Stories by American Authors Volume III Part 12

POOR OGLA-MOGA.

BY DAVID D. LLOYD.

_Harper's Magazine, April, 1882._

I.

It was a great day when Miss Slopham, so many years conspicuous in our best society, discovered the North American Indian--not for the Indian, perhaps, but certainly for Miss Slopham. Envious and slanderous tongues said that Miss Slopham was afflicted with an ambition. She wanted a mission--not a foreign mission, in any sense of the words. She was debarred from one kind by her s.e.x, and the other involved the possibility of crocodiles and yellow fever, not to mention the chance of being sacrificed to some ugly heathen G.o.d. She could not paint, or write, or sing. The stage had never offered any attractions to her, for various reasons, one of which was, so said the same untrustworthy authority, that she had never offered any attractions to the stage. She was tall and spare, and of a dry and autumnal aspect. She wanted fame, but she wanted it respectable.

Therefore it was, said gossip, that this excellent woman turned to philanthropy. Even here her fate was against her. If she had not been a woman, she would have mourned the ill-luck that brought her into the world rather late for the anti-slavery agitation. The malicious rumor, by-the-way, which declared that she wore a bib and tucker at the time of Jackson's war with the United States Bank, was wickedly false. Miss Slopham tried tenement-house reform, but fled before the smells. She had a little practice in the hospitals and orphan asylums, but found the sphere too contracted. She felt that she needed the stimulus of public approval. She was almost in despair, when, as if by accident, her eye lighted on the North American Indian. For centuries he had been chasing the buffalo and the white man, shooting and being shot, taking up the tomahawk and perishing by the rifle, robbing and being robbed, ma.s.sacring and pillaging whenever ma.s.sacre and pillage suited his grim humor, and being all this while alternately pampered and starved, cajoled and cheated, by a government which at the same time that it furnished him with guns for shooting its own soldiers, often failed to fulfil the solemn treaties it had made with him.

He had been having this lively and variegated experience for a century or so, without any intimation, prophetic or present, of Miss Slopham's existence, when that lady discovered him, and when that happened she exclaimed: "He is mine!" Hers, she meant, for the purposes of philanthropy. Wicked tongues had suggested that in Miss Slopham's philanthropy distance lent enchantment to the view.

Only a day or two later, and before she had had time to form any plans, the postman brought a letter with the postmark of St. Louis. It read as follows:

"ST. LOUIS, _October 20, 1881_.

"MY DEAR MISS SLOPHAM,--I want to make an appeal to your benevolence, which I know never fails in case of need. There is in this city at this moment, in hiding, at the house of one of our friends, a poor persecuted Kickapoo. A Kickapoo is an Indian, you know. He has fled from his reservation because, he says, he cannot endure any longer the persecutions and wrongs he has received at the hands of the agent who has charge of the tribe. This agent must be a very bad man. Poor Ogla-Moga--that is his name; it means Young-man-who-digs-up-seed-potatoes-and-feeds-them-to-his-pony, he says, but we call him by his Indian name because it's so much prettier--says that this agent has repeatedly refused to let them go hunting, which is the only amus.e.m.e.nt the poor things have, on the miserable pretext that the hay must be got in; and he once took away the gun of one of the Kickapoos because he pretended to believe that the man had shot a settler, whereas there was no proof of it at all, except, Ogla-Moga says, that the man died soon after the gun went off. Ogla-Moga says nothing wounds the self-respect of an Indian so deeply as to take his gun away from him, and we have all felt a great deal of sympathy with that poor insulted Kickapoo. Isn't it a shame that a great government should deliberately and maliciously oppress these unfortunate and high-spirited people?

"But I had almost forgotten what it was that I had to ask.

Poor dear Ogla-Moga--he is so quiet and gentle and sad that we have all really grown fond of him--says that it won't be safe for him to stay here: the officers will soon be after him for having left his reservation. Now we have arranged to send him eastward with Mr. Michst. He is the new lecturer before our Ethical Circle, which meets every Sunday in Azure Hall. I read a paper there last Sunday, called, 'Is there Anything?' which Mr. Michst says contains the most triumphant series of negations he ever heard. He says I completely disprove the existence of everything, including many things we all know to be true. My friends in the Circle are begging me to publish it, and I think of doing so, under the t.i.tle of 'The Everlasting No Indeed.'

