“Well, why don’t you do somep’m to help stop her from cryin’, yourself?” Elsie asked crossly.
“Well, I will,” he promised, much too rashly. “I’d stop him in a minute if I had my way.”
“All right,” Daisy said unexpectedly, halting with Willamilla just in front of him. “Go on an’ stop her, you know so much!”
“He’ll stop when I tell him to,” Laurence said, in the grim tone his father sometimes used, and with an air of power and determination, he rolled up the right sleeve of his shirtwaist, exposing the slender arm as far as the elbow. Then he shook his small fist in Willamilla’s face.
“You quit your noise!” he said sternly. “You hush up! Hush up this minute! Hush opp!”
Willamilla abated nothing.
“Didn’t you hear me tell you to hush up?” Laurence asked her fiercely. “You goin’ to do it?” And he shook his fist at her again.
Upon this, Willamilla seemed vaguely to perceive something personal to herself in his gesture, and to direct her own flagellating arms as if to beat at his approaching fist.
“Look out!” Laurence said threateningly. “Don’t you try any o’ that with me, Mister!”
But the mulatto baby’s squirmings were now too much for Daisy; she staggered, and in fear of dropping the lively burden, suddenly thrust it into Laurence’s arms.
“Here!” she gasped. “I’m ‘most worn out! Take her!”
“Oh, golly!” Laurence said.
“Don’t drop her!” both ladies screamed. “Put her back in the wagon.”
Obeying them willingly for once, he turned to the wagon to replace Willamilla therein; but as he stooped, he was forced to pause and stoop no farther. Hossifer had stationed himself beside the wagon and made it clear that he would not allow Willamilla to be replaced. He growled; his upper lip quivered in a way that exhibited almost his whole set of teeth as Laurence stooped, and when Laurence went round to the other side of the wagon, and bent over it with his squirming and noisy bundle, Hossifer followed, and repeated the demonstration. He heightened its eloquence, in fact, making feints and little jumps, and increasing the visibility of his teeth, as well as the poignancy of his growling. Thus menaced, Laurence straightened up and moved backward a few steps, while his two friends, some distance away, kept telling him, with unreasonable insistence, to do as they had instructed him.
“Put her in the wagon, and come on!” they called. “We got to go back! It’s after three o’clock! Come on!”
Laurence explained the difficulty in which he found himself. “He won’t let me,” he said.
“Who won’t?” Daisy asked, coming nearer.
“This dog. He won’t let me put him back in the wagon; he almost bit me when I tried it. Here!” And he tried to restore Willamilla to Daisy. “You take her an’ put her in.”
But Daisy, retreating, emphatically declined — which was likewise the course adopted by Elsie when Laurence approached her. Both said that Hossifer “must want” Laurence to keep Willamilla, for thus they interpreted Hossifer’s conduct.
“Well, I won’t keep her,” Laurence said hotly. “I don’t expect to go deaf just because some old dog don’t want her in the wagon! I’m goin’ to slam her down on the sidewalk and let her lay there! I’m gettin’ mighty tired of all this.”
But when he moved to do as he threatened, and would have set Willamilla upon the pavement, the unreasonable Hossifer again refused permission.
He placed himself close to Laurence, growling loudly, displaying his teeth, bristling, poising dangerously, and Laurence was forced to straighten himself once more without having deposited the infant, whom he now hated poisonously.
“My goodnuss!” he said desperately.
“Don’t you see?” Daisy cried, and her tone was less sympathetic than triumphant. “It’s just the way we said; Hossifer wants you to keep her!”
Elsie agreed with her, and both seemed pleased with themselves for having divined Hossifer’s intentions so readily, though as a matter of fact they were entirely mistaken in this intuitional analysis. Hossifer cared nothing at all about Laurence’s retaining Willamilla; neither was the oyster-coloured dog’s conduct so irrational as the cowed and wretched Laurence thought it. In the first place, Hossifer was never quite himself away from an alley; he had been upon a strain all that afternoon. Then, when the elderly coloured woman had forbidden him to accompany her, and he found himself with strangers, including a white boy, and away from everything familiar, except Willamilla, in whom he had never taken any personal interest, he became uneasy and fell into a querulous mood. His uneasiness naturally concerned itself with the boy, and was deepened by two definite attempts of this boy to approach him.
When the family Sunday walk was undertaken, Hossifer followed Willamilla and the wagon; for of course he realized that this was one of those things about which there can be no question: one does them, and that’s all. But his thoughts were constantly upon the boy, and he resolved to be the first to act if the boy made the slightest hostile gesture. Meanwhile, his nerves were unfavourably affected by the strange singing, and they were presently more upset by the blatancies of Willamilla. Her wailing acted unpleasantly upon the sensitive apparatus of his ear — the very thing that made him so strongly dislike tinny musical instruments and brass bands. And then, just as he was feeling most disorganized, he saw the boy stoop. Hossifer did not realize that Laurence stooped because he desired to put Willamilla into the wagon; Hossifer did not connect Willamilla with the action at all. He saw only that the boy stooped. Now, why does a boy stoop? He stoops to pick up something to throw at a dog. Hossifer made up his mind not to let Laurence stoop.
