Part 1

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GAMBOLLING WITH GALATEA: A BUCOLIC ROMANCE

by

CURTIS DUNHAM

Author of “The Casino Girl in London,” “Two in a Zoo,” “The Golden Goblin,” etc.

With Illustrations by Oliver Herford

Houghton Mifflin Company Boston & New York The Riverside Press Cambridge MDCCCCIX

Copyright, 1909, by Curtis Dunham and Houghton Mifflin Company

All Rights Reserved

Published May 1909

_Preliminary and Confidential_

Fair reader (and unfair one, of either sex), I pray you be not dismayed by the profundity of this discourse. Doubtless there are some light-minded observers who would have seen in the natural phenomena herein recorded the very quintessence of humor, the apotheosis of the comical. Such pretenders to scientific and literary eminence would entertain the same view of the noble Titanotherium Robustum, or the sublime Stegosaurus Ungulatus. They would have cast merry doubts upon the improving conversation between Balaam and his Ass; ridiculed the psychic resources of the Birds of St. Francis d’Assisi; scoffed at the gratitude of Æsop’s Lion; denied the acumen of the Jumping Frog of Calaveras; yea, and presumed to say “scat” to the sacred Cat of Bubastis.

Fair reader (or unfair one), be warned against all such triflers with the important truths of nature. Life is earnest. Turn the page—read, ponder, and be wise.

C. D.

_Contents_

PRELIMINARY AND CONFIDENTIAL vii

_PART I_ INITIATION OF THE TWO-LEGGED PARTNERS 1

_PART II_ FAIR WARNING TO THE HORSELESS 39

_PART III_ PIG-MALION AND GALATEA 67

_PART IV_ THE OBSEQUIES OF BOS NEMO 98

_PART V_ EQUUS MINOR, DETECTIVE 127

_PART VI_ TAURUS CUPID, ESQ. 157

_Illustrations_

“_I wouldn’t roost in a cherry tree_” (_page 30_) Frontispiece

_The goat seemed to nod his approval_ 44

_Sit perfectly still for five minutes while the gentleman takes your picture_ 92

_Seized her hand and kissed it ardently_ 126

_The guests ate their turnips decorously_ 150

_All the four-legged members of the firm had drawn near_ 168

GAMBOLLING WITH GALATEA

I _Initiation of the Two-Legged Partners_

The thing was incredible. It was intolerable—just cause for mutiny. Talk about injustice, arrogant denial of the equal rights of man and beast! Well, here was a spectacle calculated to make the heavens weep. Yet never had a June sky revealed a deeper shade of blue for fleecy clouds to sail upon. The wind that should have risen in a shriek of indignation blew softly around the corner of the barn, and was laden with fragrance from all the flowers that bloom. In the meadow just beyond the stone fence, the tall grass waved gently, whispering contentment to the brook that gurgled with happiness. Birds sang, grasshoppers chirped—

Clarence could stand it no longer. With his neck stretched far out of his stall window, the colt lifted up his voice and whinnied remonstrance.

“O Amanda! Why are we still prisoners, and the sun half-way up the roof of heaven? It is an outrage, Amanda. Come quickly and let us out.”

Reginald—the round fat one with the tight kink in his tail—stood on his hind-legs inside the barnyard fence under the colt’s nose, and voiced his personal grievance in short sharp squeaks.

“Let me out, let me out, let me out! My trough is empty. My flattened belly cleaves to my backbone.”

On either side of him were Mrs. Cowslip and Gustavius, with their heads over the fence and their noses in the air.

“Amanda, O Amanda!” bawled the bull-calf, while his mother—she of the liquid eyes and the crumpled horn—lowed her gentle reminder:—

“Good, kind Amanda, this yard is barren; in the pasture the long grass is luscious. Amanda, O Amanda!”

And William, the big-horned and bearded one, butted foolishly at the hinges of the barnyard gate.

