Part 8

Uncle Antonio, like many foreign noblemen, carried with him a miniature cooking outfit and some imported ingredients. He had said nothing about these, being content to subsist entirely upon my humbler fare, but one day, when I was about to start for the village, he came to me.

“You goa da town?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Looka da here,” pleaded Uncle Antonio. “You bringa sixa da pork chop, two lar-rge can da tomat, one onion lika your head.”

“What for?” I asked, suspiciously.

Uncle Antonio’s face became radiant. “Hist!” he replied, in a stage whisper. “Me cooka da spaghett! Nica da spaghett!”

For the first time in my life, I felt deep and abiding love for my Uncle. Needless to say, I hastened back with the required articles.

In a kettle, over the fire, Uncle Antonio fried the pork chops and the onion to a deep seal brown, then added the contents of both cans of tomatoes. He salted the mixture liberally, then from his pack brought two large cloves of garlic and a bottle of paprika. He sliced the garlic in, sprinkled it with the paprika, and, by some means known only to himself, decreased the heat.

All day the appetising compound simmered. At night, Uncle Antonio pressed the entire mixture through a sieve that he had in his kit, and set it aside. Then he prepared a kettle of boiling water, with a tablespoonful of salt in it, and from the inside of his organ took out a great bundle of spaghetti, the tubes being very small, and something over a yard and a half long.

“Nica da spaghett,” crooned Uncle, stroking it fondly. “Maka da wonderful moosic!”

He boiled it twenty minutes by my jewelled repeater, drained it, put some on my plate, poured a liberal quantity of the sauce over it, and passed me a bottle of grated cheese, which, until now, he had kept in his hat.

I tasted of it with some misgivings, but instantly I was Uncle’s. Through my system vibrated a single joyous thought—I had watched him and I knew how to do it.

I must have eaten nearly a peck of it. There was some left, and when I went to bed I put it outside, for fear I should get up and eat it in the night.

In the morning I crept out, hungrily, thinking to steal a march upon Uncle, but, to my astonishment, the plate looked as if it had been washed, and all the sauce was gone!

I made a loud exclamation of pained surprise, and Uncle Antonio came out, fully dressed. He slept in his clothes to save time and trouble. “Oh,” he shrieked, tearing his hair, “eet ees Jocko! Jocko haf been here in ze night w’ile I sleep! Jocko lova da spaghett! He always washa da plate for me!”

He tore around like a madman, looking for his pet, but of course he found nothing. I saw something, but wisely held my tongue about it. A box of Hoop-La’s footprints had been left on the doorstep and there was a bundle of her tracks a little farther on in the wood.

Like Minerva from the head of Jove, a great scheme presented itself, all ready to be worked out. That afternoon, I climbed to my observatory, and with my powerful field-glass saw Hoop-La on the veranda of her home, grinning, licking her chops, and occasionally patting her stomach with an air of satisfaction.

That night I said to my esteemed relation: “Uncle Antonio, if you will fix up another pail of that spaghetti, borrow a Horse, and trust me implicitly, I think I can restore Jocko to your empty arms.”

He looked at me suspiciously, then assailed me with a torrent of questions, to all of which I made no reply. He spent the night preparing more sauce, and at dawn he set out for the nearest village, twenty-one and a half miles distant, to borrow a Horse.

About noon, he rode in, put up the Horse in the bridle chamber attached to the premises, and cooked a savoury mess of spaghetti. My mouth watered, but I dared not hesitate. I mounted, took the plate, and rode off toward Hoop-La’s den.

As I had hoped, she was at home. I tied the plunging steed, whose mouth was dripping and who regarded the spaghetti yearningly, and advanced to the front piazza.

Sniffing hungrily, she came out, and I heard the frenzied clankings of Jocko’s chain. “Come, Hoop-La,” I said, though my voice trembled. She called her children, and in a moment they were all eating greedily.

As I had planned, poor, imprisoned Jocko came out to the end of his chain. It did not permit him to go farther than a foot from the entrance, but that was sufficient for my purpose. Quick as a flash, I unfastened the chain from his collar, took the thoroughly frightened animal in my arms, and ran for dear life to the Horse.

