Kitabı oku: «Sandburrs and Others», sayfa 18
CRIB OR COFFIN?
I
YOUNG Jones stood in the telegraph office – the one at Twenty-third Street and Broadway. There was an air of triumph about Jones, an atmosphere of insolent sagacity, which might belong to one who, by some sudden, skilful sleight had caught a starling. Yet Jones’s victory was in nowise uncommon. Others had achieved it many a time and oft. It was simply a baby; young Jones had become a papa, and it was this that gave him those frills which we have chronicled. The presence of young Jones in the telegraph office might be explained by looking over his shoulder. This is the message he wrote:
New York City, Dec. 8, ’99.
Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps,
Albany, N. Y.
I still take it you are interested in the census of your family. Recent events in this city have altered the figures. Don’t attempt to write a history of the tribe of Van Epps without consulting Sanford Jones.
“There!” said young Jones, “that ought to fetch him. He won’t know whether I mean the birth of a baby or Mary’s death. If he doesn’t come to see her now, I will mark him off my list for good. I would as it stands, if it were not for Mary.”
“Won’t father worry, dear?” asked Mary, when young Jones repeated the ambiguous message he had aimed at his up-the-State father-in-law.
“I expect him to shed apprehensive tears all the way to New York,” replied young Jones. “But don’t fret, Mary; I am sure he will come; and a tear or two won’t hurt him. They will help his eyes, even though they do his heart no good. I don’t resent his treatment of me, but his neglect of you is not so easy to forgive.”
II
This was the story:
Back four years, Albany would have shown you young Jones opening his law office in that hamlet. Mary was “Mary Van Epps.” At that time seventeen years was all the family register allowed to her for age.
Her father, Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps, was one of the leading citizens of Albany. While not a millionaire, he was of sufficient wealth to dazzle the local eye, and he was always mentioned by the denizens of his native place as “rich.”
Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps had a weakness. He was slave to the pedigree habit. Never a day went by but he called somebody’s attention to those celebrities who aforetime founded and set flowing the family of Van Epps; and he proposed at some hour in the future to write a history of that eminent house. With his wealth and his family pride to prompt him, it came easy one day for Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps to object with decision and vigour to a match between young Jones and his daughter Mary.
“They were both fools!” he said.
Then he pointed out that the day would never dawn when a plebeian like unto Jones, without lineage or lucre, boasting nothing better than a law office vacant of practice, and on which the rent was in arrears three months, would wed a daughter of the Van Epps. Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps, in elaboration of his objection, showed that beyond a taste to drink whiskey and a speculative bent toward draw poker, he knew of nothing which young Jones possessed. Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps closed, as he began, with the emphatic announcement that no orange blossoms would ever blow for the nuptials of young Jones and Mary Van Epps.
Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps in his attitude will have the indorsement of all good Christian people. He was right as a father. As a prophet touching orange blossoms, however, he was what vulgar souls call “off.” Of that anon.
III
YOUNG Jones more than half believed that Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps was right. So far as whiskey and draw poker were concerned, he went with him; but with Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps’ objections to him, based on the lack of pedigree and a failure of pocket-book, he didn’t sympathise.
“I may be poor, and my family tree may be a mullein stalk, but I am still a fitting mate for any member of the Van Epps tribe.”
Thus spake young Jones to Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps. He then took the earliest private occasion to kiss Mary good-bye, give her his picture, and make her his promise to wed her within five years.
“Would she wait?”
“I would wait a century,” said Mary.
Young Jones kissed Mary again after that. The next day Albany was short one citizen, and that citizen was young Jones. Albany is short to this day.
IV
Let us drop details. Good luck came to young Jones, hard on the lonely heels of his evacuation of Albany. He was named a junior partner of a New York City law firm. His income equalled his hope. He dismissed whiskey and draw poker, and he wrote to Mary Van Epps:
“Could he claim her now?”
Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps said “No” again. Young Jones still lacked ancestry, and a taste for whiskey and four aces still lurked in his blood. Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps would not consent. This served for a time to abate the bridal preparations.
