The Fascinating Stranger and Other Stories/Willamilla
WILLAMILLA
MASTER LAURENCE COY, aged nine, came down the shady sidewalk one summer afternoon, in a magnificence that escaped observation. To the careless eye he was only a little boy pretending to be a drummer; for although he had no drum and his clenched fingers held nothing, it was plain that he drummed. But to be merely a drummer was far below the scope of his intentions; he chose to employ his imagination on the grand scale, and to his own way of thinking, he was a full drum-corps, marching between lines of tumultuous spectators. And as he came gloriously down the shouting lane of citizenry he pranced now and then; whereupon, without interrupting his drumming, he said sharply: “Whoa there, Jenny! Git up there, Gray!” This drum-corps was mounted.
He vocalized the bass drums and the snare drums in a staccato chant, using his deepest voice for the bass, and tones pitched higher, and in truth somewhat painfully nasal, for the snare; meanwhile he swung his right arm ponderously on the booms, then resumed the rapid employment of both imaginary sticks for the rattle of the tenor drums. Thus he projected and sketched, all at the same time, every detail of this great affair.
“Boom!” he said. “Boom! Boomety, boomety, boom!” Then he added:
“Boom! Boom!
Boom bought a rat trap,
Bigger than a bat trap,
Bigger than a cat trap!
Boom! Boom!
Boomety, boomety, boom!”
So splendid was the effect upon himself of all this pomp and realism, that the sidewalk no longer contented him. Vociferating for the moment as a bugle, the drum-corps swung to the right and debouched to the middle of the street, where such a martial body was more in place, and thenceforth marched, resounding. “Boom! Boom! Boomety, boomety, boom!” There followed repetitions of the chant concerning the celebrated trap purchased by Mr. Boom.
A little girl leaned upon a gate that gave admission to a pleasant yard, shaded by a vast old walnut tree, and from this point she watched the approach of the procession. She was a homely little girl, as people say; but a student of small affairs would have guessed that she had been neatly dressed earlier in the day; and even now it could be seen that the submergence of her right stocking into its own folds was not due to any lack of proper equipment, for equipment was visible. She stood behind the gate, eagerly looking forth, and by a coincidence not unusual in that neighbourhood, a beautiful little girl was at the gate of the next yard, some eighty or a hundred feet beyond; but this second little girl’s unspotted attire had suffered no disarrangements, and her face was clean; even her hands were miraculously clean.
When the sonorous Laurence came nearer, the homely little girl almost disappeared behind her gate; her arms rested upon the top of it, and only her hair, forehead and eyes could be seen above her arms. The eyes, however, had become exceedingly sharp, and they shone with an elfin mirth that grew even brighter as the drum-corps drew closer.
“Boom!” said Laurence. “Boomety, boomety, boom!” And again he gave an account of Mr. Boom’s purchase; but he condescended to offer no sign betokening a consciousness of the two spectators at their gates. He went by the first of these in high military order, executing a manœuvre as he went—again briefly becoming a trumpeter, swinging to the right, then to the left, and so forward once more, as he resumed the drums. “Boom! Boom! Boomety, boomety, boom!
“Boom! Boom!
Boom bought a rat trap,
Bigger than a bat trap”
But here he was profoundly annoyed by the conduct of the homely little girl. She darted out of her gate, ran to the middle of the street and pranced behind him in outrageous mockery. In a thin and straining voice, altogether inappropriate for the representation of a drum-corps, she piped:
“Boom bought a rat trap,
Bigger than a bat trap,
Bigger than a cat trap!
Boom!”
Laurence turned upon her. “For heavenses’ sakes!” he said. “My good-nuss, Daisy Mears, haven’t you got any sense? For heavenses’ sakes, pull up your ole stockin’s!”
“I won’t,” Miss Mears returned with instant resentment. “I guess you can’t order me around, Mister Laurence Coy! I doe’ know who ever ’pointed you to be my boss! Besides, only one of ’em’s fell down.”
“Well, pull it up, then,” he said crossly. “Or else don’t come hangin’ around me!”
“Oh, you don’t say so!” she retorted. “Thank you ever so kinely an’ p’litely for your complimunts just the same, but I pull up my stockin’s whenever I want to, not when every person I happen to meet in the street goes an’ takes an’ tells me to!”
“Well, you better!” said Laurence, at a venture, for he was not absolutely certain of her meaning. “Anyway, you needn’t hang around me unless”
He stopped, for Daisy Mears had begun, not to hang around him indeed, but to dance around him, and indecorously at that! She levelled her small, grimy right forefinger at him, appearing to whet it with her left forefinger, which was equally begrimed, and at the same time she capered, squealing triumphantly: “Ya-ay, Laurunce! Showin’ off! Showin’ off ’cause Elsie Threamer’s lookin’ at you! Showin’ off for Elsie! Showin’ off for Elsie!”
“I am not!” Laurence made loud denial, but he coloured and glanced wretchedly at the other little girl, who had remained at her own gate. Her lovely, shadowy eyes appeared to be unaware of the dispute in the street; and, crooning almost soundlessly to herself, she had that perfect detachment from environment and events so often observed in Beauties.
“I am not!” Laurence repeated. “If I was goin’ to show off before anybody, I wouldn’t show off before Elsie!” And on the spur of the moment, to prove what he said, he made a startling misrepresentation of his sentiments. “I hate her!” he shouted.
