CHAPTER VI.
Fritz, junior, slept soundly; but he had a child’s fashion of waking early. When he found the sunlight shining into his eyes through the window which, being unaccustomed to care for young folks, Aunt Ruth had forgotten to darken,—and thus insure her own undisturbed morning nap,—he sat up in bed and looked about him. He was perfectly wide awake on the instant, and the cheerfulness of the sunlight was scarcely greater than the clear light of the lad’s own happy nature.
“I was a dreadful bad boy, last night! I’m awful sorry I licked the crippler and—by jingo! I’ll go and tell him so!”
Paula had labored long and seriously with her little brother; but he didn’t take polishing well at all—that is, of the sort which his elder sister was minded to give him. It made not the slightest impression on this small man to be forbidden a dozen times a day to use the language which came naturally to his lips, and which from hisassociation with the boys of the street he had come to consider smart.
More than this, Uncle Fritz was always inclined to concur in Fritz, junior’s, own opinion. But, for the matter of that, pretty nearly everything the little lad did was “smart” in the eyes of his adoring uncle, who firmly believed that his namesake was an epitome of every human grace and virtue. He would not have had the child different for half his fortune; and it was well for the little fellow that he had the wholesomest and sweetest of natures, and that he had sprung from a race of gentlefolk.
But there was a polishing he did take, readily. If by any chance—alas! they were frequent—he had inadvertently really pained any living heart, he could not rest till he had done his childish utmost to banish that pain. Once, on one never-to-be-forgotten, dreadful day, he had told Fritzy Nunky a lie! “Story” does not express it; fib is too mild; falsehood or untruth indicate a premeditation which was absent from the offence; so, though it is an ugly word, never to be carelessly uttered or written, it must stand.No matter what the lie was about; that was between the two Fritzes. Suffice it to tell that the big Fritz had suffered actual agony, fearing that his idol was going to be found wanting in that first foundation of all nobility,—truthfulness. And the little Fritz has seen the agony, and—but the sorrow of a little child is sacred.
So that rough corner of his character was polished till the shining gold showed bright and sparkling. Fritz never told a second lie; nor would he have done so for any enticement which could have been offered him.
Now he remembered that he had been “spunky” and almost “killed” somebody; and somehow this tender-hearted little gentleman felt as if his day would begin better if he could get that unpleasant memory off his mind. So he slipped out of bed, threw his nightshirt into one corner of the room, soused the water in the bowl all over the floor, in his vain effort to make it answer for the tubbing to which he was accustomed, tried to straighten his curly tangles of hair with two strokes of the brush, then to button his shoes on the wrong feet, and gave up thematter as satisfactorily settled by leaving both unfastened, put his knickerbockers on wrong side before with a goodly protuberance of shirt waist to protest against the arrangement, and hied himself out of the room.
As he passed a little chamber under the stairs, he heard the familiar snore of Fritz the elder, and was about to run back and get a pillow to hurl at him. It was a kind of awakening to which both the Fritzes were accustomed, in their loving equality of playfellows, but for once Fritz, junior, refrained.
Not from the slightest hesitation about disturbing his guardian, but because it would hinder him from finding and apologizing to Melville. He was in a great hurry to get that job off his hands; then he would be free to hunt up that donkey who lived with his pretty aunt, and ask his permission to be ridden.
Melville was in a refreshing sleep. His feeble body needed it as much as his tired brain, for half of the invalid’s crossness came, had his relatives but known it, from a restlessness of mind which needed to be understood before itcould be cured. There had never been any one about him to understand it; so the crippled lad had lain month in and month out weaving his fancies to himself, and disdaining to confide them to any other, as one shrinks from trusting a perfectly and freshly ripened cluster of grapes to the careless fingers of a child, lest its delicate bloom be lost before its beauty becomes known.
Out of his dreamless rest he was awakened by the touch of a little hand.
“Wake up, you poor crippler, can’t you! I want to tell you I— Say, can’t you wake up?”
Fritz had stiffened the grasp of his fingers to a painful clutch; and he had yet to learn that Melville was habitually “sore all over,” outwardly as well as within.
The clutch succeeded where the gentler touch had failed, and the sick lad opened his eyes with such suddenness that his disturber fairly jumped.
“What the dickens are you doing here again?” roared Melville.
Fritz trembled. Still, he did not retreat; he was far too much in earnest.
“I come—I come—” began the child, andpaused, confused. He somehow found this humiliation of himself vastly harder than any of the many similar confessions he had previously made. He was accustomed to having his “I’m sorrys” met more than half way by the friendly interpretation of love.
But there was no love in the scowling brow upon the pillow, and only a very present memory of the indignity which its owner had suffered.
“Yes, I see you’ve ‘come.’ Why? That’s what I want to know!” thundered the invalid.
“What is it, Melville? Did you call me, darling?” sleepily asked Grandmother Capers, coming to the doorway; and Fritz’s ready attention was drawn away from his cousin to her.