I was none too soon. With an angry snarl, Hoop-La followed me, but she had already eaten too heartily to do her best work on the rough track which lay ahead of us. She clung to the Horse’s tail, growling and snarling in baffled rage, her claws and teeth urging the trembling steed into a foaming gallop.

My hat flew off and many of my most valuable ideas blew out through my ears, never to return, but Jocko, terrorised into death-like stillness, lay quietly inside my coat.

Somehow or other, I kept my seat, and thus we dashed into Uncle Antonio’s presence. When she saw the strange man, Hoop-La let go and slunk back into the woods, defeated and ashamed.

“_Jocko!_” screamed Uncle, in a passion of joy, as his long-lost pet flew into his arms. “_Bambino! Cara mia!_” Fine family feeling compels me to draw a veil over that affecting reunion.

Just at sunset, they left me, marching southward, Uncle’s blissful state of mind expressing itself in exultant strains from his organ. He read meanings into the music that the composer, in his wildest moments, could never have hoped to convey. It is a peculiarity of travelling musical geniuses, like my Uncle, that they always begin a journey at sunset, when the day goes.

Growing ever fainter, the compelling strains of triumph broke upon my listening ears, fortunately without doing any damage. Fortissimo, forte, decrescendo, piano, diminuendo, pianissimo, peace—thus the clear commanding notes died into silence, winding in a thread of silver melody around the base of the distant hill.

Night fell, but I dodged and it did not hit me. The quiet sweetness of the woods was like a plaster on a sore place, and I enjoyed it to the full. My conscience reproached me somewhat for betraying the trust the tawny mother had reposed in me, and I felt, intuitively, that I should never see her again.

I never did, though I am always expecting to meet her in the woods, and I never hear a _faux pas_ without thinking it maybe Hoop-La or one of her children.

JENNY RAGTAIL

After my Uncle went away, the silence began to rasp on my nerves; it was so different from what I had been accustomed to. I had that curious, attenuated nervousness which is always expecting something unpleasant to happen. This was especially acute along about seven in the evening, at which time my talented relative was wont to begin his regular recital upon the instrument he so thoroughly understood.

From seven to eleven, the air would be full of faint, mysterious echoes which had no discernible source. Fragmentary, disorganised phrases from _Bedelia_, _Could Ye Come Back to Me, Douglas_, and the beautiful, though familiar melodies from _Il Trovatore_, came in from the woods around me and beat against the walls of my cabin. It seemed as though some of Uncle’s music had been canned and the cans were exploding. The effect was uncanny, to say the least.

As time went on, it became evident that I must do something desperate, or else become the star inmate of a padded cell. Those who do not believe in personal influence should remain alone for a time in a place which an uninvited relation has regretfully left. With nerves and senses sharpened by the ordeal through which they have recently passed, they will hear and feel some queer things, or I miss my guess.

At the crisis of my unhappy condition, I remembered the old saying, “Like cures like,” and I clutched at it as a drowning man grabs the proverbial straw. “The hair of a dog will cure the bite,” continued my inner consciousness.

But what could I do that would even remotely approach the things that Uncle did? I had no musical gifts, and an organ like his was out of the question for about eleven hundred and eighty-nine different reasons. I must have something, however; something distinctively Italian. Like lightning the solution of my problem burst upon me. A concertina!

Within a week I had procured a fine one, also an instruction book. The new study became so absorbing that I forgot all about Unnatural History, for the time being. It was not long before I could play _Down on the Suwanee River_, _The Last Rose of Summer_, and _Home, Sweet Home_. The instrument had a wonderfully fine tone, and, for the first time, I began to understand the wild, universal passion to learn music.

I discovered that the pleasure is mainly selfish, the joy being principally that of the performer. The one who plays, or rather works, an instrument of any sort, can never give others as much pleasure as he gives himself. With the voice, the principle is the same, though greatly intensified. Conversation exemplifies it in lesser degree, though not much less. I remembered that when I was very young, a number of other rising citizens used to battle with me for the control of the harmonica which I found in my infantile sock one radiant Christmas morning. “The child is father of the man,” said Wordsworth, though how much his word’s worth it is not for me to say.

