Part 17

Marie held loving little arms out to receive the dripping stop-gap, saying: “We’ll go to bed, right now, my ‘peshous Dinah’! Never mind your nighty, you’ll get cold! Come, and we’ll cuddle up, until you are all dry again!” And then the storm broke! It was simply impossible that Marie should be allowed to go to bed with that dripping bundle pressed in her arms, and it was equally impossible to make her obey or listen to reason. It was a wretched scene. The mother knelt to the child she had ruined, calling her, “her angel, her star, her flower,” and Marie gave her a kick or a push at each word, and swore oaths that a mule-driver would hesitate before ejecting in a row. Where had she learned them? Who knows? Who ever knows how a beloved child learns evil? But on and on went this battle, until at last, worn out with the past fright and the present rage, the little vixen fainted.

Mrs. Tyler sent for the doctor, and while waiting his coming, and after Marie’s recovery of consciousness, she said to me: “Carrie, can’t you think of some way to keep that awful doll away from my darling to-night? Try, child, try!”

I thought hard enough to turn my hair gray, it seemed to me, before I was gladdened by an idea. I went to the door and beckoned Mrs. Tyler, and asked her, in a whisper, two or three questions about an article she had been reading aloud when the storm arose--an article about the water-cure, then the very newest fad. She gave me the desired information, and thus armed, I stole to Marie’s side, and with great seeming secrecy, told her I had a lovely new play, if only her mother would allow us (poor Mrs. Tyler!) to play it.

Rather languidly, she answered: “To-morrow, Cawie!”

But I said: “To-morrow would be too late, because Dinah had to be awful wet to play this game.”

At once she was all eagerness, and commanded me to explain. And so it came about, that the “peshous un” was stripped under loving eyes and rolled in a wet dinner-napkin, and then “packed” in wet sheets, all according to “Hoyle,” or the water-cure doctors. And I engaged to give her several drinks of water during the night, and assured Marie that she would find her “peshous Dinah” all right in the morning, and Marie laughed and talked, while I did the packing. And the doctor found her with a high pulse and red cheeks, but the wet doll was not in her arms. She refused to show her tongue, because she said the last time she put out her tongue at him, he was mad about it, which was very true.

He gave her a powder, she went to sleep, and the rest of us humbly thanked our Creator.

Dinah was snatched out of her “pack” and put in the warm oven to dry, while the other members of the family slept the sleep of the weary and the worn.

Three entire years passed in alternate peace and strife. Acting in the interest of decency and cleanliness, Mrs. Tyler had covered Dinah with fresh linen several times. Little Marie had grown taller, more beautiful, and more impish; while Dinah still reigned supreme, though almost every bureau in the house had in its bottom drawer a wax doll or two, rolled up in towels.

For some time before the great disaster, we had been tormented by cats. Why our garden should have been selected for their mass-meetings, I can’t imagine. We lived in a fashionable quarter; there was an air of eternal Sabbath brooding over our heavily shaded street; a few lap-dogs resided thereon, but no one stooped to cats. Yet night and cats descended upon us together.

Mrs. Tyler raised many herbs for kitchen use, but after the arrival of the cats the herbs entered the kitchen no more. The back garden was destroyed.

They were a musical as well as warlike race, and their head notes, chest notes, and stomach notes, were poured forth with passionate ardor, but I never, never learned to distinguish the tenderest love song from the wail of complete despair, though I was quick to recognize the gage of battle. I also learned that the bitterness and ferocity of an engagement was not to be measured so surely by the loss of blood as by the loss of fur.

But let me stop right here, and not weary the reader with what I know about cats--tribal, nomadic, domestic; their habits, laws, and superstitions; their sign-language, being the very same that was taught to the tail-chasing, sacred kittens of Cheops and the first Pharaoh--and only state that in the study of feline folklore, I have known of a student becoming so absorbed that he forgot everything on earth, even the “lore,” in his mad pursuit of a feline.

