III
Eustace waddled stanchly in the path of virtue. Despite the ill success of his attempt to set Clarence's coop in order, he still pursued his crusade against plural doting.
The unregenerate rooster continued to chaff him.
"Ah there, old top-knot!" Clarence would gurgle. "How's our bright little uplifter to-day? Still busily uplifting?"
But the thrust that got Eustace in the pin feathers was:
"I know why you're such a model drake,—it's because your wife is the only duckess in the barnyard."
"Not at all!" he replied. "The principles for which I stand are absolute. They would be the same if there were a hundred duckesses besides Gertrude!"
"Even a hundredprettyones?"
"Certainly!"
Clarence chuckled.
"For all your noble principles, I wouldn't trust you with a wooden decoy! No, old angel-wings, I.... Look! as I live, a bewitching broiler! What elegantly slender drumsticks she has! I'll have to make her acquaintance."
Forgetting all about Eustace, he scrambled out of the woodpile (where this conversation was held), and stalked forward jauntily to meet the new arrival.
"Are you looking for anyone?" he inquired gallantly.
"No, I'm a stranger. I just arrived by the latest crate."
"Ah, I see. So you're one of this week's débutantes.—Then may I have the honor of showing you about?"
"You're very kind."
And off they strolled down the alley of tin cans known as Lover's Lane.
Eustace watched them sadly.
"So young and tender!" he thought. "Such chick-like innocence!" The wickedness of the world appalled him.
Hearing an unfamiliar voice, he looked up. Like a queenly galleon swaying from side to side, there approached a snowy, rounded whiteness. The paddling feet seemed scarcely to leave the ground. A golden-webbed goddess!
Eustace was spellbound.
She, all unconscious, continued to approach, caroling little toot-like honks. There was a soft rasp in her voice that thrilled him to the gizzard.
Seeing Eustace, she paused. Their eyes met. Then, with a pretty turn of her head, she looked at him out of the other eye.
"Who are you?" he said, as though in a dream.
"I am Phyllis," she answered simply.
"What a beautiful name!"
"And yours?"
"Eustace."
After a moment of silence, he asked:
"Where did you come from?"
She sighed.
"From a far-distant barnyard. I was kidnapped."
"Kidnapped!"
"Yes, snatched away from my mother and sisters."
"But was there no one to defend you?"
She shook her tail mournfully. A glistening tear coursed down her lovely beak.
"There, little bird, don't cry!" he said sympathetically, smoothing down her soft feathers.
"I was subjected to the most cruel indignities," she murmured.... "I, who had always been treated with particular care and regaled with special dishes of mush!"
"Oh!" he exclaimed, his blood boiling at the thought, "If only I had been there!" He clenched his pinions.
Smiling gratefully amid her tears, she quacked:
"You are very comforting."
Eustace's heart beat faster.
"I was lonely and homesick," she continued, "but your sympathy makes me forget everything."
"Phyllis!"
His crop heaved.
"Now I am not even sorry!"
"Really? Do you really mean that?"
"Yes. For in that other barnyard there were no drakes as high-minded and chivalrous as you."
High-minded! Chivalrous! How those words singed him! Dazedly he awoke from his wild dream.
"I ... I am not what you think I am," he stammered, conscience-stricken. "I am unworthy. I forgot myself. Forgive me ... I ... I am a married bird!"
And he fled, wobbling rather than waddling, from her presence.
In the solitude of the dim crypt under the veranda he pondered over what had happened. He was contrite, humbled, thoroughly ashamed of himself. As he listened to the ominous rumble of rocking chairs overhead, he felt that the Powers Above knew and were displeased.
And yet he could not free himself from the spell of the enchantress. Her image haunted him,—the dark eyes and radiant bill, the softly undulating neck, the downy complexion, the beautifully-rounded form, the feet that tapered exquisitely toward the heel....
