Part 12

The Knights’ Sunday went like this: When it was time for Sunday-school the front door opened (mind you, in any other family of like position in life, that door would have opened for only one of three things--a wedding, a funeral, or the first visit of the clergyman, so think how they honored that mere child)--then big Mrs. Knights appeared and brushed the step over with a cloth and retired from view (a pause), then little Rosie appeared, balancing a moment on the step like one of her own pet, white doves, her many short skirts and her white dress starched to the uttermost limit of rattling stiffness, open-work white stockings and black slippers, with an ankle strap fastened with a gold button, a broad, pink sash about her waist, pink ribbon bows on each long, blond braid, a big leghorn hat secured first by an elastic band, and over that by broad, pink ribbons tied in a large bow under her milk-white chin. In her little, mitted hands she held a testament, and from between its leaves peeped a pink or a rose--a handkerchief the size of a large postage stamp finished her outfit--and so, gravely and with great propriety, she came down the narrow path between the “flox” and “sweet-william,” the “larkspur” and “four o’clocks,” and all the horde of strong-growing, free-blooming flowers of the poor--herself the daintiest flower of them all--and at the gate she turned and kissed her hand to the two heads thrust out at either side of the door--the fresh-shaven face of her father low down on one side, the broad-smiling face of her mother high up on the other--then walked sedately on towards the church, while behind her, the heads gone, the door closed, seemingly of its own volition--to open no more until the next week.

A few minutes later Mrs. Knights appeared at the side door where there was a tiny, _tiny_ little platform, with “scarlet-beans” trained thickly over its morsel of roof. On this porch one chair was carefully placed on Sunday mornings and occupied by Mrs. Knights, arrayed in a white petticoat and white bedgown (as the short, loose garment was called). Her hair was oiled and brushed to a glassy smoothness, a big horn-comb loomed high above her head, and a pair of gold ear-drops, that seemed to have been sold by the yard, dangled from her ears. Her tired, old feet rested in a huge pair of braided list shoes that looked like boats. Once seated, “Little Knights” trotted out with a Bible of a size so prodigious one wondered how it ever found a resting place inside that little bit of a house. Its mighty clasps undone, he placed it on his wife’s lap, and then made another trip and brought out a great pair of spectacles, framed in silver, which he solemnly fitted on her nose, then most carefully and cautiously he adapted himself to such narrow margin of floor space as was left for him, and their service began.

It was with a rather wavering, quavering rendering of an old hymn, after which Mrs. Knights opened the book, and looking over the tops of her glasses--she could not see a word through them, but she felt they loaned her a certain dignity as of office--she found the place, and by the aid of one blunt finger (its stained, cracked nail worn down to the very quick), she made her way with pathetic slowness across the page of frenzied Dutch print. Not that they doubted the saving-power of the English Bible for the English and incidentally for the American sinner, but they felt that their own sins were so peculiarly Dutch in quality that nothing short of a Dutch Bible could save them. Wherefore, Mrs. Knights, each Sunday, with blunt forefinger seemed to dig out words of Holy-writ from the great book, while her small husband carefully stored them in the basket of his memory.

After the chapter had come to its laborious close, they both took breath and wiped their dripping brows, then clasped their hands, bowed their heads and offered each a silent prayer. I had once come upon them so, the bees circling about their gray, old heads, while their prayers, like the perfume of two souls mingling with the perfume of the flowers, rose through the warm air, straight to that great God who had given them Rosie.

And that sweet name encompassed all of good his life contained--health and strength, growing wealth and the respect in which his neighbors held him, and when he would have offered humble thanks for them, instead he blessed God for Rosie.

With a slight trace of that peasant cunning which had been his when the stocking-foot had been his only bank, he tried to hide, as far as possible, his increasing prosperity. He had long owned the double lot and the toy house that made home for him, and it was whispered that certain lots on the outskirts of the town, used by “Little Knights” for a truck-garden, were really his, though the wily Jacobus often, perhaps too often, referred to the fact: “Dat he had paid de rent dem gartens of!” However, the old neighbors to this day tell a story of “Little Knights” touching upon his secretiveness about money.