But his tormentress was accustomed to deal with wild allegations of this sort, and to discount them. “Ya-ay, Laur-runce!” she cried. “Showin’ off for Elsie! Yes, you were! Showin’ off for Elsie! Show-win’ off for Ell-see!” And circling round him in a witch dance, she repeated the taunt till it nauseated him, his denials became agonized and his assertions that he hated Elsie, uproarious. Thus within the space of five minutes a pompous drum-corps passed from a state of discipline to one of demoralization.
“Children! Children!” a woman’s voice called from an open window. “Get out of the street, children. Look out for the automobiles!”
Thereupon the witch dance stopped, and the taunting likewise; Daisy returned to the sidewalk with a thoughtful air; and Master Coy followed her, looking rather morbid, but saying nothing. They leaned against the hedge near where the indifferent and dreamy Elsie stood at her gate; and for some time none of the three spoke: they had one of those apparently inexplicable silences that come upon children. It was Laurence who broke it, with a muttering.
“Anyways, I wasn’t,” he said, seemingly to himself.
“You was, too,” Daisy said quietly.
“Well, how you goin’ to prove it?” Laurence inquired, speaking louder. “If it’s so, then you got to prove it. You either got to prove it or else you got to take it back.”
“I don’t either haf to!”
“You do too haf to!”
“All right, then,” said Daisy. “I’ll prove it by Elsie. He was, wasn’t he, Elsie?”
“What?” Elsie inquired vaguely.
“Wasn’t Laurence showin’ off out in the street? He was showin’ off, wasn’t he?”
“I was not!”
“You was, too! Wasn’t he, Elsie?”
“I doe’ know,” Elsie said, paying no attention to them; for she was observing a little group that had made its appearance at the next corner, a few moments earlier, and now came slowly along the sidewalk in the mottled shade of the maple trees. “Oh, look!” she cried. “Just look at that darling little coloured baby!”
Her companions turned to look where she pointed, and Daisy instantly became as ecstasized as Elsie. “Oh, look at the precious, darling, little thing!” she shouted.
As for Laurence, what he saw roused little enthusiasm within his bosom; on the contrary, he immediately felt a slight but distinct antipathy; and he wondered as, upon occasion he had wondered before, why in the world little girls of his own age, and even younger girls, as well as older girls and grown-up women, so often fell into a gesticular and vocal commotion at the sight of a baby. However, he took some interest in the dog accompanying this one.
The baby sat in a small and rickety wooden wagon which appeared to be of home manufacture, since it was merely a brown box on small wheels or disks of solid wood. A long handle projected behind as a propelling device, but the course of the vehicle was continually a little devious, on account of a most visible eccentricity of the front wheels. The infant was comfortable among cushions, however, and over its head a little, ancient, fringed red parasol had been ingeniously erected, probably as much for style as for shade. Moreover, this note of fashion was again touched in the baby’s ribboned cap, and in the embroidered scarf that served as a coverlet, and, though plainly a relic, still exhibited a lively colour.
An unevenly ponderous old coloured woman pushed the wagon; but her complexion was incomparably darker than the occupant’s, which was an extremely light tan, so that no one would have guessed them to be as nearly related as they really were. And although this deeply coloured woman’s weight was such a burden to her that she advanced at a slow, varying gait, more a sag-and-shuffle than a walk, she was of an exuberantly gracious aspect. In fact, her expression was so benevolent that it was more than striking; it was surprising. Her eyes, rolling and curiously streaked, were visibly moist with kindness; her mouth was murmurous in loving phrases addressed sometimes to life generally, sometimes to the baby, and sometimes to the dog accompanying the cortège.
This dog was one of those dogs who feel themselves out of place in the street, and show that they do by the guardedness of their expressions. Their relief when they reach an alley is evident; then they relax at once; the look of strain vanishes from their eyes, and their nerves permit them once more to sit when they massage their ears. They seem intended to be white, but the intention appears to have become early enfeebled, leaving them the colour of a pale oyster;—and they do not wear collars, these dogs. A collar upon one of them would alter his status disturbingly, and he would understand that, and feel confused and troubled. In a word, even when these dogs are seen in an aristocratic environment, for some straying moment, they are dogs instantly recognizable as belonging to coloured persons.
This one was valued highly by his owners; at least that was implied by what the benevolent old woman said to him as they moved slowly along the sidewalk toward the three children at Elsie Threamer’s gate.
“Hossifer,” she said, addressing the dog, “Hossifer, I b’lieve my soul you the fines’ dog in a worl’! I feel the lovin’es’ to you I ever feel any dog. You wuff fo’, fi’ hunnud dolluhs, Hossifer. You wuff fousan’ dolluhs; yes, you is! You a lovin’ dog, Hossifer!” Then she spoke to the baby, but affection and happiness almost overcame her coherence. “Dah-li-dah-li-dah-li-deedums!” she said. “Oh, but you the lovin’, lovin’, lovin’ baby, honey! You is my swee’, swee’, li’l dee-dee-do! Oh, oh, oh, bless Lawd, ain’ it a fine day! Fine day fer my honey lovin’ baby! Fine day f’um lovin’ heaven! Oh, oh, oh, I’m a-happy! Swee’ lovin’ livin’, lem me sing! Oh, lem me sing!”