As I played, one day, I felt bright eyes upon me. I was taking deep accordion plaits in the silence, but I was not wholly oblivious to my surroundings. “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast”—how wonderfully true that is! Already I looked forward to the time when all the wood-folk should come and stand around me, open-mouthed and rapt, while I worked my concertina.

Every day, when I began to practise my technical exercises, I felt the bright eyes. When an eye is laid on a Little Brother of the Woods, he can feel it all through his system. I was not sufficiently interested, however, to investigate.

One bright morning, when I was practising that beautiful song beginning: “Knock, and the world knocks with you; boost, and you boost alone,” I heard a corroborative thump from the woods.

It was really a tremendous noise and seemed as though it must have been made by a Moose, an Elephant, or some animal equally large. At brief intervals the sound was repeated and at last I concluded that someone in my immediate neighbourhood was giving a pound party.

The next day, according to the entries in my observation ledger, I had filled the concertina with cooky crumbs and had begun to play a cake-walk, adding a little milk to the interior occasionally to produce a more liquid tone. From the distant shrubbery, from the same quarter where I had repeatedly felt the bright eyes, I heard a thump-thump-thump, perfectly metrical, and in time with my merry tune. It was accompanied by a soft patter, seemingly from very small hands. With a sudden reversion to my former interests I threw the concertina aside, and dashed into the forest.

There, beneath a bush, were Jenny Ragtail and her son, Chee-Wee, still patting and thumping in the metre of the cake-walk and not knowing that the music had stopped. It takes sound some time to travel and I have always been very quick on my feet.

As soon as they saw me, they vanished.

When I returned to my instrument, it refused to work, and upon taking it apart, I discovered that the milk had been churned to butter. I was obliged to scrape the entire mechanism before I could play any more, but there was a smile of satisfaction upon my face as I did so. I had always known that the long ears of Rabbits served some good purpose in the wise economy of creation, and now I perceived that they were ears for music. A Donkey’s telephonic apparatus is constructed upon much the same plan, and everyone knows how he can sing.

I have not space to describe the gradual manner in which my acquaintance with Jenny Ragtail progressed, nor how I learned all that I know about Rabbits and their language. Suffice it to say that before many weeks had passed by, she and Chee-Wee would scamper into my presence as soon as I began the first notes of the cake-walk, and would sit very close to me as I extracted the melody from the instrument, patting and thumping at the accented notes.

I remembered reading in my well-thumbed copy of _Uncle Remus_ that “Bre’r Rabbit was always a master hand to pat a tune,” but I never wholly believed it until I saw it done. Little Brothers of the Woods are sometimes very incredulous of the observations of others, as my readers have doubtless noted.

In the remainder of this scientific treatise, though I may translate freely and frequently from Rabbit into English, I shall say nothing that the Rabbits did not say. Accuracy has always been a strong point with me—in fact, I am rabid upon it.

Jenny Ragtail was a large, well-shaped brown Rabbit. Her body tapered slightly in at the waist line, and this led me to surmise that in the privacy of her chamber she wore some sort of a corset. Her finale was a gloriously beautiful tuft of white Rabbit fur, which led Chee-Wee in and out of the mazes of the forest trails like a friendly beacon. Her eyes were large and brown and motherly, and projected so far from her kind, matronly countenance, that she could see behind her, in the same manner that the ever-feminine of our own species can see around a corner or through a stone wall. Jenny’s intuition was marvellous.

Chee-Wee was almost infinitesimal in size. He looked like a baby Rat and was once taken for one by a lady book agent, with a very dignified carriage, who penetrated the wilderness as far as my hermitage. I never knew whose Nature Library she was canvassing for, because, at the first glimpse of Chee-Wee, she took the brakes off her carriage and fled into the next county. Those who think that women cannot run should have seen this book agent.