The others gave no heed to William’s puerile devices. He was only an addle-pated goat anyway, devoid of reasoning power and puffed up with vanity. They put their noses together and considered the matter, the bull-calf wrinkling his yellow muzzle at Clarence’s ear and dropping now and then a superfluous comment. Ordinarily the colt, having an exalted sense of his own superiority, would have indulged in no such familiarity with a placid old cow and her lubberly calf; but it was plain that the present occasion was one demanding the sinking of the individual in the organization. So Clarence patiently reviewed the situation, inviting their suggestions.

To go back to the events of the early morning. Why had that two-legged tyrant, who always responded so promptly to the vulgar name of Gabe whenever Amanda hailed him from the kitchen door, harnessed the mare and driven off, leaving them deprived of their customary liberty, and without a word of explanation? The act was contrary to the Professor’s most sacred principle of equity for all living creatures, whether having four legs or only two.

“And yet just now you led us in our supplications to Amanda,” observed Mrs. Cowslip. “Why did you not remind the Professor of our—”

“Ah!” broke in Gustavius, “you can trust the Professor to understand the needs of a bull-calf.”

“You don’t have to ask the Professor twice when you want your back scratched,” grunted Reginald, his tail kinking tighter than ever with delicious memories.

“The Professor has a large, round, and most inviting stomach,” commented William. “Never before have I spared such a stomach. Yet never have I felt the slightest inclination to butt the Professor.”

Mrs. Cowslip turned her mild eyes inquiringly on the colt. “I suggest,” she said, “that we remind the Professor—”

“My gracious!” interrupted Clarence with impatience. “Can’t you fellows remember anything over-night? The Professor drove off behind my mother yesterday morning. There was a box beside him in the wagon. He wore his high hat. Mother came home without him. There’s nobody left in the house but Amanda and that two-legged Gabe.”

Just then Gustavius tossed his immature horns and bellowed:—

“Amanda! Amanda!”

With an apron over her head and a tin pail on her arm, Amanda had come into view beyond the angle of the barn.

“She’s going to the strawberry-patch over beyond the orchard,” said Clarence, excitedly. “Quick! Now, all together!”

Amanda had not the hardihood to ignore the resulting chorus of appeals to her. But she passed quickly on out of sight, after turning long enough to wave her hand and answer:—

“Jest be patient, you critters. Gabe’ll ’tend to you when he gits home.”

The colt nearly burst with indignation.

“That settles it,” he shrieked, lashing out with his heels so that there was a great clatter of things loose in the barn. Then he drew back his lips, baring his teeth, and began snapping at the latch-string of the barn-door, which was just beyond his reach.

“It’s a pity,” said Mrs. Cowslip. “I’ve seen your mother let herself in that way many a time, when she was full of grass and eager for her midday nap.”

“If I was only out of here, I could reach that string,” grunted Reginald, with one thought for the colt and two for himself.

“Oh, we know all about you,” retorted Clarence with exasperation. “If you could get out you’d scoot for those artichokes down by the brook and never look behind you, you fat, selfish, kink-tailed little beast.”

“Just you try me,” urged the pig, for he had great confidence in the colt’s resources.

Once more their noses were close together, while Clarence instructed them in the details of a desperate effort designed to gain freedom for them all.

To contend with the smug incredulity of those millions of human kind who spend their lives in little brick-and-mortar boxes set one on top of another in long double rows is the fate of all chroniclers of the important aspects of nature. But truth is mighty and will prevail. Let us therefore proceed calmly with the facts.

When Clarence had repeated his instructions several times, Reginald gave three sharp, intelligent grunts and ran straight to the barnyard gate. With his stiffened snout he began furiously attacking the hard earth beneath the lower bar.

“Not there, you idiot!” squealed the colt. “The other end. The other end, where the iron hinges are!”

Reginald stood corrected. While the dirt flew from under the hinged end of the gate, Gustavius galloped foolishly around the yard with his tail aloft, and William, with a coolly calculating eye on those hinges, backed away slowly, with significance understood by all the other conspirators. Mrs. Cowslip looked on benignantly. Presently the pig got his sturdy shoulders under the gate and heaved with all his might. William, with head down, leaped to the assault. The crash of his horns on those hinges reëchoed between orchard and wooded hills. But the gate was raised only an inch or two, and Reginald stuck fast. His squeals as he struggled would have melted a heart of stone. William backed away for another assault. It was while he was in mid-air that Clarence shrilled:—

“Not the hinges! The pig, the pig!”

