Chapter 7
I laid down my book with a sigh, and went into the garden. Mike saw me and shouted:--
"Misther Burthon, will ye look dhere? Did ye's ever see the loike av dhat bye?"
Looking up at the play-room window, a long, narrow sort of loop-hole in a Gothic gable, I beheld my youngest nephew standing upright on the sill.
"Toddie, go in--quick!" I shouted, hurrying under the window to catch him in case he fell outward.
"I tan't," squealed Toddie.
"Mike, run up-stairs and snatch him in; Toddie, go on, I tell you!"
"Tell you I TAN'T doe in," repeated Toddie. "ZE bit bots ish ze whay-al, an' I'ez Djonah, an' ze whay-al's froed me up, an' I'ze dot to 'tay up here else ze whay-al 'ill fwallow me aden."
"I won't LET him swallow you. Get in now--hurry," said I.
"Will you give him a penny not to fwallow me no more?" queried Toddie.
"Yes--a whole lot of pennies."
"Aw wight. Whay-al, don't you fwallow me no more, an' zen my Ocken Hawwy div you whole lots of pennies. You must be weal dood whay-al now, an' then I buys you some tandy wif your pennies, an'--"
Just then two great hands seized Toddie's frock in front, and he disappeared with a howl, while I, with the first feeling of faintness I had ever experienced, went in search of hammer, nails, and some strips of board, to nail on the outside of the window-frame. But boards could not be found, so I went up to the play-room and began to knock a piece or two off the box which had done duty as whale. A pitiful scream from Toddie caused me to stop.
"You're hurtin' my dee old whay-al; you's brakin' his 'tomach all open--you's a baddy man--'TOP hurtin' my whay-al, ee--ee--ee," cried my nephew.
"I'm not hurting him, Toddie," said I; "I'm making his mouth bigger, so he can swallow you easier."
A bright thought came into Toddie's face and shone through his tears. "Then he can fwallow Budgie too, an' there'l be two Djonahs--ha--ha--ha! Make his mouf so big he can fwallow Mike, an' zen mate it 'ittle aden, so Mike tan' det OUT; nashty old Mike!"
I explained that Mike would not come upstairs again, so I was permitted to depart after securing the window.
Again I settled myself with book and cigar; there was at least for me the extra enjoyment that comes from the sense of pleasure earned by honest toil. Pretty soon Budge entered the room. I affected not to notice him, but he was not in the least abashed by my neglect.
"Uncle Harry," said he, throwing himself in my lap between my book and me, "I don't feel a bit nice."
"What's the matter, old fellow?" I asked. Until he spoke I could have boxed his ears with great satisfaction to myself; but there is so much genuine feeling in whatever Budge says that he commands respect.
"Oh, I'm tired of playin' with Toddie, an' I feel lonesome. Won't you tell me a story?"
"Then what'll poor Toddie do, Budge?"
"Oh, he won't mind--he's got a dead mouse to be Jonah now, so I don't have no fun at all. Won't you tell me a story?"
"Which one?"
"Tell me one that I never heard before at all."
"Well, let's see; I guess I'll tell--"
"Ah--ah--ah--ah--ee--ee--ee," sounded afar off, but fatefully. It came nearer--it came down the stairway and into the library, accompanied by Toddie, who, on spying me, dropped his inarticulate utterance, held up both hands, and exclaimed:--
"Djonah bwoke he tay-al!"
True enough; in one hand Toddie held the body of a mouse, and in the other that animal's caudal appendage; there was also perceptible, though not by the sense of sight, an objectionable odor in the room.
"Toddie," said I, "go throw Jonah into the chicken-coop, and I'll give you some candy."
"Me too," shouted Budge, "cos I found the mouse for him."
I made both boys happy with candy, exacted a pledge not to go out in the rain, and then, turning them loose on the piazza, returned to my book. I had read perhaps half-a-dozen pages when there arose and swelled rapidly in volume a scream from Toddie. Madly determined to put both boys into chairs, tie them and clap adhesive plaster over their mouths, I rushed out upon the piazza.
"Budgie tried to eat my candy," complained Toddie.
"I didn't," said Budge.