Oppressed by the consciousness of sin, and, at the same time, inflamed by his guilty infatuation, Eustace could not endure being alone a moment longer. He decided to go home. It would be hard to look Gertrude in the beak ... but he would have to; for he needed her spiritual influence. Communion with her strong nature would calm him.
Toddling home moodily, he arrived just as his wife was on the point of leaving.
"Where are you going?" he said.
(Howbonyshe looked to-day!)
"To the mass meeting at the haystack."
"What mass meeting?"
"You don't mean to tell me you've forgotten!"
"Oh, I remember now. This is the day of your rally." But she was not satisfied.
"I must say, you take a fine interest in my work!" she exclaimed caustically. "Why, you act as though you didn't care whether I raised the funds for that laying-in hospital or not!"
"Ido, dear. But to-day ... I ... I don't feel well. I have a headache."
"I'm sorry.—But hurry and come along, or you'll be late."
The thought of facing that gabbling assemblage was revolting to him.
"I don't think I'll go."
"What!"
"I believe I'll stay home.—I came here to have a talk with you, Gertrude. I need your spiritual help."
"I'm awfully sorry, then, that you didn't come a little sooner,—for you know how glad I always am to discuss anything that is on your mind. If you had only...."
"But couldn't you stay with me just alittlewhile?"
"My dear Eustace, you seem to forget that I have topresideat that meeting. How could I stay with you? Besides, this whole idea of endowing a free nest-box is mine, and I intend to see it carried through."
She started off.
"But, Gertrude ..." he protested.
She paused, with an expression of impatience, and said:
"Oh, well, I'll be late, then. What is it?"
"Gertrude ... I just wanted to talk with you ... and be with you. I...."
"Do hurry!"
The words stuck in his gullet.
"Well, I can't wait here all day, you know!"
"Gertrude ..."
"Sorry, but I'll have to see you some other time. Good-bye!" And she hastened away to her meeting.
Eustace gazed after her stonily.
"You might have saved me—if you had cared!"
He had craned out to her for help, and she had deliberately sidled away from him.
"Hah!" he quacked bitterly. "What difference does it make! What does anything matter! Hah! I flap my wings at the world!"
He was becoming a queer duck.
Casting one farewell look at his home, he fled. Beyond the outermost paling of the barnyard he went, on into the uncharted wilds of the cow pasture. He waddled blindly.
As he entered a grove of cat-tails, there was a stifled quack. A snowy apparition started up from the couch of reeds where it had been squatting.
"You!" cried Eustace.
She returned his gaze mutely.
"How ... how did you get here?" he asked.
"The cold-heartedness I met with was more than I could bear. It drove me out. Even you, the only living fowl who spoke to me ... even you...."
"Ah, can't you understand!"
"Yes, I understand ... only too well. Let's not talk of it.—Tell me, how is it thatyouare here?"
"I, too, am an exile."
"What! Why, I heard you spoken of as a great leader, almost a prophet."
"All that is past!" he said in soul-agony. "I go to become a hermit."
"But your wife?"
"I shall never see her again."
There was a tense silence. Phyllis, avoiding his look, toyed nervously with a leaf. At last, stiffening up his neck with as much firmness as he could muster, Eustace said:
"Good-bye."
She raised her lovely profile and was about to quack, when he burst out, croaking with emotion:
"Ah, Phyllis, Phyllis! I have said a last farewell to nest, wife, career,—but I cannot say it to you! You hold me as with a magic spell. Love—tempestuous, convention-defying—has swept me off my webs."
"I, too, have...."
She buried her head, in confusion, under her wing.
"Phyllis!"
He covered her beautiful amber wax-cherry lips with kisses.
After a while she murmured:
"We'll be exiles together, won't we, dear."
"Yes, my duckie. We'll paddle out on the pond of love sidebone by sidebone. We'll seek some friendly wild where we may build our nest, far from the madding cackle."
"Yes; in a land of milk-weed and honeysuckle."
"My swan! My nightingale! My dove!"
"My kingbird!"
