Is it a real English cottage?” we asked the agent suspiciously, “or is it one that has been hastily aged to rent to Americans?”
It was the real thing: he vouched for it. It was right in the middle of England. The children could walk for miles in any direction without falling off the edge of England and getting wet.
“See here!” I said. “How many blocks from Scotland is it?”
“Blocks from Scotland?” He didn't understand.
“Yes,” I said, “blocks from Scotland.” I explained. My wife and I had been trying to get a real English accent. That was one of the things we had come to England for. We wanted to take it back with us and use it in Brooklyn, and we didn't want to get too near Scotland and get any Scottish dialect mixed up with it. It seemed that the cottage was quite a piece from Scotland. There was a castle not far away—the fifteenth castle on the right side as you go into England. When there wasn't any wind you didn't get a raw sea breeze or hear the ocean vessels whistle.
“Is it overgrown with ivy,” asked Marian, my wife.
Yes, it was ivy-covered. You could scarcely see it for ivy—ivy that was pulling the wall down, ivy as deep-rooted as the hereditary idea.
“Are the drains bad?” I asked.
They were. There would be no trouble on that score. What plumbing there was, was leaky. The roof leaked.
There was neither gas nor electricity, nor hot and cold water, nor anything else.
“I suppose the place is rather damp?” I said to the agent. “Is it chilly most of the time? Are the flues defective? Are the floors uneven? Is the place thoroughly uncomfortable and unsanitary and unhabitable in every particular?”
Yes, it had all these advantages. I was about to sign the lease when my wife plucked me by the sleeve in her impulsive American way. “Is there a bathroom?” she asked.
“My dear Mrs. Minever,” said the agent with dignity, “there is not. I can assure you that there are no conveniences of any kind. It is a real English cottage.”
I took the place. It was evening of the third day after we took possession that I discovered that we had been taken in. All the other Americans in that part of England were sitting out in front of their cottages trying to look as if they were accustomed to them, and we—my wife and Uncle Bainbridge and I—were sitting in front of ours trying to act as English as we knew how, when a voice hailed me.
“You are Americans, aren't you, sir?” said the voice.
The voice was anyhow; so we shamefacedly confessed.
“I thought you looked like it,” said the voice, and its owner came wavering toward us through the twilight.
“What makes you think we look like it?” I said, a trifle annoyed; for it had been my delusion that we had got ourselves to looking quite English—English enough, at least, so that no one could tell us in the faint light.
“Our clothes don't fit us, do they?” asked my wife nervously.
“They can't fit us,” said I; “they were made in London.”
I spoke rather sharply, I suppose. And as I was speaking, a most astonishing thing happened—the person I had been speaking to suddenly disappeared. He was, and then he was not! I sprang up, and I could tell from my wife's exclamation that she was startled, too. As for Uncle Bainbridge, he seldom gives way to emotion not directly connected with his meals or his money.
“Here, you!” I called out loudly, looking about me.
The figure came waveringly into view again.
“Where did you go to?” I demanded. “What do you mean by acting like that? Who are you, anyhow?”
“Please, sir,” said the wavery person, “don't speak so crosslike. It always makes me vanish. I can't help it, sir.”
He continued timidly:
“I heard a new American family had moved here and I dropped by to ask you, sir, do you need a ghost?”
“A ghost! Are you——”
“Yes, sir,” with a deprecating smile. “Only an American ghost; but one who would appreciate a situation all the more, sir, for that reason. I don't mind telling you that there's a feeling against us American ghosts here in England, and I've been out of a place for some time. Maybe you have noticed a similar feeling toward Americans? I'm sure, sir, you must have noticed a discrimination, and——”
“Don't say 'sir' all the time,” I told him.
“Beg pardon, sir,” he rejoined: “but it's a habit. I've tried very hard to fit myself to English ways and it's got to be second nature, sir. My voice I can't change; but my class—I was a barber in America, sir—my class I have learned. And,” he repeated rather vacantly, “I just dropped by to see if you wanted a ghost. Being fellow Americans, you know, I thought——” His voice trailed off into humble silence, and he stood twisting a shadowy hat round and round in his fingers.
“See here!” I said. “Should we have a ghost?”
“Beg pardon, sir, but how much rent do you pay?” I told him.
He answered politely but with decision, “Then, sir, in all fairness, you are entitled to a ghost with the place. It gives a certain tone, sir.”
“Why weren't we given one, then?” I asked
“Well——” he said, and paused. If a ghost can blush with embarrassment, he blushed. “You see,” he went on, making it as easy for me as he could, “English ghosts mostly object to haunting Americans, just as American ghosts find it difficult to get places in English houses and cottages. You see, sir, we are——”
He halted lamely, and then finished, “We're soAmericansomehow, sir.”
“But we've been cheated!” I said.
“Yes, sir,” said the American ghost, “regularlyhad” He said it in quite an English manner, and I complimented him on his achievement. He smiled with a child's delight.
“Would I do?” he urged again, with a kind of timid insistence.
My sympathies were with him. “You don't mind children?” I said. “We have two.”
“No,” he replied; “leastways, if they aren't very rough, I am not much frightened of them.”
“I guess,” I began, “that——” I was about to say that he would do, when my wife interrupted me.
“We do not want a ghost at all,” she said firmly.
“But, my dear——”
She raised her eyebrows at me, and I was silent. After looking from one to the other of us wistfully for a moment, the applicant turned and drifted away, vanishing dejectedly when he reached the gate.
“You heard what he said, Henry?” said my wife as he disappeared. “It is lucky that you have me by you! Do you want to saddle yourself with an American ghost? For my part, I will have an English ghost or none!”
I realized that Marian was right; but I felt sorry for the ghost.
“What did—the fellow—want?” roared Uncle Bain-bridge, who is deaf, and brings out his words two or three at a time.
“Wanted to know—if we wanted—a ghost!” I roared in reply.
“Goat? Goat? Huh-huh!” shouted Uncle Bain-bridge. “No, sir! Get 'em a pony—and a cart—little cart! That's the best—thing—for the kids!”
Uncle Bainbridge is, in fact, so deaf that he is never bothered by the noises he makes when he eats. As a rule when you speak to him he first says, “How?” Then he produces a kind of telephone arrangement. He plugs one end into his ear, and shoves a black rubber disk at you. You talk against the disk, and when he disagrees with you he pulls the plug out of his ear to stop your foolish chatter, and snorts contemptuously. Once my wife remarked to me that Uncle Bainbridge's hearing might be better if he would only cut those bunches of long gray hair out of his ears. They annoy every one except Uncle Bainbridge a great deal. But the plug was in, after all, and he heard her, and asked one of the children in a terrible voice to fetch him the tin box he keeps his will in.
