ABERCROMBIE'S WOOING
None but could smile upon the spinster and be glad of the little tale
she told. Half the world knows of the pigeons so nourished on one of the
most crowded corners in the heart of a great, turbulent city, but none
had thought before of what might accompany this exhibition of the fact
that there is still a regard for beings of the lower and less grasping
life. Very pleasant was the conversation and very understanding were the
comments, but the Colonel, like many a commander of the past, from
Joshua down, noted the swift passing of the hours of day and was
insatiate for more of what might be attained before it was too late. He
called upon the Banker. That gentleman, easy, suave and really a good
specimen of the class which inclines us to save by taking care of our
savings--and only rarely departing with them--was quite equal to the
demand at the paying-teller's window. "I have listened," he said, "to
these accounts, some of adventure, some of fancy, some of love and
persistence, and it has occurred to me that even I might contribute
something to the general fund. Oddly enough, as coming from me, what I
shall tell is a story of love and courage and persistence all combined.
It is not a tale of some far country, but one of our modern life, a tale
of true lovers whose union was opposed but who came together at last in
spite of obstacles. I think we may term it
ABERCROMBIE'S WOOING
Mr. Gentil Abercrombie is a fine fellow, quick-witted, and amiable, with
prospects in the world, but he is not, as yet, wealthy. Last spring he
fell in love with Miss Frances Dobson, and the young lady seemed not
entirely oblivious of the fact nor altogether displeased with it. The
affair appeared prosperous to the hopeful Abercrombie until the middle
of June, when the Dobson family moved to their country home at a modest
little watering place not far from the city, leaving the suitor in a
position he did not like. A resolute gentleman, though, is Mr.
Abercrombie, and he followed his star, taking apartments at the
watering-place hotel, coming into town by train daily and returning in
the evening.
The young lady thus sought had the fortune to be the only daughter of
her somewhat austere parents, Mr. James Dobson and Mrs. Irene Dobson,
each distinctly of the class not to be trifled with by any too aspiring
suitor. Abercrombie was admitted to the Dobson residence, for he has
good social standing--but his reception was not as warm as the weather.
It appeared to each of the lovers early in the season that it was best
to be politic, and that Abercrombie was not, as yet, looked upon by the
father and mother as a person with that superabundance of worldly goods
and of stability of character and wisdom which should appertain to the
husband of the Family Pride. Hence it came that Abercrombie made an
effort whenever an opportunity offered to become what he remarked to
himself as "solid with the old folks." Hence it came, too, that at a
certain trying time there arrived in his immediate vicinity a certain
quantity and quality of disaster.
It chanced that on one occasion, Abercrombie, seeking, as usual, to
ingratiate himself with the parents, drifted into a discussion
concerning the bringing up of children and expressed himself to the
effect that, in place of the usual inane though amusing fairy stories
and things of that sort, children should in their youth, when the memory
fairly petrifies things, be entertained with pleasant tales about
natural history and in fact about anything likely to aid most in future
equipment for the great struggle in the world. Of natural history he
made a point. Well, one evening, in just what poets call the "gloaming,"
Abercrombie, the parents, Frances and young Erastus Dobson were sitting
together upon the front porch, when, suddenly, from some inscrutable
impulse, Erastus broke out with the exclamation:
"Mr. Abercrombie, tell me a story."
Here was a situation! It flashed upon Abercrombie, that he had, as
already mentioned, impressed upon the elder people the fact that, in his
opinion, the youthful mind should be loaded with natural history when
tales were imposed upon it. There was no alternative. Here were the
older people listening and expectant. Here was Erastus, vociferous. Here
was his own sweetheart, sitting in the half darkness and wondering if he
were equal to the occasion!
Abercrombie quivered for a moment trying to collect his senses which
seemed to have been, somehow, "jolted" by Erastus' request, and then
suddenly became so desperate and cold-blooded that he could not
understand himself.
