At first the people looked at his signboard out of the eye corner, and wondered lazily why any one should bear the name of Neeltje; but as time went on, men spoke to other men, saying, “How do you pronounce the name of that barber up there on Bridge Street hill?” And then, before any could prevent it, the best minds of the town were splintering their lances against William Neeltje’s signboard. If a man had a mental superior, he guided him seductively to this name, and watched with glee his wrecking. The clergy of the town even entered the lists. There was one among them who had taken a collegiate prize in Syriac, as well as in several less opaque languages, and the other clergymen—at one of their weekly meetings—sought to betray him into this ambush. He pronounced the name correctly, but that mattered little, since none of them knew whether he did or did not; and so they took triumph according to their ignorance. Under these arduous circumstances it was certain that the town should look for a nickname, and at this time the nickname was in process of formation. So William Neeltje lived on with his secret, smiling foolishly toward the world.
“Come on,” cried little Cora. “Let’s all get our hair cut. That’s what let’s do. Let’s all get our hair cut! Come on! Come on! Come on!”
The others were carried off their feet by the fury of this assault. To get their hair cut! What joy! Little did they know if this were fun; they only knew that their small leader said it was fun. Chocolate-stained but confident, the band marched into William Neeltje’s barber shop.
“We wish to get our hair cut,” said little Cora, haughtily.
Neeltje, in his shirt sleeves, stood looking at them with his half-idiot smile.
“Hurry, now!” commanded the queen. A dray horse toiled step by step, step by step, up Bridge Street hill; a far woman’s voice arose; there could be heard the ceaseless hammers of shingling carpenters; all was summer peace. “Come on, now. Who’s goin’ first? Come on, Ella; you go first. Gettin’ our hair cut! Oh what fun!”
Little Ella Earl would not, however, be first in the chair. She was drawn toward it by a singular fascination, but at the same time she was afraid of it, and so she hung back, saying: “No! You go first! No! You go first!” The question was precipitated by the twins and one of the Phelps children. They made simultaneous rush for the chair, and screamed and kicked, each pair preventing the third child. The queen entered this mêlée, and decided in favor of the Phelps boy. He ascended the chair. Thereat an awed silence fell upon the band. And always William Neeltje smiled fatuously.
He tucked a cloth in the neck of the Phelps boy and, taking scissors, began to cut his hair. The group of children came closer and closer. Even the queen was deeply moved. “Does it hurt any?” she asked, in a wee voice.
“Naw,” said the Phelps boy, with dignity. “Anyhow, I’ve had m’ hair cut afore.”
When he appeared to them looking very soldierly with his cropped little head, there was a tumult over the chair. The Margate twins howled; Jimmie Trescott was kicking them on the shins. It was a fight.
But the twins could not prevail, being the smallest of all the children. The queen herself took the chair, and ordered Neeltje as if he were a lady’s maid. To the floor there fell proud ringlets, blazing even there in their humiliation with a full fine bronze light. Then Jimmie Trescott, then Ella Earl (two long ash-colored plaits), then a Phelps girl, then another Phelps girl; and so on from head to head. The ceremony received unexpected check when the turn came to Dan Earl. This lad, usually docile to any rein, had suddenly grown mulishly obstinate. No, he would not, he would not. He himself did not seem to know why he refused to have his hair cut, but, despite the shrill derision of the company, he remained obdurate. Anyhow, the twins, long held in check and now feverishly eager, were already struggling for the chair.
And so to the floor at last came the golden Margate curls, the heart treasure and glory of a mother, three aunts, and some feminine cousins.
All having been finished, the children, highly elate, thronged out into the street. They crowed and cackled with pride and joy, anon turning to scorn the cowardly Dan Earl.
Ella Earl was an exception. She had been pensive for some time, and now the shorn little maiden began vaguely to weep. In the door of his shop William Neeltje stood watching them, upon his face a grin of almost inhuman idiocy.
II
It now becomes the duty of the unfortunate writer to exhibit these children to their fond parents. “Come on, Jimmie,” cried little Cora, “let’s go show mamma.” And they hurried off, these happy children, to show mamma.