She sang, and so loudly that she astonished the children; whereupon, observing their open mouths and earnestly staring eyes, she halted near them and laughed.
“Why all you look at me so funny?” she inquired hilariously. “Li’l whi’ boy, what fer you open you’ mouf at me, honey?”
“I didn’t,” Laurence said.
“Yes’m, indeed you did, honey,” she gaily insisted. “You all free did. Open you’ moufs and look so funny at me—make me laugh an’ holler!” And with unconventional vivacity she whooped and cackled strangely.
Finding her thus so vociferously amiable, Daisy felt encouraged to approach the wagon; and bending down over it, she poked the mulatto baby repeatedly in an affectionate manner. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “I do think this is the darlingest baby!”
“Ain’ it!” the coloured woman cried. “Ain’ it! Yes’m, you say what’s so! Ain’ it!”
“Does it belong to you?” Daisy inquired.
“Yes’m, indeed do! I’m baby’ grammaw. Baby my li’l lovin’ gran’chile.”
It was plain that all three children thought the statement remarkable; they repeatedly looked from the light tan grandchild to the dark brown grandmother and back again, while Daisy, in particular, had an air of doubt. “Are you sure?” she asked. “Are you sure you’re its gran’ma?”
“Yes’m indeed!”
“Honest?”
“Yes’m indeed!”
“Well” Daisy began, and was about to mention the grounds of her doubt; but tact prevailed with her, and she asked a question instead.
“What’s its name?”
“Name Willamilla.”
“What?”
“Name Willamilla.” “Willamilla?” said Daisy. “I never heard it before, but it’s a right pretty name.”
“Yes’m indeed!” the coloured woman agreed enthusiastically. “Willamilla lovin’, happy, gran’ name!”
“What’s the dog’s name?” Laurence asked.
“Hossifer.”
Laurence frowned importantly. “Is he full-blooded?” he inquired.
“Is he who?”
“I guess he isn’t very full-blooded,” Laurence said. “Will he bite?”
“Hossifer?” she said. “Hossifer, he a mighty lovin’ dog! Bite? He ain’ bite nobody. Hossifer, he a lovin’-hearted dog.”
Elsie had come out of her gate, and she bent over the wagon with Daisy. “Oh, my!” she said wistfully. “I do wish we could have this baby to play with.”
“Couldn’t we?” Daisy asked of the baby’s grandmother. “Would you be willing to sell it to us?”
“No’m,” the coloured woman replied, though she manifested no surprise at the question. “No’m; my son-’law, he wouldn’ lem me sell no Willamilla.”
“Well, would you give it to us, then?”
“No’m. Can’ give Willamilla ’way.”
“Oh, my!” Daisy exclaimed. “I do wish we could have this baby to play with awhile, anyway.”
The woman appeared to consider this, and her processes of considering it interested the children. Her streaked eyes were unusually large and protuberant; she closed them, letting the cumbrous lids roll slowly down over them, and she swayed alarmingly as she did this, almost losing her balance, but she recovered herself, opened her eyes widely, and said:
“How long you want play with Willamilla, honey?”
“Oh!” Daisy cried. “Will you let us? Oh, all afternoon!”
“Listen me,” said Willamilla’s grandmother. “I got errand I love to go on. Wagon push ri’ heavy, too. I leave Willamilla with you lovin’ li’l whi’ chillun, an’ come back free o’clock.”
“Oh, lovely!” Daisy and Elsie both shouted.
“Free o’clock,” said the coloured woman.
“That’ll give us lots o’ time,” said Elsie. “Maybe almost an hour!”
The woman took a parcel from the wagon; it was wrapped in an old newspaper, and its shape was the shape of a bottle, though not that of an infant’s milk-bottle. Also, the cork was not quite secure, and the dampened paper about the neck of this bottle gave forth a faint odour of sweet spirits of niter mingled with the spicy fragrance of a decoction from juniper, but naturally neither the odour nor the shape of the parcel meant anything to the children. It meant a great, great deal to Willamilla’s grandma, however; and her lovingness visibly increased as she took the parcel in her arms.
“I’m go’ take this nice loaf o’ bread to some po’ ole sick folks whut live up the alley ovuh yonnuh,” she said. “Hossifer he go’ stay with Willamilla an’ li’l wagon.” She moved away, but paused to speak to Hossifer, who followed her. “Hossifer, you the lovin’est dog in a wide worl’, but you go on back, honey!” She petted him, then waved him away. “Go on back, Hossifer!” And Hossifer returned to the wagon, while she crossed the street toward the mouth of an alley.
The children stared after her, being even more interested just then in her peculiar progress than they were in their extraordinary new plaything. When the coloured woman reached a point about half way across the street, she found a difficulty in getting forward; her feet bore her slowly sidewise for some paces; she seemed to wander and waver; then, with an effort at concentration, she appeared to see a new path before her, followed it, and passed from sight down the alley.
Behind her she left a strongly favourable impression. Never had Daisy and Elsie met an adult more sympathetic to their wishes or one more easily persuaded than this obliging woman, and they turned to the baby with a pleasure in which there was mingled a slight surprise. They began to shout endearing words at Willamilla immediately, however, and even Master Coy looked upon the infant with a somewhat friendly eye, for he was warmed toward it by a sense of temporary proprietorship, and also by a feeling of congeniality, due to a supposition of his in regard to Willamilla’s sex. But of course Laurence’s greater interest was in Hossifer, though the latter’s manner was not encouraging. Hossifer’s brow became furrowed with lines of suspicion; he withdrew to a distance of a dozen yards or so, and made a gesture indicating that he was about to sit down, but upon Laurence’s approaching him, he checked the impulse, and moved farther away, muttering internally.