"Yes, Erastus," he said, affably; "I will tell you a story, most
willingly." Then he continued:
"This is the story of the Boy and the Bull and the Horned Hen. Once
there was a boy. It has frequently happened that there was a boy, so
that it is hardly worth while referring to such a thing now, but, since
we have mentioned it, we'll let it go. Tum-a-row! This boy lived in the
country and was kind to a Hen. Little did he know that the hen
appreciated and remembered it, but she did! One day this boy started to
cross a meadow in which was a savage bull, and the boy forgot he had on
his red sweater. In the middle of the meadow stood a tree which was
blasted and which looked almost like a cone. It was what a young
kindergarten teacher might describe as a trunk from which the branches
had been riven away in some of Nature's convulsions, probably electric.
Anyhow, the bull started for the boy and the boy started for the tree.
Tum-a-row! The boy reached the tree four and one-third seconds before
the bull reached the same place, and the boy began climbing and was at
least thirty feet from the ground before the bull arrived. It is
needless to say that the boy climbed with much rapidity. The bull
followed rapaciously--yes, that's the word--and began climbing also with
great rapidity behind the boy, and there was a race to what--if the term
may be applied to such a dead trunk of a tree--to the topmast. There the
tree sloped to a point, which the boy, climbing with avidity--that's the
word,--reached easily, under the stress of circumstances. The bull,
climbing swiftly after, attained a height of between ten and fifteen
feet from his intended victim, and then, reaching the slope of
compression, as one may say, of the dead tree, suddenly found himself
without sufficient grasp and slid down, again and again, as he sought to
reach the apex of the cone. The boy, meanwhile, was and properly, too,
in a state of utmost fear, as the bull from time to time seemed almost
successful in his upward attempts.
"But there is a limit to endeavor. The bull, fatigued at last, slid
downward to the ground, just as the hen, who, happily for the boy, had
noted from the distant barnyard what was going on, came desperately to
the rescue. The struggle which ensued was something doubtless without a
parallel, or anything else in the way of similitude, in the history of
single combats. It was something frightful! The bellowing of the hen,
the hissing and cackling of the bull, the scattering of scales from both
adversaries as they clashed together, cannot be adequately described.
But the end came quickly. There came a moment, when perspiring and
panting, the hen gored the bull with all her might, mind and strength,
and he fell lifeless to the ground.
"The moral of this story is, be kind to a hen. Tum-a-row!"
"Why do you say 'Tum-a-row'?" suddenly demanded Erastus.
"Well, I hardly know, myself," said Abercrombie. "I guess it's a sort of
accompaniment. It came in an old farmer's song I heard when I was a
little boy, in an old song which told about a young man who went 'down
in the medder for to mow,' and who 'mowed around till he did feel a
pizen sarpint bite him on the heel;' and, every little while, through
the song came the word 'Tum-a-row.' That's the reason 'Tum-a-row' comes
in so often in the story. It isn't my fault; it just seems to belong.
Tum-a-row!"
"Tell me another! Tell me another!" shouted young Erastus, but there
came no sound from the twilight which encompassed the old people, nor
from the gloaming about the sweetheart, though little did it matter.
Abercrombie had passed the caring point!
"One more will I tell you," he said, speaking in a resonant and rotund
voice, to the wide-mouthed and expectant Erastus. "This is the story of
the Dark Forest, the Charcoal Burners, the Witch and the Boa
Constrictor.
"Once there was a forest so dark that you cannot conceive of its
darkness. Oh! it was just a forest dark from Darkville! It was fringed
about with a forest which was somewhat lighter, in which things lived,
but nothing lived in the forest itself; it was too black! Among the
people who lived in this lighter fringe of forest were some Charcoal
Burners. You will always find Charcoal Burners connected with a deep
forest story, particularly in the German Medieval Legends. The Charcoal
Burners in those stories usually lived in some glade in the middle of
the wood, but the Charcoal Burners we are telling about lived on the
outside for the reason we have given--but they ought not really to be
called 'burners,' because they did not burn anything. Whenever orders
came for charcoal they simply took their shovels and went down an aisle
into the depth of the inner wood and dug out great hunks of the
blackness, which they brought out and stacked upon wagons, and which
were conveyed to Vienna and Wiesbaden and Oshkosh and all the other
charcoal commercial centers.