Rosie, who, by the way was Rosie to all the world except her father--he called her ever and always his Rose or his “Little Rose;” in babyhood, or in womanhood, “My Rose” was the name he gave his idol! When his Rose had reached the age of fourteen, she stood before him one evening, holding a match to his pipe, and when the tobacco glowed evenly all over, she shut down the perforated silver cover, and said suddenly: “Father, I wonder if you can be rich enough to buy me something, an expensive something, too, father?” and the old eyes had fairly danced, and surely in that moment, Jacobus Knights tasted all the sweetness of prosperity. Yet, Jacobus was a Dutchman, and therefore cautious, and so assuming as much doubt as was possible over so absolutely certain a matter, he inquired as to the nature of “dis ting vat made such expense mit itself,” and Rosie, with clear eyes on his face, had answered with a little tremble of anxiety in her voice: “A piano, father.”

And the small father had crushed back a smile, and averted joyous eyes, and had basely suggested that an accordeon “might answer youst as well.”

But clever Rosie noticed he said no word about not affording it, so she instantly assumed a patient look of endurance, saying: “No father, an accordeon will not do; but never mind, I see you are not rich enough yet, I can wait!” and he had hastily broken in on this meekness with: “_You see, you see_, youst noddings, my Rose! How many dimes a hunnert tollars, makes dem bianos mit demselves, all mit der india-rupper overcoats on ’em, too, unt lots of dat moosic pieces sphilt all de top over? All--youst all de nice hair-horse biano stools, too, vat twist round unt round, and make you sick mit yourself--everyting vat goes dat biano mit? _Dat_ is, vat I come rich enough to give mit my Rose!”

But imagine the stupefaction of every soul who knew “Little Knights,” when two weeks later, without a word of his intentions to anyone, he sent men to lay the foundation of a new house on the next-door lot, which was vacant; and to the excited inquiries of his neighbors he _naively_ replied, between puffs of smoke: “Vell, you see now, my Rose, she vant dat biano, unt--(pause)--unt I have to make first de house to put him in--don’t you see mit me?” And the laugh that followed rolled around the town and made him known far and wide as the little, Dutch gardener who built a house for his daughter’s piano.

A few more prosperous years and “Little Knights,” who began to be called “Little Old Knights” now, was watching, with proud eyes, the growing train of Rosie’s lovers. She was a charming girl--clever, well-read, an excellent musician, a perfect little housekeeper, and, best of all, tenderly, bravely loyal to her big, illiterate mother and her short-cut, old father.

She was a milk-white blond--a silvery, flaxen blond, and though tints of mauve and clear, pure blue found favor in her eyes, she still wore pink for her old father’s sake. He had used to say of her in baby days: “My Rose is such a vite, liddle Rose--I like dat she be tied up pink ribbons mit--alvays mit pink!” So now, tied up “mit pink,” she received her young friends in that one-time “holy of holies”--the front room; now termed parlor. With a sort of anguished pride big Mrs. Knights saw sunlight streaming through only thin lace curtains across the new carpet--saw other books than the Bible and family album there--saw flowers and open piano, and oh--oh--the chairs all pulled out from their nice, straight rows against the wall! But then--ach Gott! Rosie knew! And the ringing of the doorbell was as music in the ears of the doting, old pair who sat in the inner room--one knitting, the other smoking--both nodding and smiling and putting severe restraint upon themselves to keep from rushing in with refreshments before greetings were hardly over.

That moment of offering refreshments was a moment of joy and of torture. They would willingly have effaced themselves from the life of their “American” daughter (as they proudly called her), but she had neither friend nor acquaintance who did not know--and through her introduction--her father and mother. With regard to the latter, Rosie had worked a miracle. In two years’ time, by faithful and almost desperate effort, she had taught her mother nine simple English words. They were evidently selected by the astute Rosie with a view to future social requirements. So now Mrs. Knights could, with portentous gasps and moistening brow, say: “How do-do?” “Com’ again!” “Good-bye!” “Ver’ glad!” “Ver’ sorry!” and “My!” And when the moment came for the long-necked bottles of sparkling German wine--the fruit--the sandwiches--the cream-cheese, etc., to appear, the old pair, rejoicing in their hospitality, swelling with pride in Rosie and Rosie’s popularity, yet nearly crushed by embarrassment, appeared, too. And Mrs. Knights--“How do-do?” all round--wilted into a big chair in the corner, from whence she smiled most happily and cast a “My!” of excellent pronunciation into the general conversation now and then, for which her Rosie gave her a dozen kisses afterward.

