Chapter 4

"Oh, yes," she artlessly answered in reply to the concluding query; "I'll want to go back there lots o' times; but not to see them! I'll--only--go--back --there--to--see"--and here she was holding up the little flared-out fingers of her left hand, and with the index finger of the right touching their pink tips in ordered notation with the accent of every gleeful word--"I'll--only--go--back--there --to--see--David--Mason--Jeffries--'cause--he's --the--boy--fer--me!" And then she clapped her hands again and laughed in that half-hysterical, half- musical way of hers till we all joined in and made the echoes of the old hall ring again. "And then," she went on, suddenly throwing out an imperative gesture of silence--"and then, after I've been in this-- here house a long, long time, and you all gits so's you like me awful--awful--awful well, then some day you'll go in that room there--and that room there--and in the kitchen--and out on the porch-- and down the cellar--and out in the smoke-house-- and the wood-house--and the loft--and all around --oh, ever' place--and in here--and up the stairs-- and all them rooms up there--and you'll look behind all the doors--and in all the cubboards--and under all the beds--and then you'll look sorry-like, and holler out, kind o' skeert, and you'll say: 'Where-- is--Mary--Alice--Smith?' And then you'll wait and listen and hold yer breath; and then somepin' 'll holler back, away fur off, and say: 'Oh--she--has gone--home!' And then ever'thing'll be all still ag'in, and you'll be afraid to holler any more--and you dursn't play--and you can't laugh, and yer throat'll thist hurt and hurt, like you been a-eatin' too much calamus-root er somepin'!" And as the little gipsy concluded her weird prophecy, with a final flourish of her big pale eyes, we glanced furtively at one another's awestruck faces, with a superstitious dread of a vague indefinite disaster most certainly awaiting us around some shadowy corner of the future. Through all this speech she had been slowly and silently groping up the winding steps, her voice growing fainter and fainter, and the littly pixy form fading, and wholly vanishing at last around the spiral banister of the upper landing. Then down to us from that alien recess came the voice alone, touched with a tone as of wild entreaty and despair: "Where--is--Mary-- Alice--Smith?" And then a long breathless pause, in which our wide-eyed group below huddled still closer, pale and mute. Then--far off and faint and quavering with a tenderness of pathos that dews the eyes of memory even now--came, like a belated echo, the voice all desolate: "Oh--she--has --gone--home!"

What a queer girl she was, and what a fascinating influence she unconsciously exerted over us! We never tired of her presence; but she, deprived of ours by the many household tasks that she herself assumed, so rigidly maintained and deftly executed, seemed always just as happy when alone as when in our boisterous, fun-loving company. Such resources had Mary Alice Smith--such a wonderful inventive fancy! She could talk to herself--a favorite amusement, I might almost say a popular amusement, of hers, since these monologues at times would involve numberless characters, chipping in from manifold quarters of a wholesale discussion, and querying and exaggerating, agreeing and controverting, till the dishes she was washing would clash and clang excitedly in the general badinage. Loaded with a pyramid of glistening cups and saucers, she would improvise a gallant line of march from the kitchen table to the pantry, heading an imaginary procession, and whistling a fife-tune that would stir your blood. Then she would trippingly return, rippling her rosy fingers up and down the keys of an imaginary portable piano, or stammering flat-soled across the floor, chuffing and tooting like a locomotive. And she would gravely propound to herself the most intricate riddles--ponder thoughtfully and in silence over them--hazard the most ridiculous answers, and laugh derisively at her own affected ignorance. She would guess again and again, and assume the most gleeful surprise upon at last giving the proper answer, and then she would laugh jubilantly, and mockingly scout herself with having given out "a fool-riddle" that she could guess "with both eyes shut."

"Talk about riddles," she said abruptly to us, one evening after supper, as we lingered watching her clearing away the table--"talk about riddles, it--takes--David--Mason--Jeffries--to--tell--riddles! Bet you don't know

'Riddle-cum, riddle-cum right! Where was I last Saturd'y night? The winds blow--the boughs did shake-- I saw the hole a fox did make!' "

Again we felt that indefinable thrill never separate from the strange utterance, suggestive always of some dark mystery, and fascinating and holding the childish fancy in complete control.

"Bet you don't know this-'un neether:

'A holler-hearted father, And a hump-back mother-- Three black orphants All born together!' "

We were dumb.