Uncle Bainbridge ismyuncle. My wife reminds me of that every now and then. And he is rather hard to live with. But Marian, in spite of his little idiosyncrasies, has always been generous enough to wish to protect him from designing females only too ready to marry him for his money. So she encourages him to make his home with us. If he married at all, she preferred that he should marry her cousin, Miss Sophia Calderwod. That was also Miss Sophia's preference.
We did get a ghost, however, and a real English ghost. The discovery was mine. I was sitting in the room we called the library one night, alone with my pipe, when I heard a couple of raps in, on, about, or behind a large bookcase that stood diagonally across one corner. It was several days after we had refused the American applicant, and I had been thinking of him more or less, and wondering what sort of existence he led. One half the world doesn't know how the other half lives. I suppose my reflections had disposed my mind to psychic receptivity; for when I heard raps I said at once:
“Are there any good spirits in the room?” It is a formula I remembered from the days when I had been greatly interested in psychic research.
Rap! rap! came the answer from behind the bookcase.
I made a tour of the room, and satisfied myself that it was not a flapping curtain, or anything like that.
“Do you have a message for me?” I asked.
The answer was in the affirmative.
“What is it?”
There was a confused and rapid jumble of raps. I repeated the question with the same result.
“Can you materialize?”
The ghost rapped no.
Then it occurred to me that probably this was a ghost of the sort that can communicate with the visible world only through replying to such questions as can be answered by yes or no. There are a great many of these ghosts. Indeed, my experience in psychic research has led me to the conclusion that they are in the majority.
“Were you sent down by the agent to take this place?” I asked.
“No!” It is impossible to convey in print the suggestion of hauteur and offended dignity and righteous anger that the ghost managed to get into that single rap. I have never felt more rebuked in my life; I have never been made to feel more American.
“Sir or madam,” I said, letting the regret I felt be apparent in my voice, “I beg your pardon. If you please, I should like to know whose ghost you are. I will repeat the alphabet. You may rap when you wish me to stop at a letter. In that way you can spell out your information. Is that satisfactory?”
It was.
“Who are you?”
Slowly, and with the assured raps of one whose social position is defined, fixed, and secure in whatever state of existence she may chance to find herself, the ghost spelled out, “Lady Agatha Pelham.”
I hope I am not snobbish. Indeed, I think I have proved over and over again that I am not, by frankly confessing that I am an American. But at the same time I could not repress a little exclamation of pleasure at the fact that we were haunted by the ghost of a member of the English aristocracy. You may say what you will, but there is a certain something—a manner—an air—I scarcely know how to describe it, but it is there; it exists. In England, one meets it so often—I hope you take me.
My gratification must have revealed itself in my manner. Lady Agatha rapped out, if anything with more haughtiness than she had previously employed—yes, even with a touch of defiance:
“I was at one time a governess.”
I gradually learned that while her own family was as good as the Pelham family, Lady Agatha's parents had been in very reduced circumstances, and she had had to become a governess. When Sir Arthur Pelham had married her, his people acted very nasty. He hadn't any money, and they had wanted him to marry some. He got to treating her very badly before he died. And during his lifetime, and after it, Lady Agatha had had a very sad life indeed. Still, you know, she was an aristocrat. She made one feel that as she told her story bit by bit. For all this came very gradually, as the result of many conversations, and not at once. We speedily agreed upon a code, very similar to the Morse telegraphic code, and we still further abbreviated this, until our conversations, after a couple of weeks, got to be as rapid as that of a couple of telegraph operators chatting over the wires. I intimated that it must be rather rough on her to be haunting Americans, and she said that she had once lived in our cottage and liked it.
In spite of her aristocracy, I don't suppose there ever was a more domestic sort of ghost than Lady Agatha. We all got quite fond of her, and I think she did of us, too, in spite of our being American. Even the children got into the habit of taking their little troubles and perplexities to her. And Marian used to say that with Lady Agatha in the house, when Uncle Bain-bridge and I happened to be away, she felt sosafesomehow.
I imagine the fact that she had once been a governess would have made it rather difficult for Lady Agatha in the house of an English family of rank. On the other hand, her inherent aristocratic feeling made it quite impossible for her to haunt any one belonging to the middle or lower classes. She could haunt us, as Americans, and not feel that the social question mattered so much, in spite of what the American ghost had hinted. We Americans are so unclassified that the English often take chances with individuals, quite regardless of what each individual's class would naturally be if he had a class. Even while they do this they make us feel very often that we are hopelessly American; but they do it, and I, for one, am grateful. Lady Agatha sympathized with our desire to become as English as possible, she could quite understand that. I find that many Englishmen approve the effort, although remaining confident that it will end in failure.
Lady Agatha helped us a great deal. We used to have lessons in the evenings in the library. For instance, the children would stand at attention in front of the bookcase, and repeat a bit of typical English slang, trying to do it in an absolutely English way. They would do it over and over and over, until finally Lady Agatha would give a rap of approval. Or I would pretend that I was an Englishman in a railway carriage, and that an American had just entered and I was afraid he would speak to me. I got rather good at this, and made two or three trips to London to try it out. I found that Americans were imposed on, and actually in one instance I made one Englishman think that I was an Englishman who thought he was an American. He was a nobody, however, and didn't really count. And then, I am afraid, I spoiled it all. We Americans so often spoil it all! I enjoyed it so that I told him. He looked startled and said, “But how American!” He was the only Englishman I ever fooled.
But Lady Agatha's night classes were of great benefit to us. We used to practise how to behave toward English servants at country houses, and how to act when presented at court, and dozens of things like that: not that we had been asked to a country house, or expected to be presented at court soon. Marian and I had agreed that the greater part of this information would be quite useless while Uncle Bainbridge was still spared to us. Even in Brooklyn Uncle Bainbridge had been something of a problem at times. But we thought it just as well to prepare ourselves for the sad certainty that Uncle Bainbridge would pass into a better world before many years.
Uncle Bainbridge, who is very wealthy indeed, affects more informality than the usual self-made man. He used to attend our evening classes with a contemptuous expression upon his face, and snort at intervals. Once he even called me “Puppy!” Then he thrust his telephone arrangement before my face and insisted that I tell him whether I was sane or not.
“Puppy!” he bellowed. “Quit apin' the English! I get along with 'em myself—without any nonsense! Treat 'em white! Always treat me white! No foolishness! Puppy!”
My wife and I soon discovered that Lady Agatha and Uncle Bainbridge were on the most friendly terms. He would sit for hours in the library, with his telephone receiver held patiently near the bookcase, shouting questions and smiling and nodding over the answers. Marian and I were afraid that Uncle Bainbridge, by his lack of polish, might offend Lady Agatha. And at first it was her custom to hover about anxiously while they were talking to each other. But Uncle Bainbridge discovered this, and resented it to such an extent that she had to be cautious indeed.