Chee-Wee was not many weeks old, but already he was beginning to study in the school his mother taught. There are schools of Rabbits, just as there are schools of Fish, though it is not so generally known. They learn by whisker touching, the sense of smell, telegraphy with the hind feet, and by another method which I shall explain later.

The first thing Jenny taught Chee-Wee was to play dead. One thump means “freeze.” Two thumps mean “follow me.” Three thumps mean “danger—run for dear life,” and four thumps mean “come.” The politicians who have their ears to the ground are many times only Unnaturalists in disguise, listening for Rabbit thumps. Then, when a valuable franchise comes along, they are in a position to grab it.

One day Chee-Wee had a dreadful adventure. He was in the woods near my cabin and Jenny was out foraging. She had put him in a _crèche_ under the roots of a pine and told him not to move a muscle until she came. A terrible serpent, with a very bright head, was close to Chee-Wee; a peculiar, striped serpent that made him stiff with fright. He had read in his little primer about garter snakes, and in his childish ignorance supposed this was one. He was scared almost to death, but he had enough presence of mind to thump for his mother, who instantly left her shopping tour and hastened to his side.

He was partially right, though it was not a Snake at all and had been dropped by the lady book agent in her mad flight through the forest, but, none the less, Chee-Wee was soundly spanked for turning in a 4:11 alarm for nothing more than a smoking chimney, while his mother was engaged in chasing up a bargain sale.

Those who have not lived near enough to the animals to know what they are talking about will think I have made Chee-Wee and his mother too human, but that little band of choice spirits who study the encyclopedias all Winter and get out a Nature Book apiece every Spring, will know that I have not so abased my high calling as to be inaccurate in even the smallest detail.

A Rabbits best friend is his brier patch and he is seldom more than eight and one half hops away from it. Jenny Ragtail used to carry a copy of that beautiful poem, _Brier Rose_, in her reticule, so that she would always have a place of refuge in time of trouble. I know this, because I wrote the piece out for her myself from my book of _Parlour Elocution_.

Jenny was devoted to Chee-Wee. She loved him nineteen times as hard as she could have done if his eighteen little brothers and sisters, who were published simultaneously, had not died of a fever before they were a week old. This was an epidemic which raged fiercely among the Squirrels and nearly spoiled all the Rabbit stew. He got nineteen times as much schooling and learned nineteen times as much as he could otherwise have done. This accounts for anything that may seem unusually intelligent in the future conduct of Chee-Wee.

First, she taught him geography. With a toothpick I gave her, she drew out a singularly accurate relief map of the surrounding country in the sand at my door. I still have the toothpick and a small bottle of the sand, which I kept to convince the doubting ones. She was a week or more in making it, and I fear that Chee-Wee would have been very restless, had it not been for the little silvery minnow in a glass of water at Jenny’s elbow, which interested him greatly. She kept it there in order that her map might be drawn to scale.

When the map was finished, I was allowed to inspect it, and it was really wonderful, though it was not at all the kind of a map that I should have drawn. She had marked the brier patches, the dens of Woodchucks and Weasels, the kennel of a distant farmer’s Hound, and a log in the middle of a pond. This latter place was marked by a small piece of flag-root which bore the picture of a Rabbit’s hind foot, and meant “Last Stand.” It was well named, for no animal but a loan shark could have found them there.

She taught him to comb his hair, brush his teeth, wash his face, paying special attention to his ears, and to curl his tail up over his back, like a Squirrel. It was the merest stub of a tail and Chee-Wee got vertigo once from chasing it round and round trying to get a good view of it. Their comb was an ordinary curry comb, which presumably had dropped from the vest pocket of some canine pursuer.

Jenny saved her own combings, putting them carefully away in a box made of Squirrel bark. I noted afterward that she had stuck little bits of fur on some of the thorns in the brier patch where she and Chee-Wee lived, after the manner of Hop o’ My Thumb, who dropped pebbles in the wood that he might find his way home again. This was to guide Chee-Wee to the family residence in time of need.