"You can't guess nothin'!" she said half pityingly. "W'y, them's easy as fallin' off a chunk! First-un's a man named Fox, and he kilt his wife and chopped her head off, and they was a man named Wright lived in that neighberhood--and he was a-goin' home--and it was Saturd'y night--and he was a-comin' through the big woods--and they was a storm--and Wright he clumb a tree to git out of the rain, and while he was up there here come along a man with a dead woman--and a pickax, and a spade. And he drug the dead woman under the same tree where Mr. Wright was--so ever' time it 'ud lightnin', w'y, Wright he could look down and see him a-diggin' a grave there to bury the woman in. So Wright, he kep' still tel he got her buried all right, you know, and went back home; and then he clumb down and lit out fer town, and waked up the constabul--and he got a supeeny and went out to Fox's place, and had him jerked up 'fore the gran' jury. Then, when Fox was in court and wanted to know where their proof was that he kilt his wife, w'y, Wright he jumps up and says that riddle to the judge and all the neighbers that was there. And so when they got it all studied out--w'y, they tuk old Fox out and hung him under the same tree where he buried Mrs. Fox under. And that's all o' that'n; and the other'n--I promised-- David--Mason--Jeffries--I wouldn't--never--tell --no--livin'--soul--'less--he--gimme--leef,--er-- they--guessed--it--out--their--own--se'f!" And as she gave this rather ambiguous explanation of the first riddle, with the mysterious comment on the latter in conclusion, she shook her elfin tresses back over her shoulders with a cunning toss of her head and a glimmering twinkle of her pale bright eyes that somewhat reminded us of the fairy godmother in Cinderella.

And Mary Alice Smith was right, too, in her early prognostications regarding the visits of her Uncle Tomps and Aunt 'Lizabeth. Many times through the winter they "jest dropped in," as Aunt 'Lizabeth always expressed it, "to see how we was a-gittin' on with Mary Alice." And once, "in court week," during a prolonged trial in which Uncle Tomps and Aunt 'Lizabeth rather prominently figured, they "jest dropped in" on us and settled down and dwelt with us for the longest five days and nights we children had ever in our lives experienced. Nor was our long term of restraint from childish sports relieved wholly by their absence, since Aunt 'Lizabeth had taken Mary Alice back with them, saying that "a good long visit to her dear old home--pore as it was--would do the child good."

And then it was that we went about the house in moody silence, the question, "Where--is--Mary-- Alice--Smith?" forever yearning at our lips for utterance, and the still belated echo in the old hall overhead forever answering, "Oh--she--has--gone --home!"

It was early spring when she returned. And we were looking for her coming, and knew a week beforehand the very day she would arrive--for had not Aunt 'Lizabeth sent special word by Uncle Tomps, who "had come to town to do his millin', and git the latest war news, not to fail to jest drop in and tell us that they was layin' off to send Mary Alice in next Saturd'y."

Our little town, like every other village and metropolis throughout the country at that time, was, to the children at least, a scene of continuous holiday and carnival. The nation's heart was palpitating with the feverish pulse of war, and already the still half-frozen clods of the common highway were beaten into frosty dust by the tread of marshaled men; and the shrill shriek of the fife, and the hoarse boom and jar and rattling patter of the drums stirred every breast with something of that rapturous insanity of which true patriots and heroes can alone be made.

But on the day--when Mary Alice Smith was to return--what was all the gallant tumult of the town to us? I remember how we ran far up the street to welcome her--for afar off we had recognized her elfish face and eager eyes peering expectantly from behind the broad shoulders of a handsome fellow mounted on a great high-stepping horse that neighed and pranced excitedly as we ran scurrying toward them.

"Whoo-ee!" she cried in perfect ecstasy, as we paused in breathless admiration. "Clear--the-- track--there,--old--folks--young--folks!--fer-- Mary--Alice--Smith--and--David--Mason--Jeffries-- is--come--to--town!"

O what a day that was! And how vain indeed would be the attempt to detail here a tithe of its glory, or our happiness in having back with us our dear little girl, and her hysterical delight in seeing us so warmly welcome to the full love of our childish hearts the great, strong, round-faced, simple- natured "David--Mason--Jeffries"! Long and long ago we had learned to love him as we loved the peasant hero of some fairy tale of Christian Andersen's; but now that he was with us in most wholesome and robust verity, our very souls seemed scampering from our bodies to run to him and be caught up and tossed and swung and dandled in his gentle giant arms.

All that long delicious morning we were with him. In his tender charge we were permitted to go down among the tumult and the music of the streets, his round good-humored face and big blue eyes lit with a luster like our own. And happy little Mary Alice Smith--how proud she was of him! And how closely and how tenderly, through all that golden morning, did the strong brown hand clasp hers! A hundred times at least, as we promenaded thus, she swung her head back jauntily to whisper to us in that old mysterious way of hers that "David--Mason--Jeffries--and--Mary--Alice --Smith--knew--something--that--we--couldn't --guess!" But when he had returned us home, and after dinner had started down the street alone, with little Mary Alice clapping her hands after him above the gate and laughing in a strange new voice, and with the backs of her little fluttering hands vainly striving to blot out the big tear-drops that gathered in her eyes, we vaguely guessed the secret she and David kept. That night at supper-time we knew it fully. He had enlisted.

