I
Eustace was a thorough gentleman. There was candor in his quack, and affability in his waddle; and underneath his snowy down beat a pure and sympathetic heart. In short, he was a most exemplary duck.
Or rather, to be more correct, a drake: for he was a husband, and the proud father of several eggs.
He admired his wife tremendously. "Gertrude," he said to her one day, as he squatted beside the nest in his burdock home, "you are certainly a wonderful female to have laid those eggs. I can't tell you how I respect you for what you have done."
"That's all very well," she replied, preening herself coolly, "but I notice you never offer to sit on them."
"That's all very well," she replied, preening, "but I notice you never offer to sit on them."
"That's all very well," she replied, preening, "but I notice you never offer to sit on them."
"That's all very well," she replied, preening, "but I notice you never offer to sit on them."
Eustace was taken aback. "Surely you wouldn't expect me to do that!" he said.
"I don't see why not. I've been sitting here for over two weeks, and now it seems only fair that you should take your turn."
"But, my dear duckling," he protested, "it would never do! It would look unmanly. Think how Clarence would crow over me!"
"That's it!" she said scornfully. "That's the way it is with you drakes! You haven't the spunk to do what you ought to, for fear some old libertine of a rooster will make fun of you!"
"But, darling ..."
"Oh you males! You expect a female to give up everything for motherhood, and yet you aren't willing, or are afraid, to do anything to make her life endurable!"
"But I should think you would be happy, with such beautiful eggs as these," he ventured in a conciliatory tone. "Look at Martha:sheseems quite blissful over hers, and yet they aren't nearly as large or as white."
This allusion had just the wrong effect. "Now don't try to set up that stupid hen as an example for me!" she snapped indignantly. "All her life she's done nothing but lay eggs and sit on them. And what is the result?—she hasn't an idea under her comb, no, not even sense enough to know that Clarence is carrying on disgracefully with other chickens."
Eustace, feeling uncomfortable, tried to interpose a pacifying remark, but she did not give him a chance.
"It's females like that who have kept our sex in subjection. ButI'mnot one of them, let me tell you. I believe in a communal incubator."
"Yes, dear,—such a thing might be very convenient, if it were once established,—though I fear it would lack the personal touch. But for the time being, since there isn't any communal incubator, your duty is to sit on your eggs."
"My duty! How about my duty to myself? Don't you suppose that my nature demands any higher fulfillment than this?" Rustling her feathers petulantly, she got up.
"Stop!" he cried. "You shall not desert our eggs! I have acceded to your other modernisms—your coop-reform theories, your sex-education for ducklings; I have even come out openly for the single standard of morality;—but this thing I will not tolerate."
"You'd like me to be an insipid nestwarmer like Martha, wouldn't you? Well, I won't, now. I intend to know life!" And, with a defiant waggle of her tail, she departed, to undertake research in distant puddles.
Eustace felt stunned. He was so dazed that he allowed a luscious black beetle, that crawled past within easy range, to proceed on its way ungobbled. Poor, forlorn eggs, he thought, children of an unnatural mother, they were too young to realize that they had been forsaken!
Pity overcame his pride: he sidled over and sat on them. They felt rather cosy and comforting, pressing thus snugly against his paternal breast. He spread out his feathers lovingly.
He would sit here for a while, he thought, as he craned his neck this way and that to be sure that no one was looking,—yes, he would sit here till Gertrude returned, and then he would do what he could to make things up again. After all, there was a good deal in what she had said. Shehadhad a hard time, sitting still for so many days, and he ought to be willing to....
"Er-ur-er-ur-errr!" crowed an insolent voice, startlingly near by.
Clarence! Eustace hopped off the eggs as though they were live coals. Hastily snapping up something from the ground, he began gulping it assiduously, with much show of hunger. But his success was not great, for it was a rubber washer and proved to be more pliable than swallowable.
Clarence came swaggering up with, "Hello, Eustace, old game bird! Say, did you see a good-looking blonde pullet go past here?"
Eustace laid down the washer and answered stiffly, "No."
"Well, you needn't act so sanctimoniously about it," said the rooster with a leer. "You may fool your wife with your righteous air, but you can't gull me!" He gave Eustace a sly dig in the wishbone.
"Clarence," said the other with dignity, "there are some things which, I fear, we shall never regard in the same light."
The rooster burst into a jeering gurgle, flapping his wings with merriment. "Oh, I forgot,—you're one of those single standard cranks. Well, no wonder you're henpecked!" Just then he caught sight of the nest. "Been sitting on the eggs, like a well-trained husband?"
"No. Certainly not!" stammered Eustace, overcome with mortification.
Clarence, not to be hoodwinked with such a feeble denial, only chortled the more scoffingly. He would have continued his gibes but for the sudden appearance of the blonde pullet. "Ah, there she is!" he exclaimed abruptly, and strutted off after her.
The frame of mind in which Eustace now found himself was not a pleasant one. "I suppose the old scoundrel will tell everybody he caught me sitting on the eggs!" he reflected. "And how those gossipy Guinea fowls will carry on when they hear it!" He picked up the washer again and chewed it malevolently—nyap, nyap, nyap, nyap—ulp!—out it flipped. Oh, what was the use of anything anyhow? Casting one look at the eggs that had been the innocent authors of his undoing, he waddled sadly away and buried his dejected head in the depths of the frog-pond.