"What DID you do?" I demanded.
"I didn't bite it at all--I only wanted to see how it would feel between my teeth--that's all."
I felt the corners of my mouth breaking down, and hurried back to the library, where I spent a quiet quarter of an hour in pondering over the demoralizing influence exerted upon principle by a sense of the ludicrous. For some time afterward the boys got along without doing anything worse than make a dreadful noise, which caused me to resolve to find some method of deadening piazza-floors if _I_ ever owned a house in the country. In the occasional intervals of comparative quiet I caught snatches of very funny conversation. The boys had coined a great many words whose meaning was evident enough but I wonder greatly why Tom and Helen had never taught them the proper substitutes.
Among others was the word "deader," whose meaning I could not imagine. Budge shouted:--
"O Tod; there comes a deader. See where all them things like rooster's tails are a-shakin'?--Well, there's a deader under them."
"Dasth funny," remarked Toddie.
"An' see all the peoples a-comin' along," continued Budge, "THEY know 'bout the deader, an' they're goin' to see it fixed. Here it comes. Hello, deader!"
"Hay-oh, deader," echoed Toddie.
What COULD deader mean?
"Oh, here it is right in front of us," cried Budge, "and AIN'T there lots of people? An' two horses to pull the deader--SOME deaders has only one."
My curiosity was too much for my weariness; I went to the front window, and, peering through, saw--a funeral procession! In a second I was on the piazza, with my hands on the children's collars; a second later two small boys were on the floor of the hall, the front door was closed, and two determined hands covered two threatening little mouths.
When the procession had fairly passed the house I released the boys and heard two prolonged howls for my pains. Then I asked Budge if he wasn't ashamed to talk that way when a funeral was passing.
"'TWASN'T a funeral," said he. "'Twas only a deader, an' deaders can't hear nothin'."
"But the people in the carriages could," said I.
"Well," said he, "they was so glad that the other part of the deader had gone to heaven that they didn't care WHAT I said. Ev'rybody's glad when the other parts of deaders go to heaven. Papa told me to be glad that dear little Phillie was in heaven, an' I WAS, but I do want to see him again awful."
"Wantsh to shee Phillie aden awfoo," said Toddie, as I kissed Budge and hurried off to the library, unfit just then to administer farther instruction or reproof. Of one thing I was very certain--I wished the rain would cease falling, so the children could go out of doors, and I could get a little rest, and freedom from responsibility. But the skies showed no signs of being emptied, the boys were snarling on the stairway, and I was losing my temper quite rapidly.
Suddenly I bethought me of one of the delights of my own childish days--the making of scrap-books. One of Tom's library drawers held a great many Lady's Journals. Of course Helen meant to have them bound, but I could easily repurchase the numbers for her; they would cost two or three dollars; but peace was cheap at that price. On a high shelf in the playroom I had seen some supplementary volumes of "Mercantile Agency" reports which would in time reach the rag-bag; there was a bottle of mucilage in the library-desk, and the children owned an old pair of scissors. Within five minutes I had located two happy children on the bath-room floor, taught them to cut out pictures (which operation I quickly found they understood as well as I did) and to paste them into the extemporized scrap-book. Then I left them, recalling something from Newman Hall's address on "The Dignity of Labor." Why hadn't I thought before of showing my nephews some way of occupying their mind and hands? Who could blame the helpless little things for following every prompting of their unguided minds? Had I not a hundred times been told, when sent to the wood-pile or the weediest part of the garden in my youthful days, that
"Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do?"
"Never again would I blame children for being mischievous when their minds were neglected.
I spent a peaceful, pleasant hour over my novel, when I felt that a fresh cigar would be acceptable. Going up-stairs in search of one I found that Budge had filled the bathtub with water, and was sailing boats, that is, hair-brushes. Even this seemed too mild an offense to call for a rebuke, so I passed on without disturbing him, and went to my own room. I heard Toddie's voice, and having heard from my sister that Toddie's conversations with himself were worth listening to, I paused outside the door. I heard Toddie softly murmur:--
"Zere, pitty yady, 'tay ZERE. Now, 'ittle boy, I put you wif your mudder, tause mudders likes zere 'ittle boys wif zem. An' you sall have 'ittle sister tudder side of you,--zere. Now, 'ittle boy's an' 'ittle girl's mudder, don't you feel happy?--isn't I awfoo good to give you your 'ittle tsilderns? You ought to say, 'Fank you, Toddie,--you'se a nice, fweet 'ittle djentleman.'"