The Trescotts and their guests were assembled, indolently awaiting the luncheon bell. Jimmie and the angel child burst in upon them. “Oh, mamma,” shrieked little Cora, “see how fine I am! I’ve had my hair cut! Isn’t it splendid? And Jimmie too!”
The wretched mother took one sight, emitted one yell, and fell into a chair. Mrs. Trescott dropped a large lady’s journal and made a nerveless mechanical clutch at it. The painter gripped the arms of his chair and leaned forward, staring until his eyes were like two little clock faces. Dr. Trescott did not move or speak.
To the children the next moments were chaotic. There were a loudly wailing mother and a pale-faced, aghast mother; a stammering father and a grim and terrible father. The angel child did not understand anything of it save the voice of calamity, and in a moment all her little imperialism went to the winds. She ran sobbing to her mother. “Oh, mamma! mamma! mamma!”
The desolate Jimmie heard out of this inexplicable situation a voice which he knew well, a sort of colonel’s voice, and he obeyed like any good soldier. “Jimmie!”
He stepped three paces to the front. “Yes, sir.”
“How did this—how did this happen?” said Trescott.
Now Jimmie could have explained how had happened anything which had happened, but he did not know what had happened, so he said, “I—I—nothin’.”
“And, oh, look at her frock!” said Mrs. Trescott, brokenly.
The words turned the mind of the mother of the angel child. She looked up, her eyes blazing. “Frock!” she repeated. “Frock! What do I care for her frock? Frock!” she choked out again from the depths of her bitterness. Then she arose suddenly, and whirled tragically upon her husband. “Look!” she declaimed. “All—her lovely—hair—all her lovely hair—gone—gone!” The painter was apparently in a fit; his jaw was set, his eyes were glazed, his body was stiff and straight. “All gone—all—her lovely hair—all gone—my poor little darlin’—my—poor—little—darlin’!” And the angel child added her heartbroken voice to her mother’s wail as they fled into each other’s arms.
In the meantime Trescott was patiently unraveling some skeins of Jimmie’s tangled intellect. “And then you went to this barber’s on the hill. Yes. And where did you get the money? Yes. I see. And who besides you and Cora had their hair cut? The Margate twi— Oh, Lord!”
Over at the Margate place old Eldridge Margate, the grandfather of the twins, was in the back garden picking peas and smoking ruminatively to himself. Suddenly he heard from the house great noises. Doors slammed, women rushed upstairs and downstairs calling to each other in voices of agony. And then full and mellow upon the still air arose the roar of the twins in pain.
Old Eldridge stepped out of the pea patch and moved toward the house, puzzled, staring, not yet having decided that it was his duty to rush forward. Then around the corner of the house shot his daughter Mollie, her face pale with horror.
“What’s the matter?” he cried.
“Oh, father,” she gasped, “the children! They—”
Then around the corner of the house came the twins, howling at the top of their power, their faces flowing with tears. They were still hand in hand, the ruling passion being strong even in this suffering. At sight of them old Eldridge took his pipe hastily out of his mouth. “Good God!” he said.
And now what befell one William Neeltje, a barber by trade? And what was said by angry parents of the mother of such an angel child? And w
hat was the fate of the angel child herself?
There was surely a tempest. With the exception of the Margate twins, the boys could well be eliminated from the affair. Of course it didn’t matter if their hair was cut. Also the two little Phelps girls had had very short hair, anyhow, and their parents were not too greatly incensed. In the case of Ella Earl, it was mainly the pathos of the little girl’s own grieving; but her mother played a most generous part, and called upon Mrs. Trescott, and condoled with the mother of the angel child over their equivalent losses. But the Margate contingent! They simply screeched.
Trescott, composed and cool-blooded, was in the middle of a giddy whirl. He was not going to allow the mobbing of his wife’s cousins, nor was he going to pretend that the spoliation of the Margate twins was a virtuous and beautiful act. He was elected, gratuitously, to the position of a buffer.