That was all; he was perfectly willing for Willamilla to be put back in the wagon, and the father, the mother and the visiting lady were alike mistaken — especially the father, whose best judgment was simply that Hossifer was of a disordered mind and had developed a monomania for a very special persecution. Hossifer was sane, and his motives were rational. Dogs who are over two years of age never do anything without a motive; Hossifer was nearing seven.
Daisy and Elsie, mistaken though they were, insisted strongly upon their own point-of-view in regard to him. “She wants you to keep her! She wants you to keep her!” they cried, and they chanted it as a sort of refrain; they clapped their hands and capered, adding their noise to Willamilla’s, and showing little appreciation of the desperate state of mind into which events had plunged their old friend Laurence.
“She wants you to keep her!” they chanted. “She wants you to keep her. She wants you to keep her, Laurence!”
Laurence piteously entreated them to call Hossifer away; but the latter was cold to their rather sketchy attempts to gain his attention. However, they succeeded in making him more excited, and he began to bark furiously, in a bass voice. Having begun, he barked without intermission, so that with Hossifer’s barking, Willamilla’s relentless wailing, and the joyous shouting of Daisy and Elsie, Laurence might well despair of making himself heard. He seemed to rave in a pantomime of oral gestures, his arms and hands being occupied.
A man wearing soiled overalls, with a trowel in his hand, came from behind a house near by and walking crossly over the lawn, arrived at the picket fence beside which stood the abandoned wagon.
“Gosh, I never did!” he said, bellowing to be audible. “Git away from here! Don’t you s’pose nobody’s got no ears? There’s a sick lady in this house right here, and she don’t propose to have you kill her! Go on git away from here now! Go on! I never did!”
Annoyed by this labourer’s coarseness, Elsie and Daisy paused to stare at him in as aristocratic a manner as they could, but he was little impressed.
“Gosh, I never did!” he repeated. “Git on out the neighbourhood and go where you b’long; you don’t b’long around here!”
“I should think not,” Daisy agreed crushingly. “Where we live, if there’s any sick ladies, they take ’em out an’ bury ’em!” Just what she meant by
this, if indeed she meant anything, it is difficult to imagine, but she felt no doubt that she had put the man in his ignoble and proper place. Tossing her head, she picked up the handle of the wagon and moved haughtily away, her remarkably small nose in the air. Elsie went with her in a similar attitude.
“Go on! You hear me?” The man motioned fiercely with his trowel at Laurence. “Did you hear me tell you to take that noise away from here? How many more times I got to—”
“My gracious!” Laurence interrupted thickly. “I doe’ want to stay here!”
He feared to move; he was apprehensive that Hossifer might not like it, but upon the man’s threatening to vault over the fence and hurry him with the trowel, he ventured some steps; whereupon Hossifer stopped barking and followed closely, but did nothing worse. Laurence therefore went on, and presently made another attempt to place Willamilla upon the pavement — and again Hossifer supported the ladies’ theory that he wanted Laurence to keep Willamilla.
“Listen!” Laurence said passionately to Hossifer. “I never did anything to you! What’s got the matter of you, anyway? How long I got to keep all this up?”
Then he called to Elsie and Daisy, who were hurrying ahead and increasing the distance between him and them, for Willamilla’s weight made his progress slow and sometimes uncertain. “Wait!” he called. “Can’ chu wait? What’s the matter of you? Can’ chu even wait for me?”
But they hurried on, chattering busily together, and his troubles were deepened by his isolation with the uproarious Willamilla and Hossifer. Passers-by observed him with hearty amusement; and several boys, total strangers to him, gave up a game of marbles and accompanied him for a hundred yards or so, speculating loudly upon his relationship to Willamilla, but finally deciding that Laurence was in love with her and carrying her off to a minister’s to marry her.
He felt that his detachment from the rest of his party was largely responsible for exposing him to these insults, and when he had shaken off the marbleplayers, whose remarks filled him with horror, he made a great effort to overtake the two irresponsible little girls.
“Hay! Can’ chu wait?” he bawled. “Oh, my good-ram! For heavenses’ sakes! Dog-gone it. Can’ chu wait! — I can’t carry this baby all the way!”
