Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Cleymore raised his head a little.

  “I surrender,” he sighed, and fainted.

  Then there came a great sound of cheering from below, the drums rattled, and the music of the bugles swelled nearer and nearer, until a crash of eager feet sounded among the branches of the abatis and a figure clad in grey leaped upon the breastworks and drove the steel point of a standard into the gravel.

  “In the name of God!” he shouted in a voice choked with emotion.

  “Let him pray, “ muttered the dusty veterans of Longstreet’s infantry as they wheeled into the parallels, “he’s one of Jackson’s men.”

  And all these things were done in the Name of the Most High.

  THE BOY’S SISTER.

  “Le plus grand tort de la plupart des maris envers leurs femmes, c’est de les avoir épousées.”

  “Je ne me sens jamais plus seul que lorsque je livre mon coeur à quelque ami.”

  MAUPASSANT.

  I.

  GARLAND’S profession took him to Ten Pin Corners. His profession was to collect butterflies for the Natural History Museum of New York. “Uncle Billy,” who kept the Constitution Hotel at Ten Pin Corners, thought “bug huntin’” was a “dampoor bizness, even fur a dood,” — and perhaps it was — but that is none of your business or mine. Garland lived at the Constitution Hotel. The hotel did small honour to its name, in fact it would have ruined any other constitution. It was ruining Garland’s by degrees, but a man of twenty-five doesn’t notice such things. So Garland swallowed his saleratus biscuits and bolted pork and beans, and was very glad that he was alive.

  He had met the male population of Ten Pin Corners over the bar at the Constitution Hotel, — it being a temperance state — and there he had listened to their views on all that makes life worth living.

  He tried to love his fellow-countrymen. When Orrin Hayes spat upon the stove and denounced woman’s suffrage — when Cy Pettingil, whose wife was obliged to sign his name for him, agreed profanely — when the Hon. Hanford Perkins, A. P. A., demonstrated the wickedness of Catholicism, and proffered vague menaces against Rome, Garland conscientiously repressed a shudder.

  “They are my countrymen, God bless ‘em,” he thought, smiling upon the free-born.

  Uncle Billy’s felonious traffic in the “j’yfull juice,” did not prevent his attendance at town meeting, nor his enthusiastic voice against local option.

  “I ain’t no dum fool,” he observed to Garland, “let the wimmen hev their way.”

  “But don’t you think,” suggested Garland, “that a liberal law would be better?”

  “Naw,” replied Uncle Billy.

  “But don’t you think even a poor law should be observed until wise legislation can find a remedy?”

  “Naw,” said Uncle Billy, and closed the subject.

  Sometimes Uncle Billy would come out on the verandah where Garland was sitting in the sun, fussing over some captured caterpillar. His invariable salute was, “More bugs? Gosh!”

  Once he brought Garland a cockroach, and suggested the bar-room as a new and interesting collecting ground, but Garland explained that his business did not include such augean projects, and the thrifty old man was baffled.

  “What’s them bugs good fur?” he demanded at length. Garland explained, but Uncle Billy never got over the impression that Garland’s real business was the advertising of Persian Powder. Most of the prominent citizens of Ten Pin Corners came to Garland to engage his services as potato-beetle exterminator, measuring-worm destroyer, and general annihilator of mosquitoes, and to each in turn he carefully explained what his profession was.

  They were skeptical — sometimes sarcastic. One thing, however, puzzled them; he had never been known to try to sell anybody Persian Powder, for, possessed with the idea that he was some new species of drummer, they found this difficult to reconcile with their suspicions.

  “Bin a-buggin’, haint ye?” was the usual salute from the free-born whom he met in the fields; and when Garland smiled and nodded, the free-born would expectorate and chuckle, “Oh, yew air slick, Mister Garland, yew’re more ‘n a Yankee than I be.”

  Ten Pin Corners was built along both sides of the road; the Constitution Hotel stood at one extremity of the main street, the Post Office at the other. Garland once asked why the place was called Ten Pin Corners, and Uncle Billy told him a lie about its having been named from his, Uncle Billy’s, palatial ten pin alley.

  “Then why not Ten Pin Alley?” asked Garland.

