Ma Pettengill Part 16

The crafty wretch! He could wake up in the night and put his hand on those keys in the dark. Probably he often done so. I spoke a few simple words of praise for his sagacity. And after this interesting lecture on his trunk and its keys, and a good look at the accurate layout of his one million belongings, I had his number. He was the oldest living boy scout.

And this poor girl with the designful eyes on him was the oldest living debutante. I learned afterward that the great aim of science is cla.s.sification. I had these two cla.s.sified in no time, like I'd been pottering away at science all my life. Why, say, this Oswald person even carried a patent cigar lighter that worked! You must of seen hundreds of them nickel things that men pay money for. They work fine in the store where you buy 'em. But did you ever see one work after the man got it outside, where he needed it? The owner of one always takes it out, looking strained and nervous, and presses the spring; and nothing happens except that he swears and borrows a match. But Oswald's worked every time. It was uncanny! Only a boy scout could of done it.

So they got settled and the field work begun next day. The two men would ride off early to a place about five miles north of here that used to be an ancient lake--so I was told. I don't know whether it did or not. It's dry enough now. It certainly can't be considered any part of our present water supply. They would take spades and hammers and magnifying gla.s.ses and fountain pens, and Oswald's cigar lighter and some lunch, and come back at night with a fine mess of these here trilobites and vertebrae; and ganoids and petrified horseflies, and I don't know what all; mebbe oyster sh.e.l.ls, or the footprints of a bird left in solid rock, or the outlines of starfish, or a shrimp that was fifty-two million years old and perfectly useless.

They seemed to have a good time. And Oswald would set up late writing remarks about the petrified game they had brought in.

I didn't used to see much of 'em, except at night when we'd gather for the evening meal. But their talk at those times did wonders for me. All about the aims of science and how we got here and what of it. The Prof was a bulky old boy, with long gray hair and long black eyebrows, and the habit of prevailing in argument. Him and Oswald never did agree on anything in my hearing, except the c.h.i.n.k's corn m.u.f.fins; and they looked kind of mad at each other when they had to agree on them.

Take the age of this earth on which we make our living. They never got within a couple of hundred million years of each other. Oswald was strong for the earth's being exactly fifty-seven million years old. Trust him to have it down fine! And the old man hung out for four hundred million.

They used to get all fussed up about this.

They quoted authorities. One scientist had figured close and found it was fifty-six million years. And another, who seemed to be a headliner in the world of science, said it was between twenty million and four hundred million, with a probability of its being ninety-eight million. I kind of liked that scientist. He seemed so human, like a woman in a bean-guessing contest at the county fair. But still another scientist had horned in with a guess of five hundred million years, which was at least easy to remember.

Of course I never did much but listen, even when they argued this thing that I knew all about; for back in Fredonia, New York, where I went to Sunday-school, it was settled over fifty years ago. Our dear old pastor told us the earth was exactly six thousand years old. But I let the poor things talk on, not wanting to spoil their fun. When one of 'em said the world was made at least fifty-seven million years ago I merely said it didn't look anywhere near as old as that, and let it go.

We had some merry little meals for about a month. If it wasn't the age of G.o.d's footstool it would be about what we are descended from, the best bet in sight being that it's from fishes that had lungs and breathed under water as easy as anything, which at least put dimmers on that old monkey scandal in our ancestry. Or, after we moved outside on the porch, which we had to do on account of Oswald smoking the very worst cigars he was able to find in all the world, they would get gabby about all things in the world being simply nothing, which is known to us scientists as metaphysics.

Metaphysics is silly-simple--like one, two, three. It consists of subject and object. I only think I'm knitting this here sock. There ain't any sock here and there ain't any me. We're illusions. The sound of that c.h.i.n.k washing dishes out in the kitchen is a mere sensation inside my head. So's the check for eighty dollars I will have to hand him on the first of the month--though the fool bank down in Red Gap will look on it with uneducated eyes and think it's real. Philosophers have dug into these matters and made 'em simple for us. It took thousands of books to do it; but it's done at last. Everything is nothing. Ask any scientist; he'll make it just as clear to you as a mist in a fog.

And even nothing itself ain't real. They go to that extreme. Not even empty s.p.a.ce is real. And the human mind can't comprehend infinite s.p.a.ce.

I got kind of hot when one of 'em said that. I asked 'em right off whether the human mind could comprehend s.p.a.ce that had an end to it. Of course it can't comprehend anything else but infinite s.p.a.ce. I had 'em, all right; they had to change the subject. So they switched over to free will. None of us has it.

That made me hot again. I told 'em to try for even five minutes and see if they could act as if they didn't have the power of choice. Of course I had 'em again. Mebbe there ain't free will, but we can't act as if there wasn't. Those two would certainly make the game of poker impossible if folks believed 'em.

I nearly broke up the party that night. I said it was a shame young men was being taught such stuff when they could just as well go to some good agricultural college and learn about soils and crops and what to do in case of a sick bull. Furthermore, I wanted to know what they would do to earn their daily bread when they'd got everything dug up and labelled.

