Chapter V: Part 5

Unaffected was the regret in Yellow Bear City, Storey County, Nevada, when, upon a certain January evening in the year 187--, the news spread that Professor Jovanny was dead. Professor Jovanny had been a long time (as time runs in communities like Yellow Bear City) piano-player in ordinary to the “Cosmopolitan Hotel and Dancing Pavilion--Ladies Free.” Yellow Bear was yet something uncultivated. It was true that its small population found advantage in pursuing the study of geology, after the methods advocated by Mr. Squeers, and that tons of gold-hiding quartz were daily crushed through their energies; but, in spite of a weekly newspaper, thirteen saloons (where discussion upon our national policy not unfrequently led to--lead), an unfinished Methodist mission chapel and six dance-houses (including the Cosmopolitan), the advances of art and sentiment within Yellow Bear’s straggling limits had been coy. The dint of pity was quite a different matter. It was genuinely felt now. All was excitement at “Cosmopolitan End,” where a notice, nailed above the bar of the popular resort, apprised patrons, first, of the sad event, and, second, of the omission of the usual evening dance, which Professor Jovanny’s untimely taking-off rendered impracticable. The street-corner next the Cosmopolitan, just around which stood the house of mourning, was the rallying-spot for groups of sympathizing Yellow Bear citizens. “Poor old One-Two-Three!”--“Handlin’ a golden harp, mebbe, by this, think?” and many other more potent and entirely unquotable remarks and testimonials to the virtuoso’s virtues were plentiful and loud. The old and cracked piano itself, at the upper end of the long dance-room, was already draped with sundry torn strips of bombazine and white cambric. A yellow and scarcely relevant engraving of Abraham Lincoln, which the Yellow Bear flies seemed to have visited with cruel pertinacity, had been propped upright upon its cover. Its legend, “We Mourn our Loss,” struck the barkeeper as an appropriate and delicate expression of personal grief, under the circumstances. San Monito street was unanimous in confessing that Yellow Bear could well have spared a better man; thereby signifying a man who could drink deep, swing a pick long and shoot informally--in none of which accomplishments the dead musician had been versed. The editor of the Weekly Intelligencer was, during the last moments of the waning twilight, correcting in proof an obituary headed in his heaviest-faced capitals, “Muses in the Mud. Death of our Talented Fellow-Citizen, Professor Jovanny.” In short, as Rioba Jack expressed it to the crowd of choice spirits hanging about the Cosmopolitan bar, Professor Jovanny’s decease was “a suc--cess.”

And as to this dead Nevada Orpheus who lay white and rigid around the corner, and whose name, when pronounced nearer to the Atlantic, must have been Giovanni something, or something Giovanni, what was now to him the petty bustle of Yellow Bear City--or what the scarcely more important bustle that the whole round earth makes as it spins. Six months back the “Professor” had landed in this rude mining-town of the Sierras. Gaunt, middle-aged, travel-stained and timid was this waif and stray of art, blown by some ironical wind hither. Under one arm was a music portfolio; hanging to the other, a daughter. Nevertheless, Professor Jovanny made his advent in a smiling hour for his fortunes. Between Dennison, proprietor of the Cosmopolitan, and the newcomer an out-of-hand bargain was struck in very Western English and very badly mangled Italian ditto that was satisfactory to both parties. Professor Jovanny abode in Yellow Bear and won reputation. Whether he had ever tried his hand at other music than the festive waltz, jig and walk-around is open to doubt. But certain it was that he played everything of that stamp with such irresistible vigor and spirit that the Cosmopolitan outrivaled all its compeers apace, and the mirth and fun of its nightly revels (termed upon Sundays, out of deference to religious scruples, “grand sacred concerts”) waxed nightly more fast and furious. As for the daughter, one single relic of her father’s early refinement asserted itself on her behalf, namely, that not one of the Yellow Bear species-male could truly say that he knew her. Rioba Jack, Dennison of the Cosmopolitan, “Mister” (whose sobriquet was the derisive contraction of one lone visiting card unfortunately discovered among the effects of Mr. James Thornborough Harrington, formerly of the State of Maine), nor any of their fraternity, had been able to get the advantage of this mortifying dilemma. The girl was hardly ever seen upon the street, so jealous was her father’s watchfulness. In time Rioba Jack and the rest of them came to respect this position. That is, they ceased to combat it actively. “After all,” remarked some one, during a discussion of the topic, “it ain’t a bad idea to _have_ one real woman in this here town.” There happened to be a considerable female contingent already in Yellow Bear society, so the remark last quoted evinced a good deal of nice discrimination on the speaker’s part.

It was not until evening that, with the session of the wonted parliament around the Cosmopolitan bar, the proposition to inter Professor Jovanny with civic honors took shape. The full quorum was present in that hospitable retreat. Distilled liquors flowed, albeit no dance was forthcoming. Rioba Jack rose to address the company. “It appears to me,” said that gentleman, covering both his awkwardness as orator and his mouth with a tumbler, when desirable--“it appears to me that we had ought--that in view of his position in Yellow Bear--that we had ought to give Professor Jovanny his funeral.” “My sentiments,” interrupted an approving voice, promptly. Rioba Jack continued: “He hain’t left nothin’ worth chattering about, except the gal, and all gals ain’t cash. Jovanny was a artist way above tide-level--there ain’t no mistake about that. Talk about your celluloid-clawyers! Talk about your Dumb Toms! Talk of your--of your scales,” the Rioba concluded hastily, suddenly realizing that he was drifting among breakers in any rash employment of technical terms, “unless a man had heerd Jovanny rattlin’ ‘Where was Moses,’ in this here hotel, he hadn’t never heerd no genuine tunin’ up at all. I say, we had ought to give Jovanny a big time.”