V
Two years deserted the future for the past. A great deal of water will run under a bridge in two years. Mary Van Epps was nineteen. She went on a visit to a Trenton relative. Young Jones became abundant in Trenton at that very time. They took in a parson while on a stroll one day, and when that experienced divine got through with them they were man and wife. They wired their entangled condition to Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps. He sent them a message of wrath.
“I cast Mary off for ever! Never let me see her face again!”
“Very well!” remarked young Jones as he read the wire; “I shall need Mary myself, in New York. Casting her off, therefore, at Albany, cuts no great figure. As for Mary’s face, I will look at it all the more to make up for her brutal dad’s abatement of interest therein.”
Then he kissed Mary as if the feat were entirely fresh. And while Mary wept, she still felt very happy. Next they came to a modest home in the city.
VI
Two years more trailed the otners into history. Young Jones was held a fortunate man. His work was a success. Whiskey and poker were now so far astern as to be hull-down in the horizon. And he loved Mary better than ever. She was the triumph of his life, and he told her so every day.
“It is certainly wonderful,” he said, “how much more beautiful you become every day.”
This pleased Mary; and while her heart turned to her hard old father, she did not repent that episode at Trenton, which changed her name to Jones.
Once a month Mary faithfully addressed a letter, new and fresh each time with the love that fails and fades not, to “Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps, Albany, N. Y.” And once a month Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps read it, gulped a little, and made no reply.
“I will never see her again!” Colonel Stuyvesant
Van Epps remarked to himself on these letter occasions.
All the time he knew he lived for nothing else. But he thought of his family and mustered his pride, and of course became a limitless fool at once, as do those who give way to an attack of pedigree.
But the Jones baby was born; and young Jones concluded to try his hand on Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps. Mary wanted him to come, and that settled the whole matter so far as young Jones was concerned. In his new victory as a successful father, he felt that he could look down on Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps. He therefore wrote the message referred to in our first chapter with perfect confidence, that, turn as matters might, he had nothing to fear.
“The past, at least, is secure!” said young Jones; “and, come what may, I have Mary and the baby.” Both Mary and young Jones, however, awaited the returns from Albany with anxiety; – Mary, because she loved her father and mourned for his old face, and young Jones because he loved Mary. They were relieved when the bell rang at 7 P. M., and a bicycle boy handed in a yellow paper, which read: “Will be there to-morrow on the 8:30. – Stuyvesant Van Epps.”
Mary was all gladness. Young Jones was calm, but gave way sufficiently to say:
“Mary, we will call the cub ‘Stuyvesant Van Epps Jones.’”
VII
YOUNG Jones met Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps at the Forty-Second Street station. The old gentleman had been torn by doubts and grievous misgivings all the way down. What did young Jones’ ambiguous message mean? Was Mary dead? Was he bound to a funeral? or a christening? Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps knew that something tremendous had happened. But what?
Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps walked up to young Jones at the station, and without pausing to greet him, remarked:
“Crib or coffin?”
“Crib!” said young Jones.
Then Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps fell into a storm of tears, and began to shake young Jones by the hand for the first time in his life.
VIII
The three happiest people in the world that night were Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps, Mary and young Jones. The baby was the one member of the family who did not give way to emotion. He received his grandfather with a stolid phlegm which became a Van Epps.
“And his name is Stuyvesant Van Epps Jones,” said Mary.
Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps kissed Mary again at this cheering news, and shook hands with young Jones for the second time in his life.
That is all there is to a very true story. Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps lives now in New York City, and Albany is shy a second citizen. Mary is happy, young Jones feels like a conqueror, and the infant, Stuyvesant Van Epps Jones, beneath the eye of his grandsire, waxes apace.
OHIO DAYS
I – AT THE LEES
Aunt Ann, be we goin’ to the spellin’ to-night at the Block schoolhouse?”
Jim Lee always called his wife “Aunt Ann.” So did everybody except her daughter Lydia. She called Aunt Ann “Mother.” But to Jim Lee and the other inhabitants of Stowe Township, she was “Aunt Ann Lee.”
As Jim Lee asked Aunt Ann the question, he threw down the armful of maple wood and retreated to the back door to stamp the snow off his boots.