When, several hours later, he returned home, he found Gertrude already there. She was in the best of spirits. "What do you think," she said breathlessly, "my theories are working out!"
But he hardly heard her. He was staring blankly at the nest. It was empty. The beautiful white eggs were gone.
"What have you done with our poor unhatched children?" he gasped.
"Nothing," she replied calmly. "I was just going to tell you: they have been taken to the communal incubator."
"What!—Who took them?"
"I don't know."
"Then how do you know where they are gone?"
"By intuition, you stupid. How else should you expect me to know?—It justhadto come. I've been predicting it all along."
"I only hope nothing serious has happened to them," he said earnestly.
"Nonsense!" she replied. Then she went on triumphantly: "Think what it will mean for them. They will be hatched scientifically, eugenically. And when our little girls grow up—for some of them may be girls—they will befree women; they will enjoy the happiness of motherhood without its drudgery."
Eustace did not share her enthusiasm. He felt anxious and lonesome.
A week later, the whole barnyard was agog with the news that Martha had hatched out a brood of ducklings.
Gertrude veiled her disappointment over there being really no communal incubator, by remarking sarcastically to her husband, "Well, a hot-nurse is the next best thing, and Martha makes an excellent one. It's all she's capable of."
"But do you think people will understand?" asked Eustace uneasily.
"All who keep abreast of the times will."
But gossip was rife. The Guinea hens started it, jabbering most scurrilously; the geese prated of it to the turkeys, who held up their feathers in genteel horror at the thought of such a scandal; and a pair of puritanical doves, looking down disapprovingly from a high gable, puffed themselves out with self-righteousness and murmured thanks be to heaven that they had always kept aloof from everybody else.
When the news reached Clarence, he left off flirting with his newest affinity and stalked home in a towering rage. He found Martha sitting on a batch of eggs, while round about her pattered the furry little ducklings.
"Faithless wife!" he cried. "Go! Never let me see your beak again! And take your web-footed brats with you!"
The hen was in a pitiable flutter of distress. "I am innocent," she clucked. "I have been true to you. I really don't knowhowit happened."
"Hah! Do you expect me to believe that, you English sparrow?"
"Revile me and peck me, if you have stopped loving me,—but, oh, don't drive me away from my eggs."
"Go!" he reiterated, shaking his comb at her. "You're not fit to have the custody of them!"
The poor flustered thing got up, all atremble. She called despondently to her foster children, who toddled after her as she departed.
"Now for that villain of a drake!" thought Clarence, and he set out in search of Eustace.
The father of the ducklings was at that moment in the middle of the pond, regaling himself upon a lucky find of frog's-egg tapioca. As he swallowed the succulent globules his neck writhed in contortions of joy.
"Hah! you guzzling hypocrite! you hawk in dove's clothing!" cried a voice.
Eustace looked up. There on the bank was Clarence, pacing to and fro in a fury.
"Come out on shore, you sleek betrayer, you whited sepulcher!"
The full terror of his situation dawned on him. Here was he, despite his conscientious integrity, accused of a most heinous sin,—and, worst of all, accused by Clarence!
Interested spectators began to assemble on the bank. Eustace became a center of attention. And the rooster continued to rail and threaten.
"Oh, if I could only get at you!—you with your single standard!"
That was a bombshell. "Shut your bill, you liar!" shouted Eustace, as, with a vigorous kick of his foot, he wheeled away from the tapioca and started for the shore.
Gertrude, arriving on the scene with a flying scuttle, beheld her hero paddling resolutely to land. How proud she was to see him face that big prize-fighter! But, determined that they should not come to blows, she rushed up behind Clarence and honked in his ear: "Ilaid those eggs, you blustering fool. Martha onlysaton them. She would sit on anything."
"What—what's that?" asked the startled rooster.
"Martha would sit onanything," repeated the Amazon. "I can prove it.—Stand back, Eustace!—Here she comes now. I'll make her sit on that stone." She indicated a smooth white pebble that was somewhat oval in shape.
As she spoke, the forlorn hen drew near, followed by the ducklings. They trailed along after her like a train of guilt.
"Shameless creature!" muttered Clarence.
But she, keeping her eyes dejectedly on the ground, did not notice him, nor anyone else.
Gertrude stationed herself by the pebble. As Martha passed by, she said, in a tone of politeness, "Pardon me, but you dropped an egg."
Martha stopped. "Oh, did I?" she said gratefully. "Thank you, thank you for telling me. I'm so bewildered I hardly know what I'm doing—Ah, the poor little thing is all cold!" she added, sitting compassionately upon the pebble; while, unobserved by her, the ducklings tobogganed down the bank into the water.
Gertrude eyed the rooster witheringly. "Whom are you going to fight with aboutthisegg?" she demanded.
"Well, I'll be fricasseed!" said Clarence. Then he turned to the drake. "Eustace, I apologize. And I don't mind saying that you have a remarkably clever wife."
"She's the most wonderful female in feathers!" assented Eustace fervently.
"However," added the rooster, "there are compensations about having a dull one." For among the crowd of onlookers his eye had just fallen upon a little bantam lady whom he had never seen before.