Vernon L. Kellogg (1867—) is a professor in Leland Stanford Junior University whose writings have been chiefly scientific. HisInsect Stories, from which the next selection is taken, is an interesting and instructive group of stories suitable for pupils in the third, fourth, or fifth grade. A later book is calledNuova, the New Bee. ("The Vendetta" is used by permission of the publishers, Henry Holt & Co., New York City.)
VERNON L. KELLOGG
This is the story of a fight. In the first story of this book, I said that Mary and I had seen a remarkable fight one evening at sundown on the slopes of the bare brown foothills west of the campus. It was not a battle of armies— we have seen that, too, in the little world we watch,—but a combat of gladiators, a struggle between two champions born and bred for fighting, and particularly for fighting each other. One champion was Eurypelma, the great, black, hairy, eight-legged, strong-fanged tarantula of California, and the other was Pepsis, a mighty wasp in dull-blue mail, with rusty-red wings and a poisonous javelin of a sting that might well frighten either you or me. Do you have any wasp in your neighborhood of the ferocity and strength and size of Pepsis? If not, you can hardly realize what a terrible creature she is. With her strong hard-cased body an inch and a half long, borne on powerful wings that expand fully three inches, and her long and strong needle-pointed sting that darts in and out like a flash and is always full of virulent poison, Pepsis is certainly queen of all the wasp amazons. But if that is so, no less is Eurypelma greatest, most dreadful, and fiercest, and hence king, of all the spiders in this country. In South America and perhaps elsewhere in the tropics, live the fierce bird-spiders with thick legs extending three inches or more on each side of their ugly hairy bodies. Eurypelma, the California tarantula, is not quite so large as that, nor does he stalk, pounce on and kill little birds as his South American cousin is said to do, but he is nevertheless a tremendous and fear-inspiring creature among the small beasties of field and meadow.
But not all Eurypelmas are so ferocious; or at least are not ferocious all the time. There are individual differences among them. Perhaps it is a matter of age or health. Anyway, I had a pet tarantula which I kept in an open jar in my room for several weeks, and I could handle him with impunity. He would sit gently on my hand, or walk deliberately up my arm, with his eight,fixed, shining, little reddish eyes staring hard at me, and his long seven-jointed hairy legs swinging gently and rhythmically along, without a sign of hesitation or excitement. His hair was almost gray and perhaps this hoariness and general sedateness betokened a ripe old age. But his great fangs were unblunted, his supply of poison undiminished, and his skill in striking and killing his prey still perfect, as often proved at his feeding times. He is quite the largest Eurypelma I have ever seen. He measures—for I still have his body, carefully stuffed, and fastened on a block with legs all spread out—five inches from tip to tip of opposite legs.
At the same time that I had this hoary old tarantula, I had another smaller, coal-black fellow who went into a perfect ecstasy of anger and ferocity every time any one came near him. He would stand on his hind legs and paw wildly with fore legs and palpi, and lunge forward fiercely at my inquisitive pencil. I found him originally in the middle of an entry into a classroom, holding at bay an entire excited class of art students armed with mahl-sticks and paint-brushes. The students were mostly women, and I was hailed as deliverer and greatestdompteurof beasts when I scooped Eurypelma up in a bottle and walked off with him.
But this is not telling of the sundown fight that Mary and I saw together. We had been over to the sand-cut by the golf links, after mining-bees, and were coming home with a fine lot of their holes and some of the bees themselves, when Mary suddenly called to me to "see the nice tarantula."
Perhaps nice isn't the best word for him, but he certainly was an unusually imposing and fluffy-haired and fierce-looking brute of a tarantula. He had rather an owly way about him, as if he had come out from his hole too early and was dazed and half-blinded by the light. Tarantulas are night prowlers; they do all their hunting after dark, dig their holes and, indeed, carry on all the various businesses of their life in the night-time. The occasional one found walking about in daytime has made a mistake, someway, and he blunders around quite like an owl in the sunshine.
All of a sudden, while Mary and I were smiling at this too early bird of a tarantula, he went up on his hind legs in fighting attitude, and at the same instant down darted a great tarantula hawk, that is, a Pepsis wasp. Her armored body glinted cool and metallic in the red sunset light, and her great wings had a suggestive shining of dull fire about them. She checked her swoop just before reaching Eurypelma, and made a quick dart over him, and then a quick turn back, intending to catch the tarantula in the rear. But lethargic and owly as Eurypelma had been a moment before, he was now all alertness and agility. He had to be. He was defending his life. One full fair stab of the poisoned javelin, sheathed but ready at the tip of the flexible, blue-black body hovering over him, and it would be over with Eurypelma. And he knew it. Or perhaps he didn't. But he acted as if he did. He was going to do his best not to be stabbed; that was sure. And Pepsis was going to do her best to stab; that also was quickly certain.
At the same time Pepsis knew—or anyway acted as if she did—that to bestruck by one or both of those terrible vertical, poison-filled fangs was sure death. It would be like a blow from a battle-axe, with the added horror of mortal poison poured into the wound.
So Eurypelma about-faced like a flash, and Pepsis was foiled in her strategy. She flew up and a yard away, then returned to the attack. She flew about in swift circles over his head, preparatory to darting in again. But Eurypelma was ready. As she swooped viciously down, he lunged up and forward with a half-leap, half-forward fall, and came within an ace of striking the trailing blue-black abdomen with his reaching fangs. Indeed it seemed to Mary and me as if they really grazed the metallic body. But evidently they had not pierced the smooth armor. Nor had Pepsis in that breathless moment of close quarters been able to plant her lance. She whirled, up high this time but immediately back, although a little more wary evidently, for she checked her downward plunge three or four inches from the dancing champion on the ground. And so for wild minute after minute it went on; Eurypelma always up and tip-toeing on those strong hind legs, with open, armed mouth always toward the point of attack, and Pepsis ever darting down, up, over, across, and in and out in dizzy dashes, but never quite closing.
Were Mary and I excited? Not a word could we utter; only now and then a swift intake of breath; a stifled "O" or "Ah" or "See." And then of a sudden came the end. Pepsis saw her chance. A lightning swoop carried her right on to the hairy champion. The quivering lance shot home. The poison coursed into the great soft body. But at the same moment the terrible fangs struck fair on the blue armor and crashed through it. Two awful wounds, and the wings of dull fire beat violently only to strike up a little cloud of dust and whirl the mangled body around and around. Fortunately Death was merciful, and the brave amazon made a quick end.
But what of Eurypelma, the killer? Was it well with him? The sting-made wound itself was of little moment; it closed as soon as the lancet withdrew. But not before the delicate poison sac at its base inside the wasp-body had contracted and squirted down the slender hollow of the sting a drop of liquid fire. And so it was not well with Eurypelma in his insides. Victor he seemed to be, but if he could think, he must have had grave doubts about the joys of victory.
For a curious drowsiness was coming over him. Perhaps, disquieting thought, it was the approaching stupor of the poison's working. His strong long legs became limp, they would not work regularly, they could not hold his heavy hairy body up from the ground. He would get into his hole and rest. But it was too late. And after a few uneven steps, victor Eurypelma settled heavily down beside his amazon victim, inert and forevermore beyond fighting. He was paralyzed.