The chorus of approval came _fortissimo_.

“I move that Rioba Jack be app’inted a committee of one to wait on deceased and ask his gal if the notion jumps with her feelin’s, like as it were.” This suggestion from a distant quarter, however mixed, was to the point. It was carried. Every man present felt equal to himself undertaking this preliminary; but this was no time for permitting personal interests to dam the current of popular feeling. Rioba Jack strode from the barroom. Applause and suggestion swelled behind his back. “Make it a square out-and-out show.” “Borry the Methodist’s gospel stamp.” “Pay an entrance fee for the benefit of the gal.” “E_m_balm the corpse!” and the like, were distinguishable among these. High over all the tumult broke the stentorian voice of Dennison of the Cosmopolitan, commanding order and enforcing the same by the handle of his knife applied vigorously to a tumbler. Finally some settled plan of action crystalized. A “square funeral” Professor Jovanny should have. His body should “lay in state” for the whole of the ensuing day--on the piano in the adjoining dance-room--that piano which had so often been shaken to its center beneath the defunct’s nimble fingers. “Mister’s” proposal of an admission fee--for gentlemen only--was accepted. The entire male population of Yellow Bear City was to be duly invited to appear and “view the remains” for the modest sum of one dollar, during any hour of the morrow’s daylight most suited to individual convenience. A brass band had not yet been organised in Yellow Bear, or it would unquestionably have been provided. A free bar was--of course. At nightfall Professor Jovanny should be buried with all the mortuary pomp practicable.

Rioba Jack was greeted eagerly upon his return. “It’s all right,” responded that worthy, composedly resuming his seat. “Go ahead, all hands! I didn’t see the gal, but Big Jinny and Pearl Kate are settin’ round with her, and they give her the message. Jinny says its all right. We can go ahead.”

The Rioba was fully posted on the progress of affairs during his absence. The idea of Professor Jovanny’s “laying in state” upon the old piano alone drew forth his contempt in round terms; which, although they betrayed surprising acquaintance with scriptural phraseology, were by no means pious. “D---- any such half-way style as that,” he ended, explosively; “What _I_ say is, buy the old tune-box from Dennison and bury Jovanny _in_ it!” The uproar that greeted this novel proposal, like Prospero’s tale, might have cured deafness. Naturally, each person present promptly claimed to have thought of it himself--and rejected it unuttered. Dennison announced his entire willingness to dispose of the widowed instrument at a reasonable figure. There was a unanimous rush into the long dance-room adjoining. Away flew the emblems of grief dangling about the object of special inspection. Its cover was laid off, bodily, in a twinkling. Its length, its depth, its available breadth and strength of bottom were excitedly ascertained. It was bought within ten minutes by a lavish collection, Dennison mentioning a price that certainly showed him to be an astute man in recognizing a commercial opportunity. Thereupon did the whole roomful resolve itself into a committee on destruction. Alas! what soft-hearted story-teller can dwell upon the unholy hammering and cleaving, the ruthless hacking and smashing which ended in making visible for weeks thereafter in the back yard of the Cosmopolitan a hideous wreck of tangled steel wire, white and black keys and splinters of sounding-board--in a word, the entrails of the murdered piano?

By ten o’clock the work was fairly done. The crowd had departed, and only Dennison, Rioba Jack and “Mister” now remained in the long dance-room. Dennison was smoking, as he leaned against one end of his late piece of property. “Mister,” with bared arms, diligently rubbed oil over sundry scratches upon its case. Rioba Jack was strengthening with hammer and nails some weak spot beneath. The flaring light from a couple of oil lamps on the side of the wall brought out strong shadows on the three dark, heavily-mustached faces. Neither of the trio broke the silence for a few moments. Presently the Rioba emerged from his close quarters and began hammering at the end opposite to Dennison. He looked up. “What’s goin’ to become of the gal?” he queried, abruptly; “Yellow Bear ain’t no place for a decent one like her, ’specially if she’s left alone in it.”

“Oh, I’ve fixed that,” replied Dennison, leisurely, “Mother Sal’s a-goin’ to take keer of her till she can do for herself.”

The Rioba dropped his lathe-nail and stopped his pounding. “Mother Sal,” he repeated--“Mother Sal around on San Monito street?”

“Yes! who else?”

Rioba Jack quietly turned and slipped on his coat.

“Dennison,” he said, with an unwonted accent of expostulation lurking in his voice, “don’t do this thing. Keep your hand out of deviltry for once--leastways such deviltry as this. I don’t know Jovanny’s gal. I hain’t hardly ever seen her. ’Taint for myself I’m askin’ it--but just you let her alone. Won’t you?”

Dennison had removed his pipe from his mouth for good now. He stood staring angrily at the Rioba, whose clear, dark eyes under their bushy brows were fixed with unwonted brilliancy upon his own. The proprietor of the Cosmopolitan burst into a rude laugh. “What’s the matter with the man?” he ejaculated. Then returning the Rioba’s steadfast gaze with an equally pertinacious and meaning one, he answered with much deliberateness, “Look-a-here, Rioba, I suppose I _can_ take a hint if I _must_--especially when it’s rammed down into my skull as this one appears to be. You and me has got along without trouble for ever since we come to Yellow Bear. I should be sorry, very sorry, to be obleeged to have any unpleasantness between us now. I always feel bound _to_ have unpleasantness with any man, partner or stranger, who interferes with my own partic’ler concerns. Do you take?”

The Rioba made no direct reply. He stood with his eyes bent upon the floor abstractedly. Nevertheless he “took.” “Good-night, Dennison--good-night, ‘Mister,’” he suddenly said, and turning abruptly upon his heel he quitted the Cosmopolitan without another syllable.