Now, one evening, Mr. Tyler brought home an old friend, whom he asked to dine and pass the night. The old friend had with him a small dog, who also dined and passed the night. The gentleman was a bachelor then, and if he is alive and sane, I have the biggest and ugliest silver dollar in the world to bet against a crooked hair-pin, that he is a bachelor now. The dog was small, and it had hair--lots of hair--and judging by sight alone, that was all he had. His master claimed that he could see a difference between fore and aft, between head and tail. Well, perhaps he could when the dog was awake, but ’twas base boasting to make any such claim when he was sleeping. He was named “Bolivar,” not after the military gentleman, but in memory of his youthful and almost fatal attempt to swallow whole one of those very large, hard, round candies boys call “Bolivars.”

This four-legged guest had made that thing adored of men, “a record,” and it was for killing rats. Now you show me a dog with a record for killing rats, and I’ll show you a dog who has broken the record killing cats. It’s perfectly natural; he has to kill the cats or there would not be rats enough to make a record with.

Bolivar was graciously received by Marie, who knew but little of dogs, and who asked “why he bit his own back when everybody’s legs were in his reach,” adding, “If I was a dog I’d bite somebody else every time;” which was pure and unadulterated truth, I’m sure.

In the forenoon of that day, “Tyler’s pretty devil” had favored us with one of her wildest tantrums. The servant, Norah, had spilled a little hot tea over Dinah’s foot, and Marie had gone into a very frenzy of rage. Seizing Dinah by the legs, she had thrashed the girl out of the room and the house; had with one sweep of Dinah’s body cleared a small table of every article it held; had cut her own hand; had held her breath until she was blue; had indeed furnished her whole family with healthy but rather unpleasant exercise for both mind and body, and when she had so stirred her monkeys up that we each chattered our teeth while we swang madly from our own particular pole, she had suddenly calmed down and requested me to bandage Dinah’s scalded foot, and proceed with her to the garden, there to play “sick lady in the country.”

By some chance there had sprung up, at the very foot of the garden, a large weed, a most uncommon growth amid such surroundings; a great, big, coarse-leafed, pinkish-topped thing, a sort of pretty tramp from the woods or fields; I think it’s called milk-weed, though to Dinah it was usually an orange orchard, while only occasionally it became a pine forest in which we lost ourselves and endured great hardships.

I remember it was an orange orchard that day, and after a long play, when Marie was called to dress for dinner, she advised Dinah to remain where she was, saying, “When dinner is over I’ll bring you some dessert.”

So I gave Dinah a book to read, and we left her. We both looked back, Marie many times, and always kissing her hand. And so I most often see her in my memory, the “peshous one,” I mean, sitting stiffly against the trunk of her orange tree, one foot bandaged (without the formality of first removing her boot), an open almanac on her lap, whose piteous, gray, old jokes were to entertain her during our absence, her water-waves trim and neat, her round eye mild and pleasant, her smile almost meeting behind--so I saw her that last day.

The dinner was over; it had not been what you might call an hilarious affair. There seems to be something in the blood of wives at enmity with _uninvited_ guests, and Mrs. Tyler was cold as ice and as bitter as a black frost.

When dinner was nearly ready, Bolivar sneaked out to the kitchen, where the cook had given him a large, square meal, feeding him from her own hand, as she told me afterward in confidence, until “he was that full his eyes bulged, Miss!” And in that dreadful state he waddled back to the dining-room, and when dinner was over, sat on end by his master and laid beseeching, hypocritical paws on his knee, and was fed again, after which he was in a condition bordering on apoplexy, and quite unfit to play “soldier,” or “dead-dog,” or do anything in fact, save retire to the flyless shadows under the piano and there sleep, audibly. Marie was so interested in Bolivar and so busy flirting with his master (she was a coquette at one year), that she actually forgot Dinah, who still sat in the orange orchard.

The bare idea of a dog sleeping in her house filled Mrs. Tyler with such indignation that other arrangements had to be hastily made for Bolivar’s accommodation.

Some former tenants had left a kennel behind them. It was brought from the wood-house, a bit of old carpet put into it, and the sleepy Bolivar was hitched to it with a piece of cord. After two or three strangling efforts to follow his master, kennel and all, into the house, he finally settled himself, and we all separated for the night.