And so Mary and I brought him home in our collecting box, together with the torn body of Pepsis with her wings of slow fire dulled by the dust of her last struggles. And though it is a whole month now since Eurypelma received his stab from the poisoned javelin of Pepsis, he has not recovered; nor will he ever. When you touch him, hedraws up slowly one leg after another, or moves a palpus feebly. But it is living death; a hopeless paralytic is the king.
Dear reader, you are of course as bright as Mary, and so you have noticed, as she did right away, the close parallel between what happened to Eurypelma and what happened to the measuring-worms brought by Ammophila to her nest burrow as described in the first story in this book. And so, like Mary, you realize that the vendetta or life feud between the tarantula family and the family of Pepsis, the tarantula hawk, is based on reasons of domestic economy rather than on those of sentiment, which determine vendettas in Corsica and feuds in Kentucky.
To be quite plain, Pepsis fights Eurypelma to get his huge, juicy body for food for her young; and Eurypelma fights Pepsis to keep from becoming paralyzed provender. If Pepsis had escaped unhurt in the combat at which Mary and I "assisted," as the French say, as enthralled spectators, we should have seen her drag by mighty effort the limp, paralyzed, spider giant to her nest hole not far distant—a great hole twelve inches deep and with a side chamber at the bottom. There she would have thrust him down the throat of the burrow, and then crawled in and laid an egg on the helpless beast, from which in time would have hatched the carnivorous wasp grub. Pepsis has many close allies among the wasps, all black or steely blue with smoky or dull-bronze wings, and they all use spiders, stung and paralyzed, to store their nest holes with.
"Do the little black and blue wasps hunt the little spiders and the larger ones the big spiders?" asked Mary.
"Exactly," I respond, "and the giant wasp of them all, Pepsis, the queen of the wasp amazons, hunts only the biggest spider of them all, Eurypelma, the tarantula king, and we have seen her do it."
"Well," says Mary, "even if she wants him for her children to eat, it's a real vendetta, isn't it?"
"Indeed it is," I answer, "it's more real, and fiercer, and more relentless, and more persistent than any human vendetta that ever was. For every Pepsis mother in the world is always hunting for Eurypelmas to fight. And notallCorsicans have a vendetta on hand, nor all Kentuckians a feud."
Sewell Ford (1868-) is noted for his fine stories about horses, especially those inHorses Nine, from which the following story of "Pasha" is taken. (By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.) Pasha plays a most important part in a human romance with war as a background, and the combination is very effective. Mr. Ford'sTorchystories are also very popular with young people.
SEWELL FORD
Long, far too long, has the story of Pasha, son of Selim, remained untold.
The great Selim, you know, was brought from far across the seas, where he had been sold for a heavy purse by a venerable sheik, who tore his beard during the bargain and swore by Allah that without Selim there would be for him no joy in life. Also he had wept quite convincingly on Selim's neck—but he finished by taking the heavy purse. That was how Selim, the great Selim,came to end his days in Fayette County, Kentucky. Of his many sons, Pasha was one.
In almost idyllic manner were spent the years of Pasha's coltdom. They were years of pasture roaming and blue grass cropping. When the time was ripe, began the hunting lessons. Pasha came to know the feel of the saddle and the voice of the hounds. He was taught the long, easy lope. He learned how to gather himself for a sail through the air over a hurdle or a water-jump. Then when he could take five bars clean, when he could clear an eight-foot ditch, when his wind was so sound that he could lead the chase from dawn until high noon, he was sent to the stables of a Virginia tobacco-planter who had need of a new hunter and who could afford Arab blood.
In the stalls at Gray Oaks stables were many good hunters, but none better than Pasha. Cream-white he was, from the tip of his splendid, yard-long tail to his pink-lipped muzzle. His coat was as silk plush, his neck as supple as a swan's, and out of his big, bright eyes there looked such intelligence that one half expected him to speak. His lines were all long, graceful curves, and when he danced daintily on his slender legs one could see the muscles flex under the delicate skin.
Miss Lou claimed Pasha for her very own at first sight. As no one at Gray Oaks denied Miss Lou anything at all, to her he belonged from that instant. Of Miss Lou, Pasha approved thoroughly. She knew that bridle-reins were for gentle guidance, not for sawing or jerking, and that a riding-crop was of no use whatever save to unlatch a gate or to cut at an unruly hound. She knew how to rise on the stirrup when Pasha lifted himself in his stride, and how to settle close to the pig-skin when his hoofs hit the ground. In other words, she had a good seat, which means as much to the horse as it does to the rider.
Besides all this, it was Miss Lou who insisted that Pasha should have the best of grooming, and she never forgot to bring the dainties which Pasha loved, an apple or a carrot or a sugarplum. It is something, too, to have your nose patted by a soft gloved hand and to have such a person as Miss Lou put her arm around your neck and whisper in your ear. From no other than Miss Lou would Pasha permit such intimacy.
No paragon, however, was Pasha. He had a temper, and his whims were as many as those of a school-girl. He was particular as to who put on his bridle. He had notions concerning the manner in which a currycomb should be used. A red ribbon or a bandanna handkerchief put him in a rage, while green, the holy color of the Mohammedan, soothed his nerves. A lively pair of heels he had, and he knew how to use his teeth. The black stable-boys found that out, and so did the stern-faced man who was known as "Mars" Clayton. This "Mars" Clayton had ridden Pasha once, had ridden him as he rode his big, ugly, hard-bitted roan hunter, and Pasha had not enjoyed the ride. Still, Miss Lou and Pasha often rode out with "Mars" Clayton and the parrot-nosed roan. That is, they did until the coming of Mr. Dave.
In Mr. Dave, Pasha found a new friend. From a far Northern State was Mr. Dave. He had come in a ship to buy tobacco, but after he had bought his cargo he still stayed at Gray Oaks, "to complete Pasha's education," so he said.
Many ways had Mr. Dave which Pasha liked. He had a gentle manner of talking to you, of smoothing your flanks and rubbing your ears, which gained your confidence and made you sure that he understood. He was firm and sure in giving command, yet so patient in teaching one tricks, that it was a pleasure to learn.
So, almost before Pasha knew it, he could stand on his hind legs, could step around in a circle in time to a tune which Mr. Dave whistled, and could do other things which few horses ever learn to do. His chief accomplishment, however, was to kneel on his forelegs in the attitude of prayer. A long time it took Pasha to learn this, but Mr. Dave told him over and over again, by word and sign, until at last the son of the great Selim could strike a pose such as would have done credit to a Mecca pilgrim.
"It's simply wonderful!" declared Miss Lou.
But it was nothing of the sort. Mr. Dave had been teaching tricks to horses ever since he was a small boy, and never had he found such an apt pupil as Pasha.
Many a glorious gallop did Pasha and Miss Lou have while Mr. Dave stayed at Gray Oaks, Dave riding the big bay gelding that Miss Lou, with all her daring, had never ventured to mount. It was not all galloping though, for Pasha and the big bay often walked for miles through the wood lanes, side by side and very close together, while Miss Lou and Mr. Dave talked, talked, talked. How they could ever find so much to say to each other Pasha wondered.
But at last Mr. Dave went away, and with his going ended good times for Pasha, at least for many months. There followed strange doings. There was much excitement among the stable-boys, much riding about, day and night, by the men of Gray Oaks, and no hunting at all. One day the stables were cleared of all horses save Pasha.