The gray Nevada dawn was beginning to filter between the sharp Sierra peaks. Yellow Bear looked like a sketch in India-ink on gray paper. Around the corner of the Cosmopolitan came a little procession not irreverently conveying upon a shutter something over which a sheet had been loosely spread. The air was raw and cold. “Careful--that’s it--steady now,” cautioned Dennison in a low voice as they mounted the Cosmopolitan doorstep. “Mister,” Rioba Jack, Big Jinny, and Pearl Kate set down their burden at the upper end of the dance-room. “Come gals, fly round,” exhorted Dennison, “there’s all the bar to be set up across there--them windows has got to be darkened up--there ain’t no time to waste. ‘Mister’ and me’ll tend to our share of the performance.” “I say, Jinny,” questioned the Rioba _sotto voce_ to that Paphian nymph a moment later, when Dennison and “Mister” were engaged at a distance, “you left her asleep, eh?” (There had, by the way, been no allusion from either party concerned as to the embryo “unpleasantness” of the preceding night--again to “Mister’s” secret regret). “Sound, Jack--just like she was dead drunk,” responded Big Jinny, cheerfully, pounding away with her hammer at the window-sash. Her interrogator frowned. The answer somehow gritted against his dormant sense of the fitting. Big Jinny drove another tack and began to whistle.

A little later a magnificent eastern flare of pink and gold fell through the one window yet undarkened upon the face of Professor Jovanny, peacefully upturned from his last pillow--a roll of his own thumbed dance-music wrapped about with a white bar napkin. A moth-eaten knitted lap-robe was thrown across his feet. Dressed in his one threadbare black suit--a pile of his own music beneath the forlorn gray head--truly here went one to the grave with all that he possessed--except a daughter.

Dennison, the Rioba, “Mister” and the women stood for a moment motionless beside the body--their tasks completed.

“A becomin’ caskit, altogether,” exclaimed the proprietor of the Cosmopolitan, eyeing it critically.

“There’s somethin’ wanting all the same,” quoth “Mister,” after the continued pause had grown oppressive.

“Wantin’,” retorted Dennison; “I’d like to know what it is. Look at them there flags over the windows! Look at that there bar, where all that a man’s got to do is to walk up, after he’s paid his dollar, and help himself or let Pearl and Jinny here help him! Look at this here coffin--solid rosewood, round corners, carved legs and ag-graffe treble,” he went on, with a grin at his own wit. “Come, now, ‘Mister,’ what more could Jovanny or anybody else want?”

But “Mister” was paying no attention to this sally or the mirth it had provoked. “Flowers--flowers and fruit--fruit and flowers,” he was muttering to himself, apparently confounding a conventional Eastern attention from the friends of an afflicted family with the catalogue of some Maine county-fair. “Must come to the same thing--of course,” he exclaimed, conclusively, striding away from the _de facto_ coffin and his companions. He disappeared within the barroom. “I’ve made free with them new stores of yourn, Dennison,” he called out presently, staggering down the room toward the expectant party, weighted with an awkward load--two stems of bananas and four spiky pineapples. “It won’t hurt their sellin’,” he apologized, as with a dexterous balancing and tying he disposed of the two first-named decorations upright, one upon either side of poor Professor Jovanny’s perpendicular feet--vegetable obelisks. A pineapple stood upon each one of the “round corners.” Dennison and the rest were hearty in commendations of their friend’s thoughtfulness and taste. “That just fixes her off too slick!” exclaimed Big Jinny, in high delight.

The sun mounted; the barkeeper appeared in the adjoining room. First stragglers, curious to learn the truth of any rumors concerning the day’s novelties at the Cosmopolitan, strolled across the threshold. Dennison put “Mister” and a table on which was deposited a loaded revolver and an empty biscuit-tin, with a slit in its cover, over against the door; Big Jinny and the Pearl, he posted at the special bar for the day, which he had by no means ungenerously furnished forth; himself, he stationed in an arm-chair, without the dance-room, to advertise the obsequies, urge entrance into the penetralia of the dance-room, as a matter of duty and pleasure, and act as master of ceremonies generally.

It will be remarked that, designedly or accidentally, Rioba Jack was appointed unto no prominent function in these festivities of grief, so he dropped an eagle into “Mister’s” resonant receptacle and walked out of the Cosmopolitan. The street was sparsely peopled at that early hour. He turned the corner of the hotel and halted abruptly to avoid collision with a figure--a girl standing motionless, and leaning against the wall, as if summoning up the courage to advance further. What told the Rioba instantly that it was Professor Jovanny’s daughter, was not difficult to appreciate. The set young face, tear-stained and pallid, but independent of a pair of dark, mournful eyes for its beauty, the slender form not ungracefully draped by the scanty, black-stuff dress; the head bared to the sharp morning wind--it was a vignette of young grief, passive, despairing, solitary, that the Rioba gazed at pityingly.

“Good--good-day,” he said, awkwardly. “You’re--his gal, I take it. Can I--might I help you, Miss?” The last word in respectful salute to the unmarried, weaker sex, had been a stranger to the Rioba’s lips for a dozen years.

“I am going to my father,” the girl replied, in a curiously abstracted fashion of speech; one wherein lay just a shadow of foreign accent. She looked away from the Rioba’s clear gaze, and continued, as if partly speaking to herself, “I wish to see where they have put my father. I must sit by him. He will need me.”

“But,” began the Rioba, in distressed perplexity, as she wrapped her shawl closer about her exposed throat (it was a beautiful throat), and made a motion to pass him, “yer father’s dead, Miss. Poor, old Jovanny’s dead. He’s layin’ in state in his pianny--coffin, I mean--round to the Cosmopolitan here. You wouldn’t like to be a sittin’ alone there all day ’side the coffin, and everybody starin’ at you. ’Twouldn’t do.”