“I want to know,” he said, “so’s to do the chores in time.”
Aunt Ann was chopping mince-meat. She was a clean, beautiful woman of the buxom sort. Her eyes were very blue, while her hair was very black with not a strand of silver, for all her forty-seven years. Jim Lee held Aunt Ann in great respect. Aunt Ann on her part was a tender soul and true, although Jim Lee had found her quite firm at times.
“Now and then she’s a morsel hard on the bit,” said Jim Lee, descriptively.
Perhaps the two old-maid Spranglers meant the same thing when they said: “There never was a body with blue eyes and black hair who didn’t have the snap in ‘em.”
“Yes,” replied Aunt Ann to Jim Lee’s question “yes, of course we’ll go. I’ve got to see Mrs. Au about some rag carpets she’s weavin’ for me, and she be there. Better get the Morgan colt and the cutter ready, father; we’ll go in that.”
“That’ll only hold two,” said Jim Lee. “How Lide goin’ to go?”
“Lide’s goin’ with Ed Church. She’s over to Jenn Ruple’s now; she and Jen are goin’ to choose up for the spellin’ bee. But she’ll be back in time, and Ed Church is comin’ for her at half-past seven.”
Jim Lee’s face showed that he didn’t like Ed Church He said nothing for five minutes, and pulling off his kip-skin boots began to give them a coat of tallow.
“Where’s Ezra?” at last he asked. Ezra was the heir of the house of Lee. His age was eleven; he was twenty.
“Ezra’s down cellar sortin’ over that bin of peach blows,” said Aunt Ann, busy with her mince-me; and chopping-bowl; “they’d started to rot.”
“I wanted to send him to the Corners for the mail,” suggested Jim Lee, as he kneaded the wax tallow into the instep of his boot to soften the leather.
“You’d better hitch up the colt a mite early,” answered
Aunt Ann, “and go to the Corners before we start to the spellin’. Ezra’s got to churn as soon; he’s done the peachblows.”
There was another pause. Jim Lee softly drew on his freshly tallowed boots, and then stood up an tried them by raising his heels one after the other bending the boots at the toes as if testing a couple of Damascus sword blades.
“I don’t like this here Ed Church sparkin’ our Lide,” remarked Jim Lee at last; “bimeby they’ll want to get married.”
“Father!” said Aunt Ann, raising her blue eyes with a look of cold criticism from the mince-meat she was massacring.
“Has he asked Lide yet?” said Jim Lee.
“No, he ain’t,” replied Aunt Ann, “but he’s goin’ to.”
“How do you know?”
“How do I know?” repeated Aunt Ann, as she set the chopping-bowl on the kitchen table, and turned to put a few select sticks of maple into the oven to the end that they become kiln-dried and highly inflammable; “how do I know Ed Church is goin’ to marry Lide? Humph! I can see it.”
“I’m goin’ to put a stop to it,” said Jim Lee. “This Church boy is goin’ to keep away from Lide.”
“Father, you’re goin’ to do nothing of the kind,” and Aunt Ann’s eyes began to sparkle. “You can run the farm and Ezra, father; I’ll run Lide and the house. The only person who’s goin’ to have a syllable to say about Lide’s marryin’ when the time comes, is Lide herself. If she wants Ed Church she’s goin’ to have him.”
“Aunt Ann, I’m s’prised at you upholdin’ for this Church boy!” Jim Lee threw into his tone a strain of strong reproof. “Ed Church drinks.”
“Ed Church don’t drink,” retorted Aunt Ann sharply.
“How about that time two years ago last summer? Waren’t Ed Church drunk over at the Royalton Fair?”
“Yes, he was,” answered Aunt Ann, “and that’s the only time. But so was my father drunk once at a barn-raisin’ when he was a boy, for I’ve heerd him tell it; and I guess my father, William H. Pickering, was as good as any Lee who ever greased his boots. One swallow don’t make a summer, and one drunk don’t make a drunkard. Ed Church told me himself that he ain’t took a drop since.”