I peered cautiously--then I entered the room hastily. I didn't say anything for a moment, for it was impossible to do justice, impromptu, to the subject. Toddie had a progressive mind--if pictorial ornamentation was good for old books, why should not similar ornamentation be extended to objects more likely to be seen? Such may not have been Toddie's line of thought, but his recent operations warranted such a supposition. He had cut out a number of pictures, and pasted them upon the wall of my room--my sister's darling room, with its walls tinted exquisitely in pink. As a member of a hanging committee, Toddie would hardly have satisfied taller people, but he had arranged the pictures quite regularly, at about the height of his own eyes, had favored no one artist more than another, and had hung indiscriminately figure pieces, landscapes, and genre pictures. The temporary break of wall-line, occasioned by the door communicating with his own room, he had overcome by closing the door and carrying a line of pictures across its lower panels. Occasionally, a picture fell off the wall, but the mucilage remained faithful, and glistened with its fervor of devotion. And yet so untouched was I by this artistic display, that when I found strength to shout "Toddie!" it was in a tone which caused this industrious amateur decorator to start violently, and drop his mucilage-bottle, open end first, upon the carpet.
"What will mamma say?" I asked.
Toddie gazed, first blankly and then inquiringly, into my face; finding no answer or sympathy there, he burst into tears, and replied:--
"I dunno."
The ringing of the lunch-bell changed Toddie from a tearful cherub into a very practical, business-like boy, and shouting "Come on, Budge!" he hurried down-stairs, while I tormented myself with wonder as to how I could best and most quickly undo the mischief Toddie had done.
I will concede to my nephews the credit of keeping reasonably quiet during meals; their tongues doubtless longed to be active in both the principal capacities of those useful members, but they had no doubt as to how to choose between silence and hunger. The result was a reasonably comfortable half-hour. Just as I began to cut a melon, Budge broke the silence by exclaiming:--
"O Uncle Harry, we haven't been out to see the goat to-day!"
"Budge," I replied, "I'll carry you out there under an umbrella after lunch, and you may play with that goat all the afternoon, if you like."
"Oh, won't that be nice?" exclaimed Budge. "The poor goat! he'll think I don't love him a bit, 'cause I haven't been to see him to-day. Does goats go to heaven when they die, Uncle Harry?"
"Guess not--they'd make trouble in the golden streets, I'm afraid."
"Oh, dear! then Phillie can't see my goat. I'm so awful sorry," said Budge.
"_I_ can see your goat, Budgie," suggested Toddie.
"Huh!" said Budge, very contemptuously. "YOU ain't dead."
"Well, Izhe GOIN' to be dead some day 'an zen your nashty old goat sha'n't see me a bit--see how he like ZAT." And Toddie made a ferocious attack on a slice of melon nearly as large as himself.
After lunch Toddie was sent to his room to take his afternoon nap, and Budge went to the barn on my shoulders. I gave Mike a dollar, with instructions to keep Budge in sight, to keep him from teasing the goat, and to prevent his being impaled or butted. Then I stretched myself on a lounge, and wondered whether only half a day of daylight had elapsed since I and the most adorable woman in the world had been so happy together. How much happier I would be when next I met her! The very torments of this rainy day would make my joy seem all the dearer and more intense. I dreamed happily for a few moments with my eyes open, and then somehow they closed, without my knowledge. What put into my mind the wreck-scene from the play of "David Copperfield," I don't know; but there it came, and in my dream I was sitting in the balcony at Booth's, and taking a proper interest in the scene, when it occurred to me that the thunder had less of reverberation and more woodenness than good stage thunder should have. The mental exertion I underwent on this subject disturbed the course of my nap, but as wakefulness returned, the sound of the poorly simulated thunder did not cease; on the contrary, it was just as noisy, and more hopelessly a counterfeit than ever. What could the sound be? I stepped through the window to the piazza, and the sound was directly over my head. I sprang down the terrace and out upon the lawn, looked up, and beheld my youngest nephew strutting back and forth on the tin roof of the piazza, holding over his head a ragged old parasol. I roared--
"Go in, Toddie--this instant!"