We were all asleep--and then we were all awake again! No, it was not the “crack of doom” we heard, but if you were to break one boiler factory into a foundling asylum and beat them together, you might get an idea of the kind of noise that aroused us. I murmured “Cats,” and tried to slip back into the sweet land of “Nod,” but there came a new noise. It had a wooden sound. What was it? My mother said “Is the wood-pile falling down?” But it sounded to me as though the shed was jumping up and down. Suddenly we gasped, “The dog! The kennel!”

Next instant the cord broke and with an ear piercing “ky--i, ky--i!” Bolivar set out to build up another record. It was fearful! The carnage was great, but the noise was maddening. Our nearest neighbor came to his window and made very, _very_ personal remarks about people who would keep a dog where they knew cats came. This gentleman’s head was like a large, china egg, for baldness, and I think the extreme hairiness of Bolivar added bitterness to his words.

Had Bolivar been satisfied to kill his cats once only, his record would have been bigger, but he had a habit of killing his victims several times, going back to them and shaking and tossing them and crunching their spines with his front teeth, and while this habit had the advantage of making his cats and rats very dead indeed, it lost him a good deal of time.

I slipped out of bed and went to the window and looked out, just as the triumphant Bolivar tore around the house, dragging his prey and kicking up the grave as he ran. Just beneath me he paused to re-kill his victim, shaking it viciously, tossing it over his head, and with a goatlike spring catching it again. Then, taking it at the head, he, with savage growls, began nipping it down its back. At that moment I heard the stairs creak, and some one softly opened the front door, and then Mr. Tyler’s friend came into view.

He was dressed, or--that is to say--er--er, well, he wasn’t undressed, quite. His feet were thrust into a pair of heelless slippers, and I experienced a feeling of some surprise at the number of strings I could see dangling from him. There were two broad, white ones hanging down behind from the waist-line, and at least four pieces of white tape trailed along behind his bare heels, which looked in the moonlight like a pair of fine onions--moonlight always has that strange, transforming power.

Yes, though his dress was careless and simple to a degree, still it answered quite nicely for two o’clock in the morning, though ten hours later it would have landed him in the fine, new insane asylum waiting for gentlemen dressed that way.

He conversed with Bolivar a few moments, and his gestures, while a trifle angular, were really very impressive and expressive. What he said seemed to fill Bolivar with utter amazement, and finally with shame and vexation. I am positive that, had he had a tail, it would have been but a wagless sagging down, and vanity of vanities. As it was, he could only bow his head and meekly follow his master, carefully stepping on all four of the trailing tapes, whenever he could, and making a snap now and then at the broad, white things dangling from the waist-line.

Once more was he put into the kennel and tied, this time with a clothes-line, which might have tried the strength of the best steer in the cattle market. Once more peace descended upon us. Bolivar had earned fresh laurels to rest upon. The live cats had gone away, and the dead cats kept perfectly quiet, which was all one had the right to expect of them.

It was yet very early morning when I heard Norah at Mrs. Tyler’s door, knocking, and crying in a tearful voice for her to “get up fur huvvens sake!”

She also called upon such a very large number of Saints to come to her help that I am sure the house could not have held them had they laid aside their symbols and things and answered to her call. I suppose they felt that everybody’s business was nobody’s business, so none of them responded.

Mrs. Tyler was unmistakably vexed as she opened the door, and Norah was unmistakably startled, for Mrs. Tyler not only kept her teeth in a cup of water over night, but, to make it wave, she plaited her front hair in many, many tight, little braids (that was before crimping-pins), which looked like nothing so much as a bunch of nicely cleaned and neatly tied rats’ tails.

“What is the meaning of all this to-do?” asked the lady.

“Oh, Mu’m, its all that divil’s own dog’s doin’s! Him that I fed with me own two hands, last night, till his shape was gone intirely! And now she’s tored to pieces! The Saints be good to us!”

“Do you know,” cried Mrs. Tyler, “what you are saying!”

“I do the same!” replied Norah. “I’m a’saying that that dog ‘Bullinger’ has tored her to pieces, and she’s as dead as any mack’rel!”

“Who is dead, Norah?”

“Why, Miss Dinah, poor thing!”

“What!” Mrs. Tyler stepped outside and quickly closed the door behind her. She took Norah by the wrist, gave her a shake, and asked in a low tone: “What’s that about Dinah?”