“Good doggie!” Laurence said. “I won’t hurt you. Hyuh, Hossifer! Hyuh, Hossifer!”
Hossifer’s mutterings became more audible, his brow more furrowed, and his eyes more undecided. Thus by every means he sought to make plain that he might adopt any course of action whatever, that he but awaited the decisive impulse, would act as it impelled, and declined responsibility for what he should happen to do on the spur of the moment. Laurence made a second effort to gain his confidence, but after failing conspicuously he thought best to return to Willamilla and the ladies.
“My goodness!” he said. “What on earth you doin’ to that baby?”
Chattering in the busiest and most important way, they had taken Willamilla from the wagon and had settled which one was to have the “first turn.” This fell to Daisy, and holding Willamilla in her arms rather laboriously—for Willamilla was fourteen months old and fat—she began to walk up and down, crooning something she no doubt believed to be a lullaby.
“It’s my turn,” Elsie said. “I’ve counted a hunderd.”
“No fair!” Daisy protested at once. “You counted too fast.” And she continued to pace the sidewalk with Willamilla while Elsie walked beside her, insisting upon a rightful claim.
“Here!” Laurence said, coming up to them. “Listen! You’re holdin’ him all sprawled out and everything—you better put him back in the wagon. I bet if you hold him that way much longer you’ll spoil somep’m in him.”
“Him?” Both of his fair friends shouted; and they stared at Laurence with widening eyes. “Well, I declare!” Elsie said pettishly. “Haven’t you even got sense enough to know it’s a girl, Laurence Coy?”
“It is not!”
“It is, too!” they both returned.
“Listen here!” said Laurence. “Look at his name! I guess that settles it, don’t it?”
“It settles it he’s a girl,” Daisy cried. “I bet you don’t even know what her name is.”
“Oh, I don’t?”
“Well, what is it, then?”
“Willie Miller.”
“What?”
“Willie Miller!” Laurence said. “That’s what his own gran’mother said his name was. She said his name’s Willie Miller.”
Upon this the others shouted in derision; and with the greatest vehemence they told him over and over that Willamilla’s name was Willamilla, that Willamilla was a girl’s name, that Willamilla was consequently a girl, that she was a girl anyhow, no matter what her name was, but that her name actually was Willamilla, as her own grandmother had informed them. Grandmothers, Daisy and Elsie explained pityingly, are supposed to know the names of their own grandchildren.
Laurence resisted all this information as well as he was able, setting forth his own convictions in the matter, and continuing his argument while they continued theirs, but finally, in desperation, he proposed a compromise.
“Go on an’ call him Willamilla,” he said bitterly, “—if you got to! I doe’ care if you haven’t got any more sense’n to call him Willamilla when his real name’s Willie Miller an’ his own gran’mother says so! I’m goin’ to call him Willie Miller till I die; only for heavenses’ sake, hush up!”
The ladies declined to do as he suggested; whereupon he withdrew from the dispute, and while they talked on, deriding as well as instructing him, he leaned upon the gate and looked gloomily at the ground. However, at intervals, he formed with his lips, though soundlessly, the stubborn words, “His name’s Willie Miller!”
“Oh, I tell you what’d be lovely!” Daisy cried. “Maybe she knows how to walk! Let’s put her down and see—and if she doesn’t know how already, why, we can teach her!”
Elsie gladly fell in with her friend’s idea, and together they endeavoured to place Willamilla upon her feet on the ground. In this they were confronted with insuperable difficulties: Willamilla proved unable to comprehend their intentions; and although Daisy knelt and repeatedly placed the small feet in position, the experiment was wholly unsuccessful. Nevertheless the experimenters, not at all discouraged, continued it with delight, for they played that Willamilla was walking. They heaped praises upon her.
“My darling baby!” Daisy cried. “Doesn’t she walk beautiful?”
“The precious little love!” Elsie echoed. “She just walks beautiful!”
At this the gloomy person in the background permitted himself to sneer. “That ain’t walkin’,” he said.
“It is, too! You doe’ know what you’re talkin’ about!” the chorus of two retorted, not interrupting their procedure.
“He ain’t walkin’,” Laurence maintained.
“She is, too!” said Elsie.
“She’s walkin’ now,” said Daisy. “She’s walkin’ all the time.”
“No, he’s not,” Laurence said. “His feet are sort of curly, and they’re ’way too wide apart. I bet there’s somep’m the matter with him.”
“There is not!” The two little girls looked round at him indignantly; for this unwarranted intimation of some structural imperfection roused them. “Shame on you!” Daisy said; and to Willamilla: “Show mamma how beautiful she walks.”
“He can’t do it,” Laurence said obdurately. “I bet there is somep’m the matter with him.”
“There is not!”
“Yes, sir,” said Laurence, and he added, with conviction: “His legs ain’t fixed on him right.”
“Shame on you, Laurence Coy!”
But Laurence persisted in his view.
“Listen!” he said, arguing. “Look at my legs. Look at anybody’s legs that can walk. Well, are they fixed on ’em the way his are?”
