaps, when they were boys. But finally
Hamilton Swift's business took him over to the other side of the water
to live; and he married an English girl, an orphan without any kin. That
was about seven years ago. Well, sir, this last summer he and his wife
were taking a trip down in Switzerland, and they were both
drowned--tipped over out of a rowboat in Lake Lucerne--and word came
that Hamilton Swift's will appointed Dave guardian of the one child they
had, a little boy--Hamilton Swift, Junior's his name. He was sent across
the ocean in charge of a doctor, and Dave went on to New York to meet
him. He brought him home here the very day before you passed the house
and saw poor Dave getting up at four in the morning to let that ghost
in. And a mighty funny ghost Simpledoria is!”
“I begin to understand,” I said, “and to feel pretty silly, too.”
“Not at all,” he rejoined, heartily. “That little chap's freaks would
mystify anybody, especially with Dave humoring 'em the ridiculous way he
does. Hamilton Swift, Junior, is the curiousest child I ever saw--and
the good Lord knows He made all children powerful mysterious! This poor
little cuss has a complication of infirmities that have kept him on his
back most of his life, never knowing other children, never playing, or
anything; and he's got ideas and ways that I never saw the beat of! He
was born sick, as I understand it--his bones and nerves and insides are
all wrong, somehow--but it's supposed he gets a little better from year
to year. He wears a pretty elaborate set of braces, and he's subject to
attacks, too--I don't know the name for 'em--and loses what little voice
he has sometimes, all but a whisper. He had one, I know, the day after
Beasley brought him home, and that was probably the reason you thought
Dave was carrying on all to himself about that jumping-match out in the
back-yard. The boy must have been lying there in the little wagon they
have for him, while Dave cut up shines with 'Bill Hammersley.' Of
course, most children have make-believe friends and companions,
especially if they haven't any brothers or sisters, but this lonely
little feller's got HIS people worked out in his mind and materialized
beyond any I ever heard of. Dave got well acquainted with 'em on the
train on the way home, and they certainly are giving him a lively time.
Ho, ho! Getting him up at four in the morning--”
Mr. Dowden's mirth overcame him for a moment; when he had mastered it,
he continued: “Simpledoria--now where do you suppose he got that
name?--well, anyway, Simpledoria is supposed to be Hamilton Swift,
Junior's St. Bernard dog. Beasley had to BATHE him the other day, he
told me! And Bill Hammersley is supposed to be a boy of Hamilton Swift,
Junior's own age, but very big and strong; he has rosy cheeks, and he
can do more in athletics than a whole college track-team. That's the
reason he outjumped Dave so far, you see.”
V
Miss Apperthwaite was at home the following Saturday. I found her in the
library with Les Miserables on her knee when I came down from my room a
little before lunch-time; and she looked up and gave me a smile that
made me feel sorry for any one she had ceased to smile upon.
“I wanted to tell you,” I said, with a little awkwardness but plenty of
truth, “I've found out that I'm an awful fool.”
“But that's something,” she returned, encouragingly--“at least the
beginning of wisdom.”
“I mean about Mr. Beasley--the mystery I was absurd enough to find in
'Simpledoria.' I want to tell you--”
“Oh, _I_ know,” she said; and although she laughed with an effect of
carelessness, that look which I had thought “far away” returned to her
eyes as she spoke. There was a certain inscrutability about Miss
Apperthwaite sometimes, it should be added, as if she did not like to be
too easily read. “I've heard all about it. Mr. Beasley's been appointed
trustee or something for poor Hamilton Swift's son, a pitiful little
invalid boy who invents all sorts of characters. The old darky from over
there told our cook about Bill Hammersley and Simpledoria. So, you see,
I understand.”
“I'm glad you do,” I said.
A little hardness--one might even have thought it bitterness--became
apparent in her expression. “And I'm glad there's SOMEbody in that
house, at last, with a little imagination!”
“From everything I have heard,” I returned, summoning sufficient
boldness, “it would be difficult to say which has more--Mr. Beasley or
the child.”
Her glance fell from mine at this, but not quickly enough to conceal a
sudden, half-startled look of trouble (I can think of no other way to
express it) that leaped into it; and she rose, for the lunch-bell was
ringing.