His talks with Lady Agatha became longer and longer, and more and more frequent, until finally he received more of her attention than all the rest of us put together. Indeed, we need not have worried about Uncle Bainbridge's offending Lady Agatha: the friendship grew closer and closer. We were certain finally that it was taking on a strong tinge of sentimentality. One day my wife stopped me just outside the library door and said in a whisper, indicating the general direction of Lady Agatha's bookcase with a wave of her hand:
“Henry, those two old things in there are calling each other Hiram and Agatha!”
I listened, and it was so. A week later I heard Uncle Bainbridge seated by the bookcase, bellowing out a sentimental song. He was having a great deal of difficulty with it, and in order that he might hear himself he was singing with the black disk arrangement held directly in front of his own mouth.
I cannot say that Uncle Bainbridge became etherealized by the state of his feelings toward Lady Agatha, whatever the exact state of his feeling may have been. But he did change a little, and the change was for the better. He cut out the bunches of gray hair from his ears, and he began to take care of his fingernails. Lady Agatha was having a good influence upon him.
One day, as he and I were standing by the front gate, he suddenly connected himself for speech and roared at me, with a jerk of his thumb toward the house.
“Fine woman!”
“Who?” I shouted back.
“Aggie.”
“Why, yes. I suppose she—was.”
“No nonsense!” he yelled. “Husband was a brute! Marry her myself! In a minute—if possible. Ain't possible! Shame! Bet she could make—good dumplings—apple dumplings! Huh!”
Uncle Bainbridge is very fond of apple dumplings. His final test of a woman is her ability to make good apple dumplings. Several women might have married him had they been able to pass that examination. He can pay no higher compliment to a woman than to be willing to believe her able to make good dumplings.
“Aggie, in there!” he roared again, impatient because I was slow in answering. “Dumplings! That kind of woman—could have made—good dumplings!”
I felt, somehow, that it was going a bit too far to imagine Lady Agatha at so plebeian a task as making apple dumplings.
“Uncle Bainbridge,” I shouted, “the upper classes—in England—can't make—apple dumplings!”
Even as I shouted I was aware that some bypasser, startled at our loud voices, was pausing just outside the gate. I turned to encounter for a moment the haughty glare of the most English-looking elderly woman I have ever seen. She had a large, high nose, and she was a large, high-looking handsome woman generally. She said no word to me; but as she stared her lips moved ever so slightly. I fancied that to herself she said, “Indeed!” I have never felt more utterly superfluous, more abjectly American. She turned from me with an air that denied my existence, a manner that indicated that such things as Icould notexist, and it would be foolish to try to make her believe they did exist. She bowed to Uncle Bainbridge, smiled as he returned her bow, and passed on. Uncle Bainbridge's eyes followed her admiringly.
“'Mother fine woman!” he thundered, so that she must have heard him. “Friend of mine! Sensible woman! No frills!”
I tried to ask him who she was, when and where he had become acquainted with her, and a dozen other questions; but Uncle Bainbridge unplugged himself, cutting off all communication with the outer world, and resolutely refused any information. That he should know the lady did not surprise me, however. It had happened several times since we had been in England that Uncle Bainbridge had become friendly with people whom we did not know. We never got from him any exact idea as to the social status of these persons, and indeed we always found that he had no really definite ideas on that subject to communicate.
Our dear Lady Agatha was almost the only English friend my wife and I had made.
My wife and I were very well contented that Uncle Bainbridge's feeling for Lady Agatha should grow stronger and stronger. We argued that while he was so intimately friendly with dear Lady Agatha he would not be so likely to fall a prey to any person who might want to marry him for his wealth. So we decided to encourage the friendship in every way possible, and would have been only too glad to have it go on indefinitely.
“I feel so at peace about Uncle Bainbridge now,” was the way my wife expressed it, “with him and dear Lady Agatha so wrapped up in each other.”
But this cheerful condition of affairs was not destined to last many weeks. One day my wife received a letter from her cousin, Miss Sophia Calderwood. Cousin Sophia was in London, and would be with us on the coming Saturday. She had spoken of the possibility of paying us a visit while we were in England, and of course we had urged her to do so; although at the time the possibility had seemed rather remote to us.
Miss Sophia was past her first youth, but still very girlish at times. Under her girlishness there was a grim determination. She had made up her mind to marry Uncle Bainbridge. My wife, as I have already said, had been inclined to favour the idea, since it would keep strangers from getting hold of Uncle Bainbridge's money. But now that Uncle Bainbridge and Lady Agatha were getting along so well together my wife had begun to hope that Uncle Bainbridge would never marry anybody. We both thought the friendship might become an ideal, but none the less overmastering, passion; one of those sacred things, you know, of the sort that keeps a man single all his life. If Uncle Bainbridge remained unmarried out of regard for Lady Agatha, we agreed, it would be much better for him at his time of life than to wed Miss Sophia.
So we both considered Miss Sophia's visit rather inopportune. Not that we felt that Uncle Bainbridge was predisposed toward her. On the contrary, he had always manifested more fear than affection for her. But, I repeat, she was a determined woman. The quality of her determination needed no better evidence than the fact that she had, to put it vulgarly, pursued her quarry across the seas. It was evident that the citadel of Uncle Bainbridge's heart was to undergo a terrible assault. As for him, when he heard she was coming, he only emitted a noncommittal snort.
Miss Sophia, when she arrived, had apparently put in the months since we had seen her in resolute attempts at rejuvenation. She was more girlish than I had known her in fifteen years. And she had set up a lisp. She greeted Uncle Bainbridge impulsively, effusively.
“You dear man,” she shrilled into his telephone, “you don't detherve it, but gueth what I've brought you all the way acroth the ocean! A new rethipe for apple dumplings!”
“How?” said Uncle Bainbridge. “What say?” And when she repeated it he said “Umph!” disconnected himself, and blew his nose loudly. He rarely said anything to her but “Umph!” walking away afterward with now and then a worried backward glance.
When we told Miss Sophia about Lady Agatha, and she finally understood the intimacy that had grown up between Lady Agatha and Uncle Bainbridge, she looked reproachfully at my wife, as if to say, “You have been a traitor to my cause!” And then she announced very primly, quite forgetting her lisp, “I am quite sure that I, for one, do not care to make the acquaintance of this person!”
“Cousin Sophia,” said my wife sharply, “what do you mean by that?”
“I think, Cousin Marian, that my meaning is sufficiently clear.”
“You forget,” rejoined my wife icily, “that dear Lady Agatha is our guest.”
Miss Sophia sniffed, and was silent.
“Besides,” continued Marian, “what can you possibly have against her?”
“Marian,” said Miss Sophia, “will you answer me one question?”