Pretty soon they'd have every last organic remains put into a catalogue, the whole set complete and unbroken--and then what? They'd be out of a job.

The Prof laughed and said let the future take care of itself. He said we couldn't tell what might happen, because, as yet, we was nothing really but supermonkeys. That's what he called our n.o.ble race--supermonkeys!

So I said yes; and these here philosophers that talked about subject and object and the nothingness of nothing reminded me of monkeys that get hold of a looking-gla.s.s and hold it up and look into it, and then sneak one paw round behind the gla.s.s to catch the other monkey. So he laughed again and said "Not bad, that!"

You could kid the Prof, which is more than I can say for Oswald. Oswald always took a joke as if you'd made it beside the casket holding all that was mortal of his dear mother. In the presence of lightsome talk poor Oswald was just a chill. He was an eater of spoon-meat, and finicking.

He could talk like Half Hours With the World's Best Authors, and yet had nothing to say but words.

Still, I enjoyed them evenings. I learned to be interested in vital questions and to keep up with the world's best thought, in company with these gents that was a few laps ahead of it. But not so with the motherless chit. This here Lydia made no effort whatever to keep up with the world's best thought. She didn't seem to care if she never perfected her intellect. It would of been plain to any eye that she was spreading a golden mesh for the Oswald party; yet she never made the least clumsy effort to pander to his high ideals.

She was a wonder, that girl! All day she would set round the house, with her hair down, fixing over a lace waist or making fudge, and not appearing to care much about life. Come night, when the party was due to return, she would spry up, trick herself out in something squashy, with the fashionable streamlike effect and a pretty pair of hammock stockings with white slippers, and become an animated porch wren. That seemed to be the limit of her science.

Most motherless chits would of pretended a feverish interest in the day's hunt for fossil c.o.c.kroaches, and would even of gone out to chip off rocks with a hammer; but not Lydia. She would never pretend to the least infatuation for organic remains, and would, like as not, strike up something frivolous on her ukulele while Oswald was right in the middle of telling all about the secret of life. She was confident all the time, though, like she already had him stuffed and mounted. She reminded me of that girl in the play What Every Woman Thinks She Knows.

Lydia had great ideas of cooking, which is an art to ensnare males. She said she was a dandy cook and could make Saratoga chips that was all to the Kenosha--whatever that meant. Think of it--Saratoga chips! Over eight hundred ways to cook potatoes, and all good but one; and, of course, she'd have to hit on this only possible way to absolutely ruin potatoes.

She could cook other things, too--fudge and stuffed eggs and cheese straws, the latter being less than no food at all. It gives you a line on her.

I suppose it was all you could expect from a born debutante that had been brought up to be nice to college boys on a moonlit porch, allowing them to put another sofa pillow back of her, and wearing their cla.s.s pins, and so forth. And here she was come to thirty, with fudge and cheese straws and the ukulele still bounding her mental horizon, yet looking far above her station to one of Oswald's serious magnitude.

I never have made out what she saw in him. But then we never do. She used to kid about him--and kid him, for that matter. She'd say to me: "He does care frightfully about himself, doesn't he?" And she said to me and said to him that he had mice in his wainscoting. Mice or rats, I forget which. Any wise bookmaker would of posted her up in this race as a hundred-to-one shot. She had plenty of blandishment for Oswald, but not his kind. She'd try to lure him with furtive femininity and plaintive melodies when she ought to have been putting on a feverish interest in organic fauna. Oswald generally looked through or past her. He give a whole lot more worry to whether his fountain pen would clog up on him.

They was both set in their ways, and they was different ways; it looked to me like they never could meet. They was like a couple of trained seals that have learned two different lines of tricks.

Of course Oswald was sunk at last, sunk by a chance shot; and there was no doubt about his being destroyed, quant.i.ties of oil marking the surface where he went down. But it seemed like pure chance. Yet, if you believe Oswald and scientific diagnosis, he'd been up against it since the world was first started, twenty million or five hundred million years ago--I don't really know how many; but what's a few million years between scientists? I don't know that I really care. It's never kept me wakeful a night yet. I'd sooner know how to get eighty-five per cent. of calves.

Anyway, it was Oswald's grand new wardrobe trunk that had been predestined from the world's beginning to set him talkative about his little flower with bones and a voice; this same new wardrobe trunk that was the pride of his barren life and his one real worry because he might sometime lose the keys to it.

It's an affecting tale. It begun the night Oswald wanted the extra table put in his room. They'd come in that day with a good haul of the oldest inhabitants round here that had pa.s.sed to their long rest three million years ago--petrified fishworms and potato bugs, and so forth, and rocks with bird tracks on 'em. Oswald was as near human as I'd seen him, on account of having found a stone caterpillar or something--I know it had a name longer than it was; it seemed to be one like no one else had, and would therefore get him talked about, even if it had pa.s.sed away three million years before the Oregon Short Line was built.