But he did. Panting, staggering, perspiring, with Willamilla never abating her complaint for an instant, and Hossifer warning him fiercely at every one of his many attempts to set her down, Laurence struggled on, far behind the cheery vanguard. Five blocks of anguish he covered before he finally arrived at Elsie Threamer’s gate, whence this unfortunate expedition had set out.
Elsie and Daisy were standing near the gate, looking thoughtfully at Willamilla’s grandmother, who was seated informally on the curbstone, and whistling to herself.
Laurence staggered to her. “Oh, my! Oh, my!” he quavered, and would have placed Willamilla in her grandmother’s arms, but once more Hossifer interfered — for his was a mind bent solely upon one idea at a time — and Laurence had to straighten himself quickly.
“Make him quit that!” he remonstrated. “He’s done it to me more than five hunderd times, an’ I’m mighty tired of all this around here!”
But the coloured woman seemed to have no idea that he was saying anything important, or even that he was addressing himself to her. She rolled her eyes, indeed, but not in his direction, and continued her whistling.
“Listen! Look!” Laurence urged her. “It’s Willie Miller! I wish he was dead; then I wouldn’t hold him any longer, I bet you! I’d just throw him away like I ought to!” And as she went on whistling, not even looking at him, he inquired despairingly: “My goodness, what’s the matter around here, anyways?”
“Elsie!” a voice called from a window of the house.
“Yes, mamma.”
“Come in, dear. Come in quickly.”
“Yes’m.”
She had no more than departed when another voice called from a window of the house next door, “Daisy! Come in right away! Do you hear, Daisy?”
“Yes, mamma.” And Daisy went hurriedly upon the summons.
Laurence was left alone in a world of nightmare. The hated Willamilla howled within his ear and weighed upon him like a house; his arms ached, his head rang; his heart was shaken with the fear of Hossifer; and Willamilla’s grandmother sat upon the curbstone, whistling musically, with no apparent consciousness that there was a busy world about her, or that she had ever a grandchild or a dog. His terrible and mystifying condition began to appear to Laurence as permanent, and the accursed Willamilla an Old-Man-of-the-Sea to be his burden forever. A weariness of life — a sense of the futility of it all — came upon him, and yet he could not even sink down under it.
Then, when there was no hope beneath the sky, out of the alley across the street came a delivering angel — a middle-aged, hilarious coloured man seated in an enfeebled open wagon, and driving a thin gray antique shaped like a horse. Upon the side of the wagon was painted, “P. SkoNe MoVeiNG & De-LiVRys,” and the cheerful driver was probably P. Skone himself.
He brought his wagon to the curb, descended giggling to Willamilla’s grandmother, and by the exertion of a muscular power beyond his appearance, got her upon her feet. She became conscious of his presence, called him her lovin’ Peter, blessed and embraced him, and then, consenting to test the tensile strength of the wagon, reclined upon him while he assisted her into it. After performing this feat, he extended his arms for Willamilla.
“He won’t let me,” Laurence said, swallowing piteously. “He wants me to keep him, an’ he’ll bite me if!”
“Who go’ bite you, white boy?” the cheerful coloured man inquired. “Hossifer?” Laughing, he turned to the faithful animal, and swept the horizon with a gesture. “Hossifer, you git in nat wagon!”
With the manner of a hunted fugitive, Hossifer instantly obeyed; the man lifted Willamilla’s little vehicle into the wagon, took Willamilla in his arms, and climbed chuckling to the driver’s seat. “Percy,” he said to the antique, “you git up!”
Then this heavenly coloured man drove slowly off with Willamilla, her grandmother, Hossifer and the baby-wagon, while Laurence sank down upon the curbstone, wiped his face upon his polka-dotted sleeve and watched them disappear into the dusty alley. Willamilla was still crying; and to one listener it seemed that she had been crying throughout long, indefinite seasons, and would probably continue to cry forever, or at least until a calamity should arrive to her, in regard to the nature of which he had a certain hope.
He sat, his breast a vacancy where lately so much emotion had been, and presently two gay little voices chirped in the yard behind him. They called his name; and he turned to behold his fair friends. They were looking brightly at him over the hedge.
“Mamma called me to come in,” Daisy said.
“So’d mine,” said Elsie.
“Mamma told me I better stay in the house while that ole coloured woman was out here,” Daisy continued. “Mamma said she wasn’t very nice.”
“So’d mine,” Elsie added.
“What did you do, Laurence?” Daisy asked.
“Well—” said Laurence. “They’re gone down that alley.”
“Come on in,” Daisy said eagerly. “We’re goin’ to play I-Spy. It’s lots more fun with three. Come on!”
“Come on!” Elsie echoed. “Hurry, Laurence.”
He went in, and a moment later, unconcernedly and without a care in the world, or the recollection of any, began to play I-Spy with the lady of his heart and her next neighbour.
THE ONLY CHILD
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 dow
n 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.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 504