“Perhaps, Cousin Sophia.”
“Cousin Marian, where, I ask you,whereis Sir Arthur Pelham?”
“Why, how should I know, Cousin Sophia?” My wife was genuinely puzzled by the question, and so was I.
“Exactly!” And Miss Sophia's voice was acid. “How should you know? I imagine it is a point upon which Lady Agatha Pelham, under the circumstances, has not been very communicative.”
“But, Cousin Sophia——” I began.
She interrupted me. “Cousin Henry,” she said, “do you mean to say that you approve of these goings-on in your house? The idea of a married woman entering into a perfectly open flirtation with a man, as this Lady Agatha Pelham has done! Not that I blame Hiram Bainbridge; for men are susceptible when skillfully practised upon—especially with arts which I have never stooped to employ. It is shameless, Cousin Henry, shameless! If Cousin Marian's mother were alive, she would at least see that the children were sent back to America before they become contaminated by this atmosphere. Cousin Henry, to think that you have been so corrupted by European ways already that you acquiesce in this anomalous relationship!”
“I should hardly call it that, Cousin Sophia,” I ventured, “and for the life of me I cannot see anything wrong.”
It took me a little while to catch Miss Sophia's point of view. I am bound to say that she presented it rather convincingly. If Sir Arthur had been alive, she said, she would have seen nothing wrong in Lady Agatha forming any ties she might choose in the spirit world. Or if Sir Arthur had been in the spirit world and Lady Agatha in the earth life, she would have exonerated Lady Agatha from any indelicacy in forming a close friendship with Uncle Bainbridge. But since both Sir Arthur and Lady Agatha were in the spirit life, Lady Agatha's place was with Sir Arthur.
“Aristocrat or not,” she said, “she is indelicate, she is unladylike, she is coarse, or she would not carry on in this fashion with a man to whom she is not married.”
“I will not have dear Lady Agatha insulted!” said my wife, white with anger, rising from the chair in which she had been sitting.
“It is I who have been insulted, by being asked to a house where such a brazen and indecent affair is accepted as a matter of course,” said Cousin Sophia.
I hastily interposed. I saw that my wife was about to cast prudence to the winds and tell Miss Sophia that if she felt that way about it she might as well leave. Miss Sophia is very well-to-do herself, and my wife is her only near relation. I did not fear that the rupture would be permanent; for I had known Marian and Cousin Sophia to go quite this far many times before, and, indeed, in an hour they had both apparently got over their temper.
Miss Sophia, although certain now that she would receive no assistance from my wife in her siege of Uncle Bainbridge, did not swerve from her determination to subjugate him. I imagine it is rather difficult to give battle when your rival is a ghost: the very intangibility of the tie makes it hard to attack. Yet the person who is in the earth life has certain advantages also. I do not know whether I have mentioned it or not, but Miss Sophia could scarcely be called beautiful. One after another, all her life, she had seen men upon whom she had set her affection become the husbands of other women, and in her duel with the ghost there was a quality of desperation that made the struggle, every move of which I watched, extremely interesting. In spite of her announcement that she did not care to meet Lady Agatha, she learned the code by which she communicated with us, and did not absent herself from our gatherings in the library.
Miss Sophia must have been desperate indeed, or she would not have resorted to the trick she used. About a week after Miss Sophia's arrival Lady Agatha suddenly ceased to communicate with us. We grew alarmed, wondering what could have happened to her, as the days passed and the friendly rappings were not resumed. In the light of what happened later I am sure that Miss Sophia deliberately drove Lady Agatha away. What method she used I do not know. But if she had said to Lady Agatha directly the things that she had said to us about her, the insult would have been quite sufficient to make that proud and gentle spirit take her departure. Likely Miss Sophia got into communication with Lady Agatha and hurled at her the bitter question, “Where is Sir Arthur Pelham?” Lady Agatha was not the person to enter into any vulgar quarrel, nor yet to vouchsafe explanations concerning her personal affairs.
Several days after Lady Agatha fell silent I heard Uncle Bainbridge bellowing forth questions in the library. I was outside the house near the library window, which was open. Thinking joyously that Lady Agatha had returned to us, I stepped nearer to the window to make sure. I saw at once, as I peeped in, that the bookcase, which set very near the window, had been slightly moved. Miss Sophia, who was very thin, had managed to introduce herself into the triangular space behind it—I had mentioned that it set diagonally across one corner. She was crouched upon the floor rapping out a conversation with Uncle Bainbridge—impersonating Lady Agatha! Uncle Bainbridge, in front of the bookcase, was apparently unsuspicious; nor did Miss Sophia suspect that I saw her through the half-inch of window that commanded her hiding place.
“You must marry!” rapped Miss Sophia, in the character of Lady Agatha.
“Who?” bellowed Uncle Bainbridge.
“Miss Sophia Calderwood,” said the fake ghost.
“Aggie, I'm hanged if I do!” yelled Uncle Bainbridge. “Ask me—something—easy!”
“Hiram, listen carefully,” began the false Lady Agatha. Then she told him that this would be their last interview. Circumstances over which she had no control compelled her to depart. She was to assume another phase of existence upon another plane. She could not explain to him so that he would understand. But her interest in him would never flag. And she knew that he would be happier wedded to some good woman. It was apparent to her that Miss Sophia would make him the ideal wife. He would soon learn to love Miss Sophia. She had considerable difficulty in getting the promise; but finally Uncle Bainbridge snorted out a pledge that he would marry, and stumped away.
That night he went to London. It was a week before he returned. I did not communicate what I had seen and heard to Marion. The truth was, I felt rather sorry for Miss Sophia. To resort to such a trick she must have been desperate indeed. I tried to imagine what her life had been, and not condemn her too harshly. And besides, if she was to marry Uncle Bainbridge, which seemed settled now, I did not care to have her aware that I knew her secret.
During the absence of Uncle Bainbridge she became quietly radiant, as befits one who knows that the battle is won. She was evidently certain that he would speak definitely upon his return.
The night that he came back he gathered us all about him in the library. “Something to say! Important!” he shouted.
We all assumed attitudes of attention.
“Thinking maybe—get married!” said Uncle Bainbridge. It was just like Uncle Bainbridge to announce the matter in the lady's presence before having formally asked her; but I felt that it was a trifle hard on Miss Sophia. But a glance at her reassured me on that score. She was flushed; but it was the flush of triumph rather than the flush of embarrassment.
“Bought a brewery!” said Uncle Bainbridge. “Good brewery! Good beer! Like English beer! Like English people!”
1 felt that this was a little irrelevant, and I am sure that Miss Sophia felt the same way.
“Bought a castle!” said Uncle Bainbridge, warming to the work. “Fine castle! Like castles! Fix it up! Live in it! Settle here! Like England! Fine country.”