“I’m goin’ to break up this nonsense between him and Lide, at any rate,” said Jim Lee. His mood was dogged, and it served to irritate Aunt Ann.
“All you’ve got ag’inst Ed Church, father,” said Aunt Ann, “is that his father voted ag’in you for pathmaster, and I’m glad he did. What under the sun you ever wanted to be pathmaster for, and go about ploughin’ up good roads to make ‘em bad, was more’n I could see. I’m glad you was beat.”
“I’m goin’ to stop this Church boy hangin’ ‘round Lide, jest the same,” was the closing remark of Jim Lee. At this point he went out to the barn to put some straw in the cutter and harness the Morgan colt. Aunt Ann turned again to her duties.
“Father is so exasperatin’,” remarked Aunt Ann, as she poured some boiling water over a dozen slices of salt pork to “freshen it,” in the line of preparing them for the evening frying-pan. “He’ll find out, though, that I’ll have a tolerable lot to say about Lide’s marriage.”
II – ED CHURCH AND LIDE
At half-past seven, Ed Church swung into Jim Lee’s yard, with a horse all bells, and a cutter a billow of buffalo robes. He did not dare leave Grey Eagle, his pet colt, for Grey Eagle was restless with the wintry evening air and wanted to go. So Ed Church notified Lide of his coming by shouting, “House!” with a great voice.
Grey Eagle made a plunge at the sound, but was brought up by the bit.
“How’dy do, Ed,” said Lide, as she came out the side door. She looked rosy and pretty with her muskrat muff and cape.
“Hello, Lide,” said Ed. “You’ll have to scramble in yourself. I can hardly hold the colt this weather, when he don’t have nothin’ to do but eat.”
Lide scrambled in. As Ed Church stood up in the cutter to allow Lide a chance to be seated, her face came close to his. Taking his eyes from Grey Eagle for the mere fraction of a second, he kissed her dexterously. Lide received the caress with the most admirable composure, and Ed Church himself did not act as if the idea was a discovery or the experiment new.
“Let him out, Ed!” said Lide, when they were well into the road.
There was a foot of snow on the ground. The fence corners showed great drifts, while each rail of the fence had a ruffle of its own of cold, white snow. As far as one could see in the moonlight, the fields to each side were like milk. In the background stood the grey woods laced against the sky. Here and there a lamp shone in a neighbour’s window like an eye of fire.
Stowe Township was out that night. The steady beat of the bells could be heard ahead and behind. Ed Church sent Grey Eagle forward with long strides, the cutter following over the hard, packed snow with no more of resistance than a feather. Lide held her muff to her face, so that she might open her mouth to talk without catching any of the flying snowballs from Grey Eagle’s nervous hoofs.
“It’ll be a big spellin’-school to-night,” said Lide.
“Yes, I guess it will,” replied Ed. “I hear folks are comin’ clear from Hammond Corners.”
“If that Gentry girl comes,” said Lide, “mind! you’re not to speak to her, Ed. If you do, you can go home alone.”
Ed grinned with an air of pleased superiority.
“Get up,” he said to Grey Eagle. Then to Lide: “Go on! You’re jealous!”
“No, I ain’t!” said Lide, with a lofty intonation. “Speak to her if you want to! What do I care!”
“I won’t speak to her, Lide.”
Ed looked at his sweetheart to see how she received his submission. As the road was level and straight at this point, and Grey Eagle had worn away the wire edge of his appetite to “go,” Ed put his face in behind the muskrat muff and kissed Lide again. The victim abetted the outrage.
“I saw ye!” yelled a happy voice behind. It was Ben Francis with Jennie Ruple. They also were enthroned in a cutter.
“What if you did?” retorted Lide with a toss.
“Do it again if I want to!” shouted Ed Church with much joyous hardihood.
“I never asked you to marry me yet, did I, Lide?” observed Ed Church, after two minutes of silence.
“No, you didn’t,” said Lide from behind the muskrat muff. The words would have sounded hard, if it were not for the sudden soft sweetness of the voice, which was half a whisper.
“Well, I’ll do it now,” said Ed, with much resolution, but a little shake in the tone. “You’ll marry me, Lide, when we get ready?”