But, curiously enough, the one who achieved the bulk of the misery was old Eldridge Margate, who had been picking peas at the time. The feminine Margates stormed his position as individuals, in pairs, in teams, and en masse. In two days they may have aged him seven years. He must destroy the utter Neeltje. He must midnightly massacre the angel child and her mother. He must dip his arms in blood to the elbows.
Trescott took the first opportunity to express to him his concern over the affair, but when the subject of the disaster was mentioned, old Eldridge, to the doctor’s great surprise, actually chuckled long and deeply. “Oh, well, look-a-here,” he said. “I never was so much in love with them there damn curls. The curls was purty—yes—but then I’d a darn sight rather see boys look more like boys than like two little wax figgers. An’, ye know, the little cusses like it themselves. They never took no stock in all this washin’ an’ combin’ an’ fixin’ an’ goin’ to church an’ paradin’ an’ Showin’ off. They stood it because they were told to. That’s all. Of course this here Neel-te-gee, er whatever his name is, is a plumb dumb ijit, but I don’t see what’s to be done, now that the kids is full well cropped. I might go and burn his shop over his head, but that wouldn’t bring no hair back on to the kids. They’re even kicking on sashes now, an’ that’s all right, ’cause what fer does a boy want a sash?”
Whereupon Trescott perceived that the old man wore his brains above his shoulders, and Trescott departed from him rejoicing greatly that it was only women who could not know that there was finality to most disasters, and that when a thing was fully done, no amount of door-slammings, rushings upstairs and downstairs, calls, lamentations, tears, could bring back a single hair to the heads of twins.
But the rains came and the winds blew in the most biblical way when a certain fact came to light in the Trescott household. Little Cora, corroborated by Jimmie, innocently remarked that five dollars had been given her by her father on her birthday, and with this money the evil had been wrought. Trescott had known it, but he—thoughtful man—had said nothing. For her part, the mother of the angel child had up to that moment never reflected that the consummation of the wickedness must have cost a small sum of money. But now it was all clear to her. He was the guilty one—he! “My angel child!”
The scene which ensued was inspiriting. A few days later, loungers at the railway station saw a lady leading a shorn and still undaunted lamb. Attached to them was a husband and father who was plainly bewildered, but still more plainly vexed, as if he would be saying: “Damn ’em! Why can’t they leave me alone?”
August, 1899
[Harper’s Magazine, Vol. 99, pp. 358–364.]
* Whilomville Stories.
LYNX-HUNTING*
Jimmie lounged about the dining room and watched his mother with large, serious eyes. Suddenly he said, “Ma—now—can I borrow pa’s gun?”
She was overcome with the feminine horror which is able to mistake preliminary words for the full accomplishment of the dread thing. “Why, Jimmie!” she cried. “Of al-l wonders! Your father’s gun! No indeed you can’t!”
He was fairly well crushed, but he managed to mutter, sullenly, “Well, Willie Dalzel, he’s got a gun.” In reality his heart had previously been beating with such tumult—he had himself been so impressed with the daring and sin of his request—that he was glad that all was over now, and his mother could do very little further harm to his sensibilities. He had been influenced into the venture by the larger boys.
“Huh!” the Dalzel urchin had said; “your father’s got a gun, hasn’t he? Well, why don’t you bring that?”
Puffing himself, Jimmie had replied, “Well, I can, if I want to.” It was a black lie, but really the Dalzel boy was too outrageous with his eternal bill-posting about the gun which a beaming uncle had entrusted to him. Its possession made him superior in manfulness to most boys in the neighborhood—or at least they enviously conceded him such position—but he was so overbearing, and stuffed the fact of his treasure so relentlessly down their throats, that on this occasion the miserable Jimmie had lied as naturally as most animals swim.
Willie Dalzel had not been checkmated, for he had instantly retorted, “Why don’t you get it, then?”
“Well, I can, if I want to.”
“Well, get it, then!”
“Well, I can, if I want to.”
Thereupon Jimmie had paced away with great airs of surety as far as the door of his home, where his manner changed to one of tremulous misgiving as it came upon him to address his mother in the dining room. There had happened that which had happened.