He looked; he stared; and as he stared his eyes grew bigger and bigger, which was quite unnecessary, since they were very round and wide open at all times. He had never seen any such person, and instantly he decided that the old lady was the “Witch of Endor,” about whom his guardian was continually talking when things went wrong in his great business house. “The ‘Witch of Endor’ is to pay!” was Uncle Fritz’smost vehement expression; and little Fritz thought that this must be she, and he did not at all wonder that big Fritz dreaded her.
His feet began to shake in their ill-adjusted shoes, and, if his hair had not been so well deluged by those two dabs of the brush and bath water, it might have stood upright.
Melville saw the growing consternation on the childish face before him, and turned from it to its cause. Then he did not even attempt to restrain the disrespectful laugh which followed.
Grandmother Capers was one of those saving old ladies who do not wear their false teeth when asleep; and as by daylight she wore both “upper” and “under,” and as her features were of the sort described as hooked, the economy resulted in an undress, and sinister appearance, which was at least an unlucky transformation. Add to that the fact that she was also one of the fast fading race who cling to a combination of false-front and black silk skull-cap draped with lace by day, in lieu of their own silver locks, the effect when this regalia was laid aside added one more factor to a get-up which Fritz did notfind attractive. Then, being of slender build and sensitive temperament, she always found it convenient to sleep wrapped in one shawl; and, owing to the undue exposure of the night just gone, she had put on a second, of rich color and great amplitude. Below all trailed a heavy dressing-gown which was summer and winter bedfellow to shawl number one.
Melville was on the point of retorting to her usual fond inquiry: “No, I didn’t ‘call you darling!’” but one of those rare glimpses of humor which proved him, after all, to be something of a Kinsolving and relative to Ruth, averted the sharp retort. For the first time in his life he saw his doting grandmother as other people saw her; or might see her, if they were admitted to the close intimacy which was his.
“For goodness sake, grandmother! Haven’t you what you call a ‘Bay State’ shawl?”
“Yes. And I suppose you think I ought to have it on.” She laughed gaily, in relief from the usual reprimand and appreciation of their mutual wit.
But to the little foreigner the laugh was moreterrible than Melville’s frown had been. His chin dropped, and something very like a quiver swept over the brave red lips.
Melville’s gaze had returned to his cousin’s face by then, and an impish impulse seized him. He would make Fritz kiss Grandmother Capers! The child evidently regarded her with some inexplicable terror, and this would be a punishment complete and well-deserved.
“Come here a minute, grandma.”
The loving creature obeyed the summons swiftly, glad of his unusual gentleness, and in her feeble haste stumbled continually upon her long train. This gave her the hobbling gait which was the one touch needed to make her, in Fritz’s eyes, the so much dreaded “Endor woman.”
“I want you to kiss this sweet little boy. He is an early visitor, and so devoted, you see!”
Melville’s laugh, saying this, was harsh, but that Mrs. Capers did not observe. She only knew that Melville laughed. She was ready to do anything he asked of her. So she followed after the child, who slowly retreated, and bent her face to touch his.
“Kiss me, little man. Come, kiss me good-morning.”
Kiss the “Witch of Endor!” It was dreadful enough to know she really lived, and right here in his own grandmother’s house; but—kiss her! Before the horror of that rite the stalwart soul of the “little man” appeared to die within him. He tried to retreat still farther, and found himself prevented by the barrier of a wall. He darted his terrified glance this way and that for some way of escape, but the pale morning light showed nothing clearly. Else would the still bright eyes of Grandmother Capers have seen what they did not see, that the child’s hesitation was not shyness but fear; and even for Melville’s dear sake she would not have done what she did do.
Fritz felt the frill of her night-cap brush his hair, then her peppermint-scented breath reached his nostrils, and, with a shriek as if all the witches ever known to history were upon him, he struck out in his own defence.
Melville, even, had looked for no such result as this. At the most, he expected to see “a littlefun”; but his knowledge of healthy boyhood was slight, and a boy who, small as this one was, had yet pluck enough to protect himself from the aggressions even of “witches” was amazing to him.
Needless to say that poor Mrs. Capers was far more astonished than her grandson, and with a more serious cause. As the first blow of the sturdy little fist fell on her unsuspecting cheek, she started and staggered back. Then came a second blow, and she retreated still farther; but her aged feet caught in the folds of her long gown, and she was thrown violently to the floor.
For a moment chaos reigned.
Fritzy’s fighting blood was up. “St. George and the Dragon” and “Ralph the Lion Killer” were nothing to him. He, who all unarmed and unsuspecting, had met and conquered Uncle Fritz’s “Witch of Endor!” Wouldn’t Fritzy Nunky be a proud and happy man when she should be safely out of the way, and no longer “to pay!” At this thought the whacking blows redoubled, and it was only owing to Grandmother Capers’s well wrapped person that she was notthen and there annihilated, as her adversary, forsooth, intended.
Meanwhile, Melville lay helpless on his bed and hollaed. The game had gone to terrifying limits, and he was powerless to stop it, save by his lusty voice; which, for awhile, seemed rather to egg on the small pugilist than to restrain him.