"Some time, if he is needed badly, you may have Pasha, but not now." Miss Lou had said. And then she had hidden her face in his cream-white mane and sobbed. Just what the trouble was Pasha did not understand, but he was certain "Mars" Clayton was at the bottom of it.
No longer did Miss Lou ride about the country. Occasionally she galloped up and down the highway, to the Pointdexters and back, just to let Pasha stretch his legs. Queer sights Pasha saw on these trips. Sometimes he would pass many men on horses riding close together in a pack, as the hounds run when they have the scent. They wore strange clothing, did these men, and they carried, instead of riding-crops, big shiny knives that swung at their sides. The sight of them set Pasha's nerves tingling. He would sniff curiously after them and then prick forward his ears and dance nervously.
Of course Pasha knew that something unusual was going on, but what it was he could not guess. There came a time, however, when he found out all about it. Months had passed when, late one night, a hard-breathing, foam-splotched, mud-covered horse was ridden into the yard and taken into the almost deserted stable. Pasha heard the harsh voice of "Mars" Clayton swearing at the stable-boy. Pasha heard his own name spoken, and guessed that it was he who was wanted. Next came Miss Lou to the stable.
"I'm very sorry," he heard "Mars" Clayton say, "but I've got to get out of this. The Yanks are not more than five miles behind."
"But you'll take good care of him, won't you?" he heard Miss Lou ask eagerly.
"Oh, yes; of course," replied "Mars" Clayton, carelessly.
A heavy saddle was thrown on Pasha's back, the girths pulled cruelly tight, and in a moment "Mars" Clayton was on his back. They were barely clear of Gray Oaks driveway before Pasha felt something he had never known before. It was as if someone had jabbed a lot of little knives into his ribs. Roused by pain and fright, Pasha reared in a wild attempt to unseat this hateful rider. But "Mars" Clayton's knees seemed glued to Pasha's shoulders. Next Pasha tried to shake him off by sudden leaps, sidebolts, and stiff-legged jumps. These manœuvres brought vicious jerks on the wicked chain-bit that was cutting Pasha's tender mouth sorrily and more jabs from the little knives. In this way did Pasha fight until his sides ran with blood and his breast was plastered thick with reddened foam.
In the meantime he had covered miles of road, and at last, along in the cold gray of the morning, he was ridden into a field where were many tents and horses. Pasha was unsaddled and picketed to a stake. This latter indignity he was too much exhausted to resent. All he could do was to stand, shivering with cold, trembling from nervous excitement, and wait for what was to happen next.
It seemed ages before anything did happen. The beginning was a tripping bugle-blast. This was answered by the voice of other bugles blown here and there about the field. In a moment men began to tumble out of the white tents. They came by twos and threes and dozens, until the field was full of them. Fires were built on the ground, and soon Pasha could scent coffee boiling and bacon frying. Black boys began moving about among the horses with hay and oats and water. One of them rubbed Pasha hurriedly with a wisp of straw. It was little like the currying and rubbing with brush and comb and flannel to which he was accustomed and which he needed just then, oh, how sadly. His strained muscles had stiffened so much that every movement gave him pain. So matted was his coat with sweat and foam and mud that it seemed as if half the pores of his skin were choked.
He had cooled his parched throat with a long draught of somewhat muddy water, but he had eaten only half of the armful of hay when again the bugles sounded and "Mars" Clayton appeared. Tightening the girths, until they almost cut into Pasha's tender skin, he jumped into the saddle and rode off to where a lot of big black horses were being reined into line. In front of this line Pasha was wheeled. He heard the bugles sound once more, heard his rider shout something to the men behind, felt the wicked little knives in his sides, and then, in spite of aching legs, was forced into a sharp gallop. Although he knew it not, Pasha had joined the Black Horse Cavalry.
The months that followed were to Pasha one long, ugly dream. Not that he minded the hard riding by day and night. In time he became used to all that. He could even endure the irregular feeding, the sleeping in the openduring all kinds of weather, and the lack of proper grooming. But the vicious jerks on the torture-provoking cavalry bit, the flat sabre blows on the flank which he not infrequently got from his ill-tempered master, and, above all, the cruel digs of the spur-wheels—these things he could not understand. Such treatment he was sure he did not merit. "Mars" Clayton he came to hate more and more. Some day, Pasha told himself, he would take vengeance with teeth and heels, even if he died for it.
In the meantime he had learned the cavalry drill. He came to know the meaning of each varying bugle-call, from reveille, when one began to paw and stamp for breakfast, to mournful taps, when lights went out, and the tents became dark and silent. Also, one learned to slow from a gallop into a walk; when to wheel to the right or to the left, and when to start on the jump as the first notes of a charge were sounded. It was better to learn the bugle-calls, he found, than to wait for a jerk on the bits or a prod from the spurs.
No more was he terror-stricken, as he had been on his first day in the cavalry, at hearing behind him the thunder of many hoofs. Having once become used to the noise, he was even thrilled by the swinging metre of it. A kind of wild harmony was in it, something which made one forget everything else. At such times Pasha longed to break into his long, wind-splitting lope, but he learned that he must leave the others no more than a pace or two behind, although he could have easily outdistanced them all.
Also, Pasha learned to stand under fire. No more did he dance at the crack of carbines or the zipp-zipp of bullets. He could even hold his ground when shells went screaming over him, although this was hardest of all to bear. One could not see them, but their sound, like that of great birds in flight, was something to try one's nerves. Pasha strained his ears to catch the note of each shell that came whizzing overhead, and, as it passed, looked inquiringly over his shoulder as if to ask, "Now what on earth was that?"
But all this experience could not prepare him for the happenings of that never-to-be-forgotten day in June. There had been a period full of hard riding and ending with a long halt. For several days hay and oats were brought with some regularity. Pasha was even provided with an apology for a stall. It was made by leaning two rails against a fence. Some hay was thrown between the rails. This was a sorry substitute for the roomy box-stall, filled with clean straw, which Pasha always had at Gray Oaks, but it was as good as any provided for the Black Horse Cavalry.
And how many, many horses there were! As far as Pasha could see in either direction the line extended. Never before had he seen so many horses at one time. And men! The fields and woods were full of them; some in brown butternut, some in homespun gray, and many in clothes having no uniformity of color at all. "Mars" Clayton was dressed better than most, for on his butternut coat were shiny shoulder-straps, and it was closed with shiny buttons. Pasha took little pride in this. He knew his master for a cruel and heartless rider, and for nothing more.
One day there was a great parade, when Pasha was carefully groomed forthe first time in months. There were bands playing and flags flying. Pasha, forgetful of his ill-treatment and prancing proudly at the head of a squadron of coal-black horses, passed in review before a big, bearded man wearing a slouch hat fantastically decorated with long plumes and sitting a great black horse in the midst of a little knot of officers.
Early the next morning Pasha was awakened by the distant growl of heavy guns. By daylight he was on the move, thousands of other horses with him. Nearer and nearer they rode to the place where the guns were growling. Sometimes they were on roads, sometimes they crossed fields, and again they plunged into the woods where the low branches struck one's eyes and scratched one's flanks. At last they broke clear of the trees to come suddenly upon such a scene as Pasha had never before witnessed.
Far across the open field he could see troop on troop of horses coming toward him. They seemed to be pouring over the crest of a low hill, as if driven onward by some unseen force behind. Instantly Pasha heard, rising from the throats of thousands of riders, on either side and behind him, that fierce, wild yell which he had come to know meant the approach of trouble. High and shrill and menacing it rang as it was taken up and repeated by those in the rear. Next the bugles began to sound, and in quick obedience the horses formed in line just on the edge of the woods, a line which stretched on either flank until one could hardly see where it ended.