“A castle! Oh, how lovely!” shrilled Miss Sophia, clapping her hands girlishly. “How lovely for all of us!”
“Not invited!” roared Uncle Bainbridge, taking us all in with one sweeping gesture. “None of you!”
There was silence for a moment.
“Going to get married!” said Uncle Bainbridge, rising to his feet. “Not Sophia! Caught Sophia—behind bookcase! Knew all the time! Sneaky trick! Marry fine woman! Henry saw her—over the fence that day! Fine woman! Curate's mother here! Dumplings! Fine dumplings! Learned to make 'em for me! She don't want—to get too thick—with any my relations! She says—all of you—are too American!”
And as Uncle Bainbridge blew his nose loudly and sat down there was a sudden rattle of rapping from the bookcase: nothing so articulate as a remark in the code, but a sound more like a ripple of well-bred laughter. This was the last we ever heard from Lady Agatha, and I have sometimes wondered just what she meant by it. It is so hard, sometimes, to understand just what the English are laughing at.
The bench, the barrel, and the cracker box in front of Hennery McNabb's general store held three men, all of whom seemed to be thinking. Two of them were not only thinking but chewing tobacco as well. The third, more enterprising than the other two, more active, was exerting himself prodigiously. He was thinking, chewing tobacco, and whittling all at the same time.
Two of the men were native and indigenous to Hazel-ton. They drew their sustenance from the black soil of the Illinois prairie on which the little village was perched. They were as calm and placid as the growing corn in the fields round about, as solid and self-possessed and leisurely as the bull-heads in the little creek down at the end of Main Street.
The third man was a stranger, somewhere between six and eight feet high and so slender that one might have expected the bones to pop through the skin, if one's attention had not been arrested by the skin itself. For he was covered and contained by a most peculiar skin. It was dark and rubbery-looking rather than leathery, and it seemed to be endowed with a life of its own almost independent of the rest of the man's anatomy. When a fly perched upon his cheek he did not raise his hand to brush it off. The man himself did not move at all.
But his skin moved. His skin rose up, wrinkled, twitched, rippled beneath the fly's feet, and the fly took alarm and went away from there as if an earthquake had broken loose under it. He was a sad-looking man. He looked sadder than the mummy of an Egyptian king who died brooding on what a long dry spell lay ahead of him.
It was this third man of whom the other two men were thinking, this melancholy stranger who sat and stared through the thick, humid heat of the July day at nothing at all, with grievous eyes, his ego motionless beneath the movements of his rambling skin. He had driven up the road thirty minutes before in a flivver, had bought some chewing tobacco of Hennery McNabb, and had set himself down in front of the store and chewed tobacco in silence ever since.
Finally Ben Grevis, the village grave-digger and janitor of the church, broke through the settled stillness with a question:
“Mister,” he said, “you ain't done nothing you're afraid of being arrested for, hev you?”
The stranger slowly turned his head toward Ben and made a negative sign. He did not shake his head in negation. He moved the skin of his forehead from left to right and back again three or four times. And his eyebrows moved as his skin moved. But his eyes remained fixed and melancholy.
“Sometimes,” suggested Hennery McNabb, who had almost tired himself out whittling, “a man's system needs overhaulin', same as a horse's needs drenchin'. I don't aim to push my goods on to no man, but if you was feelin' anyway sick, inside or out, I got some of Splain's Liniment for Man and Beast in there that might fix you up.”
“I ain't sick,” said the stranger, in a low and gentle voice.
“I never seen many fellers that looked as sad as you do,” volunteered Ben Grevis. “There was a mighty sad-lookin' tramp, that resembled you in the face some, was arrested here for bein' drunk eight or nine years ago, only he wasn't as tall as you an' his skin was different. After Si Emery, our city marshal, had kep' him in the lock-up over Sunday and turned him loose again, it come to light he was wanted over in I'way for killin' a feller with a piece of railroad iron.”
“I ain't killed anybody with any railroad iron over in I'way,” said the lengthy man. And he added, with a sigh: “Nor nowheres else, neither.”
Hennery McNabb, who disagreed with everyone on principle—he was the Village Atheist, and proud of it—addressed himself to Ben Grevis. “This feller ain't nigh as sad-lookin' as that tramp looked,” said Hennery. “I've knowed any number of fellers sadder-lookin' than this feller here.”
“I didn't say this feller here was the saddest-lookin' feller I ever seen,” said Ben Grevis. “All I meant was that he is sadder-lookin' than the common run of fellers.” While Hennery disagreed with all the world, Ben seldom disagreed with any one but Hennery. They would argue by the hour, on religious matters, always beginning with Hennery's challenge: “Ben Grevis, tell me just one thing if you can,wheredid Cain get his wife?” and always ending with Ben's statement: “I believe the Book from kiver to kiver.”
The tall man with the educated skin—it was educated, very evidently, for with a contraction of the hide on the back of his hand he nonchalantly picked up a shaving that had blown his way—spoke to Ben and Hennery in the soft and mild accents that seemed habitual to him:
“Where did you two see sadder-lookin' fellers than I be?”
“Over in Indianny,” said Hennery, “there's a man so sad that you're one of these here laughin' jackasses 'longside o' him.”
And, being encouraged, Hennery proceeded.
This here feller (said Hennery McNabb) lived over in Brown County, Indianny, but he didn't come from there original. He come from down in Kentucky some-wheres and his name was Peevy, Bud Peevy. He was one of them long, lank fellers, like you, stranger, but he wasn't as long and his skin didn't sort o' wander around and wag itself like it was a tail.
It was from the mountain districts he come. I was visitin' a brother of mine in the county-seat town of Brown County then, and this Bud Peevy was all swelled up with pride when I first knowed him. He was proud of two things. One was that he was the champeen corn-licker drinker in Kentucky. It was so he give himself out. And the other thing he was prouder yet of. It was the fact, if fact it was, that he was the Decidin' Vote in a national election—that there election you all remember, the first time Bryan run for President and McKinley was elected.
This here Bud Peevy, you understand, wasn't really sad when I first knowed him: he onlylookedsad. His sadness that matched his innard feelin's up to his outward looks come on to him later. He was all-fired proud when I first knowed him. He went expandin' and extendin' of himself around everywheres tellin' them Indianny people how it was him, personal, that elected McKinley and saved the country from that there free-silver ruination. And the fuller he was of licker, the longer he made this here story, and the fuller, as you might say, of increditable strange events.
Accordin' to him, on that election day in 1896 he hadn't planned to go and vote, for it was quite a ways to the polls from his place and his horse had fell lame and he didn't feel like walkin'. He figgered his district would go safe for McKinley, anyhow, and he wouldn't need to vote. He was a strong Republican, and when a Kentuckian is a Republican there ain't no stronger kind.