The bright, laughing girl saw that her father had the prettiest visitor in the room to sit by, and that her own choice of the young men should wait upon her mother, and so, with wonderful tact, she led them into her brighter life, instead of shutting them out into the shamed solitude known to so many lowly parents. Rosie was nineteen when she made her choice. Young Randall had been a child of wealth until, at twenty, his father tried to “corner” something and had been cornered himself and ruined. Then the boy went to work and had been working for six years when he fell in love with Rosie. Never had there been such excitement in a Dutchman’s life before! Little Old Knights was a house-building, present-buying, hand-rubbing, amiable, little lunatic! His wife smiled in her very sleep at night, and lived in her Dutch receipt-book all day, while Rosie had to watch the pair with the eyes of an affectionate lynx to prevent them from buying horse-hair furniture for her future parlor, and large chunks of amethyst or big, diamond-set things for ornaments.

But she managed so well that only a few atrocities crept in among her gifts, and her little home was charming. Many thought that now, as Rosie entertained a good deal and had new friends in her new home, she would ignore the old folks. Not she! Whenever she had anything “on,” from a “coffee-drinking” to an “evening party,” she flew down to the old home and laced her mother into shape, crowding her into a stiff, silk gown, that creaked at each labored breath of its wearer, and when she was in full panoply of war, and Little Old Knights had been turned about and looked over as if he were a boy getting ready for Sunday-school, Rosie kissed them both and took them off to her own home, and set them down in two big chairs with a little table between them, for their spectacles and handkerchiefs and other small belongings--and there, like an old pair of children, they sat and enjoyed all that went on; and when there was dancing, “Old Knights” never failed to indulge in one waltz with his ancient wife--the memory of whose youth must have gone into her feet to make her so light on them still. And while Rosie joined in the laughter this waltz always aroused, there would be a tremor in her voice and she would hold her young husband’s hand close and whisper: “Will you love _me_ like that, Hal, when I have grown old?”

So on radiant wings time flew by, until one morning neighbors heard laughing in “Little Knights’” garden--laughing that continued and continued, and when they went over, “Little Knights” was doing the laughing, with tears running down his cheeks and falling on the prodigious Bible open on his short knees. When questioned, he exclaimed: “She has kom’--all safe, she has kom’! I seen her mit mine eyes--I have tooched her mit dese fingers! De liddle daughter of mine own Rose! Ach, de Almighty Gott is a most goot Gott!” and then he bowed his white head and muttered: “Now let Thy servant depart mit peace!” And so poor, “Little Old Knights” found his cup of joy full to the brim!

And what happens to any cup held in human hands if filled to the brim? It runs over--and there is cruel loss! And so it came to pass that Rosie’s little one stayed with them just long enough to smile a recognition of her girlish mother’s face, and then some sweet, strong call came from the “beyond” that baby had heard and answered--and they were left to wonder at the awful void that small absence made in all their lives.

Poor, Old Knights! Tight in his arms he held the tiny, coffined dead--moaning over and over: “My liddle pud--my Rose’s liddle pud!”--until that sad moment when, by sheer force, they took the wee, dead thing from him, to hide it away beneath the flowers and the grasses.

Time passed slowly now. Rosie, very gentle--very tender of others--was sad, so sad. That was not natural to her--so all rejoiced when hope once more shone in her face--and all was thankful when Little Old Knights trotted from door to door with the news that his Rose had “anodder liddle daughter--so like--ach Gott! so like de first--as never yet dey saw!”