“Yes, they are!” Daisy returned sharply. “Only hers are fixed on better than yours!”
“They ain’t,” said Laurence. “Mine are fixed on like other people’s, and his are—well, they’re terrable!”
“Oh, isn’t he tiresome?” Elsie said pettishly. “Do be quiet about your ole legs!”
“Yes, do!” said Daisy; and then she jumped up, a new idea lighting her eyes. “I tell you what let’s do,” she cried. “Let’s put her back in the wagon, an’ play we’re takin’ a walk on Sunday with our baby an’ all the family.”
“How’ll we play it?” Elsie asked.
“Well, I’ll be the mamma and push the wagon,” Daisy said excitedly. “Elsie, you be some lady that’s visitin’ us, an’ sort of walk along with us, an’”
“No,” Elsie interrupted. “I want to be the mamma and push the wagon, an’ you be some lady that’s visitin’ us.”
Daisy looked a little annoyed, but she compromised. “Well, we’ll go a long walk, and I’ll be the mamma the first block, an’ then the next block you can be the mamma, and I’ll be the lady that’s visitin’ us, an’ then the next block it’ll be my turn again.”
“All right,” said Elsie. “What’ll we have Laurence be?”
“We’ll have him be the father.”
Laurence frowned; the idea was rather distasteful to him, and for some reason a little embarrassing. “Listen!” he said. “What do I haf to do?”
“Oh, just walk along and kind of talk an’ everything.”
“Well” he said uncertainly; then he brightened a little. “I’ll be smokin’ cigars,” he said.
“All right, you can.” And having placed Willamilla in the wagon, Daisy grasped the handle, pushing the vehicle before her. Laurence put a twig in his mouth, puffing elaborately; Elsie walked beside Willamilla; and so the procession moved—Hossifer, still in a mood of indecision, following at a varying distance. And Daisy sang her lullaby as they went.
This singing of hers had an unfavourable effect upon Laurence. For a few minutes after they started he smoked his twig with a little satisfaction and had a slight enjoyment in the thought that he was the head of a family—but something within him kept objecting to the game; he found that really he did not like it. He bore it better on the second and fourth blocks, for Elsie was the mother then, but he felt a strong repulsion when Daisy assumed that relation. He intensely disliked being the father when she was the mother, and he was reluctant to have anybody see him serving in that capacity. Daisy’s motherhood was aggressive; she sang louder and louder, and even without the singing the procession attracted a great deal of attention from pedestrians. Laurence felt that Daisy’s music was in bad taste, especially as she had not yet pulled up her stocking.
She made up the tune, as well as the words, of her lullaby; the tune held beauty for no known ears except her own and these were the words:
“Oh, my da-ar-luh-un baby,
My-y lit-tull baby!
Go to sleep! Go to slee-heep!
Oh, my dear lit-tull baby!
My baby, my dar-luh-un bay-bee,
My bay-bee, my bay-hay-bee!”
As she thus soothed the infant, who naturally slumbered not, with Daisy’s shrill voice so near, some people on the opposite side of the street looked across and laughed; and this caused a blush of mortification to spread over the face of the father.
“Listen!” he remonstrated. “You don’t haf to make all that noise.”
She paid no attention but went on singing.
“Listen!” said Laurence nervously. “Anyways, you don’t haf to open your mouth so wide when you sing, do you? It looks terrable!”
She opened it even wider and sang still louder:
“My lit-tull baby, my da-ar-luh-un bay-bee!
My bay-bee! My bay-hay-bee!”
“Oh, my!” Laurence said, and he retired to the rear; whereupon Hossifer gave him a look and fell back a little farther. “Listen!” Laurence called to Daisy. “You scared the dog!”
Daisy stopped singing and glanced back over her shoulder. “I did not!” she said. “You scared her yourself.”
“Who?” Laurence advanced to the side of the wagon, staring incredulously. “Who you talkin’ about?”
“She was walkin’ along nice only a little way behind us,” Daisy said, “until you went near her.”
“I went near who?” Laurence asked, looking very much disturbed. “Who was walkin’ along nice?”
“Hossifer was. You said I scared her, and all the time she”
“Listen!” said Laurence, breathing rapidly. “I won’t stand it. This dog isn’t a girl!”
“Hossifer’s a girl’s name,” said Daisy placidly. “I bet you never heard of a boy by that name in your life!”
“Well, what if I never?”
“Well,” said Daisy authoritatively, “that proves it. Hossifer’s a girl’s name and you just the same as said so yourself. Elsie, didn’t he say Hossifer isn’t a boy’s name, an’ doesn’t that prove Hossifer’s a girl?”
“Yes, it does,” Elsie returned with decision.
Laurence looked at them; then he shook his head. “Oh, my!” he said morosely, for these two appeared set upon allowing him no colleagues or associates whatever, and he felt himself at the end of his resources.
Daisy began to sing again at once.
“Oh, my dar-lun lit-tull bay-hay-bee-hee!” she sang; and she may have been too vehement for Willamilla, who had thus far remained remarkably placid under her new circumstances; Willamilla began to cry.
She began in a mild way, with a whimper, inaudible on account of the lullaby; then she slightly increased her protest, making use of a voice like the tinnier tones of a light saxophone; and having employed this mild mechanism for some time, without securing any relief from the shrillness that bothered her, she came to the conclusion that she was miserable. Now, she was of this disposition: once she arrived at such a conclusion, she remained at it, and nothing could convey to her mind that altered conditions had removed what annoyed her, until she became so exhausted by the protraction of her own protests that she slept, forgot and woke to a new life.