William understood. This time all the weight behind his horns landed with a resounding smack on Reginald’s inviting posterior. In the midst of heart-rending squeals the gate rose in the air and the barnyard prisoners looked out on liberty. Instantly Reginald was off in the direction of the artichokes.

“Stop!” shrieked Clarence. “As I’m a thoroughbred, you shall feel my heels among your spareribs!”

Reginald looked back, and seeing immediate menace in the lowered horns of Mrs. Cowslip and Gustavius, turned about, ran to the barn-door, stood on his hind-legs, seized with his teeth the leather string at which the colt was frantically snapping, gave one sharp pull—and the deed was done. If Amanda, a moment later, had looked up from her strawberry-picking, she would have seen, circling over the half-lawn, half-pasture between the barn and the house, all tails in the air, a triumphant procession consisting of one yearling colt, one cow with a crumpled horn, one bull-calf, one he-goat making short stiff-legged jumps with horns lowered, and one pig bringing up the rear with a tail now so tightly kinked that it lifted his hind-quarters clear of the ground at every second leap.

But Amanda’s mind was glued on strawberries; and for the present other matters of moment require us, too, to leave the escaped prisoners to their own devices.

* * * * *

Half a mile away the Poet and his sister sat on a boulder beside the road. It was a semi-public road winding around the foot of a wooded hill. Behind them, a mile away, was the railway station. That mile had been mostly uphill, and the Poet did not love physical exercise. He was tall and lean, with a geometrical figure composed mainly of acute angles. When in a state of repose, it resembled a carpenter’s pocket rule which protested at being entirely shut up. The Poet’s sister, on the contrary, was mainly curves—those delicate, subtle curves that deny the presence of bones, yet repel any suggestion of fat. She was young; not too young—just young enough to have won the crowning glory of spinsterhood. She had quantities of red hair, the kind of red hair that always goes with that astonishingly transparent skin underneath which scattering amber freckles come and go over-night. There was one now on the side of her nose, which had a becomingly mirthful tilt at the end. Her lips were full at the centre, carmine, and with finely shaped corners which could not by any possibility be drawn downward. She wore a solid pair of calfskin boots, with military heels which looked small while being ample in size. Her dark walking-skirt barely reached the interesting spot where her bootlaces were tied. Her waist, of a soft, cream-tinted material, left her neck and throat bare—for which the Lord be praised!—and a shapeless, yet shapely, fluffy white thing resting on the coils of her hair seemed to absorb warmth from them. In short, you will make no mistake when you keep your mind fixed on the Poet’s sister.

“Just around the next turn of the road, George,” she was saying, “our little summer Elysium will burst upon your view.”

The Poet mopped the long, solemn countenance that was belied by his eyes and his manner of speech.

“Galatea, I have observed that most things elysian in this life are generally just around the corner. I am not impatient. I can wait. In fact, I should prefer to have that first view burst upon me while I am comfortably seated in the spring wagon of—What did I understand you to say the gentleman’s name was, Galatea?”

“He is called Gabe.”

“Doubtless a corruption of Gabriel. I wonder if Gabriel blows his trumpet for breakfast?”

Galatea’s lips parted in a musical ripple of laughter. The sight would have caused a dentist to pass on, with misgivings about his future. The Poet merely remarked:—

“Galatea, are you sure we brought our toothbrushes?” Whereupon the dentist would have been heartened by the sight of a tiny point of gold shining out of the crown of her left bicuspid.

“George, you lazy thing, come on. It’s only half a mile further. Gabriel probably missed us at the station, and has returned by the main road.”

“Oh, well, if all roads lead to Elysium, I suppose it’s no use waiting here.”

Slowly the Poet’s angles adjusted themselves to the upright position, and he strode on beside his sister.

“So you really like the place, Galatea?”

“It’s lovely—just the spot to give you inspiration, George. I shall expect great things of you, dear.”