Lifted from earth on wings of ecstacy, Eustace recited:
"A nook of rushes underneath the bough,A bug or twain, or toothsome frog—and thouBeside me quacking in the wilderness,—O, wilderness were paradise enow!"
"A nook of rushes underneath the bough,A bug or twain, or toothsome frog—and thouBeside me quacking in the wilderness,—O, wilderness were paradise enow!"
"A nook of rushes underneath the bough,A bug or twain, or toothsome frog—and thouBeside me quacking in the wilderness,—O, wilderness were paradise enow!"
"A nook of rushes underneath the bough,
A bug or twain, or toothsome frog—and thou
Beside me quacking in the wilderness,—
O, wilderness were paradise enow!"
Phyllis sighed.
"But come!" said Eustace eagerly. "Let us fly to that wilderness!"
"Yes, let us fly!"
Gathering up her feathers, she waddled with him out into the great unknown.
Before they had traveled a distance of twenty leaves, they heard an awful sound. A gigantic Being, under whose terrible feet great twig-logs snapped like straws, came crashing through the jungle. In an instant he was upon them.
Eustace, disregarding his own peril, spread out his wings to shield Phyllis. But she, lacking the valor of a drake, ducked.
O fatal flop! In less time than the twitching of a tail the awful Being pounced down, seized her by her lily-white neck, and bore her, shrieking, away; while Eustace, following frenziedly, exhausted himself in futile cries. At sight of the execution block, his honks became hysterical.
The hatchet gleamed aloft. He turned away and closed his eyes. The sound of the blow went through him like a spit. Sick at heart, he staggered away, hardly aware that he was back in the barnyard.
"The good-to-eat die young!" he cried in anguish.
O the irony of life! Why should she be cut off in her prime, and he, a hardened sinner, be spared? Miserable bird that he was, why should he be left to linger on uselessly in the world?
"Mr. Eustace!" ventured a timid voice.
Looking up, he saw a bright little red-combed cockerel.
"Oh, sir," said the cockerel deferentially, "I've been searching for you everywhere."
His sweet ingenuousness was very appealing.
"You have? Why, what can I do for you?" said Eustace, softened.
"Please, sir, I'm secretary of the Young Peepers' League, and we want to know if you'll be kind enough to give us a talk tomorrow on 'Character Building'".
"Please, sir, I'm secretary of the Young Peepers' League."
"Please, sir, I'm secretary of the Young Peepers' League."
"Please, sir, I'm secretary of the Young Peepers' League."
What!—he, the weak and sinful wretch, the....
"Please say you will!" pleaded the cockerel. "It'll mean so much to us. You know, we all look up to you so!"
A feeling of balm stole into Eustace's breast.
"I will," he answered humbly, strumming the little chap's comb.
The young fowl thanked him, and then skipped away happily.
"Bless his little giblets!" sighed Eustace.
From that moment everything seemed more cheerful. The ground looked weedier, the pond looked greener, the watering trough looked leakier, the sleepy hollows of the dirt-bathing resort looked dustier, and the sky more like rain.
There was still work to be done, there were still ideals to be striven for.
Feeling once more himself—no, not quite his old self, for the fire through which he had just passed had burned into his soul—he went home to make peace with Gertrude.
She was waiting for him. Standing in front of a salmon-can cheval glass, she was anxiously massaging the wrinkles under her eyes. She had heard that there was a new duckess in the barnyard.
"Well, dear!" she exclaimed with unwonted cordiality; and then launched into a nervous babble of demonstrativeness.
Eustace let her chatter on. He was in too serious a mood to listen to her. Deep and solemn thoughts filled his mind.
"Vanity of vanities!" he reflected. "The paths of glory lead but to the gravy."
"The good-to-eat die young. The paths of glory lead but to the gravy."
"The good-to-eat die young. The paths of glory lead but to the gravy."
"The good-to-eat die young. The paths of glory lead but to the gravy."