But along about four o'clock in the afternoon a man comes ridin' up to his house with his horse all a lather of foam and sweat, and the horse was one of these here Kentucky thoroughbred race horses that must 'a' travelled nigh a mile a minute, to hear Bud Peevy tell of it, and that horse gives one groan like a human bein' and falls dead at Bud Peevy's feet afore the rider can say a word, and the rider is stunned.
But Bud Peevy knowed him for a Republican county committeeman, and he poured some corn licker down his throat and he revived to life again. The feller yells to Bud as soon as he can get his breath to go to town and vote, quick, as the polls will close in an hour, and everybody else in that district has voted but Bud, and everyone has been kep' track of, and the vote is a tie.
It's twelve miles to the pollin' place from Bud's farm in the hills and it is a rough country, but Bud strikes out runnin' acrost hills and valleys with three pints of corn licker in his pockets for to refresh himself from time to time. Bud, he allowed he was the best runner in Kentucky, and he wouldn't 'a' had any trouble, even if he did have to run acrost mountains and hurdle rocks, to make the twelve miles in an hour, but there was a lot of cricks and rivers in that country and there had been a gosh-a-mighty big rain the night before and all them cricks had turned into rivers and all them rivers had turned into roarin' oceans and Niagara catarac's. But Bud, he allows he is the best swimmer in Kentucky, and when he comes to a stream he takes a swig of corn licker and jumps in and swims acrost, boots and all—for he was runnin' in his big cowhides, strikin' sparks of fire from the mountains with every leap he made.
Five times he was shot at by Democrats in the first six miles, and in the seventh mile the shootin' was almost continual, and three or four times he was hit, but he kep' on. It seems the Democrats had got wind he had been sent for to turn the tide and a passel of 'em was out among the hills with rifles to stop him if they could. But he is in too much of a hurry to bandy words with 'em, and he didn't have his gun along, which he regretted, he says, as he is the best gun fighter in Kentucky and he keeps on a-runnin' and a-swimmin' and a-jumpin' cricks and a-hurdlin' rocks with the bullets whizzin' around him and the lightnin' strikin' in his path, for another big storm had come up, and no power on this here earth could head him off, he says, for it come to him like a Voice from on High he was the preordained messenger and hero who was goin' to turn the tide and save the country from this here free-silver ruination. About two miles from the pollin' place, jist as he jumps into the last big river, two men plunges into the water after him with dirks, and one of them he gets quick, but the other one drags Bud under the water, stabbin' and jabbin' at him. There is a terrible stabbin' and stickin' battle way down under the water, which is runnin' so fast that big stones the size of a cow is being rolled down stream, but Bud he don't mind the stones, and he can swim under water as well as on top of it, he says, and he's the best knife fighter in Kentucky, he says, and he soon fixes that feller and swims to shore with his knife in his teeth, and now he's only got one more mountain to cross.
But a kind of hurricane has sprung up and turned into a cyclone in there among the hills, and as he goes over the top of that last mountain, lickety-split, in the dark and wind and rain, he blunders into a whole passel of rattlesnakes that has got excited by the elements. But he fit his way through 'em, thankin' God he had nearly a quart of licker left to take for the eight or ten bites he got, and next there rose up in front of him two of them big brown bears, and they was wild with rage because the storm had been slingin' boulders at 'em. One of them bears he sticked with his knife and made short work of, but the other one give him quite a tussel, Bud says, afore he conquered it and straddled it. And it was a lucky thing for him, he says, that he caught that bear in time, for he was gittin' a leetle weak with loss of blood and snake bites and battlin' with the elements. Bud, he is the best rider in Kentucky, and it wasn't thirty seconds afore that bear knowed a master was a-ridin' of it, and in five minutes more Bud, he gallops up to that pollin' place, right through the heart of the hurricane, whippin' that bear with rattlesnakes to make it go faster, and he jumps off and cracks his boot heels together and gives a yell and casts the decidin' vote into the ballot box. He had made it with nearly ten seconds to spare.
Well, accordin' to Bud Peevy that there one vote carries the day for McKinley in that county and not only in that county alone, but in that electorial district, and that electorial district gives McKinley the State of Kentucky, which no Republican had ever carried Kentucky for President for afore. And two or three other States was hangin' back keepin' their polls open late to see how Kentucky would go, and when it was flashed by telegraph all over the country that Bud Peevy was carryin' Kentucky for McKinley, them other States joined in with Kentucky and cast their electorial votes that-a-way, too, and McKinley was elected President.
So Bud figgers he has jist naturally elected that man President and saved the country—he is the one that was the Decidin' Vote for this whole derned republic. And, as I said, he loves to tell about it. It was in 1896 that Bud saved the country and it was in 1900 that he moved to Brown County, Indianny, and started in with his oratin' about what a great man he was, and givin' his political opinions about this, that and the other thing, like he might 'a' been President himself. Bein' the Decidin' Vote that-a-way made him think he jist about run this country with his ideas.
He's been hangin' around the streets in his new home, the county town of Brown County, for five or six weeks, in the summer of 1900, tellin' what a great feller he is, and bein' admired by everybody, when one day the news comes that the U. S. Census for 1900 has been pretty nigh finished, and that the Centre of Population for the whole country falls in Brown County. Well, you can understand that's calculated to make folks in that county pretty darned proud.
But the proudest of them all was a feller by the name of Ezekiel Humphreys. It seems these here government sharks had it figgered out that the centre of population fell right on to where this here Zeke Humphrey's farm was, four or five miles out of town.
And Zeke, he figgers that he, himself, personal, has become the Centre of Population.
Zeke hadn't never been an ambitious man. He hadn't never gone out and courted any glory like that, nor schemed for it nor thought of it. But he was a feller that thought well enough of himself, too. He had been a steady, hard-workin' kind of man all his life, mindin' his own business and payin' his debts, and when this here glory comes to him, bein' chose out of ninety millions of people, as you might say, to be the one and only Centre of Population, he took it as his just due and was proud of it.
“You see how the office seeks the man, if the man is worthy of it!” says Zeke. And everybody liked Zeke that knowed him, and was glad of his glory.
Well, one day this here Decidin' Vote, Bud Peevy, comes to town to fill himself up on licker and tell how he saved the country, and he is surprised because he don't get nobody to listen to him. And pretty soon he sees the reason for it. There's a crowd of people on Main Street all gathered around Zeke Humphreys and all congratulatin' him on being the Centre of Population. And they was askin' his opinion on politics and things. Zeke is takin' it modest and sensible, but like a man that knowed he deserved it, too. Bud Peevy, he listens for a while, and he sniffs and snorts, but nobody pays any 'tention to him. Finally, he can't keep his mouth shut any longer, and he says:
“Politics! Politics! To hear you talk, a fellow'd think you really got a claim to talk about politics!”