“Will it inspire me to reduce the rhythm of Anacreon to ragtime, do you think?”

“O George! And there are the Professor’s pets, you know—Mrs. Cowslip, Clarence, Reginald, Gustavius, and William. I told you about them. The Professor has the most wonderful knack of understanding domestic animals and making them understand him. Really, they look upon him as one of themselves. The Professor says we do our domestic animal pets great injustice when we overlook their loyalty and intelligence, refusing to meet them half-way in friendly companionship. Why, with only a little encouragement they develop the most remarkable emotions, almost human in their complexity; while their powers of expression develop correspondingly. Positively the Professor and his cow, and colt, and pig, and bull-calf,—William the goat, Napoleon the dog, and Cleopatra the mare were away the day I called to arrange about the lease for the summer,—are just one big happy family.”

Galatea’s cheeks were flushed with enthusiasm. The Poet’s eyes twinkled, but his face remained long and solemn.

“What name does the pig answer to?”

“Reginald; but he’s a nice, clean pig.”

“Yes, of course, being a member of the Professor’s family. By the way, did you have an opportunity to note Reginald’s table manners?”

“O George, how perfectly absurd!”

“Not necessarily. I give way to no man in my determination to do justice to my fellow creatures, irrespective of the number of legs with which they are equipped. As the Professor has left us in undisputed possession for the next six months, there’s no telling what we may accomplish. What sort of voice has Reginald?”

“George, I shan’t tell you another thing!”

“There, there. It merely occurred to me that, as neither you nor I nor Arthur sings—By the way, Galatea, I suppose Arthur will run over occasionally in his new automobile, the lucky beggar?”

“I lay claim to no advance information respecting Arthur’s intentions,” answered the Poet’s sister, in cool, even tones. The flapping brim of her headgear was between the Poet’s eyes and her cheek, suddenly turned pink.

“Oh, well, I was only thinking what a boon Arthur’s banjo and my guitar would turn out to be if the pig should develop a romantic tenor voice. By Jove, Galatea! If that’s the place, I apologize for everything.”

They had reached the turn of the road that overlooked their summer Elysium. The Poet distributed his joints over another roadside boulder, while Galatea stood by his side, and gave his attention to the charming scene in detail.

“Really, a fine, rambling old house surrounded by shaded verandas below, and not too near the road. A stone-walled inclosure of half a dozen acres sloping down to a pretty brook that flows under the lower wall just below the barn—a comfortable red barn; a barn that isn’t red is only half a barn. A kitchen-garden and an orchard, and the rest pasture that is neat enough for a lawn. What romps we shall have, Galatea, with the colt and the bull-calf! What’s that vine-covered affair reared against the west gable of the house? Oh, a water-tank. Just so; there’s a pipe connecting underground with the brook, and that wind-wheel on the barn roof does the pumping. Good! I anticipate the luxury of an occasional tub. I was afraid Elysium was like Germany—lots of romance and no bathtubs. Galatea, we shall do—we shall do beautifully. But I say, what’s that funny-looking thing on the peak of the house roof?”

“Isn’t it the chimney?”

“It looks to me like a saw-horse.”

They walked on. After passing through a grove of chestnuts, they had a nearer and better view of the house.

“No, it isn’t a saw-horse,” said the Poet. “It moves. Did you see it?”

Galatea looked embarrassed.

“Galatea, the thing on our roof looks to me uncommonly like a billy-goat. Galatea, it _is_ a billy-goat—I can make out his whiskers.”

“Yes,” Galatea admitted reluctantly, “it must be William.”

“Very well, I foresee trouble for William. I am quite willing to collaborate with the Professor and take William to my bosom on equal terms as a brother, but no billy-goat shall be the man higher up in _my_ family. William has got to get down off that roof.”