She marked the moment of her decision, this afternoon, by the utterance of a wail that rose high over the singing; she lifted up her voice and used the full power of lungs and throat to produce such a sound that even the heart of the father was disquieted, while the mamma and the visiting lady at once flung themselves on their knees beside the wagon.
“Whassa matta? Whassa matta?” Daisy and Elsie inquired some dozens of times, and they called Willamilla a “peshus baby” even oftener, but were unable to quiet her. Indeed, as they shouted their soothing endearments, her tears reached a point almost torrential, and she beat the coverlet with her small fat hands.
“He’s mad about somep’m, I guess,” the father observed, looking down upon her. “Or else he’s got a spasm, maybe.”
“She hasn’t either,” Daisy said. “She’ll stop in a minute.”
“Well, it might not be spasms,” Laurence said. “But I bet whatever it is, it happened from all that singin’.”
Daisy was not pleased with his remark. “I’ll thank you not to be so kinely complimentary, Mister Laurence Coy!” she said, and she took up Willamilla in her arms, and rather staggeringly began to walk to and fro with her, singing:
“Oh, my peshus litt-tull bay-hay-bee-hee!”
Elsie walked beside her, singing too, while Willamilla beat upon the air with desperate hands and feet, closed her effervescent eyes as tightly as she could, opened her mouth till the orifice appeared as the most part of her visage, and allowed the long-sustained and far-reaching ululations therefrom to issue. Laurence began to find his position intolerable.
“For heavenses’ sakes!” he said. “If this keeps up much longer, I’m goin’ home. Everybody’s a-lookin’ at us all up an’ down the street! Whyn’t you quit singin’ an’ give him a chance to get over whatever’s the matter with him?”
“Well, why don’t you do somep’m to help stop her from cryin’, yourself?” Elsie asked crossly.
“Well, I will,” he promised, much too rashly. “I’d stop him in a minute if I had my way.”
“All right,” Daisy said unexpectedly, halting with Willamilla just in front of him. “Go on an’ stop her, you know so much!”
“He’ll stop when I tell him to,” Laurence said, in the grim tone his father sometimes used, and with an air of power and determination, he rolled up the right sleeve of his shirtwaist, exposing the slender arm as far as the elbow. Then he shook his small fist in Willamilla’s face.
“You quit your noise!” he said sternly. “You hush up! Hush up this minute! Hush opp!”
Willamilla abated nothing.
“Didn’t you hear me tell you to hush up?” Laurence asked her fiercely. “You goin’ to do it?” And he shook his fist at her again.
Upon this, Willamilla seemed vaguely to perceive something personal to herself in his gesture, and to direct her own flagellating arms as if to beat at his approaching fist.
“Look out!” Laurence said threateningly. “Don’t you try any o’ that with me, Mister!”
But the mulatto baby’s squirmings were now too much for Daisy; she staggered, and in fear of dropping the lively burden, suddenly thrust it into Laurence’s arms.
“Here!” she gasped. “I’m ’most worn out! Take her!”
“Oh, golly!” Laurence said.
“Don’t drop her!” both ladies screamed. “Put her back in the wagon.”
Obeying them willingly for once, he turned to the wagon to replace Willamilla therein; but as he stooped, he was forced to pause and stoop no farther. Hossifer had stationed himself beside the wagon and made it clear that he would not allow Willamilla to be replaced. He growled; his upper lip quivered in a way that exhibited almost his whole set of teeth as Laurence stooped, and when Laurence went round to the other side of the wagon, and bent over it with his squirming and noisy bundle, Hossifer followed, and repeated the demonstration. He heightened its eloquence, in fact, making feints and little jumps, and increasing the visibility of his teeth, as well as the poignancy of his growling. Thus menaced, Laurence straightened up and moved backward a few steps, while his two friends, some distance away, kept telling him, with unreasonable insistence, to do as they had instructed him.
“Put her in the wagon, and come on!” they called. “We got to go back! It’s after three o’clock! Come on!”
Laurence explained the difficulty in which he found himself. “He won’t let me,” he said.
“Who won’t?” Daisy asked, coming nearer.
“This dog. He won’t let me put him back in the wagon; he almost bit me when I tried it. Here!” And he tried to restore Willamilla to Daisy. “You take her an’ put her in.”
But Daisy, retreating, emphatically declined—which was likewise the course adopted by Elsie when Laurence approached her. Both said that Hossifer “must want” Laurence to keep Willamilla, for thus they interpreted Hossifer’s conduct.
“Well, I won’t keep her,” Laurence said hotly. “I don’t expect to go deaf just because some old dog don’t want her in the wagon! I’m goin’ to slam her down on the sidewalk and let her lay there! I’m gettin’ mighty tired of all this.”
But when he moved to do as he threatened, and would have set Willamilla upon the pavement, the unreasonable Hossifer again refused permission. He placed himself close to Laurence, growling loudly, displaying his teeth, bristling, poising dangerously, and Laurence was forced to straighten himself once more without having deposited the infant, whom he now hated poisonously.
“My goodnuss!” he said desperately.
“Don’t you see?” Daisy cried, and her tone was less sympathetic than triumphant. “It’s just the way we said; Hossifer wants you to keep her!”