Zeke, he never was any trouble hunter, but he never run away from it, neither.
“Mebby,” says Zeke, not het up any, but right serious and determined-like, “mebby you got more claim to talk about politics than I have?”
“I shore have,” says Bud Peevy. “I reckon I got more claim to be hearkened to about politics than any other man in this here whole country. I'm the Decidin' Vote of this here country, I am!”
“Well, gosh-ding my melts!” says Zeke Humphreys. “You ain't proud of yourself, nor nothin', are you?”
“No prouder nor what I got a right to be,” says Bud Peevy, “considerin' what I done.”
“Oh, yes, you be!” says Zeke Humphreys. “You been proudin' yourself around here for weeks now all on account o' that decidin' vote business. Andanybodymight 'a' been a Decidin' Vote. A Decidin' Vote don't amount to nothin' 'longside a Centre of Population.”
“Where would your derned population be if I hadn't went and saved this here country for 'em?” asks Bud Peevy.
“Be?” says Zeke. “They'd be right where they be now, if you'd never been born nor heard tell on, that's where they'd be. And I'd be the centre of 'em, jist like I be now!”
“And whatairyou now?” says Bud Peevy, mighty mean and insultin'-like. “You ain't nothin' but a accident, you ain't! What I got, I fit for and I earnt. But you ain't nothin' but a happenin'!”
Them seemed like mighty harsh words to Zeke, for he figgered his glory was due to him on account of the uprighteous life he always led, and so he says:
“Mister, anybody that says I ain't nothin' but a happenin' is a liar.”
“1 kin lick my weight in rattlesnakes,” yells Bud Peevy, “and I've done it afore this! And I tells you once again, and flings it in your face, that you ain't nothin' but a accidental happenin'!”
“You're a liar, then!” says Zeke.
With that Bud Peevy jerks his coat off and spits on to his hands.
“Set yo'self, man,” says he; “the whirlwind's cornin'!” And he makes a rush at Zeke. Bud is a good deal taller'n Zeke, but Zeke is sort o' bricky-red and chunky like a Dutch Reformed Church, and when this here Peevy comes on to him with a jump Zeke busts him one right on to the eye. It makes an uncheerful noise like 1 heard one time when Dan Lively, the butcher acrost the street there, hit a steer in the head with a sledge hammer. Bud, he sets down sudden, and looks surprised out of the eye that hadn't went to war yet. But he must 'a' figgered it was a accident for he don't set there long. He jumps up and rushes again.
“I'm a wildcat! I'm a wildcat!” yells this here Bud. And Zeke, he collisions his fist with the other eye, and Bud sets down the second time. I won't say this here Zeke's hands was as big as a quarter of beef. The fact is, they wasn't that big. But I seen that fight myself, and there was somethin' about the size and shape of his fist when it was doubled up that kind o'remindedme of a quarter of beef. Only his fists was harder than a quarter of beef. I guess Zeke's fists was about as hard as a hickory log that has been gettin' itself soaked and dried and seasoned for two or three years. I heard a story about Zeke and a mule that kicked him one time, but I didn't see it myself and I dunno' as it's all true. The word was that Zeke jist picked up that mule after it kicked him and frowned at it and told it if it ever done that again he would jist naturally pull off the leg that it kicked him with and turn it loose to hop away on three legs, and he cuffed that mule thorough and thoughtful and then he took it by one hind leg and fore leg and jounced it against a stone barn and told it to behave its fool self. It always seemed to me that story had been stretched a mite, but that was one of the stories they telled on Zeke.
But this here Bud Peevy is game. He jumps up again with his two eyes lookin' like a skillet full of tripe and onions and makes another rush at Zeke. And this time he gets his hands on to Zeke and they rastles back and forth. But Bud, while he is a strong fellow, he ain't no ways as strong as a mule even if he is jist as sudden and wicked, so Zeke throws him down two or three times. Bud, he kicks Zeke right vicious and spiteful into the stomach, and when he done that Zeke began to get a little cross. So he throwed Bud down again and this time he set on top of him.
“Now, then,” says Zeke, bangin' Bud's head on to the sidewalk, “am I a happenin', or am I on purpose?”
“Lemme up,” says Bud. “Leggo my whiskers and lemme up! You ain't licked me any, but them ol' wounds I got savin' this country is goin' to bust open ag'in. I kin feel 'em bustin'.”
“I didn't start this,” says Zeke, “but I'm a-goin' to finish it. Now, then, am I a accident, or was I meant?”
“It's a accident you ever got me down,” says Bud, “Whether you are a accident yourself or not.”
Zeke jounces his head on the sidewalk some more and he says: “You answer better nor that! You go further! You tell me whether I'm on purpose or not!”
“You was meant for somethin',” says Bud, “but you can't make me say what! You can bang my head off and I won't say what. Two or three of them bullets went into my neck right where you're bendin' it and I feel them ol' wounds bustin' open.”
“I don't believe you got no ol' wounds,” says Zeke, “and I don't believe you ever saved no country and I'm gonna keep you here till I've banged some sense and politeness into your head.”
Bud, he gives a yell and a twist, and bites Zeke's wrist; Zeke slapped him some, and Bud ketched one of Zeke's fingers into his mouth and nigh bit it off afore Zeke got it loose. Zeke, he was a patient man and right thoughtful and judicious, but he had got kind o' cross when Bud kicked him into the stomach, and now this biting made him a leetle mite crosser. I cal'ated if Bud wasn't careful he'd get Zeke really riled up pretty soon and get his fool self hurt. Zeke, he takes Bud by the ears and slams his head till I thought the boards in that sidewalk was goin' to be busted.
“Now, then,” says Zeke, lettin' up for a minute, “has the Centre of Population got a right to talk politics, or ain't he? You say he is got a right, or I mebby will fergit myself and get kind o' rough with you.”
“This here country I saved is a free country,” says Bud Peevy, kind o' sick an' feeble, “and any one that lives in this here country I saved has got a right to talk politics, I reckon.”
Zeke, he took that for an answer and got good-natured and let Bud up. Bud, he wipes the blood off'n his face and ketches his breath an' gits mean again right away.
“If my constitution hadn't been undermined savin' this here country,” says Bud, “you never could 'a' got me down like that! And you ain't heard the end of this argyment yet, neither! I'm a-goin' for my gun, and we'll shoot it out!”
But the townspeople interfered and give Bud to understand he couldn't bring no guns into a fight, like mebby he would 'a' done in them mountain regions he was always talkin' about; an' told him if he was to start gunnin' around they would get up a tar-and-feather party and he would be the reception committee. They was all on Zeke's side and they'd all got kind o' tired listenin' to Bud Peevy, anyhow. Zeke was their own hometown man, and so they backed him. All that glory had come to Brown County and they wasn't goin' to see it belittled by no feller from another place.