“Ed, what do you think father ‘ll say?”
Ed Church knew Lide’s father found no joy in him. The next time his voice took on a moody, half-sullen sound.
“Don’t care what he says! I ain’t marryin’ the hull Lee family.”
“But s’pose he says we can’t?”
“If he does, I’ll run away with you, Lide,” and Ed Church’s tones were touched with storm. “I’m goin* to marry you even if all the Lees in the state stand in the way!”
Lide crowded a bit closer to Ed at this, and, holding the muskrat muff against her face to keep her nose from getting red, said nothing. Lide was thinking what a noble fellow Ed was, and how much she admired him.
III – THE SPELLING SCHOOL
The Block schoolhouse was crowded. Lide and Ed made their way toward the back benches. Jim Lee spoke to his daughter and growled gruffly at Ed.
The latter half growled back. Aunt Ann was all smiles and approval of Ed. At this, Ed thought her the best woman on earth except his own mother, and mentally put her next that excellent old lady in his heart.
It was a Mr. Parker who taught at the Block school-house. At 8 o’clock he rapped on the teacher’s desk with a ruler, and everybody who was standing up hunted for a seat. Those who could find none – they were all young men and boys – crouched down along the walls of the big school-room and made seats of their heels. Mr. Parker came down from his desk and opened the stove door with the end of the ruler. The stove – a long-bodied air-tight – was raging red hot from the four-foot wood blazing in its interior. When the door was opened the heat almost singed Mr. Parker’s eyebrows. At this he started back nervously, and Ben Weld and Will Jenkins, two very small boys, laughed. The stove on its part began to cool off and the cherry colour faded from its hot sides, leaving them brown and rusty.
“Lydia Lee and Jennie Ruple have been selected to choose sides for the spelling contest,” said Mr. Parker.
Lide and Jennie seated themselves side by side on the bench which ran along the rear of the room. It was Lide’s first choice.
“Ed Church,” called Lide in a low voice.
Several young persons giggled, while Ed, blushing deeply to have his sweetheart’s preference thus forced into prominence, blundered along the aisle and sat down by Lide. It was Jennie’s choice. Jennie selected Ben Francis.
“Of course!” said Ada Farr in a loud whisper to
Myrtle Jones, “they’d choose their beaux first, so as to sit by ‘em.”
There was no gainsaying the Farr girl’s statement. The “choosing up,” however, went on. At last everybody, young and old, from the grey-headed grandpa to the five-year-old just sent to his first school that winter, had been chosen by Lide or Jennie. Then Mr. Parker began to give out the words.
Ed Church failed on the first word. It was “emphasis.” Ed thought there was an “f” in it. He straightway sat down and spelled no more that night. Lide made a better showing, and lasted through five words. She tripped on “suet” upon which she conferred an “i.” Lide then joined Ed among the silenced ones.
“Lide Lee missed on purpose,” whispered the Farr girl to her neighbour Myrtle Jones, “so she could sit and talk with Ed.”
Jim Lee spelled well, but fell a prey to “moustache.”
At last only three were left standing – Nellie Brad-dock, a girl from Hammond Corners, and Aunt Ann. Mr. Parker turned over to the back part of the spelling book where the hard words lived. Nellie Braddock fell before “umbrageous.”
The struggle between the girl from Hammond Corners and Aunt Ann was a battle of the giantesses. The girl from Hammond Corners was the champion speller of her region, and had spelled down every school so far that winter. The interest was intense, as first to Aunt Ann and then to the girl from Hammond Corners, Mr. Parker put out:
“Fantasy.”
“Autobiographer.”
“Thaumaturgie.”
“Cosmography.”
At last the girl from Hammond Corners tripped on:
“Sibylline.”
She made it “syb.” Mr. Parker had to show her the spelling book to convince the girl from Hammond Corners that she had missed. She glanced in the spelling book where Mr. Parker’s finger pointed, and then burst into tears. At this an unknown young man, presumably from Hammond Corners, got up and excitedly declared the book to be wrong. Nobody took any notice of him, however, and Aunt Ann Lee was named the victor. She had spelled down the school.