"Now all this has nothing to do with the story. These matters about the
Charcoal Burners I have related only because it chances that from the
Charcoal Burners themselves the real story was gained. We ought to be
grateful to them for what they have told.
"Four or five miles east of the Charcoal Burners lived a Boa
Constrictor. He was sixty feet long and had a gilt-edged appetite. I
don't believe in using slang, and gilt-edged is slightly slangy, but the
bald fact stands out that he had a gilt-edged appetite. He lived mostly
on wild boars, but, when the supply of wild boars gave out on any
occasion, he lived on most anything that came along.
"Now, five miles east of the Boa Constrictor lived a Witch, and she was
a witch from Witchville. She was not any common witch, but one whose
slightest anathema would just curl your hair. Talk about brimstone! Why
brimstone would be just ice cream in any comparison you could make
between this witch and other things in the world. She knew her business!
Well, this Witch had three children, two sons and a daughter, nice
little children, in their way. It happened, unfortunately, one
afternoon, that they strayed into the forest; and this afternoon
happened to be the particular afternoon on which the Boa Constrictor had
run out of wild boars. He consumed the kids--I beg your pardon; young as
you are, I beg your pardon--I meant to say that he devoured the three
young children, that he encompassed them after the constrictor manner.
"By and by, the Witch missed her children and, induced by maternal
instinct, went out looking for them, and so came to the abode of the
Constrictor. They had been on good enough terms and she approached him
affably.
"'Good morning, Mr. Constrictor,' said she.
"'Good afternoon, Mrs. Witch,' said the Constrictor.
"'Have you seen my children?' asked the lady.
"'I have not', said the Constrictor.
"The Witch was about to depart when a thought seemed to seize her and
she turned just about half way, assuming what may be designated as a
suddenly reflective attitude;
"'Are you sure, Mr. Constrictor?' said she.
"'I am sure,' said he.
"Only a person with nerves under absolute control could have been
present on that occasion and considered unmoved the changes in the
Witch's face. The accumulative grimness of her countenance became
something startling. She spoke slowly but her voice had that hard, low,
even tone which we read about in novels.
"'What is the reason that you are so big in the middle?' said she.
"'I am not big in the middle, your eyes deceive you,' said he.
"'You are lying, Mr. Constrictor,' said she, 'and I'm going to make you
tell the truth. I am going to make an Incantation over and around and
all about you that will give you some idea of what forces are at work in
the universe.'
"Then from somewhere about her skirt, she pulled out a broomstick, and
waved it five times, and said; 'Abracadabra, Pentagon' and some other
things, and, of course, the performance had its effect and the
Constrictor had to tell the truth. He simply had to! He admitted the
consumption of the three children.
"Imagine the demeanor of the Witch when she learned that her three
children had been devoured by the Constrictor! For a little time she was
speechless and white in the face, then, as reason and the control of her
powers returned, the malignant look which came was something that simply
defies description. Her voice, as she spoke to the Constrictor this
time, was shrill and raucous.
"'I am going to pronounce an Anathema upon you,' she said, 'and I'm
going to do it now. I am going to make you the same at both ends.'
"A very adroit and clever Constrictor was this, and he said nothing. But
he chuckled to himself: 'If she makes me the same at both ends, I will
have more fun than ever. With a mouth at each end, I can eat twice as
many wild boars and be twice as happy.' He coiled closer to the ground
with a look of affected submission, and the Witch went on with her
Anathema.
"It was a fine anathema, there was no question about it. Even the
leaves on the trees about first turned brown, then crackled and then
smoked, as she was making her few remarks. She completed the formula and
departed, leaving the Constrictor to become the same at both ends, and
he lay there, still chuckling, waiting for his double-headedness and
double enjoyment in the future.