From the distant line came no answering cry, but Pasha could hear the bugles blowing and he could see the fronts massing. Then came the order to charge at a gallop. This set Pasha to tugging eagerly at the bit, but for what reason he did not know. He knew only that he was part of a great and solid line of men and horses sweeping furiously across a field toward that other line which he had seen pouring over the hill crest.
He could scarcely see at all now. The thousands of hoofs had raised a cloud of dust that not only enveloped the onrushing line, but rolled before it. Nor could Pasha hear anything save the thunderous thud of many feet. Even the shrieking of the shells was drowned. But for the restraining bit Pasha would have leaped forward and cleared the line. Never had he been so stirred. The inherited memory of countless desert raids, made by his Arab ancestors, was doing its work. For what seemed a long time this continued, and then, in the midst of the blind and frenzied race, there loomed out of the thick air, as if it had appeared by magic, the opposing line.
Pasha caught a glimpse of something which seemed like a heaving wall of tossing heads and of foam-whitened necks and shoulders. Here and there gleamed red, distended nostrils and straining eyes. Bending above was another wall, a wall of dusty blue coats, of grim faces, and of dust-powdered hats. Bristling above all was a threatening crest of waving blades.
What would happen when the lines met? Almost before the query was thought there came the answer. With an earth-jarring crash they came together. The lines wavered back from the shock of impact and then the whole struggle appeared to Pasha to centre about him. Of course this was not so. But it was afact that the most conspicuous figure in either line had been that of the cream-white charger in the very centre of the Black Horse regiment.
For one confused moment Pasha heard about his ears the whistle and clash of sabres, the spiteful crackle of small arms, the snorting of horses, and the cries of men. For an instant he was wedged tightly in the frenzied mass, and then, by one desperate leap, such as he had learned on the hunting field, he shook himself clear.
Not until some minutes later did Pasha notice that the stirrups were dangling empty and that the bridle-rein hung loose on his neck. Then he knew that at last he was free from "Mars" Clayton. At the same time he felt himself seized by an overpowering dread. While conscious of a guiding hand on the reins Pasha had abandoned himself to the fierce joy of the charge. But now, finding himself riderless in the midst of a horrid din, he knew not what to do, nor which way to turn. His only impulse was to escape. But where? Lifting high his fine head and snorting with terror he rushed about, first this way and then that, frantically seeking a way out of this fog-filled field of dreadful pandemonium. Now he swerved in his course to avoid a charging squad, now he was turned aside by prone objects at sight of which he snorted fearfully. Although the blades still rang and the carbines still spoke, there were no more to be seen either lines or order. Here and there in the dust-clouds scurried horses, some with riders and some without, by twos, by fours, or in squads of twenty or more. The sound of shooting and slashing and shouting filled the air.
To Pasha it seemed an eternity that he had been tearing about the field when he shied at the figure of a man sitting on the ground. Pasha was about to wheel and dash away when the man called to him. Surely the tones were familiar. With wide-open, sniffing nostrils and trembling knees, Pasha, stopped and looked hard at the man on the ground.
"Pasha! Pasha!" the man called weakly. The voice sounded like that of Mr. Dave.
"Come, boy! Come, boy!" said the man in a coaxing tone, which recalled to Pasha the lessons he had learned at Gray Oaks years before. Still Pasha sniffed and hesitated.
"Come here, Pasha, old fellow. For God's sake, come here!"
There was no resisting this appeal. Step by step Pasha went nearer. He continued to tremble, for this man on the ground, although his voice was that of Mr. Dave, looked much different from the one who had taught him tricks. Besides, there was about him the scent of fresh blood. Pasha could see the stain of it on his blue trousers.
"Come, boy. Come, Pasha," insisted the man on the ground, holding out an encouraging hand. Slowly Pasha obeyed until he could sniff the man's fingers. Another step and the man was smoothing his nose, still speaking gently and coaxingly in a faint voice. In the end Pasha was assured that the man was really the Mr. Dave of old, and glad enough Pasha was to know it.
"Now, Pasha," said Mr. Dave, "we'll see if you've forgotten your tricks, and may the good Lord grant you haven't. Down, sir! Kneel, Pasha, kneel!"
It had been a long time since Pasha had been asked to do this, a very longtime; but here was Mr. Dave asking him, in just the same tone as of old, and in just the same way. So Pasha, forgetting his terror under the soothing spell of Mr. Dave's voice, forgetting the fearful sights and sounds about him, remembering only that here was the Mr. Dave whom he loved, asking him to do his old trick—well, Pasha knelt.
"Easy now, boy; steady!" Pasha heard him say. Mr. Dave was dragging himself along the ground to Pasha's side. "Steady now, Pasha; steady, boy!" He felt Mr. Dave's hand on the pommel. "So-o-o, boy; so-o-o-o!" Slowly, oh, so slowly, he felt Mr. Dave crawling into the saddle, and although Pasha's knees ached from the unfamiliar strain, he stirred not a muscle until he got the command, "Up, Pasha, up!"
Then, with a trusted hand on the bridle-rein, Pasha joyfully bounded away through the fog, until the battle-field was left behind. Of the long ride that ensued only Pasha knows, for Mr. Dave kept his seat in the saddle more by force of muscular habit than anything else. A man who has learned to sleep on horseback does not easily fall off, even though he has not the full command of his senses. Only for the first hour or so did Pasha's rider do much toward guiding their course. In hunting-horses, however, the sense of direction is strong. Pasha had it—especially for one point of the compass. This point was south. So, unknowing of the possible peril into which he might be taking his rider, south he went. How Pasha ever did it, as I have said, only Pasha knows; but in the end he struck the Richmond Pike.
It was a pleading whinny which aroused Miss Lou at early daybreak. Under her window she saw Pasha, and on his back a limp figure in a blue, dust-covered, dark-stained uniform. And that was how Pasha's cavalry career came to an end. That one fierce charge was his last.
In the Washington home of a certain Maine Congressman you may see, hung in a place of honor and lavishly framed, the picture of a horse. It is very creditably done in oils, is this picture. It is of a cream-white horse, with an arched neck, clean, slim legs, and a splendid flowing tail.
Should you have any favors of state to ask of this Maine Congressman it would be the wise thing, before stating your request, to say something nice about the horse in the picture. Then the Congressman will probably say, looking fondly at the picture: "I must tell Lou—er—my wife, you know, what you have said. Yes, that was Pasha. He saved my neck at Brandy Station. He was one-half Arab, Pasha was, and the other half, sir, was human."
Louisa de la Ramée (1839-1908), an English novelist, is generally known by her pseudonym "Ouida," which was the result of a child's attempt to pronounce her first name. Her novels had strong popular qualities: intensely dramatic, with sentiment rather high-pitched and always verging on the sensational. The intense human interest is constantly present in her work and accounts for her great vogue. Two of her stories, "The Dog of Flanders" and "Moufflou," have gained a permanent place in juvenile literature. They are popular among sixth, seventh, and eighth grade pupils.