“I'm just finishing the death of Jean Valjean, you know, in Les
Miserables,” she said, as we moved to the door. “I'm always afraid I'll
cry over that. I try not to, because it makes my eyes red.”
And, in truth, there was a vague rumor of tears about her eyes--not as
if she had shed them, but more as if she were going to--though I had not
noticed it when I came in.
... That afternoon, when I reached the “Despatch” office, I was
commissioned to obtain certain political information from the Honorable
David Beasley, an assignment I accepted with eagerness, notwithstanding
the commiseration it brought me from one or two of my fellows in the
reporter's room. “You won't get anything out of HIM!” they said. And
they were true prophets.
I found him looking over some documents in his office; a reflective,
unlighted cigar in the corner of his mouth; his chair tilted back and
his feet on a window-sill. He nodded, upon my statement of the affair
that brought me, and, without shifting his position, gave me a look of
slow but wholly friendly scrutiny over his shoulder, and bade me sit
down. I began at once to put the questions I was told to ask
him--interrogations (he seemed to believe) satisfactorily answered by
slowly and ruminatively stroking the left side of his chin with two long
fingers of his right hand, the while he smiled in genial contemplation
of a tarred roof beyond the window. Now and then he would give me a mild
and drawling word or two, not brilliantly illuminative, it may be
remarked. “Well--about that--” he began once, and came immediately to a
full stop.
“Yes?” I said, hopefully, my pencil poised.
“About that--I guess--”
“Yes, Mr. Beasley?” I encouraged him, for he seemed to have dried up
permanently.
“Well, sir--I guess--Hadn't you better see some one else about THAT?”
This with the air of a man who would be but too fluent and copious upon
any subject in the world except the one particular point.
I never met anybody else who looked so pleasantly communicative and
managed to say so little. In fact, he didn't say anything at all; and I
guessed that this faculty was not without its value in his political
career, disastrous as it had proved to his private happiness. His habit
of silence, moreover, was not cultivated: you could see that “the secret
of it” was just that he was BORN quiet.
My note-book remained noteless, and finally, at some odd evasion of his,
accomplished by a monosyllable, I laughed outright--and he did, too! He
joined cachinnations with me heartily, and with a twinkling
quizzicalness that somehow gave me the idea that he might be thinking
(rather apologetically) to himself: “Yes, sir, that old Beasley man is
certainly a mighty funny critter!”
When I went away, a few moments later, and left him still intermittently
chuckling, the impression remained with me that he had had some such
deprecatory and surreptitious thought.
Two or three days after that, as I started down-town from Mrs.
Apperthwaite's, Beasley came out of his gate, bound in the same
direction. He gave me a look of gay recognition and offered his hand,
saying, “WELL! Up in THIS neighborhood!” as if that were a matter of
considerable astonishment.
I mentioned that I was a neighbor, and we walked on together. I don't
think he spoke again, except for a “Well, sir!” or two of genial
surprise at something I said, and, now and then, “You don't tell me!”
which he had a most eloquent way of exclaiming; but he listened visibly
to my own talk, and laughed at everything that I meant for funny.
I never knew anybody who gave one a greater responsiveness; he seemed to
be WITH you every instant; and HOW he made you feel it was the true
mystery of Beasley, this silent man who never talked, except (as my
cousin said) to children.
It happened that I thus met him, as we were both starting down-town, and
walked on with him, several days in succession; in a word, it became a
habit. Then, one afternoon, as I turned to leave him at the “Despatch”
office, he asked me if I wouldn't drop in at his house the next day for
a cigar before we started. I did; and he asked me if I wouldn't come
again the day after that. So this became a habit, too.
A fortnight elapsed before I met Hamilton Swift, Junior; for he, poor
little father of dream-children, could be no spectator of track events
upon the lawn, but lay in his bed up-stairs. However, he grew better at
last, and my presentation took place.
We had just finished our cigars in Beasley's airy, old-fashioned
“sitting-room,” and were rising to go, when there came the faint
creaking of small wheels from the hall. Beasley turned to me with the
apologetic and monosyllabic chuckle that was distinctly his alone.
“I've got a little chap here--” he said; then went to the door. “Bob!”
The old darky appeared in the doorway pushing a little wagon like a
reclining-chair on wheels, and in it sat Hamilton Swift, Junior.