“I want to sit by my father,” the girl answered more decidedly. “Take me to him.”

The Rioba was mute. He saw that his new _protégée_ (for such he instinctively recognized her), was in that state of mind that the eyes of all the universe were as naught to her. Extremity of sorrow had taken hold upon her, and to reason with her would be like reasoning with the clouded mind. He looked again down upon her white, pathetic face. Its innocence awoke a new emotion in the Rioba’s heart.

“Come along,” he ejaculated, not unkindly. He turned and led the way to the Cosmopolitan. His companion followed mutely with bowed head. The gathering crowd in the dance-room stared as the two entered. The girl heeded the whispers not a whit. She uttered a low exclamation and walked quickly across to the “caskit.” “He is here, you see,” she said slowly, half turning to the Rioba with a recognizing smile whose transforming effect upon her wan face, utterly obliterated from his mind any further sense of the awkwardness of his position. Some one pushed a chair forward. She seated herself beside the coffin and fixed her eyes upon the marble face within it--a statue gazing upon a statue. The room was hushed. Suddenly some human vermin, audibly of the feminine gender, laughed from a far corner. The girl raised her head and looked fixedly whence the sound had proceeded. A troubled expression came over her countenance. But at the same moment she caught sight of the Rioba standing not distant, his face flushed with wrath at the insult, his eyes brimming with compassion encountering her own. Some shadowy, tardy sense of her utterly unprotected situation must have tinged that brief look of hers with an unconscious appeal. The effect upon the Rioba was electric. Leisurely drawing his pistol from its belt, the stalwart cavalier of the Sierras, whose education in chivalry had been intuitive, stepped quietly toward the coffin of Professor Jovanny, against the edge of which that loneliest of mourners had rested her forehead. The Rioba laid his hand gently upon her shoulder, and drew himself up. “Friends and feller-citizens,” he said, running his eye comprehensively round the room as he spoke, “this here young woman and this here corpse is under _my_ protection. Look at that there comb in Big Jinny’s head!” Before any one in the room had discovered the gaudy ornament in question it was smashed to atoms by the bullet from the revolver discharged by the Rioba as a period to his sentence. Big Jinny uttered one single staccato screech (to which luxury she was certainly entitled), not much relishing being made a target of; and then became in common with the entire company, significantly silent.

Dennison’s startled face appeared at the door outside; he had listened to speech and shot. The Rioba caught his eye and smiled. It was a smile of wholesale defiance!

The morning wore on--noon came--afternoon. Professor Jovanny’s “laying in state” had been, in the language of “Mister,” “a big go.” Within its allotted limits of time, wellnigh the entire male and female population of Yellow Bear City had one by one entered the door of the Cosmopolitan dance-room, contributed (so far as concerned the male proportion), inspected, imbibed at discretion, departed. The “heft” of “Mister’s” biscuit-tin was something to excite the dormant cupidity of anyone. All day long that ill-sorted pathetic tableau in the center of the place had remained changeless--the voiceless, motionless watcher; the tranquil tenant of that uncouth coffin; the Rioba standing beside both, erect, attentive, grave. The room was scarcely entirely still; even the Rioba had not expected that. There was some shuffling of feet, subdued commenting and query. Big Jinny and the Pearl exchanged pleasantries of a more or less Doric character with passing acquaintances. Glasses clinked and coin jingled. But no word, no ejaculation was let fall that could reflect upon or annoy her who sat in the midst of the staring, sluggishly revolving whirlpool. Big Jinny had stuck sundry disconnected fragments of her unlucky adornment in her ropy locks--a laconic hint. More than once did some acquaintance offer to relieve the Rioba on guard; but that gentleman only smiled and said, in an offhand fashion, “I guess I’ll finish.”

Darkness had set in as the funeral procession took order before the Cosmopolitan door. The majority of the sterner sex in Yellow Bear seemed disposed to swell it. “Mister’s” mule-cart preceded, whereon, amputated as to its legs and with its cover nailed fast, was placed the coffin. Dennison and “Mister” drove the hearse slowly. Immediately in its rear walked, bareheaded still, and as walks the somnambulist, Professor Jovanny’s daughter. The instant that the Rioba had said, “You shall go with it,” she had not offered to interfere with the shutting up, at last, from view of her dead father’s body, or the removal of the dismembered piano itself to the cart. The Rioba himself walked a pace to the right, very much with the air of a young man who was dimly aware that he was moving toward an emergency. A miscellaneous crowd lengthened out in the rear. The pitchy flame of the pine-wood torches filled the evening air and played strange tricks with the tree shadows. Professor Jovanny’s funeral _cortège_ began to get straggling and unsteady. In fact the liberty of outside locomotion and potations of strong waters had begun to battle against further decorum. Fragments of ribald songs, unseemly pranks and hilarities broke out behind intermittently. At one stage of the progress a good part of the procession seceded to witness (and assist at) the settlement of a “melancholy dispute for precedence between two of Yellow Bear’s foremost citizens”--as their obituaries in the next _Intelligencer_ recorded. Nevertheless, the cavernous hole dug for the reception of poor Professor Jovanny, or, rather for his bulky sarcophagus, yawned at last down a little declivity under a clump of firs.

“Dig her big enough for a hoss,” had been Dennison’s prudential injunction to the “committee” of grave-diggers. In their zeal they had excavated a pit that was fearful. The crowd gathered about, holding up the torches. Dennison and “Mister” superintended carefully the lowering of the coffin, a feat accomplished not without difficulty. Yellow Bear was, by this time, too weary of affliction, and, it is only veracious to add, too inebriated to think of carrying out any of the _quasi_ religious or municipal ceremonies discussed. The first shovels of clay were discharged into the black depth. Then all at once, with this most merciless of earthly sounds suddenly breaking the stillness, the desolate mourner’s soul awoke from its long lethargy to active grief. The girl uttered an exceedingly bitter cry. “My father!--O God, my father!” came from her white lips again and again, interrupted by a tempest of sobs and tears under which she bowed, crouching down upon the earth in an agony of loss and loneliness. The Rioba stood with his head bent suspiciously near to her side. Dennison stood opposite.