"Then came to him a sort of quivery feeling, and he knew that he was
changing. It did not take more than an hour at the utmost, when that
Constrictor suddenly realized that he was the same at both ends, but--he
did not have two heads! He had two tails! There he was, a great Boa
Constrictor, sixty feet long, with a tail at each end. Of course only
one thing could happen to a Boa Constrictor with a tail at each end. He
must starve to death, simply because he could not eat. Day after day
passed, and the Constrictor grew less and less in dimensions, and,
finally, the day came when there was only a little worm, smaller than an
angle-worm. Then the day came when there was no worm at all.
"And that is the end of the story, because there isn't any more worm!"
The last sentence of the tale was concluded. Silence prevailed for a
moment or two, and then there was a gasp of delight and approval from
Erastus.
"That's bully!" he said. "Will you tell me some more, some other time,
Mr. Abercrombie?"
"Certainly, my boy," said Abercrombie. "It is well that we should become
acquainted with natural history, and in the simple tales I tell you I
shall endeavor at all times to introduce such information as will
increase your store of knowledge. Above all, we must get acquainted with
natural history."
He paused. The boy had nothing to say. Unfortunately, nobody else had
anything to say. To Abercrombie the silence seemed, in a vague way that
he could not fully comprehend, destructive. There was something the
matter with the atmosphere and he knew it. The gloaming had drifted into
darkness, and he could no longer see either his prospective
father-in-law or mother-in-law or his sweetheart. He knew only that, as
an adviser of parents of the younger male offspring of the two who were
also parents of his one object in life, he had flashed presumptuously in
the pan, that, too, in the dimness of the gathering darkness, when
people are most reflective and that he had accomplished the possibility
irretrievable.
The silence was broken at last by the voice of Mrs. Dobson. The voice
was thin and didn't seem to really "break" the silence. It seemed to
split it neatly.
"Are those your ideas, Mr. Abercrombie, as to the sort of knowledge of
natural history which should be conveyed to young children?"
"Yes, I'd like to know, myself," added Mr. Dobson.
Not a laugh, not a comment, not a sound came from the corner where sat
Miss Frances Dobson. She was strictly an aside.
Abercrombie pondered through swift seconds. He was in what, in his own
mind--so much are we addicted to the pernicious habit of thinking in the
vernacular--'in a hole'. But, the man at bay has frequently proved a
hero in a plain North American way. Abercrombie arose to the occasion!
"It may be," he said, "that in the telling to Erastus of these simple
tales, I have not followed precisely the practices of those generally
engaged in the teaching of youth. It may be that I have not instructed
him in the manner in which I might have done had I allowed a few years
to lapse and my beard to grow longer and had shaved my upper lip. It may
be that in the tales I have told Erastus there are certain
discrepancies, synchronisms, and anachronisms. My pictures may have
possessed a shade too much of the impressionist character. But what of
it? What I wanted to do was to give Erastus a general idea of Black
Forests, Witches, and Boa Constrictors."
Silence reigned again, and reigned very thoroughly for some time. Then
up rose the modern young woman.
No one in the room could see any one else, but all could hear. What the
parents heard was the sound of light footsteps along the porch and then,
after a pause;
"You're a ridiculous gentleman,--Don't pull me so!"
What they heard also was a thoughtful and generally commendatory remark
from Erastus:
"Say, old man, you're all right. You're the stuff!"
They heard no more at the time. The next morning was a fine
morning--there have been lots of them--and, as breakfast was about
ending, there took place a conversation between her parents and Miss
Dobson--a conversation inaugurated by them but ended, decidedly, by
her.
Given a young woman, the only one in the family and possessed of
character, she can usually make her parents "know their place," though
doing all this, of course, with kindness and consideration. Miss Dobson
and Abercrombie are formally engaged. The fortunate but alarmed young
man had not realized what would happen when the reinforcements came up.