  “Cuz it ain’t no alley,” sniffed Uncle Billy.

  “But,” persisted Garland, “why Corners?”

  “Becuz there haint no corners,” said Uncle Billy evasively, and retired to his bar, thirsty and irritated. “Asks enough damfool que-estions t’ set a man crazy,” he confided to the Hon. Hanford Perkins; “I’ve hed drummers an’ drummers at the Constitooshun, but I h’aint seen nothin’ tew beat him.”

  The Hon. Hanford Perkins looked at Uncle Billy and spat gravely upon the stove, and Uncle Billy spat also, to put himself on an equality with the Hon. Hanford Perkins.

  Concerning the mendacity of Uncle Billy there could be no question. Ten Pin Corners had been originally Ten Pines Corners. Half a mile from the terminus of the main street stood a low stone house. It was included in the paternal government of Ten Pin Corners, and it was from this house, surrounded by ten gigantic pines, and from the four cross-roads behind it, now long disused and overgrown with grass and fireweed, that the village name degenerated from Ten Pines to Ten Pin.

  Thither Garland was wont to go in the evenings, for the pines were the trysting places of moths — grey moths with pink and black under wings, brown moths with gaudy orange under wings, rusty red moths flecked with silver, nankeen yellow moths, the product of the measuring-worm, big fluffy moths, little busy moths, and moths that you and I know nothing about. The sap from the pines attracted some of these creatures, the lily garden in front of the stone house attracted others, and the whole combination attracted Garland. Also there lived in the stone house a boy’s sister.

  One afternoon when Uncle Billy’s continued expectoration and Cy Pettingil’s profanity had driven Garland from the hotel, he wandered down into a fragrant meadow, butterfly net in one hand, trout rod in the other, and pockets stuffed with cyanide jar, fly-book, sandwiches, and Wilson on Hybrids.

  The stream was narrow and deep, for the most part flowing silently between level banks fragrant with mint and scented grass; but here and there a small moss-grown dam choked the current into a deeper pool below, into which poured musical waterfalls.

  There were trout there, yellow, speckled, and greedy, but devious in their ways, and uncertain as April mornings. There were also frogs there, solemn green ones that snapped at the artificial flies and came out of the water with slim limbs outstretched and belly glistening.

  “It’s like pulling up some nude dwarf, when they grab the fly,” wrote Garland to his chief in New York, “really they look so naked and indecent.” Otherwise Garland was fond of frogs; he often sat for hours watching them half afloat along the bank or squatting majestically upon some mossy throne.

  That afternoon he had put on a scarlet ibis fly, and the frogs plunged and lunged after it, flopping into the pools and frightening the lurking trout until Garland was obliged to substitute a yellow fly in self defence. But the trout were coy. One great fellow leaped for the fly, missed it, leaped again to see what was wrong, and finding out, fled into the depths, waving his square tail derisively. Garland walked slowly down the brook, casting ahead into the stream, sometimes catching his fly in the rank grass, sometimes deftly defeating the larcenous manœuvres of some fat frog, and now and then landing a plump orange-bellied trout among the perfumed mint, where it flopped until a merciful tap on the nose sent its vital spark into Nirvana and its crimson flecked body into Garland’s moss-lined creel.

  Once or twice he dropped his rod in the grass to net some conceited butterfly that flaunted its charms before the
serious-minded clover bees, but he seldom found anything worth keeping, and the butterfly was left to pursue its giddy interrupted flight.

  As he passed, walking lightly on the flowering turf, the big black crickets sang to him, the katydids scraped for him, and the grasshoppers, big and little, brown, green, and yellow, hopped out of the verdure before him, a tiny escort of outriders.

  It was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon when he came to the last pool, before the meadow brook flows silently into the woods where slim black trout lurk under submerged rocks and mosquitos swoop thankfully upon the wanderer.

  On the bank of the pool sat a beautiful boy watching a cork floating with the current.

  “Hello,” said Garland, “you ought to be in school, Tip.”

  The boy looked at Garland through gilded tangled curls. “Can’t you see I’m fishin’?” he said in a whisper.