"OUIDA"
Moufflou's masters were some boys and girls. They were very poor, but they were very merry. They lived in an old, dark, tumble-down place, and their father had been dead five years; their mother's care was all they knew; and Tasso was the eldest of them all, a lad of nearly twenty, and he was so kind, so good, so laborious, so cheerful, so gentle, that the children all younger than he adored him. Tasso was a gardener. Tasso, however, though the eldest and mainly the bread-winner, was not so much Moufflou's master as was little Romolo, who was only ten, and a cripple. Romolo, called generally Lolo, had taught Moufflou all he knew; and that all was a very great deal, for nothing cleverer than was Moufflou had ever walked upon four legs.
Why Moufflou?
Well, when the poodle had been given to them by a soldier who was going back to his home in Piedmont, he had been a white woolly creature a year old, and the children's mother, who was a Corsican by birth, had said that he was just like amoufflon, as they call sheep in Corsica. White and woolly this dog remained, and he became the handsomest and biggest poodle in all the city, and the corruption of Moufflou from Moufflon remained the name by which he was known; it was silly, perhaps, but it suited him and the children, and Moufflou he was.
They lived in an old quarter of Florence, in that picturesque zigzag which goes round the grand church of Or San Michele, and which is almost more Venetian than Tuscan in its mingling of color, charm, stateliness, popular confusion, and architectural majesty. The tall old houses are weather-beaten into the most delicious hues; the pavement is enchantingly encumbered with peddlers and stalls and all kinds of trades going on in the open air, in that bright, merry, beautiful Italian custom which, alas, alas! is being driven away by new-fangled laws which deem it better for the people to be stuffed up in close, stewing rooms without air, and would fain do away with all the good-tempered politics and the sensible philosophies and the wholesome chatter which the open-street trades and street gossipry encourage, for it is good for the populace tosfogareand in no other way can it do so one-half so innocently. Drive it back into musty shops, and it is driven at once to mutter sedition. . . . But you want to hear about Moufflou.
Well, Moufflou lived here in that high house with the sign of the lamb in wrought iron, which shows it was once a warehouse of the old guild of the Arte della Lana. They are all old houses here, drawn round about that grand church which I called once, and will call again, like a mighty casket of oxidized silver. A mighty casket indeed, holding the Holy Spirit within it; and with the vermilion and the blue and the orange glowing in its niches and its lunettes like enamels, and its statues of the apostles strong and noble, like the times in which they were created,—St. Peter with his keys, and St. Mark with his open book, and St. George leaning on his sword, and others also, solemn and austere as they, austere though benign, for do they not guard the White Tabernacle of Oreagna within?
The church stands firm as a rock, square as a fortress of stone, and the winds and the waters of the skies may beat about it as they will, they have no power to disturb its sublime repose. Sometimes I think of all the noble things in all our Italy Or San Michele is the noblest, standing there in its stern magnificence, amidst people's hurrying feet and noisy laughter, a memory of God.
The little masters of Moufflou lived right in its shadow, where the bridge of stone spans the space between the houses and the church high in mid-air; and little Lolo loved the church with a great love. He loved it in the morning-time, when the sunbeams turned it into dusky gold and jasper; he loved it in the evening-time, when the lights of its altars glimmered in the dark, and the scent of its incense came out into the street; he loved it in the great feasts, when the huge clusters of lilies were borne inside it; he loved it in the solemn nights of winter; the flickering gleam of the dull lamps shone on the robes of an apostle, or the sculpture of a shield, or the glow of a casement-moulding in majolica. He loved it always, and, without knowing why, he called itla mia chiesa.
Lolo, being lame and of delicate health, was not enabled to go to school or to work, though he wove the straw covering of wine-flasks and plaited the cane matting with busy fingers. But for the most part he did as he liked, and spent most of his time sitting on the parapet of Or San Michele, watching the venders of earthenware at their trucks, or trotting with his crutch (and he could trot a good many miles when he chose) out with Moufflou down a bit of the Stocking-makers' Street, along under the arcades of the Uffizi, and so over the Jewellers' Bridge, and out of byways that he knew into the fields on the hill-side upon the other bank of Arno. Moufflou and he would spend half the day—all the day—out there in daffodil-time; and Lolo would come home with great bundles and sheaves of golden flowers, and he and Moufflou were happy.
His mother never liked to say a harsh word to Lolo, for he was lame through her fault; she had let him fall in his babyhood, and the mischief had been done to his hip never again to be undone. So she never raised her voice to him, though she did often to the others,—to curly-pated Cecco, and pretty black-eyed Dina, and saucy Bice, and sturdy Beppo, and even to the good, manly, hard-working Tasso. Tasso was the mainstay of the whole, though he was but a gardener's lad, working in the green Cascine at small wages. But all he earned he brought home to his mother; and he alone kept in order the lazy, high-tempered Sandro, and he alone kept in check Bice's love of finery, and he alone could with shrewdness and care make both ends meet and putminestraalways in the pot and bread always in the cupboard.
When his mother thought, as she thought indeed almost ceaselessly, that with a few months he would be of the age to draw his number, and might draw a high one and be taken from her for three years, the poor soul believed her very heart would burst and break; and many a day at twilight she would start out unperceived and creep into the great church and pour her soul forth in supplication before the White Tabernacle.
Yet, pray as she would, no miracle could happen to make Tasso free of military service: if he drew a fatal number, go he must, even though he take all the lives of them to their ruin with him.
One morning Lolo sat as usual on the parapet of the church, Moufflou beside him. It was a brilliant morning in September. The men at the hand-barrows and at the stall were selling the crockery, the silk handkerchiefs, and the straw hats which form the staple of the commerce that goes on round about Or San Michele,—very blithe, good-natured, gay commerce, for the most part, not got through, however, of course, without bawling and screaming, and shouting and gesticulating, as if the sale of a penny pipkin or a twopenny pie-pan were the occasion for the exchange of many thousands of pounds sterling and cause for the whole world's commotion. It was about eleven o'clock; the poor petitioners were going in for alms to the house of the fraternity of San Giovanni Battista; the barber at the corner was shaving a big man with a cloth tucked about his chin, and his chair set well out on the pavement; the sellers of the pipkins and pie-pans were screaming till they were hoarse, "Un soldo l'uno, due soldi tre!" big bronze bells were booming till they seemed to clang right up to the deep-blue sky; some brethren of the Misericordia went by bearing a black bier; a large sheaf of glowing flowers—dahlias, zinnias, asters, and daturas—was borne through the huge arched door of the church near St. Mark and his open book. Lolo looked on at it all, and so did Moufflou, and a stranger looked at them as he left the church.
"You have a handsome poodle there, my little man," he said to Lolo, in a foreigner's too distinct and careful Italian.
"Moufflou is beautiful," said Lolo, with pride. "You should see him when he is just washed; but we can only wash him on Sundays, because then Tasso is at home."
"How old is your dog?"
"Three years old."
"Does he do any tricks?"
"Does he!" said Lolo, with a very derisive laugh: "why, Moufflou can do anything! He can walk on two legs ever so long; make ready, present, and fire; die; waltz; beg, of course; shut a door; make a wheelbarrow of himself; there is nothing he will not do. Would you like to see him do something?"
"Very much," said the foreigner.
To Moufflou and to Lolo the street was the same thing as home; this cheerypiazzettaby the church, so utterly empty sometimes, and sometimes so noisy and crowded, was but the wider threshold of their home to both the poodle and the child.