My first impression of him was that he was all eyes: I couldn't look at
anything else for a time, and was hardly conscious of the rest of that
weazened, peaked little face and the under-sized wisp of a body with its
pathetic adjuncts of metal and leather. I think they were the brightest
eyes I ever saw--as keen and intelligent as a wicked old woman's, withal
as trustful and cheery as the eyes of a setter pup.
“HOO-ray!”
Thus the Honorable Mr. Beasley, waving a handkerchief thrice around his
head and thrice cheering.
And the child, in that cricket's voice of his, replied:
“Br-r-ra-vo!”
This was the form of salutation familiarly in use between them. Beasley
followed it by inquiring, “Who's with us to-day?”
“I'm MISTER Swift,” chirped the little fellow. “MIS-TER Swift, if you
please, Cousin David Beasley.”
Beasley executed a formal bow. “There is a gentleman here who'd like to
meet you.” And he presented me with some grave phrases commendatory of
my general character, addressing the child as “Mister Swift”; whereupon
Mister Swift gave me a ghostly little hand and professed himself glad to
meet me.
“And besides me,” he added, to Beasley, “there's Bill Hammersley and Mr.
Corley Linbridge.”
A faint perplexity manifested itself upon Beasley's face at this, a
shadow which cleared at once when I asked if I might not be permitted to
meet these personages, remarking that I had heard from Dowden of Bill
Hammersley, though until now a stranger to the fame of Mr. Corley
Linbridge.
Beasley performed the ceremony with intentional elegance, while the
boy's great eyes swept glowingly from his cousin's face to mine and back
again. I bowed and shook hands with the air, once to my left and once to
my right. “And Simpledoria!” cried Mister Swift. “You'll enjoy
Simpledoria.”
“Above all things,” I said. “Can he shake hands? Some dogs can.”
“Watch him!”
Mister Swift lifted a commanding finger. “Simpledoria, shake hands!”
I knelt beside the wagon and shook an imaginary big paw. At this Mister
Swift again shook hands with me and allowed me to perceive, in his
luminous regard, a solemn commendation and approval.
In this wise was my initiation into the beautiful old house and the
cordiality of its inmates completed; and I became a familiar of David
Beasley and his ward, with the privilege to go and come as I pleased;
there was always gay and friendly welcome. I always came for the cigar
after lunch, sometimes for lunch itself; sometimes I dined there instead
of down-town; and now and then when it happened that an errand or
assignment took me that way in the afternoon, I would run in and “visit”
awhile with Hamilton Swift, Junior, and his circle of friends.
There were days, of course, when his attacks were upon him, and only
Beasley and the doctor and old Bob saw him; I do not know what the boy's
mental condition was at such times; but when he was better, and could be
wheeled about the house and again receive callers, he displayed an
almost dismaying activity of mind--it was active enough, certainly, to
keep far ahead of my own. And he was masterful: still, Beasley and
Dowden and I were never directly chidden for insubordination, though
made to wince painfully by the look of troubled surprise that met us
when we were not quick enough to catch his meaning.
The order of the day with him always began with the “HOO-ray” and
“BR-R-RA-vo” of greeting; after which we were to inquire, “Who's with us
to-day?” Whereupon he would make known the character in which he elected
to be received for the occasion. If he announced himself as “Mister
Swift,” everything was to be very grown-up and decorous indeed.
Formalities and distances were observed; and Mr. Corley Linbridge (an
elderly personage of great dignity and distinction as a
mountain-climber) was much oftener included in the conversation than
Bill Hammersley. If, however, he declared himself to be “Hamilton Swift,
Junior,” which was his happiest mood, Bill Hammersley and Simpledoria
were in the ascendant, and there were games and contests. (Dowden,
Beasley, and I all slid down the banisters on one of the Hamilton Swift,
Junior, days, at which really picturesque spectacle the boy almost cried
with laughter--and old Bob and his wife, who came running from the
kitchen, DID cry.) He had a third appellation for himself--“Just little
Hamilton”; but this was only when the creaky voice could hardly chirp at
all and the weazened face was drawn to one side with suffering. When he
told us he was “Just little Hamilton” we were very quiet.