  “I see,” said Garland, “but you know your sister wouldn’t allow it. Why did you stay away from school, Tip?”

  The angelic eyes were lowered a moment, then the boy carefully raised his pole, and, seeing the bait intact, dropped it into the water again.

  “Bill Timerson biffed me,” said the child.

  “If Willy Timerson struck you, you should not stay away from school,” he said; “did you — er — hit him back?”

  “Did I?”

  “Did you?” repeated Garland, repressing a smile.

  “Heu! Why, Mister Garland, I slammed that d — n mug of his—”

  “Tip!” said Garland.

  The boy hung his head and looked at the cork. Garland sat down beside him and lighted his pipe.

  After a moment he said: “Tip, I thought you promised me not to swear.”

  The boy was silent.

  “Did you?” said Garland.

  “Yes,” replied the boy, sullenly.

  “Well?” persisted Garland.

  “I lied,” said the boy.

  “You forgot,” said Garland, quietly, “you don’t lie, Tip.”

  The boy looked at him shyly, then turned to his cork again.

  “Tip,” said Garland, “what do you think of these?” he opened his creel and Tip looked in.

  “Hell!” said the child softly.

  “What!” interrupted Garland.

  “There!” said Tip calmly, “I lied again; lam me one in the snoot, Mister Garland.”

  Garland touched the boy lightly on the forehead. “You will try,” he said, trying to conceal the despair in his voice.

  “Yes,” cried the child fervently, “I will, Mr. Garland, so help me — I mean, cross my heart!” After a moment he added, “I — I brought you a green worm — here it is—”

  “Hello! A Smerinthus, eh? Much obliged, Tip; where did you get it?”

  “Sister found it on the piazza, — she said mebbe you’d want it,” replied the child lifting his line again; “say, Mister Garland, Squire Perkins says you’re loony.”

  “What,” laughed Garland.

  “Solemn,” continued the child, “he says you was once a book agent or a drummer, but you’re loony now and can’t work.”

  “The Hon. Hanford Perkins, Tip?” asked Garland, laughing frankly.

  “Yep, ole Perkins hisself.”

  “To whom did he eulogize me, Tip?”

  “What, sir?”

  “To whom did he say this?”

  “To sister — an’ Celia turned her back on him; I — seen it. Are you loony?”

  Garland was laughing but managed to say, no. “That’s what I said,” said Tip, scowling at the water, “and I said you’d kick the hel — you’d kick the stuffins outen him if he said it much more. Will you, Mr. Garland?”

  “I — I don’t know,” said Garland, trying to control his mirth, “you mustn’t say that sort of thing, you know, Tip.”

  “I know it,” said Tip, resignedly, “I hove ‘n apple through his hat though, — last night.”

  Then Garland explained to Tip all about the deference due to age, but so pleasantly that the child listened to every word.

  “All right,” he said, “I’ll let the ole man be, — I was plannin’ to bust a window,” he continued, with a trace of regret, “but I won’t!” he cried in a climax of pious resignation.

  Garland watched a distant butterfly critically for a moment, then picked up his rod and creel and shook the ashes from his pipe.

  “Goin’ to see Cis?” inquired Tip.

  “Hem! Hum! I — er — may pass by that way,” replied Garland.

  “You won’t tell her that I smashed Bill Timerson?”

  “Of course not,” said Garland, “that’s for you to tell her.”

  “I won’t,” said the child doggedly.

  “Very well,” said Garland, walking away.

  Tip watched him, but he did not turn, and the child’s face became troubled.

  “I will tell, Mr. Garland!” he called across the meadow.

  “All right, Tip,” answered Garland, cheerily.

  II.

  BEFORE Garland came in sight of the low stone house he caught the fragrance of the lilies. The sun glittered low on the horizon, long luminous shadows stretched over meadow and pasture, and a thin blue haze floated high among the feathery tops of the pines about the house. A white nanny-goat of tender age, tethered on the velvet turf, cried “me — h! me — h!” watching him with soft silly eyes. Except for the kid, and a Maltese cat asleep on the porch, there was no sign of life about the house. Garland turned and looked out over the pastures. A spot of greyish-pink was moving down there. He watched it for a moment, quietly refilling his pipe, then dropped his rod and net upon the turf, and threw himself on the ground beside them. From time to time he raised his eyes from the pages of Wilson on Hybrids to note the progress of the pink spot in the distant pasture.