So there, under the lofty and stately walls of the old church, Lolo put Moufflou through his exercises. They were second nature to Moufflou, as to most poodles. He had inherited his address at them from clever parents, and, as he had never been frightened or coerced, all his lessons and acquirements were but play to him. He acquitted himself admirably, and the crockery-venders came and looked on, and a sacristan came out of the church and smiled, and the barber left his customer's chin all in a lather while he laughed, for the good folk of the quarter were all proud of Moufflou and never tired of him, and the pleasant, easy-going, good-humored disposition of the Tuscan populace is so far removedfrom the stupid buckram and whale-bone in which the new-fangled democracy wants to imprison it.
The stranger also was much diverted by Moufflou's talents, and said, half aloud, "How this clever dog would amuse poor Victor! Would you bring your poodle to please a sick child I have at home!" he said, quite aloud, to Lolo, who smiled and answered that he would. Where was the sick child?
"At the Gran Bretagna; not far off," said the gentleman. "Come this afternoon, and ask for me by this name."
He dropped his card and a couple of francs into Lolo's hand, and went his way. Lolo, with Moufflou scampering after him, dashed into his own house, and stumped up the stairs, his crutch making a terrible noise on the stone.
"Mother, mother! see what I have got because Moufflou did his tricks," he shouted. "And now you can buy those shoes you want so much, and the coffee that you miss so of a morning, and the new linen for Tasso, and the shirts for Sandro."
For to the mind of Lolo two francs was as two millions,—source unfathomable of riches inexhaustible!
With the afternoon he and Moufflou trotted down the arcades of the Uffizi and down the Lung' Arno to the hotel of the stranger, and, showing the stranger's card, which Lolo could not read, they were shown at once into a great chamber, all gilding and fresco and velvet furniture.
But Lolo, being a little Florentine, was never troubled by externals, or daunted by mere sofas and chairs: he stood and looked around him with perfect composure; and Moufflou, whose attitude, when he was not romping, was always one of magisterial gravity, sat on his haunches and did the same.
Soon the foreigner he had seen in the forenoon entered and spoke to him, and led him into another chamber, where stretched on a couch was a little wan-faced boy about seven years old; a pretty boy, but so pallid, so wasted, so helpless. This poor little boy was heir to a great name and a great fortune, but all the science in the world could not make him strong enough to run about among the daisies, or able to draw a single breath without pain. A feeble smile lit up his face as he saw Moufflou and Lolo; then a shadow chased it away.
"Little boy is lame like me," he said, in a tongue Lolo did not understand.
"Yes, but he is a strong little boy, and can move about, as perhaps the suns of his country will make you do," said the gentleman, who was the poor little boy's father. "He has brought you his poodle to amuse you. What a handsome dog! is it not?"
"Oh,buffins!" said the poor little fellow, stretching out his wasted hands to Moufflou, who submitted his leonine crest to the caress.
Then Lolo went through the performance, and Moufflou acquitted himself ably as ever; and the little invalid laughed and shouted with his tiny thin voice, and enjoyed it all immensely, and rained cakes and biscuits on both the poodle and its master. Lolo crumped the pastries with willing white teeth, and Moufflou did no less. Then they got up to go, and the sick child on the couch burst into fretful lamentations and outcries.
"I want the dog! I will have the dog!" was all he kept repeating.
But Lolo did not know what he said, and was only sorry to see him so unhappy.
"You shall have the dog to-morrow," said the gentleman, to pacify his little son; and he hurried Lolo and Moufflou out of the room, and consigned them to a servant, having given Lolo five francs this time.
"Why, Moufflou," said Lolo, with a chuckle of delight, "if we could find a foreigner every day, we could eat meat at supper, Moufflou, and go to the theatre every evening?"
And he and his crutch clattered home with great eagerness and excitement, and Moufflou trotted on his four frilled feet, the blue bow with which Bice had tied up his curls on the top of his head, fluttering in the wind. But, alas! even his five francs could bring no comfort at home. He found his whole family wailing and mourning in utterly inconsolable distress.
Tasso had drawn his number that morning, and the number was seven, and he must go and be a conscript for three years.
The poor young man stood in the midst of his weeping brothers and sisters, with his mother leaning against his shoulder, and down his own brown cheeks the tears were falling. He must go, and lose his place in the public gardens, and leave his people to starve as they might, and be put in a tomfool's jacket, and drafted off among cursing and swearing and strange faces, friendless, homeless, miserable! And the mother,—what would become of the mother?
Tasso was the best of lads and the mildest. He was quite happy sweeping up the leaves in the long alleys of the Cascine, or mowing the green lawns under the ilex avenues, and coming home at supper-time, among the merry little people and the good woman that he loved. He was quite contented; he wanted nothing, only to be let alone; and they would not let him alone. They would haul him away to put a heavy musket in his hand and a heavy knapsack on his back, and drill him, and curse him, and make him into a human target, a live popinjay.
No one had any heed for Lolo and his five francs, and Moufflou, understanding that some great sorrow had fallen on his friends, sat down and lifted up his voice and howled.
Tasso must go away!—that was all they understood. For three long years they must go without the sight of his face, the aid of his strength, the pleasure of his smile: Tasso must go! When Lolo understood the calamity that had befallen them, he gathered Moufflou up against his breast, and sat down too on the floor beside him and cried as if he would never stop crying.
There was no help for it; it was one of those misfortunes which are, as we say in Italian, like a tile tumbled on the head. The tile drops from a height, and the poor head bows under the unseen blow. That is all.
"What is the use of that?" said the mother, passionately, when Lolo showed her his five francs. "It will not buy Tasso's discharge."
Lolo felt that his mother was cruel and unjust, and crept to bed with Moufflou. Moufflou always slept on Lolo's feet.
The next morning Lolo got up before sunrise, and he and Moufflou accompanied Tasso to his work in the Cascine.
Lolo loved his brother, and clung to every moment whilst they could still be together.
"Can nothing keep you, Tasso?" he said, despairingly, as they went down the leafy aisles, whilst the Arno water was growing golden as the sun rose.
Tasso sighed.
"Nothing, dear. Unless Gesu would send me a thousand francs to buy a substitute."
And he knew he might as well have said, "If one could coin gold ducats out of the sunbeams on Arno water."
Lolo was very sorrowful as he lay on the grass in the meadow where Tasso was at work, and the poodle lay stretched beside him.
When Lolo went home to dinner (Tasso took his wrapped in a handkerchief) he found his mother very agitated and excited. She was laughing one moment, crying the next. She was passionate and peevish, tender and jocose by turns; there was something forced and feverish about her which the children felt but did not comprehend. She was a woman of not very much intelligence, and she had a secret, and she carried it ill, and knew not what to do with it; but they could not tell that. They only felt a vague sense of disturbance and timidity at her unwonted manner.
The meal over (it was only bean-soup, and that is soon eaten), the mother said sharply to Lolo, "Your aunt Anita wants you this afternoon. She has to go out, and you are needed to stay with the children: be off with you."
Lolo was an obedient child; he took his hat and jumped up as quickly as his halting hip would let him. He called Moufflou, who was asleep.
"Leave the dog," said his mother, sharply. "'Nita will not have him messing and carrying mud about her nice clean rooms. She told me so. Leave him. I say."
"Leave Moufflou!" echoed Lolo, for never in all Moufflou's life had Lolo parted from him. Leave Moufflou! He stared open-eyed and open-mouthed at his mother. What could have come to her?