Bud Peevy, for two or three weeks, can't understand his glory has left him, and he goes braggin' around worse than ever. But people only grins and turns away; nobody will hark to him when he talks. When Bud tries to tell his story it gets to be quite the thing to look at him and say: “Lemme up! Leggo my whiskers! Lemme up!”—like he said when Zeke Humphreys had him down. And so it was he come to be a byword around town. Kids would yell at him on the street, to plague him, and he would get mad and chase them kids, and when folks would see him runnin' after the kids they would yell: “Hey! Hey, Bud Peevy! You could go faster if you was to ride a bear!” Or else they would yell: “Whip yourself with a rattlesnake, Bud, and get up some speed!”
His glory had been so big and so widespread for so long that when it finally went, there jist wasn't a darned thing left to him. His heart busted in his bosom. He wouldn't talk about nothin'. He jist slinked around. He was most pitiful because he wasn't used to misfortune like some people.
And he couldn't pack up his goods and move away from that place. For he had come there to live with a married daughter and his son-in-law, and if he left there he would have to get a steady job working at somethin' and support himself. And Bud didn't want to risk that. For that wild run he made the time he saved the country left him strained clean down to the innards of his constitution, he says, and he wa'n't fit to work. But the thing that put the finishing touches on to him was when a single daughter that he had fell into love with Zeke Humphreys, who was a widower, and married herself to him. His own flesh and blood has disowned him, Bud says. So he turns sad, and he was the saddest man 1 ever seen. He was sadder than you look to be, stranger.
The stranger with the educated skin breathed a gentle sigh at the conclusion of Hennery's tale of the Deciding Vote and the Centre of Population, and then he said:
“I don't doubt Bud Peevy was a sad man. But there's sadder things than what happened to Bud Peevy. There's things that touches the heart closer.”
“Stranger,” said Ben Grevis, “you've said it! But Hennery, here, don't know anything about the heart bein' touched.”
Hennery McNabb seemed to enjoy the implication, rather than to resent it. Ben Grevis continued:
“A sadder thing than what happened to Bud Peevy is goin' on a good deal nearer home than Indianny.
“I ain't the kind of a feller that goes running to Indianny and to Kentucky and all over the known earth for examples of sadness, nor nothin' else. We got as good a country right here in Illinois as there is on top of the earth and I'm one that always sticks up for home folks and home industries. Hennery, here, ain't got any patriotism. And he ain't got any judgment. He don't know what's in front of him. But right here in our home county, not five miles from where we are, sets a case of sadness that is one of the saddest I ever seen or knowed about.
“Hennery, here, he don't know how sad it is, for he's got no finer feelin's. A free thinker like Hennery can't be expected to have no finer feelin's. And this case is a case of a woman.”
“A woman!” sighed the stranger. “If a woman is mixed up with it, it could have finer feelin's and sadness in it!” And a ripple of melancholy ran over him from head to foot.
This here woman (said Ben Grevis) lives over to Hickory Grove, in the woods, and everybody for miles around calls her Widder Watson.
Widder Watson, she has buried four or five husbands, and you can see her any day that it ain't rainin' settin' in the door of her little house, smokin' of her corn-cob pipe, and lookin' at their graves and speculatin' and wonderin'. I talked with her a good deal from time to time durin' the last three or four years, and the things she is speculatin' on is life and death, and them husbands she has buried, and children. But that ain't what makes her so sad. It's wishin' for somethin' that, it seems like, never can be, that is makin' her so sad.
She has got eighteen or twenty children, Widder Watson has, runnin' around them woods. Them woods is jist plumb full of her children. You wouldn't dare for to try to shoot a rabbit anywhere near them woods for fear of hittin' one.
And all them children has got the most beautiful and peculiar names, that Widder Watson got out of these here drug-store almanacs. She's been a great reader all her life, Widder Watson has, but all her readin' has been done in these here almanacs. You know how many different kinds of almanacs there always are layin' around drug-stores, I guess. Well, every two or three months Widder Watson goes to town and gets a new bale of them almanacs and then she sets and reads 'em. She goes to drug-stores in towns as far as twelve or fifteen miles away to keep herself supplied.
She never cared much for readin' novels and story papers, she tells me. What she wants is somethin' that has got some true information in it, about the way the sun rises, and the tides in the oceans she has never saw, and when the eclipses is going to be, and different kinds of diseases new and old, and receipts for preserves and true stories about how this or that wonderful remedy come to be discovered. Mebby it was discovered by the Injuns in this country, or mebby it was discovered by them there Egyptians in the old country away back in King Pharaoh's time, and mebby she's got some of the same sort of yarbs and plants right there in her own woods. Well, Widder Watson, she likes that kind o' readin', and she knows all about the Seven Wonders of the World, and all the organs and ornaments inside the human carcass, and the kind o' pains they are likely to have and all about what will happen to you if the stars says this or that and how long the Mississippi River is and a lot of them old-time prophecies of signs and marvels what is to come to pass yet. You know about what the readin' is in them almanacs, mebby.
Widder Watson, she has got a natural likin' for fine words, jist the same as some has got a gift for hand-paintin' or playin' music or recitin' pieces of poetry or anything like that. And so it was quite natural, when her kids come along, she names 'em after the names in her favourite readin' matter. And she gets so she thinks more of the names of them kids than of nearly anything else. I ain't sayin' she thinks more of the names than she does of the kids, but she likes the names right next to the kids. Every time she had a baby she used to sit and think for weeks and weeks, so she tells me, for to get a good name for that baby, and select and select and select out of them almanacs.
Her oldest girl, that everybody calls Zody, is named Zodiac by rights. And then there's Carty, whose real name is Cartilege, and Anthy, whose full name is Anthrax, and so on. There's Peruna and Epidermis and Epidemic and Pisces.
I dunno as I can remember all them swell names. There's Perry, whose real name is Perihelion, and there's Whitsuntide and Tonsillitis and Opodeldoc and a lot more—I never could remember all them kids.
And there ain't goin' to be no more on 'em, for the fact of the matter seems to be that Widder Watson ain't likely to ever get another husband. It's been about four years since Jim Watson, her last one, died, and was buried in there amongst the hickory second-growth and hazel bushes, and since that day there ain't nobody come along that road a-courtin' Widder Watson. And that's what makes her sad. She can't understand it, never havin' been without a husband for so long before, and she sets and grieves and grieves and smokes her corn-cob pipe and speculates and grieves some more.
Now, don't you get no wrong idea about Widder Watson. She ain't so all-fired crazy about men. It ain't that. That ain't what makes her grieve. She is sad because she wants another baby to pin a name to.