  Wilson was most interesting on hybrids. What Wilson had to say was this: “There can be no doubt that hybrid forms of these two splendid butterflies, Nymphalis Arthemis and Nymphalis Ephestion, exist in the localities frequented by these species. In the little village of Ten Pin Corners, Professor Wormly discovered an unknown hybrid, which, unfortunately, he was unable to capture or describe.”

  This was what Wilson had to say on hybrids. This was what Garland thought: “I’d give fifty dollars to capture one of these hybrids; — I wonder what Celia is doing in the pasture? It may not have been a hybrid; it may only have been a variety. Celia is milking the Alderney, that’s what she’s doing. Still Wormly ought to know what he’s about. Celia has finished milking; now it’s the Jersey’s turn. I should like to see a hybrid of Arthemis and — hello! Celia has finished, I fancy.” Then he laid down his book and carefully retied his necktie.

  When Celia arrived and placed her milk pail on the porch, Garland jumped to his feet with hypocritical surprise.

  “You are milking early,” he said, “did you just come from the pasture?”

  The girl looked at her pail and nodded. The sunlight gilded her arms, bare to the shoulder, and glittered in a fierce halo around her burnished hair. She had her brother’s soft blue eyes, fringed with dark lashes, but the beauty of her mouth was indescribable. Garland, as usual, offered to take the milk pail, and she, as usual, firmly declined.

  “You never let me,” he said, “I wanted to bring it up from the pasture, but I knew what you’d say.”

  “Then you saw me in the pasture,” she asked.

  “Br — er — yes,” he admitted.

  “I saw you too,” she said, and sat down in the red sunlight under the pines.

  Garland sat down also, and made an idle pass at a white butterfly with his net.

  “Have you caught any new butterflies today?” she asked, bending to tie her shoestring.

  “No, nothing new,” he answered. She straightened up, brushed a drop or two of milk from the hem of her pink skirt, passed a slim hand over her crumpled apron, and leaned back against the tree trunk, touching her hair lightly with her fingers.

  “Last night,”
she said, “a great green miller-moth came around the lamp. I caught him for you.”

  “A Luna,” he said, “thank you, Celia.”

  “Luna,” she repeated gravely, “is he rare?” She had picked up a few phrases from Garland and used them with pretty conscientiousness.

  “No,” said Garland, “not very rare — but I will keep this one.”

  “I caught some more, too,” she continued, “ a yellow miller—”

  “Moth, Celia.”

  “Miller-moth—”

  “No — a moth—”

  “A yellow moth,” she continued serenely, “that had eyes on its wings.”

  “Saturnia Io,” said Garland.

  “Io,” repeated the girl, softly, “is it rare?”

  “It is rare here. I will keep it.”

  The Maltese cat lifted its voice and rubbed its arched back against the milk pail. Its name was Julia and Garland called it to him.

  “Julia has a saucer of milk on the porch; she is only teasing,” said Celia.

  But Julia’s voice was sustained and piercing, and Garland rose laughing and poured a few drops of warm fresh milk into the half-filled saucer. Then Julia exposed the depth of her capriciousness; she sniffed at the milk, walked around it twice, touched the saucer playfully, patted a stray leaf with velvet paw, and then suddenly pretending that she was in danger of instant annihilation from some impending calamity, pranced into the middle of the lawn, crooked her tail, rushed half way up a tree-trunk, slid back, and finally charged on the tethered kid with swollen tail and ears flattened.

  Garland went back to his seat on the turf. “It is the way of the world,” he said gaily.

  Celia picked up a pine cone and sniffed daintily at the dried apex.

  “Julia was not hungry; she only wanted attention,” he added.

  “Some people are hungry for attention too, — and never get it,” said Celia.

  Garland knew what she meant. It was common gossip among the free-born who congregated about the saliva stricken stove at Uncle Billy’s or sat on musty barrels in the Post Office store.

  “But,” said Garland, “you do not want his attention, — now.”