"Leave him, I say," she repeated, more sharply than ever. "Must I speak twice to my own children? Be off with you, and leave the dog, I say."
And she clutched Moufflou by his long silky mane and dragged him backwards, whilst with the other hand she thrust out of the door Lolo and Bice.
Lolo began to hammer with his crutch at the door thus closed on him; but Bice coaxed and entreated him.
"Poor mother has been so worried about Tasso," she pleaded. "And what harm can come to Moufflou? And I do think he was tired, Lolo; the Cascine is a long way; and it is quite true that Aunt 'Nita never liked him."
So by one means and another she coaxed her brother away; and they went almost in silence to where their Aunt Anita dwelt, which was across the river, near the dark-red bell-shaped dome of Santa Spirito.
It was true that her aunt had wanted them to mind her room and her babies whilst she was away carrying home some lace to a villa outside the Roman gate, for she was a lace-washer and clear-starcher by trade. There they had to stay in the little dark room with the two babies, with nothing to amuse the time except the clang of the bells of the church of the Holy Spirit, and the voices of the lemonade-sellers shouting in thestreet below. Aunt Anita did not get back till it was more than dusk, and the two children trotted homeward hand in hand, Lolo's leg dragging itself painfully along, for without Moufflou's white figure dancing on before him he felt very tired indeed. It was pitch dark when they got to Or San Michele, and the lamps burned dully.
Lolo stumped up the stairs wearily, with a vague, dull fear at his small heart.
"Moufflou, Moufflou!" he called. Where was Moufflou? Always at the first sound of his crutch the poodle came flying towards him. "Moufflou, Moufflou!" he called all the way up the long, dark twisting stone stair. He pushed open the door, and he called again, "Moufflou, Moufflou!"
But no dog answered to his call.
"Mother, where is Moufflou?" he asked, staring with blinking, dazzled eyes into the oil-lit room where his mother sat knitting. Tasso was not then home from work. His mother went on with her knitting; there was an uneasy look on her face.
"Mother, what have you done with Moufflou,myMoufflou?" said Lolo, with a look that was almost stern on his ten-year-old face.
Then his mother, without looking up and moving her knitting-needles very rapidly, said,—
"Moufflou is sold!"
And little Dina, who was a quick, pert child, cried, with a shrill voice,—
"Mother has sold him for a thousand francs to the foreign gentleman."
"Sold him!"
Lolo grew white and grew cold as ice; he stammered, threw up his hands over his head, gasped a little for breath, then fell down in a dead swoon, his poor useless limb doubled under him.
When Tasso came home that sad night and found his little brother shivering, moaning, and half delirious, and when he heard what had been done, he was sorely grieved.
"Oh, mother, how could you do it?" he cried. "Poor, poor Moufflou! and Lolo loves him so!"
"I have got the money," said his mother, feverishly, "and you will not need to go for a soldier: we can buy your substitute. What is a poodle, that you mourn about it? We can get another poodle for Lolo."
"Another will not be Moufflou," said Tasso, and yet was seized with such a frantic happiness himself at the knowledge that he would not need go to the army, that he too felt as if he were drunk on new wine, and had not the heart to rebuke his mother.
"A thousand francs!" he muttered; "a thousand francs!Dio mio!Who could ever have fancied anybody would have given such a price for a common white poodle? One would think the gentleman had bought the church and the tabernacle!"
"Fools and their money are soon parted," said his mother, with cross contempt.
It was true: she had sold Moufflou.
The English gentleman had called on her while Lolo and the dog had been in the Cascine, and had said that he was desirous of buying the poodle, which had so diverted his sick child that the little invalid would not be comforted unless he possessed it. Now, at any other time the good woman would have sturdily refused any idea of selling Moufflou; but that morning the thousand francs whichwould buy Tasso's substitute were forever in her mind and before her eyes. When she heard the foreigner her heart gave a great leap, and her head swam giddily, and she thought, in a spasm of longing—if she could get those thousand francs! But though she was so dizzy and so upset she retained her grip on her native Florentine shrewdness. She said nothing of her need of the money; not a syllable of her sore distress. On the contrary, she was coy and wary, affected great reluctance to part with her pet, invented a great offer made for him by a director of a circus, and finally let fall a hint that less than a thousand francs she could never take for poor Moufflou.
The gentleman assented with so much willingness to the price that she instantly regretted not having asked double. He told her that if she would take the poodle that afternoon to his hotel the money should be paid to her; so she despatched her children after their noonday meal in various directions, and herself took Moufflou to his doom. She could not believe her senses when ten hundred-franc notes were put into her hand. She scrawled her signature, Rosina Calabucci, to a formal receipt, and went away, leaving Moufflou in his new owner's rooms, and hearing his howls and moans pursue her all the way down the staircase and out into the air.
She was not easy at what she had done.
"It seemed," she said to herself, "like selling a Christian."
But then to keep her eldest son at home,—what a joy that was! On the whole, she cried so and laughed so as she went down the Lung' Arno that once or twice people looked at her, thinking her out of her senses, and a guard spoke to her angrily.
Meanwhile, Lolo was sick and delirious with grief. Twenty times he got out of his bed and screamed to be allowed to go with Moufflou, and twenty times his mother and his brothers put him back again and held him down and tried in vain to quiet him.
The child was beside himself with misery. "Moufflou! Moufflou!" he sobbed at every moment; and by night he was in a raging fever, and when his mother, frightened, ran in and called in the doctor of the quarter, that worthy shook his head and said something as to a shock of the nervous system, and muttered a long word,—"meningitis."
Lolo took a hatred to the sight of Tasso, and thrust him away, and his mother too.
"It is for you Moufflou is sold," he said, with his little teeth and hands tight clinched.
After a day or two Tasso felt as if he could not bear his life, and went down to the hotel to see if the foreign gentleman would allow him to have Moufflou back for half an hour to quiet his little brother by a sight of him. But at the hotel he was told that theMilord Inglesewho had bought the dog of Rosina Calabucci had gone that same night of the purchase to Rome, to Naples, to Palermo,chi sa?
"And Moufflou with him?" asked Tasso.
"Thebarbonehe had bought went with him," said the porter of the hotel. "Such a beast! Howling, shrieking, raging all the day, and all the paint scratched off thesalondoor."
Poor Moufflou! Tasso's heart was heavy as he heard of that sad helplessmisery of their bartered favorite and friend.
"What matter?" said his mother, fiercely, when he told her. "A dog is a dog. They will feed him better than we could. In a week he will have forgotten—che!"
But Tasso feared that Moufflou would not forget. Lolo certainly would not. The doctor came to the bedside twice a day, and ice and water were kept on the aching hot little head that had got the malady with the long name, and for the chief part of the time Lolo lay quiet, dull, and stupid, breathing heavily, and then at intervals cried and sobbed and shrieked hysterically for Moufflou.
"Can you not get what he calls for to quiet him with a sight of it?" said the doctor. But that was not possible, and poor Rosina covered her head with her apron and felt a guilty creature.
"Still, you will not go to the army," she said to Tasso. Clinging to that immense joy for her consolation. "Only think! we can pay Guido Squarcione to go for you. He always said he would go if anybody would pay him. Oh, my Tasso, surely to keep you is worth a dog's life!"
"And Lolo's?" said Tasso, gloomily. "Nay, mother, it works ill to meddle too much with fate. I drew my number; I was bound to go. Heaven would have made it up to you somehow."