The crowd had dispersed before the work of “filling in” was ended. The girl would not be moved until all was over. Rioba Jack did not shift from his own station. At last, however, the shovels were thrown aside and the few men left, beside the Rioba and Dennison, began relieving each other of the torches, or collecting the tools.

“Come, my gal,” said the Rioba, with unconscious but wondrous tenderness. The sound of his voice seemed to give the kneeling one strength. She nodded her bowed head, checked her sobs piteously and presently rose. Still keeping her wet eyes averted from the flaring lights, she half-turned toward him and--put out her hand.

The Rioba took it as if it had been an angel’s. Suddenly Dennison, who had been the most attentive of spectators, approached. The Rioba looked and discerned at his back, holding a torch, the swart, greasy face of Mother Sal, whom the other man had selected as consignee of the orphan.

“Look-a-here, Rioba,” exclaimed the proprietor of the Cosmopolitan, abruptly, and standing squarely a couple of yards in front of him, “it strikes me as it’s about time now for you and me to turn over Jovanny’s gal here to one of her own _sect_. She needs a mother’s care now--a mother’s, not a father’s, except her own; nor yit a--a brother’s.”

The Rioba quite understood the situation. He changed his position, looked Dennison squarely in the eye, and with great coolness drew the young girl’s arm through his own--He had settled upon this course of action while walking with the procession. He baulked not. Pointing straight at Mother Sal’s puffy, oily countenance, he ejaculated, “A mother!” with ineffable scorn--and then added concisely: “Dennison, I p’rpose to be responsible henceforth for this here young woman. You are a liar--a thief--and--”

With a face whereon flashed out in a second all his pent-up wrath Dennison brought his pistol from behind his back and fired, but passion made his aim less true than that of the unscathed Rioba; who, entirely on his guard to meet what he had designedly provoked, fired almost simultaneously, and laid Dennison dead at his feet.

ETCHINGS: THAT DOOR

(French of Lermina: E. C. Waggener: For Short Stories.)

More nervous than drunk, he closed and locked the door, and by the light of a taper went to bed. Profound silence! Then, on his ear-drums tinkled a sound, crystalline, swelling to a vibration, like the notes of a hautboy interspersed with trumpet calls. The pillow, too, rose and fell under his head, sucking the brain like an exhauster, to eject it like a pump.

He opened his eyes. The light hushed the symphony; constrained the pillow to immobility. The taper flickered and leaped. Then, in the aureole of light, something black appeared, big, sprawling, with great antennæ. Ugh! he hated beasts! A beast? No. His arm hung from the bed; it was the shadow of his hand he saw, thrown by the taper. He turned on his back, seeing and not seeing; a misty film stretching across the sclerotic like the nyctoloptic membrane of birds. Fiery atoms danced in the darkness; his palate like a stopper closed his throat and gummed it with saliva. Then, in that obscurity, he was conscious of a slow gliding. It was the door, which he had locked, opening with wing-like sweeps, uncovering a hole long, narrow, always broader, never longer, showing black and always blacker.

He stared, lips puffed, parched and parted. But from that hole, that abyss of nothingness, nothing issued. He waited; a locked door would never thus open without something coming! He waited; still nothing; more and more feebly the taper danced; soon it would fall, splutter, drown in oil. He quickly decided. That something that did not come _should not come_! Doubling like a serpent he slipped to the floor, threw himself forward, seized, slammed the door, braced it with one hand, turned the key with the other. It was done! Breathless, panting, he returned to bed; not to sleep. His hot skin pricked and stung him; that devilish symphony, with the roar of a torrent, had recommenced. And that door, which a second time he had closed, was a second time reopening, swinging itself back like a vertical sepulchre. The wing-like sweeps began anew; the black hole widened, blacker always blacker, then--the taper fell, flashed, died to ember....

He was dead when they found him. The door? Both locked and bolted; but neither lock nor bolt had caught the socket.

AMONG THE AOULÂD NAÎEL

(Algerian Sketches: Emile Masqueray: Le Figaro: Translated for Short Stories by Eleanor Moore Hiestand.)

For two wearisome days I had been journeying back and forth in the country of the Aoulâd Naîel. I was still far from my tent when I threw myself prone upon the sands, worn out with fatigue. On the previous afternoon, my guide and I had made a little excursion to a neighboring _douar_, and I could still hear echoes of the singular greetings showered upon me by my entertainers:

“Our father! Thy tent is blessed! Thy spurs are strong!”

Suddenly, as I lay there, the clouds seemed to lower above my head; they grew strangely dense and shone like brass. The manes and tails of our horses bristled with apprehension. I felt a prolonged shiver pass over me. A powerful hand seemed to press its weight upon my temples. Now the frozen sky was streaked with white; now it settled into oppressive darkness again; and with no living thing in sight upon the dry and barren plain, we felt utterly alone and at the mercy of some awful power. Presently a veil seemed to be thrown over our heads, and night came upon us as suddenly as when a lamp is extinguished in an otherwise unlighted room.

My guide shouted. We leaped upon our horses who galloped away with winged feet, trembling with fear, away into the fathomless shadows. In vain I tried to check this mad pace. I felt like throwing myself face downward upon the ground, for I thought death awaited us in the saddle; but my guide spurred on, quite oblivious of me, murmuring:

“There is no God! but God!”