. . . . . . .

Among the list of "killed" at Rich Mountain, Virginia, occurred the name of "Jeffries, David M." We kept it from her as long as we could. At last she knew.

. . . . . . .

"It don't seem like no year ago to me!" Over and over she had said these words. The face was very pale and thin, and the eyes so bright--so bright! The kindly hand that smoothed away the little sufferer's hair trembled and dropped tenderly again upon the folded ones beneath the snowy spread.

"Git me out the picture again!"

The trembling hand lifted once more and searched beneath the pillow.

She drew the thin hands up, and, smiling, pressed the pictured face against her lips. "David--Mason --Jeffries," she said--"le's--me--and--you--go-- play--out--on--the--stairs!"

And ever in the empty home a voice goes moaning on and on, and "Where is Mary Alice?" it cries, and "Where--is--Mary--Alice--Smith?" And the still belated echo, through the high depths of the old hall overhead, answers quaveringly back, "Oh--she--has--gone--home!" But her voice-- it is silent evermore!

"Oh, where is Mary Alice Smith?" She taught us how to call her thus--and now she will not answer us! Have we no voice to reach her with? How sweet and pure and glad they were in those old days, as we recall the accents ringing through the hall--the same we vainly cry to her. Her fancies were so quaint--her ways so full of prankish mysteries! We laughed then; now, upon our knees, we wring our lifted hands and gaze, through streaming tears, high up the stairs she used to climb in childish glee, to call and answer eerily. And now, no answer anywhere!

How deft the little finger-tips in every task! The hands, how smooth and delicate to lull and soothe! And the strange music of her lips! The very crudeness of their speech made chaster yet the childish thought her guileless utterance had caught from spirit-depths beyond our reach. And so her homely name grew fair and sweet and beautiful to hear, blent with the echoes pealing clear and vibrant up the winding stair: "Where--where is Mary Alice Smith?" She taught us how to call her thus --but oh, she will not answer us! We have no voice to reach her with.

THE OLD MAN

[Response made to the sentiment, "The Old Man," at a dinner of the Indianapolis Literary Club.]

"You are old, Father William," the young man said, "And your hair has become very white; And yet you incessantly stand on your head-- Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

THE OLD MAN never grows so old as to be come either stale, juiceless, or unpalatable. The older he grows, the mellower and riper he becomes. His eyes may fail him, his step falter, and his big- mouthed shoes--"a world too wide for his shrunk shank"--may cluck and shuffle as he walks; his rheumatics may make great knuckles of his knees; the rusty hinges of his vertebrae may refuse cunningly to articulate, but all the same the "backbone" of the old man has been time-seasoned, tried, and tested, and no deerskin vest was ever buttoned round a tougher! Look at the eccentric kinks and curvings of it--its abrupt depression at the base, and its rounded bulging at the shoulders; but don't laugh with the smart young man who airily observes how full-chested the old man would be if his head were only turned around, and don't kill the young man, either, until you take him out some place and tell him that the old man got himself warped up in that shape along about the time when everybody had to hump himself. Try to bring before the young man's defective mental vision a dissolving view of a "good old-fashioned barn-raisin' "--and the old man doing all the "raisin' " himself, and "grubbin'," and "burnin' " logs and "underbrush," and "dreenin' " at the same time, and trying to coax something besides calamus to grow in the spongy little tract of swamp-land that he could stand in the middle of and "wobble" and shake the whole farm. Or, if you can't recall the many salient features of the minor disadvantages under which the old man used to labor, your pliant limbs may soon overtake him, and he will smilingly tell you of trials and privations of the early days, until your anxiety about the young man just naturally stagnates, and dries up, and evaporates, and blows away.

In this little side-show of existence the old man is always worth the full price of admission. He is not only the greatest living curiosity on exhibition, but the object of the most genial solicitude and interest to the serious observer. It is even good to look upon his vast fund of afflictions, finding prominent above them all that wholesome patience that surpasseth understanding; to dwell compassionately upon his prodigality of aches and ailments, and yet, by his pride in their wholesale possession, and his thorough resignation to the inevitable, continually to be rebuked, and in part made envious of the old man's right-of-title situation. Nature, after all, is kinder than unkind to him, and always has a compensation and a soothing balm for every blow that age may deal him. And in the fading embers of the old man's eyes there are, at times, swift flashes and rekindlings of the smiles of youth, and the old artlessness about the wrinkled face that dwelt there when his cheeks were like the pippins, and his

"Red lips redder still Kissed by strawberries on the hill."