Elsie agreed with her, and both seemed pleased with themselves for having divined Hossifer’s intentions so readily, though as a matter of fact they were entirely mistaken in this intuitional analysis. Hossifer cared nothing at all about Laurence’s retaining Willamilla; neither was the oyster-coloured dog’s conduct so irrational as the cowed and wretched Laurence thought it. In the first place, Hossifer was never quite himself away from an alley; he had been upon a strain all that afternoon. Then, when the elderly coloured woman had forbidden him to accompany her, and he found himself with strangers, including a white boy, and away from everything familiar, except Willamilla, in whom he had never taken any personal interest, he became uneasy and fell into a querulous mood. His uneasiness naturally concerned itself with the boy, and was deepened by two definite attempts of this boy to approach him.
When the family Sunday walk was undertaken, Hossifer followed Willamilla and the wagon; for of course he realized that this was one of those things about which there can be no question: one does them, and that’s all. But his thoughts were constantly upon the boy, and he resolved to be the first to act if the boy made the slightest hostile gesture. Meanwhile, his nerves were unfavourably affected by the strange singing, and they were presently more upset by the blatancies of Willamilla. Her wailing acted unpleasantly upon the sensitive apparatus of his ear—the very thing that made him so strongly dislike tinny musical instruments and brass bands. And then, just as he was feeling most disorganized, he saw the boy stoop. Hossifer did not realize that Laurence stooped because he desired to put Willamilla into the wagon; Hossifer did not connect Willamilla with the action at all. He saw only that the boy stooped. Now, why does a boy stoop? He stoops to pick up something to throw at a dog. Hossifer made up his mind not to let Laurence stoop.
That was all; he was perfectly willing for Willamilla to be put back in the wagon, and the father, the mother and the visiting lady were alike mistaken—especially the father, whose best judgment was simply that Hossifer was of a disordered mind and had developed a monomania for a very special persecution. Hossifer was sane, and his motives were rational. Dogs who are over two years of age never do anything without a motive; Hossifer was nearing seven.
Daisy and Elsie, mistaken though they were, insisted strongly upon their own point-of-view in regard to him. “She wants you to keep her! She wants you to keep her!” they cried, and they chanted it as a sort of refrain; they clapped their hands and capered, adding their noise to Willamilla’s, and showing little appreciation of the desperate state of mind into which events had plunged their old friend Laurence.
“She wants you to keep her!” they chanted. “She wants you to keep her. She wants you to keep her, Laurence!”
Laurence piteously entreated them to call Hossifer away; but the latter was cold to their rather sketchy attempts to gain his attention. However, they succeeded in making him more excited, and he began to bark furiously, in a bass voice. Having begun, he barked without intermission, so that with Hossifer’s barking, Willamilla’s relentless wailing, and the joyous shouting of Daisy and Elsie, Laurence might well despair of making himself heard. He seemed to rave in a pantomime of oral gestures, his arms and hands being occupied.
A man wearing soiled overalls, with a trowel in his hand, came from behind a house near by and walking crossly over the lawn, arrived at the picket fence beside which stood the abandoned wagon.
“Gosh, I never did!” he said, bellowing to be audible. “Git away from here! Don’t you s’pose nobody’s got no ears? There’s a sick lady in this house right here, and she don’t propose to have you kill her! Go on git away from here now! Go on! I never did!”
Annoyed by this labourer’s coarseness, Elsie and Daisy paused to stare at him in as aristocratic a manner as they could, but he was little impressed.
“Gosh, I never did!” he repeated. “Git on out the neighbourhood and go where you b’long; you don’t b’long around here!”
“I should think not,” Daisy agreed crushingly. “Where we live, if there’s any sick ladies, they take ’em out an’ bury ’em!” Just what she meant by this, if indeed she meant anything, it is difficult to imagine, but she felt no doubt that she had put the man in his ignoble and proper place. Tossing her head, she picked up the handle of the wagon and moved haughtily away, her remarkably small nose in the air. Elsie went with her in a similar attitude.
“Go on! You hear me?” The man motioned fiercely with his trowel at Laurence. “Did you hear me tell you to take that noise away from here? How many more times I got to”
“My gracious!” Laurence interrupted thickly. “I doe’ want to stay here!”
He feared to move; he was apprehensive that Hossifer might not like it, but upon the man’s threatening to vault over the fence and hurry him with the trowel, he ventured some steps; whereupon Hossifer stopped barking and followed closely, but did nothing worse. Laurence therefore went on, and presently made another attempt to place Willamilla upon the pavement—and again Hossifer supported the ladies’ theory that he wanted Laurence to keep Willamilla.
“Listen!” Laurence said passionately to Hossifer. “I never did anything to you! What’s got the matter of you, anyway? How long I got to keep all this up?”
Then he called to Elsie and Daisy, who were hurrying ahead and increasing the distance between him and them, for Willamilla’s weight made his progress slow and sometimes uncertain. “Wait!” he called. “Can’ chu wait? What’s the matter of you? Can’ chu even wait for me?”
But they hurried on, chattering busily together, and his troubles were deepened by his isolation with the uproarious Willamilla and Hossifer. Passers-by observed him with hearty amusement; and several boys, total strangers to him, gave up a game of marbles and accompanied him for a hundred yards or so, speculating loudly upon his relationship to Willamilla, but finally deciding that Laurence was in love with her and carrying her off to a minister’s to marry her.