A moment more and the clouds were cleft in twain with an awful crash. The sky was spread with a sheet of darting flame, and the earth became so bright that I saw quite plainly the gray lizards crawling in a tuft of _chih_. Our horses wheeled about, but we used our spurs, and, giving them the rein, we fled on, not knowing whither we went. We were quite beside ourselves; we no longer knew what danger it was that lashed us on. My guide urged on my horse with a hempen whip; I shouted to his. Again and again lurid flashes of lightning diffused about as dazzling circles which we traversed with a bound only to enter again into the terrible darkness. How long had we been flying? How many times had we barely escaped those awful thunderbolts? I knew only that we sped like bullets till we struck suddenly against a black cone which loomed up in our course.

Human cries rent the air, mingled with the howls of dogs.

We were trampling down somebody’s tent.

“Have a care, friend!” cried a voice from the darkness. “Thou art welcome. I would that thy countenance were known--that thou hadst come while it was yet day, but praised be God who sent thee to thy servants to herald the rain.”

We leaped from our saddles and sprang under cover just in time to escape a cascade from the clouds that would have drenched our very bones.

* * * * *

My host told me in the morning that he was about setting out in company with all the men of the _douar_ to meet a distinguished _hadj_ who had just made his third pilgrimage to the Kaaba and Medina, one of the Brotherhood of Lidi-Abd-el-Kader-el-Djilani, who was now regarded as almost a saint.

Upon their return, there was to be a festival. In the afternoon, a banquet of cuckoos, several roast sheep and honey-cakes would be served; this would be followed by target-practice and dancing--that is, there would be dancing-girls to entertain us. The tent occupied by these girls was in the remotest part of the semi-circle which the _douar_ described. I could see it at a distance; the borders were drawn up and something red showed from beneath.

I was talking to a youth who asked me in good faith whether I believed in God and whether it were true that the Europeans married their sisters. He was evidently studying me as a kind of savage beyond the reach of Mohammed. Several young women passed by us, bending beneath the weight of black leathern bottles. The water glued their thin robes to their skin. They wore no undergarments, and the wind which tossed their torn clothing, revealed their whole figures in clear profile. Some were bearing on their heads bundles of briars which they steadied with their hands. Their arms were long and well shaped; their throats had no voluptuous fullness; their figures were almost straight up and down. They looked to me like primitive caryatids of Asia.

My host had a daughter who was barely sixteen; his niece was about twenty. These girls were eyeing me from afar and could not resist their curiosity to see and speak to the _Roumi_, who was evidently bored by the youth talking to him. Under the pretext of bringing me some water, they came up, one behind the other. They looked very pretty with their abundant hair intertwined with coral and their smooth cheeks mingling the hues of amber and rose. The _Roumi_ took the bowl and drank with his eyes on his pretty servitors. As the eldest seemed surprised at this impertinence, he apologized for daring to drink in her presence, and, the ice being broken, they chatted freely. They sank their dark eyes into the depths of mine, and smiled till their beautiful teeth dazzled me.

“Why do you not cut off your moustache up to your lip? Why don’t you shave half of your head? you look like a monkey with all that hair falling over your face! Of what kind of cloth are your clothes made? Let us see, please, how it is sewed together. Did your wife make it? Tell us now--won’t you?--if your wives look like us?”

The elder who plied all these questions was half reclining in the sand, resting her body on her right hand and leaning forward so as to gain my ear. I answered her with the first lines of a song:

“Thy eyes are black without kohol,
Thy cheeks are red without fard!”

She completed the stanza:

“’Tis thou who hast given me the fever,
Thou who hast hurled me upon the mountain!”

Then she turned her face toward the furthest tent, through whose lifted borders something red shone, and said, abruptly:

“Dost thou know Khamissa?”

“What Khamissa?”

“The dancer.”

“No!”

“Then give us something right away, because, as soon as thou hast seen her, thy heart will burn itself out, and then wilt thou have nothing to do with us!”

I had in my pocket a little mirror which I gave her. The younger girl took my silk handkerchief and begged also for a red girdle I wore. So they plundered me outright--the little savages--and I was obliged to smile.

Fortunately for me, some shots were heard; sharp you-yous echoed along the line of the tents. The _hadj_ was approaching from the depth of a ravine. There were at least thirty cavaliers attending him, all mounted on spirited horses which galloped over the brow of the hill, their tails flying. More than one of these horsemen wore only a shirt, a shabby sort of a burnous over his shoulders, a rag twisted around his head, and was mounted on a wooden saddle with no covering, and only two ends of rope for a bridle! I cannot describe the effect as they came riding over the hill, their bronzed legs pressing the flanks of their steeds. What a superb poverty it was! What wonderful bandits these men were!

The holy pilgrim permitted himself to be borne on a mule’s back. His eyes were half closed, his cheeks looked pale beneath a large turban of white muslin. He trembled a little as he set foot upon the ground, and still more when he seated himself in the midst of a group of young people, who looked at him with profound awe. I suggested giving him some quinine, but I was informed that it was the fear of God which caused him to tremble; the _hadj_ thanked me with a glance which said I was only a pagan, or else I was a terrible blunderer! The women of the _douar_ had hidden themselves. They dared not appear before this holy man, perhaps for fear his sanctity should suffer. Angels have fallen for love of women.