It is not generally known that Rabbits make a blanket to cover their babies out of tufts of fur which they pick from themselves. Jenny’s blanket was a beauty and exemplified the arts and crafts movement among the Rabbits in a particularly striking way.

The background was white, and on it, in bold relief, was a large brown Rabbit, just vanishing around the corner of the blanket. Below was the motto, “Always Keep Your Front Feet off the Landscape.”

When this blanket was soiled, she washed it in the brook, using a bit of soap bark on the more soiled places, and hanging it out to dry on a line from home. Thinking that Chee-Wee might possibly take cold, I offered her a small square of brussels carpet for them to sleep under. It was the best I had, but she disdained the offering, and upon examining it closely, I saw why. Neither of them could have slept under it, because the nap was all worn off.

Rabbits love rose bushes and even that fine, new, man-made rose bush which climbs all over the country—the barbed wire fence. Jenny taught Chee-Wee how to lead his enemies into the fence and how to take the flying leap through the wires, leaving not so much as a tuft of fur behind to tell the tale. That summer Chee-Wee killed two Dogs, a Weasel, a Skunk, and three Bull Frogs, who were chasing him across the country, at different times, of course, by leading them full blast into this dangerous fence. Here they always hung until some of their mourning friends or relatives would come and cut down the body.

A Rabbit’s nose is exactly like the paper pin-wheels the children make and pin to the end of a stick. When the children run, with the stick held straight out in front of them, the pin-wheel whirls merrily, as everyone knows. A Rabbit’s nose has an interior formation of precisely the same size and shape, which revolves on an axis of cartilage at the slightest movement of the wearer. Thus does Nature care for her children.

Chee-Wee would never eat anything until his mother had certified to the quality of it. She always had to taste of it first, to be sure that it was all right, and frequently he took the food out of her mouth, in this way becoming very fond of hash. I have often seen them nibbling the ends of a long blade of grass, coming closer and closer together as the grass got shorter, and finally ending in a very loving kiss. It was both pretty and touching.

One cold day, I prepared some spaghetti according to Uncle Antonio’s method, though the pipes that I bought in the village were not at all like those that he took out of the interior recesses of his organ. We had it for lunch, Jenny Ragtail, Chee-Wee, and I, and we all ate heartily.

I was never more forcibly convinced of the truth of the saying that “What is one man’s meat is another man’s poison,” than I was that afternoon. Personally, I never felt better in my life. A warm glow of brotherly love pervaded my entire system, and there was enough spaghetti left for my luncheon the following day, if I could summon up sufficient self-denial to keep it that long.

But in less than an hour, Jenny and Chee-Wee were both very sick. Chee-Wee lay on the ground at the foot of a pine tree, and his mother, pitiable though her condition was, hobbled off to the marsh for some medicine.

When she returned, weak and exhausted, she had a large quantity of teaberries. She brewed these into a strong, bitter liquid over my fire, with boiling water from my tea-kettle. She dosed Chee-Wee with it liberally, then drank some of it herself. In half an hour, they were capering around as usual, and I was much pleased with Jenny’s cleverness.

Seeing that the mixture was a good Hare tonic, I rubbed some on my dome of thought where the thatching was thin, but it did not work in the same way.

The next day, when I brought out the plate of spaghetti for my luncheon, intending to divide, as usual, with my guests, they both scampered off at such a mad pace that I could see nothing but a cloud of dust and the gleam of light from their white tails. I did not know that anything on earth could go at such a pace as that, though my mother used to tell me, when she was making my gingham shirts, that brown and white were always fast colours. I believe it now, but I did not then, for those shirts never used to get me to school on time during the swimming season, and, indeed, often delayed me, with unaccountable knots in the sleeves.

Chee-Wee soon grew into a good-sized Rabbit. He used to stand up on his hind legs and bite the trees as high as he could reach. One tree, a few feet from my cabin door, is scarred with these tiny teeth marks from the height of one inch above the ground, where he could just reach when he was a little baby Rabbit, up to three feet and eighteen inches from the ground, which measured his height in his prime.