"Heaven sent me the foreigner; the Madonna's own self sent him to ease a mother's pain," said Rosina, rapidly and angrily. "There are the thousand francs safe to hand in thecassone, and what, pray, is it we miss? Only a dog like a sheep, that brought gallons of mud in with him every time it rained, and ate as much as any one of you."
"But Lolo?" said Tasso, under his breath.
His mother was so irritated and so tormented by her own conscience that she upset all the cabbage broth into the burning charcoal.
"Lolo was always a little fool, thinking of nothing but the church and the dog and nasty field-flowers," she said, angrily. "I humored him ever too much because of the hurt to his hip, and so—and so—"
Then the poor soul made matters worse by dropping her tears into the saucepan, and fanning the charcoal so furiously that the flame caught her fan of cane-leaves, and would have burned her arm had not Tasso been there.
"You are my prop and safety always. Who would not have done what I did? Not Santa Felicita herself," she said, with a great sob.
But all this did not cure poor Lolo.
The days and the weeks of the golden autumn weather passed away, and he was always in danger, and the small close room where he slept with Sandro and Beppo and Tasso was not one to cure such an illness as had now beset him. Tasso went to his work with a sick heart in the Cascine, where the colchicum was all lilac among the meadow grass, and the ashes and elms were taking their first flush of the coming autumnal change. He did not think Lolo would ever get well, and the good lad felt as if he had been the murderer of his little brother.
True, he had had no hand or voice in the sale of Moufflou, but Moufflou had been sold for his sake. It made him feel half guilty, very unhappy, quite unworthy of all the sacrifice that had been made for him. "Nobody shouldmeddle with fate," thought Tasso, who knew his grandfather had died in San Bonifazio because he had driven himself mad over the dream-book trying to get lucky numbers for the lottery and become a rich man at a stroke.
It was rapture, indeed, to know that he was free of the army for a time at least, that he might go on undisturbed at his healthful labor, and get a rise in wages as time went on, and dwell in peace with his family, and perhaps—perhaps in time earn enough to marry pretty flaxen-haired Biondina, the daughter of the barber in the piazzetta. It was rapture indeed; but then poor Moufflou!—and poor, poor Lolo! Tasso felt as if he had bought his own exemption by seeing his little brother and the good dog torn in pieces and buried alive for his service.
And where was poor Moufflou?
Gone far away somewhere south in the hurrying, screeching, vomiting, braying train it made Tasso giddy only to look at as it rushed by the green meadows beyond the Cascine on its way to the sea.
"If he could see the dog he cries so for, it might save him," said the doctor, who stood with grave face watching Lolo.
But that was beyond any one's power. No one could tell where Moufflou was. He might be carried away to England, to France, to Russia, to America,—who could say? They did not know where his purchaser had gone. Moufflou even might be dead.
The poor mother, when the doctor said that, went and looked at the ten hundred-franc notes that were once like angels' faces to her, and said to them,—
"Oh, you children of Satan, why did you tempt me? I sold the poor, innocent, trustful beast to get you, and now my child is dying!"
Her eldest son would stay at home, indeed; but if this little lame one died! Rosina Calabucci would have given up the notes and consented never to own five francs in her life if only she could have gone back over the time and kept Moufflou, and seen his little master running out with him into the sunshine.
More than a month went by, and Lolo lay in the same state, his yellow hair shorn, his eyes dilated and yet stupid, life kept in him by a spoonful of milk, a lump of ice, a drink of lemon-water; always muttering, when he spoke at all, "Moufflou, Moufflou,dov' eMoufflou?" and lying for days together in somnolence and unconsciousness, with the fire eating at his brain and the weight lying on it like a stone.
The neighbors were kind, and brought fruit and the like, and sat up with him, and chattered so all at once in one continuous brawl that they were enough in themselves to kill him, for such is ever the Italian fashion of sympathy in all illness.
But Lolo did not get well, did not even seem to see the light at all, or to distinguish any sounds around him; and the doctor in plain words told Rosina Calabucci that her little boy must die. Die, and the church so near! She could not believe it. Could St. Mark, and St. George, and the rest that he had loved so do nothing for him? No, said the doctor, they could do nothing; the dog might do something, since the brain had so fastened on that one idea; but then they had sold the dog.
"Yes; I sold him!" said the poor mother, breaking into floods of remorseful tears.
So at last the end drew so nigh that one twilight time the priest came out of the great arched door that is next it. Mark, with the Host uplifted, and a little acolyte ringing the bell before it, and passed across the piazzetta, and went up the dark staircase of Rosina's dwelling, and passed through the weeping, terrified children, and went to the bedside of Lolo.
Lolo was unconscious, but the holy man touched his little body and limbs with the sacred oil, and prayed over him, and then stood sorrowful with bowed head.
Lolo had had his first communion in the summer, and in his preparation for it had shown an intelligence and devoutness that had won the priest's gentle heart.
Standing there, the holy man commended the innocent soul to God. It was the last service to be rendered to him save that very last of all when the funeral office should be read above his little grave among the millions of nameless dead at the sepulchres of the poor at Trebbiano.
All was still as the priest's voice ceased; only the sobs of the mother and of the children broke the stillness as they kneeled; the hand of Biondina had stolen into Tasso's.
Suddenly, there was a loud scuffling noise; hurrying feet came patter, patter, patter up the stairs, a ball of mud and dust flew over the heads of the kneeling figures, fleet as the wind Moufflou dashed through the room and leaped upon the bed.
Lolo opened his heavy eyes, and a sudden light of consciousness gleamed in them like a sunbeam. "Moufflou!" he murmured, in his little thin faint voice. The dog pressed close to his breast and kissed his wasted face.
Moufflou was come home!
And Lolo came home too, for death let go its hold upon him. Little by little, very faintly and flickeringly and very uncertainly at the first, life returned to the poor little body, and reason to the tormented, heated little brain. Moufflou was his physician; Moufflou, who, himself a skeleton under his matted curls, would not stir from his side and looked at him all day long with two beaming brown eyes full of unutterable love.
Lolo was happy; he asked no questions,—was too weak, indeed, even to wonder. He had Moufflou; that was enough.
Alas! though they dared not say so in his hearing, it was not enough for his elders. His mother and Tasso knew that the poodle had been sold and paid for; that they could lay no claim to keep him; and that almost certainly his purchaser would seek him out and assert his indisputable right to him. And then how would Lolo ever bear that second parting?—Lolo, so weak that he weighed no more than if he had been a little bird.
Moufflou had, no doubt, traveled a long distance and suffered much. He was but skin and bone; he bore the marks of blows and kicks; his once silken hair was all discolored and matted; he had, no doubt, traveled far. But then his purchaser would be sure to ask for him, soon or late, at his old home; and then? Well, then if they did not give him up themselves, the law would make them.
Rosina Calabucci and Tasso, though they dared say nothing before any of the children, felt their hearts in theirmouths at every step on the stair, and the first interrogation of Tasso every evening when he came from his work was, "Has any one come for Moufflou?" For ten days no one came, and their first terrors lulled a little.
On the eleventh morning, a feast-day, on which Tasso was not going to his labors in the Cascine, there came a person, with a foreign look, who said the words they so much dreaded to hear: "Has the poodle that you sold to an English gentleman come back to you?"
Yes: his English master claimed him!