* * * * *

Powder was flashing from noonday till sunset. The women emerged from their tents, clad in their best. They wore long veils, white or flowered, which fell from the summit of their lofty head-dresses to the ground. Their faces were uncovered and quite brilliant with ochre and vermillion. The horses went prancing by them, and the cavaliers, in their honor, rode so close that the flaming wads from their guns burned the women’s red robes. They were intoxicated by the acid odor of smoke, they cried out like birds of prey, but kept waving handkerchiefs in the air. A cavalier seized one and galloped away with it. Several shots were fired after him across the plain. He wheeled about and rode back to his elected mistress. We grew excited. A breath of anger and combat blew over us, but, at a sign from the senior cavalier, every gun was discharged at once, and the noise of this fusillade rose to the very skies. It was not long ere we were gathered around the roast sheep, whose savory flanks were decorated with gold, white cuckoos surmounted by pats of butter and bathed in red sauce. We praised God and their was no one who complained of being slighted. The holy pilgrim was not with us. The wife of my host had served him apart with a young lamb, a huge bowl of sour milk, a fine cake of dates and semoule. Several piles of shining pieces were also given him in a kerchief and he was now reciting his litanies in honor of God and of his patron, dead to all the world but living in celestial councils, Sidi-Aba-el-Kader-el-Ghilâni-el-Baghdâdi. Khamissa had not yet shown herself. Only her two companions, Fatma and Zeineb appeared. They wore blue robes and golden diadems. They said that Khamissa must be either ill or praying.

* * * * *

At last the moon rose and in the open space in the center of the _douar_, I saw some tapers placed in parallel lines forming a sort of avenue of light. On either side the women scooped out little holes in the sand, and executed a few dancing steps. The men squatted alongside of the rows of tapers, but the women stood in the background, looking like dark phantoms. I sat with my host and some persons of distinction at the end and in the middle of the road. Opposite us sat Fatma and Zeineb, half-reclining in a group of halfa; beyond them a royal profile was visible. It was she! The words I had heard in the morning rang in my ears: “Thy heart will be burnt out!” Already the fires kindled as I looked at her. The flutes discoursed a tender strain. Zenieb and Fatma were whirling about each other, blue as the sky, shining with golden stars. Only in the shadow could I see her form outlined softly beneath the folds of a great piece of white silk which enveloped her.

What said the flutes now? The space was empty. The crackling briars shot flames up higher than the tents. The flutes called with imperious vibrating accents, in sad supplications, in wild outbursts, while the dull thud of the drums in the interval seemed to fire the soul with a holy enthusiasm.

Khamissa lifted her arms, tossed aside the haïk which enveloped her and slowly rose. She took several steps and then paused, her elbows pressed to her sides, her two hands folded against her cheeks, her head inclining somewhat to the left, her eyes half-closed--it was the attitude of prayer. She sparkled from head to foot, and, in her attitude of absolute repose, she looked like a splendid idol.

Her robes were of red, silver and gold. The scarlet drapery, cunningly drawn about her in thick folds, reached all the way to the ground. A belt of embossed silver, high under the breasts but low at the sides, encompassed her like a piece of armor. Upon her bosom lay numerous golden chains dependant from both sides of her head, which was crowned by a lofty headdress. This coiffure was made of a black silk turban and tresses of wool, over which were worn two diadems of gold with pendants that twinkled upon her forehead. A long white veil parted at her temples and fell backward over her shoulders to the ground. Neither her hair nor her ears nor her neck were visible. The perfect oval of her face, her beautiful cheeks and her long eyes were framed in gold. Her lips were painted red, her cheeks were touched with saffron and with rose, her eyelids were colored blue. It was only when she held out her arms that I saw the velvet whiteness of her flesh, and yet these arms were laden to the elbows with huge bracelets of silver that bristled with points.

Was it Pallas-Athene? Was it a Byzantine madonna? Was it a painted statue from the Acropolis? Who was this coming toward us with slow steps that glided softly over the sand keeping time with the thunder of the gongs and the wild flutes that rent the air? She swayed gently and turned her hands reddened with henna, now holding her head to the right while her wide-open eyes shone like stars. Her tall and supple body was invisible, but its movements communicated a divine grace and harmony to the garments she wore. She swayed to and fro by an insensible movement. To the young men who gazed upon her, she seemed a goddess! She advanced in this way till she stood within a few steps of my fascinated eyes; then she paused and fell back into her first attitude, the pose of a Virgin in a cathedral window. I watched her deliberately. The pendant of her diadems were golden fish, the symbols of Jesus Christ, our Saviour; in the center of her forehead hung the Christian cross; on her chin which was sculptured out of purest marble, the cross of Buddha lay; on her blood-colored hands were the seven darts of Solomon’s candlestick; around her thumbs were two blue threads, the Egyptian symbol of eternal life. This marvelous creature was unconsciously consecrated to all religions of the world.

She turned about to retire as slowly as she had advanced. Her long white veil trailed on the ground. Then she came back with a new rhythm in her movements, yet still gliding quickly, softly, subtly like a ray of sunlight. Her steps were longer now. Her lips parted in a charming smile; her head was half-turned to one side; now the right, now the left arm was extended to give a playful little tap to some lover or adorer as she advanced in the midst of beseeching shadows. Again she paused before the group of which I was a part, turned with suspended motion and then retreated. As yet not an Arab had stirred. They were squatting there with their knees pressed against their chins, half-hidden by their barnous. When she advanced for the third time, the scene changed. Then she was truly superb!

“O, Heaven! Wonderful! May God bless thy mother! God keep misery from all who belong to thee!”

Thus the men exclaimed as they pressed each other for a better view, and the women stifled the _you-yous_ in their throats, pressing their hands to their eyes.

With a backward motion, she drew off her veil; a quick movement unfastened the first row of chains from her breast. She turned her head, spread her arms in a semi-circle, bent her round bust upon her body, and, as though inspired by the beating of the drums, she tapped the earth with her naked feet. She came forward with a simple movement, with no seductive oscillation of the body, yet perfectly intoxicating! Her eyes shot sparks which fell to her very ankles where circlets of gold were flashing. It would not have surprised me, had some one of the young brigands who watched her, snatched her up in his iron grasp, swung her into his saddle and galloped away. But they seemed content simply to foreswear and ruin themselves for her. They tossed under her feet every bit of silver the holy pilgrim had left them; the sand shone with coins--five franc pieces, the _boudjous_ of Tunis, and old Spanish _douros_. Now and then, she would pause and start anew, smiling more radiantly each time she threw out her arms. I shut my eyes for a moment; I felt she was before me. I saw her kneeling, her breast swelling beneath the golden chains, raising her blue eyelids, showing her white teeth set in coral. I leaned toward her; I felt her warm breath fan my cheek. I laid three gold pieces on her brow and one on either cheek.