The sound of my voice startled the young man so severely that he lost his footing, fell, and began to roll toward the edge and to scream, both operations being performed with great rapidity. I ran to catch him as he fell, but the outer edge of the water-trough was high enough to arrest his progress, though it had no effect in reducing the volume of his howls.
"Toddie," I shouted, "lie perfectly still until uncle can get to you. Do you hear?"
"Ess, but don't want to lie 'till," came in reply from the roof. "'Tan't shee noffin' but sky an' rain."
"Lie still," I reiterated, "or I'll whip you dreadfully." Then I dashed up-stairs, removed my shoes, climbed out and rescued Toddie, shook him soundly, and then shook myself.
"I wazh only djust pyayin' mamma, an' walkin' in ze yain wif an umbayalla," Toddie explained.
I threw him upon his bed and departed. It was plain that neither logic, threats, nor the presence of danger could keep this dreadful child from doing whatever he chose; what other means of restraint could be employed? Although not as religious a man as my good mother could wish, I really wondered whether prayer, as a last resort, might not be effective. For his good, and my own peace, I would cheerfully have read through the whole prayer-book. I could hardly have done it just then, though, for Mike solicited an audience at the back door, and reported that Budge had given the carriage-sponge to the goat, put handfuls of oats into the pump-cylinder, pulled hairs out of the black mare's tail, and with a sharp nail drawn pictures on the enamel of the carriage-body. Budge made no denial, but looked very much aggrieved, and remarked that he couldn't never be happy without somebody having to go get bothered; and he wished there wasn't nobody in the world but organ-grinders and candy-store men. He followed me into the house, flung himself into a chair, put on a look which I imagine Byron wore before he was old enough to be malicious, and exclaimed:--
"I don't see what little boys was made for anyhow; if ev'rybody gets cross with them, an' don't let 'em do what they want to. I'll bet when I get to heaven, the Lord won't be as ugly to me as Mike is,--an' some other folks, too. I wish I could die and be buried right away,--me an' the goat--an' go to heaven, where we wouldn't be scolded."
Poor little fellow! First I laughed inwardly at his idea of heaven, and then I wondered whether my own was very different from it, or any more creditable. I had no time to spend even in pious reflection, however. Budge was quite wet, his shoes were soaking, and he already had an attack of catarrh; so I took him to his room and re-dressed him, wondering all the while how much similar duties my own father had had to do by me had shortened his life, and how, with such a son as I was, he lived as long as he did. The idea that I was in some slight degree atoning for my early sins, so filled my thoughts, that I did not at first notice the absence of Toddie. When it DID become evident to me that my youngest nephew was not in the bed in which I had placed him, I went in search of him. He was in none of the chambers, but hearing gentle murmurs issue from a long, light closet, I looked in and saw Toddie sitting on the floor, and eating the cheese out of a mouse-trap. A squeak of my boots betrayed me, and Toddie, equal to the emergency, sprang to his feet and exclaimed:--
"I didn't hurt de 'ittle mousie one bittie; I just letted him out, and he runded away."
And still it rained. Oh, for a single hour of sunlight, so that the mud might be only damp dirt, and the children could play without tormenting other people! But it was not to be; slowly, and by the aid of songs, stories, an improvised menagerie, in which I personated every animal, besides playing ostrich and armadillo, and a great many disagreements, the afternoon wore to its close, and my heart slowly lightened. Only an hour or two more, and the children would be in bed for the night, and then I would enjoy, in unutterable measure, the peaceful hours which would be mine. Even now they were inclined to behave themselves; they were tired and hungry, and stretched themselves on the floor, to await dinner. I embraced the opportunity to return to my book, but I had hardly read a page, when a combined crash and scream summoned me to the dining-room. On the floor lay Toddie, a great many dishes, a roast leg of lamb, several ears of green corn, the butter-dish and its contents, and several other misplaced edibles. One thing was quite evident; the scalding contents of the gravy-dish had been emptied on Toddie's arm, and how severely the poor child might be scalded I did not know. I hastily slit open his sleeve from wrist to shoulder, and found the skin very red; so, remembering my mother's favorite treatment for scalds and burns, I quickly spread the contents of a dish of mashed potato on a clean handkerchief, and wound the whole around Toddie's arm as a poultice. Then I demanded an explanation.