Fortunately for all concerned, Content was also an early riser; and this one morning in especial she had been “up with the lark,” that she might help Aunt Ruth, rightly foreseeing that the sudden invasion of a whole flock of hungry youngsters would make breakfast-getting a task for many hands.
As she entered the passage which ran by the apartments devoted to the Caperses, the sound of Melville’s voice reached her. She was used already to hearing it pitched in the most disagreeable of tones, but there was something in these roars out of the common. She had heard him quarrelling with his grandmother, and, after intrusion on one such scene, had learned to take herself as far away as possible before witnessing another. Under all her gentleness, there wasstill enough of the old Kinsolving “substance” left in Content’s veins to make her wholly sympathize with Aunt Ruth’s views concerning Melville Capers’s treatment of his grandmother.
She paused an instant; then, arrested by the difference in the “roar,” the next she had pushed open the door and come upon the conflict. What it meant she could not guess; but what it was she saw only too plainly. With one bound she had caught up Fritz in her arms, and was holding the struggling child from further mischief.
But he was not minded to be so restrained. “Let me go! Let me go, you great girl, you!”
“Hush! Melville, stop calling, and tell me what it means,” answered Content, heedless of Fritz’s violent struggles but finding herself almost incompetent to control them.
“But I must call. There must somebody come. You can’t hold that infernal little beast and help grandma too. Ruth—Aunt Ruth! Grandmother! Somebody!!”
Grandmother Capers, feeling that she was no longer being assaulted, ventured to raise herhead. “Don’t mind me, darling. I—I’m not hurt much, I—I think.” But the feebleness of her tone denied her statement, and with a new distress Content saw that the poor old lady’s nose was bleeding.
The sight of the scarlet flow he had caused for a moment incited Fritz to fresh struggles and fresh exhibitions of prowess. Truly, it had been reserved for the last of his race to be the fighter amongst them! Another moment and he realized that this was the sweet-faced new cousin Content who was holding him, and that Aunt Ruth had said of her that she “was very, very lovely in her mind, as well as in her person.”
The weather-cock curiosity of childhood veered on the instant. He ceased kicking, but none too soon for the girlish strength he had taxed so severely, and improved his chance to scrutinize the features so near his own. Aunt Ruth had told him about Content, during that sleepy, undressing talk of the night before.
“How do you know that she is pretty in her mind, too?” he had asked.
“Because her mind shows through her face,”Aunt Ruth had answered; and now he had an excellent opportunity to see where. Not that he supposed his cousin’s face would be really transparent, but he believed it must be different from that of others. The only difference he found, however, was in the singular clearness and gentleness of her expression.
Content saw that for some reason she had gained his momentary attention, and she followed up her advantage. “Go quickly, and call Aunt Ruth. If you cannot find her bring somebody—the first person you can see.” Then she sat him down upon the floor, still wistfully regarding him lest this strange combination of tenderness and wrath, in the form of a boy, should develop some new and more untoward quality as well.
But she need not have feared. Beside the quiet command of her eye, his ear had caught the words: “Are you badly hurt, poor grandma?” uttered in a sympathetic voice by the “roaring crippler,” and he was completely at sea. So he walked slowly out of the room, but less in obedience to her wish than because he was puzzling to understand how this Melville, who washis own cousin and lived here in America, could by any possibility be the grandson of the “Witch of Endor,” who, he was perfectly sure, belonged by good rights at his uncle’s great book shop in Munich. So perplexed, indeed, was he by this problem that he walked straight into the legs of portly “Fritzy Nunky.”
“Hey, small sir! And so after waking up thy poor guardian with thy noisy racing over the stairs thou wouldst walk him down like a nine-pin! Hey?” The jolly uncle swung his nephew to his shoulder, and marched away through the passage to the open door at its end.
When they came to the sunlight, he cried, “And pray where was thy valet this morning? Surely, there is something out of common with this!” The great hand caught hold of the escaping waist frill and tucked it into hiding.
“But, Fritzy Nunky, I forgot. They want you, the folks do. The roaring crippler, and the lovely-minded girl, and the ‘Witch of Endor.’ I reckon I’ve about settledher, though! So you won’t have her no more ‘to pay.’ Ain’t you awful glad?”
By many unfortunate experiences Uncle Fritz had learned that he could not always rejoice when called upon to do so by his small nephew, and he promptly inquired, with some misgiving, “What do you mean, child?”
Fritz, junior, recognized the change from the tender “thou” to the sterner “you,” which with his guardian “meant business,” and he answered, instantly:
“I’ve pounded the old woman in there pretty hard, I reckon; and the girl said for you to come quick.”
“O Fritzy! more mischief?” demanded the uncle, reproachfully. Then he put the little boy down and ordered him to lead the way.
So Mr. Fritz Pickel’s introduction to old lady Capers was made under circumstances which neither that devotee of conventionality nor the courteous gentleman would have preferred. But one glance of his keen eyes showed him that the case was far too serious for any ceremony, and the expression of them as they rested upon the strangely attired and prostrate figure was one that his little nephew never forgot.