With a burst of excited tears, Norah repeated: “She’s dead, M’um, as dead as any of them nasty cats down there! And I thought I’d come and tell you, M’um, and if you please, M’um, before the young lady finds it out, I’ll just be leavin’ me place! No M’um, you needn’t give me no character! I’ll just be goin’ peaceable-like, without any character at all!”

And long and earnest were Mrs. Tyler’s entreaties, and many were the promises she made of protection from the wrath to come, ere Norah could be induced to light the kitchen fire, her first unwilling step toward getting breakfast ready.

Then, white and trembling, Mrs. Tyler called my mother. They went forth and saw Norah had told the truth. They returned and held a consultation. Mrs. Tyler was for mad haste and another Dinah! Mother was positive the deception could not be carried out on such short notice, and a discovered attempt would add fury to the storm.

But Mrs. Tyler insisted, and together the two women worked wildly, in the hope of recreating Dinah. With dripping brows and trembling fingers they were fastening on her boots, when shrill and clear came the cry of “Dinah! Where’s my peshous Dinah? I want her!”

Truly we all wanted her at that moment!

I was scrambling into my clothes as fast as I could, when through the open door I caught a glimpse of little Marie; the next instant there was a cry of indignation, followed by the words: “What’s that? What ugly fool thing’s that--dressed up just like my Dinah? Who’s been here already?”

And Mrs. Tyler tremulously cooed that “No one has been here, darling--it is not even time for breakfast yet.”

Marie, with curled-up, contemptuous lips, held the intended deceiver out at arm’s length and slowly and derisively put out her spiteful, red tongue at her--then suddenly caught her by the heels and hurled her out of the window, remarking: “You nasty, little, ugly beast! I hope the ’hoppers and the ants’ll get all over you, and fleas in your stockin-legs, too! And who ever brought you here shall be pinched, all black! So there! Now, where’s Dinah?”

A pretended search followed, till suddenly Marie remembered she had left Dinah out in the garden. “Oh, Cawie! Cawie!” she cried, “I forgotted her, my own, peshous Dinah, and she’s been reading all night, without her dinner! Oh, Dinah! Dinah!” and away she started to the porch, on her way to rescue her beloved. And then the old struggle, between mother and child was renewed. In her foolish endeavor to deceive Marie a little longer, Mrs. Tyler told falsehood after falsehood. Now it was a curious thing about the vixen, that she was utterly truthful, for her mother was a prolific, though inconsequential liar--her lies so utterly lacking cohesive power that they never were known to sustain one another, and Marie often berated her mother for her wrong-doing.

Now nearly distracted, the child suddenly turned to me, asking: “Cawie, Cawie, has my Dinah fallen down the well?”

I shook my head, and answered, “No, Marie, dear,” while in the same moment Mrs. Tyler quickly exclaimed: “Yes, my sweet, she is in the well, but the man will get her out, and to-morrow you shall have her in all new things!”

Marie glared at her a few seconds, then stamping her foot, cried, “How dare you, you so wicked mamma! Stop, now! Stop, I say; you make lies every day, you do. Go do your hair up right, and sit in the parlor and make lies, and let me find my dear Dinah. Cawie, will help me!” and as she got through the door and into the dew-wet garden, Mrs. Tyler cried out: “She’s all right, she is in--in--the oven getting dry. You can have her soon, only my angel, come and get dressed now!”

But, with a cry of delight, her angel tore out of her hands and darted into the kitchen, and before Mrs. Tyler could signal, much less speak to Norah, Marie cried: “Norah, what’s in the oven?” and that honest bond-maiden answered, “Nothin’, Miss, its not hot enough for biscuit, see!” and she threw open the door, and into its black maw disappeared the child’s bright hopes. She stood quite still, and looked first at one and then at another. I was crying quietly, but I watched her and saw her face growing paler and paler. At last she took a fold of my mother’s dress in her hand and said: “Auntie, is my Dinah dead?”

Before she could lift her bent head to answer, Norah, with a mighty roar, burst forth: “She is, Miss, she’s dead and killed, and all tored up, and there’s nothing left of her!”