"I was only djust reatchin for a pieshe of bwed," sobbed Toddie, "an' then the bad old tabo beginded to froe all its fings at me, an' tumble down bang."
He undoubtedly told the truth as far as he knew it, but reaching over tables is a bad habit in small boys, especially when their mothers cling to old-fashioned heirlooms of tables, which have folding leaves; so I banished Toddie to his room, supperless, to think of what he had done. With Budge alone, I had a comfortable dinner off the salvage from the wreck caused by Toddie, and then I went up-stairs to see if the offender had repented. It was hard to tell, by sight, whether he had or not, for his back was to me, as he flattened his nose against the window, but I could see that my poultice was gone.
"Where is what uncle put on your arm, Toddie?" I asked.
"I ate it up," said the truthful youth.
"Did you eat the handkerchief, too?"
"No; I froed nashty old handkerchief out the window--don't want dirty old handkerchiefs in my nice 'ittle room."
I was so glad that his burn had been slight that I forgave the insult to my handkerchief and called up Budge, so that I might at once get both boys into bed, and emerge from the bondage in which I had lived all day long. But the task was no easy one. Of course my brother-in-law, Tom Lawrence, knows better than any other man the necessities of his own children, but no children of mine shall ever be taught so many methods of imposing upon parental good nature. Their program called for stories, songs, moral conversations, frolics, the presentation of pennies, the dropping of the same, at long intervals, into tin savings banks, followed by a deafening shaking-up of both banks; then a prayer must be offered, and no conventional one would be tolerated; then the boys performed their own devotions, after which I was allowed to depart with an interchange of "God bless you's." As this evening I left the room with their innocent benedictions sounding in my ears, a sense of personal weakness, induced by the events of the day, moved me to fervently respond "Amen!"
Mothers of American boys, accept from me a tribute of respect, which no words can fitly express--of wonder greater than any of the great things of the world ever inspired--of adoration as earnest and devout as the Catholic pays to the Virgin. In a single day, I, a strong man, with nothing else to occupy my mind, am reduced to physical and mental worthlessness by the necessities of two boys not overmischievous or bad. And you--Heaven only knows how--have unbroken weeks, months, years, yes, lifetimes of just such experiences, and with them the burden of household cares, of physical ills and depressions, of mental anxieties that pierce your hearts with as many sorrows as grieved the Holy Mother of old. Compared with thy endurance, that of the young man, the athlete, is as weakness; the secret of thy nerves, wonderful even in their weakness, is as great as that of the power of the winds. To display decision, thy opportunities are more frequent than those of the greatest statesman; thy heroism laughs into insignificance that of fort and field; thou art trained in a school of diplomacy such as the most experienced court cannot furnish. Do scoffers say thou canst not hold the reins of government? Easier is it to rule a band of savages than to be the successful autocrat of thy little kingdom. Compared with the ways of men, even thy failures are full of glory. Be thy faults what they may, thy one great, mysterious, unapproachable success places thee, in desert, far above warrior, rabbi or priest.
The foregoing soliloquy passed through my mind as I lay upon the bed where I had thrown myself after leaving the children's room. Whatever else attempted to affect me mentally found my mind a blank until the next morning, when I awoke to realize that I had dropped asleep just where I fell, and that I had spent nearly twelve hours lying across a bed in an uncomfortable position, and without removing my daily attire. My next impression was that quite a bulky letter had been pushed under my chamber-door. Could it be that my darling--I hastily seized the envelope and found it addressed in my sister's writing, and promising a more voluminous letter than that lady had ever before honored me with. I opened it, dropping an enclosure which doubtless was a list of necessities which I would please pack, etc., and read as follows:--
"JULY 1, 1875.