“Khamissa!” I murmured. “Lovely one! Leave me not!”

She smiled her alluring smile. The flutes burst forth in a passionate appeal. I held out my arms, but she was gone!

ETCHINGS: COMFORT

(Edward Marshall: For Short Stories.)

She was not a pretty sight ... an old woman tottering under sixty years of poverty ... and now was the worst poverty of all. Her hand, which gathered a grimy plaid shawl at her throat, trembled ceaselessly from privation, and the vile liquor privation had brought. She was hungry; it seemed to her that she had never eaten. She was cold; it seemed to her that she had never known warmth.

She crept into a little hallway on the water front. The breeze from the river was not a strong one; but to her it was a hurricane. The drizzling rain hurt her. The minor tones of a bell from a ship at the near-by docks told that it was midnight. With inarticulate moans she crouched down in a corner, closing the door to keep out the wind and rain.

Something was in the corner, she felt it with her benumbed hands. It was soft and warm to her touch. A plaintive mew followed. The something was a cat. At first she rather resented its presence. Then she gathered it up in her arms and pressed it against the bosom of her ragged old dress. Here was a creature as miserable as she. It was only a cat, but she felt less lonely with it in her arms. When she had been a little girl she had had a pet kitten.

Each was cold--the cat and the woman--but each found some warmth in the other. The cat stopped mewing and the woman stopped moaning. The wind had shifted and the rain had ceased. The door swung open again and the moon hanging calmly beautiful among the clouds, shone through the tangle of masts and cordage and into the hallway.

The woman, crouched in the corner, held the cat as she would have held a child. By-and-by she began to rock slowly to and fro. The clouds drifted away, and the stars joined the moon in peeping through the door.

The woman’s eyes were closed and she was crooning an old-fashioned lullaby. The cat was very faintly purring and one of its paws rested on her bare neck. The moon sank slowly out of sight and new clouds obscured the stars.

When the policeman peered in the hallway just before daybreak, the woman and the cat were asleep.

And they are still sleeping.

TIMMY MULLIGAN’S RALLY

(James E. Kinsella: Chicago News.)

Little Timmy Mulligan was very sick. Some of his chums said in an awed whisper: “He is dyin’ dis time, sure pop.”

No more would his 9-year-old war-whoop resound around the corner. No more would the lake front know Timmy, his bare feet, and his stone bruises. Never again would he occupy the pitcher’s box and captain the “Red Hots, de champeens uv all de 9-year-olds on de wes’-side”--a nine which, through Capt. Timmy’s masterly inshoots, had attained proud preëminence. Never again would Timmy refresh his jaded spirits by throwing rocks at the Italian on the corner, who had incurred his enmity by once refusing him a banana.

Timmy was as sturdy a youngster as ever the west side turned out; he was as manly and self-reliant as the average Chicago 9-year-old. He was the cock of the walk among all his companions--the best swimmer, the best fighter, and the best pitcher in the ward. The neighborhood was lonesome without Timmy. People could not imagine “what was on the boy,” once so hearty and vigorous, to keep to his bed.

The little invalid lay stretched out on his couch as flat and as pallid as a pancake, in the front room away up in Sylvester Mulligan’s ten-story flat building. The neighbors were coming in droves to cheer up the ailing youngster.

“You’re not goan to lave me, yer poor ould mither, are ye, Timmy asthore?” wailed his mother, rocking from side to side in her frenzy of grief, like a ship in a storm, her voice choked with grief, her eyes drowned in tears.

“Ye were allus a dutiful child to me, Timmy alanna, and ye wud not be afther lavin’ yer poor old mither to fight the wurld alone, now wud ye? You’re the only boy I have left, Timmy, and ye’ll not lave me now afther raisin’ ye as long as I have. Sphake to him, Father Murphy; plase do, yer Rivirince--he’ll moind you; he wuz allus a good-hearted boy, though a thrifle wild. Rayson wid him, father; the fayver has rached his brain, and he turns his face to the wall from me. He won’t sphake to me. Oh, it’s heart-scalded I am!”

“What’s this I hear, Timmy, about your talking of dying,” cheerfully sung out the good Father Murphy, approaching the bedside of the little sufferer, and taking the boy’s wasted hand in his own. “Why, your worth a dozen dead men, yet. I could never spare you in the world. Who could I put in your place as monitor in the school; who else could I get to run my errands and to bring me my Evening News, eh? Why, Timmy, my boy, you are indispensable to the parish--you’re a little pillar of the church--all by yourself. You’re only pretending to be sick--you who were always so strong and hearty, with the rosiest cheeks and the brightest eye of all the lads for squares around. Brace up, and leave all thoughts of dying to old folks like your mother and myself. Do you hear, Tim?”

Tim did hear, nodding his head feverishly upon his clammy pillow. His eyes burned with an unnatural fire. They had the appealing glance of a wounded deer; it would melt your heart but to look at them.

The little invalid tossed uneasily upon the bed; his curling hair, damp with perspiration and pain, strayed uneasily o’er the pillow; his thin hands beat the coverlid with the petulance of a sturdy youngster unused to such close confinement. Yet he spoke not a word.

“Haven’t you a word for your old teacher, Tim, my boy?” asked Father Murphy, softly.