Presently they turned in at the gate—and then the Poet doubled up like a jack-knife. Galatea plumped down on the grass and laughed till she cried. A nice clean fat pig, with a sort of Elizabethan ruffle about his neck, raised himself on his forelegs and sat at a little distance from Galatea, grunting mild inquiries respecting the object of her call. The ruffle was explained by the presence of several other articles of feminine wearing apparel scattered about on the grass, evidently undergoing the bleaching process. In making a selection for his own adornment, the pig had not been quite discreet. A sleek and motherly cow, with one crumpled horn, lay in the soft earth of a tulip-bed, chewing her cud. Her total lack of humor was manifest in the complacent glances which she bestowed upon her offspring, a reckless-looking bull-calf, which wore a peach-basket unnecessarily on one of his hind-legs. This scene of domestic contentment was further enhanced when a saucy yearling colt put his head out through the kitchen window and shook it knowingly at the intruders, as much as to say:—

“Go away, strangers. _We_ are at home, and _you_ ought to be.”

And then the colt, the cow, the bull-calf, the pig wearing the improvised ruffle, and the goat from his perch on the roof, united in a glance of intense astonishment at the girl seated on the grass. Why was she swaying her body up and down in that foolish fashion, while her hands beat the air aimlessly and her throat emitted incomprehensible gurgles, like the bull-calf with a turnip stuck in his gullet?

“Oh dear, oh dear!” choked Galatea. “Amanda’s stepped out somewhere, and Bos, Equus and Co. are in full charge. The cow chewing her cud in the tulip-bed—oh dear, oh dear! The bull-calf picking up stray peach-baskets, and the colt in the kitchen—oh dear, oh dear! The pig wearing one of Amanda’s—ha! ha! he! he!—one of Amanda’s newest aramatums for a collar! Slap me on the back, George; I shall die—oh dear, oh dear! And the goat overlooking things from the roof! Come and fan me, George. Oh dear, oh dear!”

But the Poet had recovered his accustomed solemnity of visage. He stood with arms folded, contemplating the goat.

“Bos, Equus and Co. are plainly within their rights,” he said, “excepting the goat. The roof of our house is not a proper place for any member of our family, two-legged or otherwise. William, come down from there!”

The goat wrinkled his nose at the Poet. It was as though he had said:—

“Why should I waste words on a stranger and an interloper?”

“Come down, William. Come down, or I’ll assert the last remnant of my authority as a two-legged person.”

William stamped his foot on the shingles in a manner plainly hostile. The Poet picked up a good-sized cobble-stone.

“William, for the last time I warn you. Come down!”

The goat backed up two or three steps and shook his horns.

“Very well, William, your blood be on your own head”; and the Poet threw the cobble-stone.

Now, as is well known, a goat has only one really vulnerable spot, namely, his curved and bony nose. Furthermore, a goat’s nose—like the beard of the prophet—is sacred. Therefore, when the cobble-stone, flying straight from the Poet’s incautious hand, struck William forcibly upon his most honored feature, the situation became grave. Stopping only to make one grimace of anguish, partly physical but mainly of his outraged soul, he ran to the west gable, leaped down upon the water-tank, thence to the woodshed roof, and from there one leap landed him on the ground. Measuring with his inflamed and malevolent eye his distance from the Poet, he began backing slowly, with portent that could not be misunderstood.

“O George, he’s going to butt you!” screamed Galatea. “Sit down! sit down!”

But the Poet stood gazing at William like one fascinated. Having backed to a distance satisfactory to his nice discrimination in such matters, the goat lowered his nose and launched himself forward straight as an arrow aimed for the lank, concave surface which indicated the Poet’s stomachic region. Perhaps it was the goat’s waning enthusiasm over a mark so little inviting,—at any rate the impact of his horns was only sufficient to cause the Poet to sit down with promptness.

“O George, did he hurt you?” asked Galatea anxiously. “I told you to sit down.”

“I believe I took your advice, Galatea,” said the Poet, looking about him in a dazed manner.

The goat was slowly backing again. There was a look in his eye which said more plainly than words:—

“Perchance you’ve had enough? If not, there’s more where that came from.”

“Don’t get up, George,” said Galatea. “Don’t move. Sit where you are and he’ll go away.”

“I’ve no intention of getting up,” answered the Poet. “I’m perfectly comfortable where I am, thank you. Besides, I’m not one of those low-spirited, truckling persons who insist on standing in the presence of a superior.”