Rosie’s joy was great, but it was not the laughing, unthinking joy of other days. She felt anxieties and fears. She dreaded this and that, but her silvery blond baby was so strong and well, and grew so fast, and “crowed” and laughed, and romped with father and grandfather, and stood so strong upon her little legs that fears had to give way to confidence, and her heart bounded with triumph when she heard the baby voice, cry imperatively; “Ma--ma! ma--ma!”

One day in particular Rosie always remembered--she had toiled for a good hour at training baby to say: “Pa--pa,” when the father had come from the office--and when he came the baby had stretched out her arms to him, looked back roguishly at Rosie, and then fairly screamed: “Ma--ma! ma--ma!” and they had all laughed and laughed! Good God! how easy it is for a baby to fill a happy home with merriment! And that very night “croup” had clutched with murderous fingers the little throat that was used to swell with laughter as a bird’s throat swells with song--and darkness and silence came upon the house.

Little Knights--poor, broken, Little Knights--like a small, gray shadow, flitted back and forth between the two stricken homes. At one moment he had blasphemed in his misery. His Rose had been lying on his breast and she had wrung her hands and lifted her tortured eyes to his and cried: “Father, what have I done? Think back--think hard! What wickedness did I do, that God should punish me so cruelly? Did I lie? Did I bear false witness against anyone? Think father--think for me, dear!”

And then he had lifted up his voice against Almighty God and cursed his work--and now he remembered his words and shivered, for, with creeping horror, he felt that there was something approaching him more terrible even than the loss of the second little bud of love and hope--Rose! Rose--his worshiped Rose--who wept not--who thought no more for others’ comforts--who sat motionless for long hours at a time, had been taken possession of by a grotesquely horrible idea that the husband she loved so was trying to put her legally away, because her children died! And she would hold his hands and beg piteously that he should wait for her to die!--that she would not be long about it now! And the poor husband would kneel at her feet and pour out his love and grief, but all in vain!

Then she would lay her head on “Little Knights’” breast and tell him to take her away before the new wife came! He felt what was coming, and believed _his_ blasphemy had brought destruction upon her when his Rose became quite mad! At first he tried to take his life, but Mrs. Knights seemed to have eyes all over--he could not escape them. Then, suddenly, he cast himself--helpless, hopeless, almost heartbroken, at the “Blessed Feet,” asking nothing for himself, but entreating mercy for his Rose!--so innocent, so good! Bye and bye he ceased to bargain with the Lord, and bowed his head, and with grief-shaken voice, said simply: “Thy will, not mine, O Gott!” and straight a gleam of sunlight came back into his life. Rose--his beloved Rose--had recovered her reason! “Little Knights” held her in his arms and kissed the weary eyes and drooping lips--and blessed God for her! but knew in his heart he would never again see his white Rose “tied up mit pink ribbons.”

And time goes on and on, and Rose, gentle, kind, a very angel of mercy to the poor, devoted to her husband and her parents--rarely smiling--never laughing--shivers at the sight of a blond baby. Four years had passed after her second loss, and her silence was deceiving them all. I think, when one Sunday in church a strange, little, restless creature in her pew crept along the seat and put its baby hand on hers, and poor Rosie at that touch had fainted dead away, after that they understood.

One day I saw “Little Knights” standing uncovered at the side of two tiny graves. A small white stone at their head had carved upon it two rosebuds and beneath, three words, clear and plain: “Our little buds!” I murmured the words half aloud, and “Little Knights,” with tears on his cheeks, said: “Yays, yays--youst liddle puds--but, oh, whad sweet, liddle puds dey were! Gott give me youst von Rose--full bloomed unt perfect--but dese puds? _No! no!_ He say dey may not bloom here!”

He looked up into the clear, far, far blue, and smiled and nodded, and said, very low: “Oop dere--I think He make ’em bloom out full--dem puds! I like I can see dat! I don’t want to leaf my Rose--I stay here as long as she stay--but I vant so much to see my liddle puds bloom!” and then he placed on each wee grave a beautiful rosebud, and trotted away home to his good, old wife and his adored Rosie!