And Oswald went on to ask if he could have this extra table in his room, because these specimens of the disturbed dead was piling up on him and he wanted to keep 'em in order. He had lighted one of his terrible cigars; so I said I would quickly go and see about a table. I said that with his venomous cigar going I would quickly have to go and see about something or else have my olfactory nerve resected, which was a grand scientific phrase I had brightly picked out and could play with one finger. It means having something done so you can't smell any more.

The Prof laughed heartily, but Oswald only said he hadn't supposed I would feel that way, considering the kind of tobacco my own cigarettes was made of, though he was sorry and would hereafter smoke out of doors.

He took a joke like a child taking castor oil. Anyway, I went out and found a spare table in the storeroom, and the c.h.i.n.k took it to Oswald's room.

The fateful moment was at hand for which Nature had been conspiring all these ages. The c.h.i.n.k held the table up against him, with the legs sticking out, and Oswald went ahead to show him where to put it. Close by the door, inside his room, was the lovely, yawning new trunk. Oswald must of been afraid one of the table legs would spear it and mar its fair varnish. He raised one hand to halt the table, then closed the trunk tenderly, snapped the lock, and moved it over into the corner, beyond chance of desecration.

Then he give careful directions for placing the table, which had to be carried round the foot of the bed and past another table, which held marine fossils and other fishbones. It was placed between this table and still another, which held Oswald's compa.s.s and microscope and his kill-kare kamp stove and his first-aid kit and his sportsman's belt safe--all neatly arranged in line. I had followed to see if there was anything more he needed, and he said no, thank you. So I come out here to look over my mail that had just come.

Ten minutes later I felt the presence of a human being and looked up to see that Oswald, the oldest living boy scout, was dying on his feet in the doorway there. His face looked like he had been in jail three years.

I thought he had seen a ghost or had a heart shock. He looked as if he was going to keel over. He had me scared. Finally he dragged himself over to the table here and says faintly:

"I believe I should like a severe drink of whisky!"

I didn't ask any questions. I saw it must be some private grief; so I got the whisky. It happened I had just one bottle in the house, and that was some perfectly terrible whisky that had been sent me by mistake. It was liquid barbed wire. Even a little drink of it would of been severe. Two drinks would make you climb a tree like a monkey. But the stricken Oswald seemed able to outfight it. He poured out half a tumblerful, drunk it neat and refused water. He strangled some, for he was only human after all. Then he sagged down on the couch and looked up at me with a feeble and pathetic grin and says:

"I'm afraid I've done something. I'm really afraid I have."

He had me in a fine state by this time. The only thing I could think of was that he had killed the Prof by accident. I waited for the horrible details, being too scared to ask questions.

"I'm afraid," he says, "that I've locked the keys of my new trunk inside of it. I'm afraid I really have! And what does one do in such a case?"

I nearly broke down then. I was in grave danger of fatal hysterics.

I suffered from the reaction. I couldn't trust myself; so I got over to the door, where my face wouldn't show, and called to the Prof and Lydia. I now heard them out on the porch. Then I edged outside the door, where people wouldn't be quite so scared if I lost control of myself and yelled.

Then these two went in and listened to Oswald's solemn words. The Prof helped me out a lot. He yelled good. He yelled his head off; and under cover of his tumult I managed to get in a few whoops of my own, so that I could once more act something like a lady when I went in.

Lydia, the porch wren, was the only one to take Oswald's bereavement at all decent. The chit was sucking a stick of candy she had shoved down into a lemon. Having run out of town candy, one of the boys had fetched her some of the old-fashioned stick kind, with pink stripes; she would ram one of these down to the bottom of a lemon and suck up the juice through the candy. She looked entirely useless while she was doing this, and yet she was the only one to show any human sympathy.

She asked the stricken man how it happened, and he told the whole horrible story--how he always kept the keys hanging on this little bra.s.s hook inside the trunk so he would know where they was, and how he had shut the trunk in a hurry to get it out of the way of the table legs, and the spring lock had snapped. And what did one do now--if anything?

"Why, it's perfectly simple! You open it some other way," says Lydia.

"Ah, but how?" says Oswald. "Those trunks are superbly built. How can one?"

"Oh, it must be easy," says Lydia, still clinging to her candy sour.

"I'll open it for you to-morrow if you will remind me."

"Remind you?" says Oswald in low, tragic tones. You could see he was never going to think of anything else the rest of his life.

By this time the Prof and I had controlled our heartless merriment; so we all traipsed in to the scene of this here calamity and looked at the shut trunk. It was shut good; no doubt about that. There was also no doubt about the keys being inside.

"You can hear them rattle!" says the awed Oswald, teetering the trunk on one corner. So each one of us took a turn and teetered the trunk back and forth and heard the imprisoned keys jingle against the side where they was hung.

"But what's to be done?" says Oswald. "Of course something must be done."