When Jimmie returned to his two distinguished companions he was blown out with a singular pomposity. He spoke these noble words: “Oh, well, I guess I don’t want to take the gun out today.”
They had been watching him with gleaming ferret eyes, and they detected his falsity at once. They challenged him with shouted gibes, but it was not in the rules for the conduct of boys that one should admit anything whatsoever, and so Jimmie, backed into an ethical corner, lied as stupidly, as desperately, as hopelessly as ever lone savage fights when surrounded at last in his jungle.
Such accusations were never known to come to any point, for the reason that the number and kind of denials always equaled or exceeded the number of accusations, and no boy was ever brought really to book for these misdeeds.
In the end they went off together, Willie Dalzel with his gun being a trifle in advance and discoursing upon his various works. They passed along a maple-lined avenue, a highway common to boys bound for that free land of hills and woods in which they lived in some part their romance of the moment, whether it was of Indians, miners, smugglers, soldiers, or outlaws. The paths were their paths, and much was known to them of the secrets of the dark green hemlock thickets, the wastes of sweet fern and huckleberry, the cliffs of gaunt bluestone with the sumach burning red at their feet. Each boy had, I am sure, a conviction that some day the wilderness was to give forth to him a marvelous secret. They felt that the hills and the forest knew much, and they heard a voice of it in the silence. It was vague, thrilling, fearful, and altogether fabulous. The grown folk seemed to regard these wastes merely as so much distance between one place and another place, or as a rabbit-cover, or as a district to be judged according to the value of the timber; but to the boys it spoke some great inspiring word, which they knew even as those who pace the shore know the enigmatic speech of the surf. In the meantime they lived there, in season, lives of ringing adventure—by dint of imagination.
The boys left the avenue, skirted hastily through some private grounds, climbed a fence, and entered the thickets. It happened that at school the previous day Willie Dalzel had been forced to read and acquire in some part a solemn description of a lynx. The meager information thrust upon him had caused him grimaces of suffering, but now he said, suddenly, “I’m goin’ to shoot a lynx.”
The other boys admired this statement, but they were silent for a time. Finally Jimmie said, meekly, “What’s a lynx?” He had endured his ignorance as long as he was able.
The Dalzel boy mocked him. “Why, don’t you know what a lynx is? A
lynx? Why, a lynx is a animal somethin’ like a cat, an’ it’s got great big green eyes, and it sits on the limb of a tree an’ jus’ glares at you. It’s a pretty bad animal, I tell you. Why, when I—”
“Huh!” said the third boy. “Where’d you ever see a lynx?”
“Oh, I’ve seen ’em—plenty of ’em. I bet you’d be scared if you seen one once.”
Jimmie and the other boy each demanded, “How do you know I would?”
They penetrated deeper into the wood. They climbed a rocky zigzag path which led them at times where with their hands they could almost touch the tops of giant pines. The gray cliffs sprang sheer toward the sky, Willie Dalzel babbled about his impossible lynx, and they stalked the mountain-side like chamois-hunters, although no noise of bird or beast broke the stillness of the hills. Below them Whilomville was spread out somewhat like the cheap green-and-black lithograph of the time— “A Bird’s-eye View of Whilomville, N. Y.”
In the end the boys reached the top of the mountain and scouted off among wild and desolate ridges. They were burning with the desire to slay large animals. They thought continually of elephants, lions, tigers, crocodiles. They discoursed upon their immaculate conduct in case such monsters confronted them, and they all lied carefully about their courage.
The breeze was heavy with the smell of sweet fern. The pines and hemlocks sighed as they waved their branches. In the hollows the leaves of the laurels were lacquered where the sunlight found them. No matter the weather, it would be impossible to long continue an expedition of this kind without a fire, and presently they built one, snapping down for fuel the brittle under branches of the pines. About this fire they were willed to conduct a sort of play, the Dalzel boy taking the part of a bandit chief, and the other boys being his trusty lieutenants. They stalked to and fro, long-strided, stern yet devil-may-care, three terrible little figures.
The Complete Short Stories and Sketches of Stephen Crane Page 78