“Let me see,” I added, “this is Saturday--is it not? Well, to-morrow, before four o’clock in the afternoon, should you go to W---- Cemetery, you would see the ‘little hop o’ my thumb’ I pointed out to you a while ago come trotting in, holding two beautiful, exquisitely beautiful, rosebuds in his hand; would see him make his way to those two tiny graves, and without shame, fall on his knees, and with one arm stretched across the graves, humbly pray. Then kissing both buds, he would place one on each grave--then, with falling tears, leave the cemetery--and that has been done and will be done, winter as well as summer, by this poor, faithful ‘Little Old Knights.’”

I glanced at my companion and was amazed to see her eyes were brimming, and as she dashed the tears away, the shameless little turncoat cried--“And do you now tell me you can’t see poetry in life--when you have known a man like that? Why, there is all the poetry of ‘fatherhood’ right before your eyes!”

And to this day she wonders why I laughed so long and heartily.

The Ambition of MacIlhenny

The Ambition of MacIlhenny

After mentioning that last name it seems like rank waste of time to say his first name was Sandy. He couldn’t help it, his parents couldn’t help it, no one could help it; one name follows the other naturally.

Well, then, being Sandy MacIlhenny, of course he was Scotch. I mention it for mere form’s sake, as you knew it beforehand, just as you knew what his first name was. But, fortunately for us all, he had lived in America so many years that he had lost or thrown away his dialect, and the only thing in his speech that could suggest his native heath was the marked preference for the letter “u” instead of “i” in whisky, (and I think, myself, “whusky” has a more filling sound) and a “burring,” a b’r’r’r to his “r’s,” as though a very large, bewildered “bumble-bee” were blundering about the end of his broad tongue, and then bumping back to the roof of his mouth.

Poor MacIlhenny’s life was a tragedy, and yet it was played, to the very last act, to an accompaniment of jeers and laughter--not malicious, not bitter, but simple, thoughtless laughter.

A description of his personal appearance might, I think, go a good way toward explaining the cause of that general laughter. Had he been simply ugly, all had been well--there’s nothing injurious in ugliness; it may even be a power. He was worse than that. In our English language there is a word that may have been created at the very moment of Sandy’s birth, for the express use of those wishing to describe him perfectly but briefly--that word is “grotesque.”

He was tall, very tall, with a sudden, rounding droop of the shoulders that gave him the look of a button-hook or interrogation point, while his thickness through the body was about that of a choice, salt codfish. If he was furnished with the usual number of internal organs they must have been pressed like autumn leaves in a dictionary, or else he did not wear them all at one time; that’s how thin he was. Then he was the only tall man I ever saw pacing through life on bowed-legs. No, not knock-kneed! Sandy’s legs were bowed to a roundness that let one see, at a glance, just how a picture of certain portions of the landscape would look in a perfectly round frame. No man on earth could command respect while standing on a pair of legs like Sandy’s, unless they were concealed beneath the protecting petticoat of church or college. He had very high cheek-bones, across which the skin was drawn so tightly that they looked like a pair of unexpected knuckles. His chin was long and straight, without the slightest indentation or curve about it. His nose shared in the general lengthiness and was thin and pointed, while, owing to the narrowness of his entire structural plan, each small, greenish-blue eye turned inwardly and gazed with fixed resentment at the intervening bridge that seemed to be crowding them.

And these cruelly crossed eyes made MacIlhenny a veritable joy to the street boys, who would follow him, performing warlike dances, and then rush before him and wait at street corners with ostentatiously crossed forefingers between which they gravely spat to avert the ill-luck his glance might put upon them.

Poor man! In no limb, no feature had he been spared--so that the final touch of common, coarse ugliness was found in the shining baldness of the top of his head, and the little flounce of brick-red hair with which he seemed to be modestly trying to cover its startling nudity.

With such a body to dwell in, one can hardly wonder that his mind should become distorted and develop only in one direction, as it were, and such a direction, for the ambition of MacIlhenny, this poor, cross-eyed, bowlegged Scotchman of the lower laboring class--this excellent cutter of stone, was to be the greatest _tragic-actor_ of his day!

Nor was his ambition of the mere “I wish I were!” or “I would like to be!” order. It was a devouring passion.