Poor, little soul! Both hands clasped convulsively. That curious quiver came to her eyelids, and the movement in her slender throat showed that she swallowed dryly at something--sorrow is always so hard to swallow! Then she flung out her arms, and giving a cry that pierced like a knife, she flung herself out of the kitchen, and, of all, places in the house, made straight for the dark store-room, off the dining-room; she who feared but two things, lightning and utter darkness, now sought the latter, and closed the door behind her, where we heard her little hands feeling for some catch or bolt to fasten it, but luckily, there was none. Mrs. Tyler was nearly wild; the pantry was very small, utterly dark, and nearly airless. In it were kept barrels of flour and sugar, boxes of tea and bags of coffee, and closed, it was black as night. She prayed, pleaded, flattered, promised, and to each prayer came a kick at the door, and the threat, “If you touch the door, I’ll make me dead! I will! I will!”

Everyone stood helpless before this small child’s power to harm herself. Mrs. Tyler denounced Norah for telling. Other members of the family begged at the door to speak to Marie a moment, just a moment, in vain; yet her voice was distinctly weaker, and all were frightened.

“I must bring her out by force!” declared Mr. Tyler.

And then, for the last time, I was called upon to play “lightning-rod.” The uncle said, “Let Carrie try,” and then all hands were on my shoulder, pushing me forward, and before I knew it I was alone. I on one side of the door, stupid and idealess, and Marie on the other side, heartbroken and relentless. I was quite a big girl then, but I’m afraid I had my finger in my mouth.

I tried to think, but I didn’t; on the contrary, I discovered a little nail-hole in the door that had been filled up with putty, and then, faint and low, almost in a whisper, I heard, “Oh, Cawie, Cawie! Oh, my Dinah!”

And I sprang to the door, opened it, and went in, and the next instant I was sitting on a bag of salt, and poor Marie was across my knees, sobbing as though her heart would break. I had left the door part way open, and as I heard some one cautiously approaching, I wildly waved my half-laced boots at them to keep away. I had not said a word; I only sat smoothing her silky, auburn hair, while she cried, and cried, and cried, and every now and then gasped, “She’s gone, all gone, every bit of her! Oh, my Dinah!”

But when she once added, “and I can’t do anything for her in the world,” my idea at last arrived, hurried, out of breath and belated, but still an idea, and I eagerly said, “Oh, Marie, dear, there’s a little of her left, enough to make a beautiful funeral!”

She shook her head, saying, “Got to have their bodies to make funerals.”

“But,” I went on, “don’t you remember the poor men your papa saw all blowed up by the engine? There wasn’t much left of them, but they had funerals, every one of them.”

She turned her tear-wet face toward me, and asked, dully, “How much was left?”

“Oh,” I replied, with an airy assumption of knowledge worthy of my elders, “bits of skin, and little bones like teeth, you know, and broken ‘spenders.’”

“But,” objected Marie, “Dinah’s teef hadn’t _growed_ yet, and she didn’t _wear_ spenders,” and her sobs broke forth anew.

I reassured her by telling her there was quite a large piece of Dinah’s flannel petticoat left, and over half of her face (including all of her indestructible smile), and perhaps we might find some more bits if we looked, and we could put them all in a little, white sheet, in a true box (a wooden box), and truly bury her just like any other person.

The poor, little vixen sat up and put her hair from her eyes and listened--she began to be interested--then the tears slipping down her wan cheeks, she stole her arm about my neck and whispered: “Cawie, where has the _inside_ Dinah gone?--the--the now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep Dinah?”

I was silent; and I could feel the trembling of her body increase as she waited for an answer. Then she wailed: “Oh, Cawie! tell me! tell me!”

Poor baby! who wanted her doll to be immortal as herself! I dared not say she was in Heaven, so without an idea of what Paradise meant, I calmly told her that “Dinah was in dolls’ Paradise”--and that was the only time I ever knew her to be called a doll.

“What’s that?” asked Marie, eagerly.

“Why,” I answered, “it’s a lovely, clean, sweet place, where dead dolls wait till their owners get dead too, and call for them on their way to Heaven.”

May I be forgiven--but I certainly had a fine, able-bodied imagination in my youth.