Once, for ten days, his Invisibles all went away on a visit: Hamilton
Swift, Junior, had become interested in bears. While this lasted, all of
Beasley's trousers were, as Dowden said, “a sight.” For that matter,
Dowden himself was quite hoarse in court from growling so much. The
bears were dismissed abruptly: Bill Hammersley and Mr. Corley Linbridge
and Simpledoria came trooping back, and with them they brought that
wonderful family, the Hunchbergs.
Beasley had just opened the front door, returning at noon from his
office, when Hamilton Swift, Junior's voice came piping from the
library, where he was reclining in his wagon by the window.
“Cousin David Beasley! Cousin David, come a-running!” he cried. “Come
a-running! The Hunchbergs are here!”
Of course Cousin David Beasley came a-running, and was immediately
introduced to the whole Hunchberg family, a ceremony which old Bob, who
was with the boy, had previously undergone with courtly grace.
“They like Bob,” explained Hamilton. “Don't you, Mr. Hunchberg? Yes, he
says they do extremely!” (He used such words as “extremely” often;
indeed, as Dowden said, he talked “like a child in a book,” which was
due, I dare say, to his English mother.) “And I'm sure,” the boy went
on, “that all the family will admire Cousin David. Yes, Mr. Hunchberg
says, he thinks they will.”
And then (as Bob told me) he went almost out of his head with joy when
Beasley offered Mr. Hunchberg a cigar and struck a match for him to
light it.
“But WHAR,” exclaimed the old darky, “whar in de name o' de good Gawd do
de chile git dem NAMES? Hit lak to SKEER me!”
That was a subject often debated between Dowden and me: there was
nothing in Wainwright that could have suggested them, and it did not
seem probable he could have remembered them from over the water. In my
opinion they were the inventions of that busy and lonely little brain.
I met the Hunchberg family, myself, the day after their arrival, and
Beasley, by that time, had become so well acquainted with them that he
could remember all their names, and helped in the introductions. There
was Mr. Hunchberg--evidently the child's favorite, for he was described
as the possessor of every engaging virtue--and there was that lively
matron, Mrs. Hunchberg; there were the Hunchberg young gentlemen, Tom,
Noble, and Grandee; and the young ladies, Miss Queen, Miss Marble, and
Miss Molanna--all exceedingly gay and pretty. There was also Colonel
Hunchberg, an uncle; finally there was Aunt Cooley Hunchberg, a somewhat
decrepit but very amiable old lady. Mr. Corley Linbridge happened to be
calling at the same time; and, as it appeared to be Beasley's duty to
keep the conversation going and constantly to include all of the party
in its general flow, it struck me that he had truly (as Dowden said)
“enough to keep him busy.”
The Hunchbergs had lately moved to Wainwright from Constantinople, I
learned; they had decided not to live in town, however, having purchased
a fine farm out in the country, and, on account of the distance, were
able to call at Beasley's only about eight times a day, and seldom more
than twice in the evening. Whenever a mystic telephone announced that
they were on the way, the child would have himself wheeled to a window;
and when they came in sight he would cry out in wild delight, while
Beasley hastened to open the front door and admit them.
They were so real to the child, and Beasley treated them with such
consistent seriousness, that between the two of them I sometimes began
to feel that there actually were such people, and to have moments of
half-surprise that I couldn't see them; particularly as each of the
Hunchberg's developed a character entirely his own to the last
peculiarity, such as the aged Aunt Cooley Hunchberg's deafness, on which
account Beasley never once forgot to raise his voice when he addressed
her. Indeed, the details of actuality in all this appeared to bring as
great a delight to the man as to the child. Certainly he built them up
with infinite care. On one occasion when Mr. Hunchberg and I happened to
be calling, Hamilton remarked with surprise that Simpledoria had come
into the room without licking his hand as he usually did, and had crept
under the table. Mr. Hunchberg volunteered the information (through
Beasley) that upon his approach to the house he had seen Simpledoria
chasing a cat. It was then debated whether chastisement was in order,
but finally decided that Simpledoria's surreptitious manner of entrance
and his hiding under the table were sufficient indication that he well
understood his baseness, and would never let it happen again. And so,
Beasley having coaxed him out from under the table, the offender “sat
up,” begged, and was forgiven. I could almost feel the splendid shaggy
head under my hand when, in turn, I patted Simpledoria to show that the
reconciliation was unanimous.