He felt that his detachment from the rest of his party was largely responsible for exposing him to these insults, and when he had shaken off the marble-players, whose remarks filled him with horror, he made a great effort to overtake the two irresponsible little girls.
“Hay! Can’ chu wait?” he bawled. “Oh, my good-nuss! For heavenses’ sakes! Dog-gone it. Can’ chu wait! I can’t carry this baby all the way!”
But he did. Panting, staggering, perspiring, with Willamilla never abating her complaint for an instant, and Hossifer warning him fiercely at every one of his many attempts to set her down, Laurence struggled on, far behind the cheery vanguard. Five blocks of anguish he covered before he finally arrived at Elsie Threamer’s gate, whence this unfortunate expedition had set out.
Elsie and Daisy were standing near the gate, looking thoughtfully at Willamilla’s grandmother, who was seated informally on the curbstone, and whistling to herself.
Laurence staggered to her. “Oh, my! Oh, my!” he quavered, and would have placed Willamilla in her grandmother’s arms, but once more Hossifer interfered—for his was a mind bent solely upon one idea at a time—and Laurence had to straighten himself quickly.
“Make him quit that!” he remonstrated. “He’s done it to me more than five hunderd times, an’ I’m mighty tired of all this around here!”
But the coloured woman seemed to have no idea that he was saying anything important, or even that he was addressing himself to her. She rolled her eyes, indeed, but not in his direction, and continued her whistling.
“Listen! Look!” Laurence urged her. “It’s Willie Miller! I wish he was dead; then I wouldn’t hold him any longer, I bet you! I’d just throw him away like I ought to!” And as she went on whistling, not even looking at him, he inquired despairingly: “My goodness, what’s the matter around here, anyways?”
“Elsie!” a voice called from a window of the house.
“Yes, mamma.”
“Come in, dear. Come in quickly.”
“Yes’m.”
She had no more than departed when another voice called from a window of the house next door, “Daisy! Come in right away! Do you hear, Daisy?”
“Yes, mamma.” And Daisy went hurriedly upon the summons.
Laurence was left alone in a world of nightmare. The hated Willamilla howled within his ear and weighed upon him like a house; his arms ached, his head rang; his heart was shaken with the fear of Hossifer; and Willamilla’s grandmother sat upon the curbstone, whistling musically, with no apparent consciousness that there was a busy world about her, or that she had ever a grandchild or a dog. His terrible and mystifying condition began to appear to Laurence as permanent, and the accursed Willamilla an Old-Man-of-the-Sea to be his burden forever. A weariness of life—a sense of the futility of it all—came upon him, and yet he could not even sink down under it.
Then, when there was no hope beneath the sky, out of the alley across the street came a delivering angel—a middle-aged, hilarious coloured man seated in an enfeebled open wagon, and driving a thin gray antique shaped like a horse. Upon the side of the wagon was painted, “P. SkoNe MoVeiNG & DeLiVRys,” and the cheerful driver was probably P. Skone himself.
He brought his wagon to the curb, descended giggling to Willamilla’s grandmother, and by the exertion of a muscular power beyond his appearance, got her upon her feet. She became conscious of his presence, called him her lovin’ Peter, blessed and embraced him, and then, consenting to test the tensile strength of the wagon, reclined upon him while he assisted her into it. After performing this feat, he extended his arms for Willamilla.
“He won’t let me,” Laurence said, swallowing piteously. “He wants me to keep him, an’ he’ll bite me if I”
“Who go’ bite you, white boy?” the cheerful coloured man inquired. “Hossifer?” Laughing, he turned to the faithful animal, and swept the horizon with a gesture. “Hossifer, you git in nat wagon!”
With the manner of a hunted fugitive, Hossifer instantly obeyed; the man lifted Willamilla’s little vehicle into the wagon, took Willamilla in his arms, and climbed chuckling to the driver’s seat. “Percy,” he said to the antique, “you git up!”
Then this heavenly coloured man drove slowly off with Willamilla, her grandmother, Hossifer and the baby-wagon, while Laurence sank down upon the curbstone, wiped his face upon his polka-dotted sleeve and watched them disappear into the dusty alley. Willamilla was still crying; and to one listener it seemed that she had been crying throughout long, indefinite seasons, and would probably continue to cry forever, or at least until a calamity should arrive to her, in regard to the nature of which he had a certain hope.
He sat, his breast a vacancy where lately so much emotion had been, and presently two gay little voices chirped in the yard behind him. They called his name; and he turned to behold his fair friends. They were looking brightly at him over the hedge.
“Mamma called me to come in,” Daisy said.
“So’d mine,” said Elsie.
“Mamma told me I better stay in the house while that ole coloured woman was out here,” Daisy continued. “Mamma said she wasn’t very nice.”
“So’d mine,” Elsie added.
“What did you do, Laurence?” Daisy asked.
“Well” said Laurence. “They’re gone down that alley.”
“Come on in,” Daisy said eagerly. “We’re goin’ to play I-Spy. It’s lots more fun with three. Come on!”
“Come on!” Elsie echoed. “Hurry, Laurence.”
He went in, and a moment later, unconcernedly and without a care in the world, or the recollection of any, began to play I-Spy with the lady of his heart and her next neighbour.