And thus it is the children are intuitively drawn toward him, and young, pure-faced mothers are forever hovering about him, with just such humorings and kindly ministrations as they bestow on the little emperor of the household realm, strapped in his high chair at the dinner-table, crying "Amen" in the midst of "grace," and ignoring the "substantials" of the groaning board, and at once insisting upon a square deal of the more "temporal blessings" of jelly, cake, and pie. And the old man has justly earned every distinction he enjoys. Therefore let him make your hearthstone all the brighter with the ruddy coal he drags up from it with his pipe, as he comfortably settles himself where, with reminiscent eyes, he may watch the curling smoke of his tobacco as it indolently floats, and drifts and drifts, and dips at last, and vanishes up the grateful flue. At such times, when a five-year-old, what a haven every boy has found between the old grandfather's knees! Look back in fancy at the faces blending there--the old man's and the boy's--and, with the nimbus of the smoke-wreaths round the brows, the gilding of the firelight on cheek and chin, and the rapt and far-off gazings of the eyes of both, why, but for the silver tinsel of the beard of one and the dusky elf-locks of the other, the faces seem almost like twins.

With such a view of age, one feels like whipping up the lazy years and getting old at once. In heart and soul the old man is not old--and never will be. He is paradoxically old, and that is all. So it is that he grows younger with increasing years, until old age at worst is always at a level par with youth. Who ever saw a man so old as not secretly and most heartily to wish the veteran years upon years of greater age? And at what great age did ever any old man pass away and leave behind no sudden shock, and no selfish hearts still to yearn after him and grieve on unconsoled? Why, even in the slow declining years of old Methuselah--the banner old man of the universe,--so old that history grew absolutely tired waiting for him to go off some place and die--even Methuselah's taking off must have seemed abrupt to his immediate friends, and a blow to the general public that doubtless plunged it into the profoundest gloom. For nine hundred and sixty-nine years this durable old man had "smelt the rose above the mold," and doubtless had a thousand times been told by congratulating friends that he didn't look a day older than nine hundred and sixty-eight; and necessarily the habit of living, with him, was hard to overcome.

In his later years what an oracle he must have been, and with what reverence his friends must have looked upon the "little, glassy-headed, hairless man," and hung upon his every utterance! And with what unerring gift of prophecy could he foretell the long and husky droughts of summer--the gracious rains, at last,--the milk-sick breeding autumn and the blighting winter, simply by the way his bones felt after a century's casual attack of inflammatory rheumatism! And, having annually frosted his feet for some odd centuries--boy and man--we can fancy with what quiet delight he was wont to practise his prognosticating facilities on "the boys," forecasting the coming of the then fledgling cyclone and the gosling blizzard, and doubtless even telling the day of the month by the way his heels itched. And with what wonderment and awe must old chronic maladies have regarded him--tackling him singly or in solid phalanx, only to drop back pantingly, at last, and slink away dumfounded and abashed! And with what brazen pride the final conquering disease must have exulted over its shameless victory! But this is pathos here, and not a place for ruthless speculation: a place for asterisks--not words. Peace! peace! The man is dead! "The fever called living is over at last." The patient slumbers. He takes his rest. He sleeps. Come away! He is the oldest dead man in the cemetery.

Whether the hardy, stall-fed old man of the country, or the opulent and well-groomed old man of the metropolis, he is one in our esteem and the still warmer affections of the children. The old man from the country--you are always glad to see him and hear him talk. There is a breeziness of the woods and hills and a spice of the bottom-lands and thickets in everything he says, and dashes of shadow and sunshine over the waving wheat are in all the varying expressions of his swarthy face. The grip of his hand is a thing to bet on, and the undue loudness of his voice in greeting you is even lulling and melodious, since unconsciously it argues for the frankness of a nature that has nothing to conceal. Very probably you are forced to smile, meeting the old man in town, where he never seems at ease, and invariably apologizes in some way for his presence, saying, perhaps, by way of explanation: "Yessir, here I am, in spite o' myself. Come in day afore yisterd'y. Boys was thrashin' on the place, and the beltin' kept a-troublin' and delayin' of 'em --and I was potterin' round in the way anyhow, tel finally they sent me off to town to git some whang-luther and ribbets, and while I was in, I thought--I thought I'd jest run over and see the Jedge about that Henry County matter; and as I was knockin' round the court-house, first thing I knowed I'll be switched to death ef they didn't pop me on the jury! And here I am, eatin' my head off up here at the tavern. Reckon, tho', the county'll stand good for my expenses. Ef hit cain't, I kin!" And, with the heartiest sort of a laugh, the old man jogs along, leaving you to smile till bedtime over the happiness he has unconsciously contributed.