"But I am wandering again. When Mr. Michst brings Ogla-Moga to you, can't you get him shelter somewhere? Mr. Michst thinks of taking him on to Washington, so that he may lay the whole matter before the President. We have all been studying this Indian question for the last ten days, and we are convinced that the whole trouble is that the President doesn't understand it. Mr. Michst feels sure that if the President will give him, say, three days of his time, he can make it perfectly clear to him. Please answer by telegraph.

"Your friend, "CLARA O. VERRAUGHT."

Now Miss Slopham lived in a neat and aesthetic apartment in a fashionable apartment-house, and it might have been supposed that she was hardly prepared to set up an asylum for fugitive Kickapoos. But that intrepid woman never faltered. Her answer went whirling by wire before she had paused to think of the ways and means of caring for poor Ogla-Moga.

"_October 23._

"_Miss Clara O. Verraught, St. Louis, Missouri_:

"Let him come at once, and send his Indian costumes with him. I have a special reason for this request.

"AMELIA SLOPHAM."

Miss Slopham formed a plan. What it was will presently appear.

II.

Not many mornings after, there was the sound of a strange footstep in Miss Slopham's kitchen, and Bridget emitted a half-shriek. "Mither of Moses! what's that?" It was Ogla-Moga, who had just arrived. His costume was an extraordinary mixture of blanket and trousers and coat, hardly consistent with the requirements of civilization. A broad slouched hat hid his coa.r.s.e black locks, and cast a friendly shadow over his piercing eyes and swarthy face.

"Here, Bridget," said Miss Slopham, "get some breakfast for this--a--a--gentleman at once." Miss Slopham was not accustomed to meeting Indians in a social way. She hardly knew whether to call him chief; she thought wildly for a moment of sheik; but compromised upon gentleman.

To Bridget's astonishment, her mistress hovered about while the strange dark man gobbled his food and glared upon her with his wild eyes. Still another stranger had come in with them; but this one wore the garments of civilization as if he were used to them. He was a bald young man--in fact, one of the baldest young men that ever was seen.

He seemed to be bald all over. He had no ascertainable eyebrows, or eyelashes, or hair, and this, with his bright, fresh complexion and his big spectacles, gave him a very unworldly appearance.

"Oh, Miss Slobham," he said, "I haf been so much mofed wid de story of dis poor Indian! He iss a shild of nature. He ha.s.s been so quiet, and so goot and so sad! I haf talked to him by de hour, and he ha.s.s not interroopted me vonce. I haf exblained to him the viewss of our Ettical Surkle upon de future state, and he ha.s.s listened so attentifely, and ven I haf looked at him I haf found dat he wa.s.s asleep. Oh, his sleep wa.s.s so benign! I haf vept; I could not h.e.l.lp it. He iss a shild of nature;" and good Mr. Michst wiped a tear from his eye.

"Good! good!" grunted Ogla-Moga, as he put a block of beefsteak in his mouth without the formality of a fork.

"He ha.s.s eaten all de vay from St. Louis to here, and he never seem to haf enough," said Mr. Michst, in awe, looking at Ogla-Moga very much as one might at the phenomenon of a menagerie.

"Poor creatures! I've often heard that their supplies were sometimes cut off for months at a time. I suppose this is a case of that kind.

Ogla-Moga," said Miss Slopham, addressing him with her most rea.s.suring and eleemosynary smile, "does the government feed you often, you--a--poor Indians?"

"Not had--what you call it?--round meal--no, square meal," the Indian replied, making an explanatory parallelogram with his hands, "in four moons."

"Moonss?--moonss? What does he mean by moonss?"

Before the lady had time to make sure of her own knowledge on the subject, Ogla-Moga began a wild and mysterious pantomime, which caused Bridget, who had her eye steadily on the strange monster, and kept close to the window as an avenue of desperate retreat, to exclaim: "Mither of Moses! what's the baste going to do?" Ogla-Moga was throwing his arm up in the air with a fierce swing, suddenly crooking his elbow, and bringing his closed hand to his mouth, while he rolled his eyes around the room with a melodramatic ferocity, evidently intended to convey the idea of extreme rapture.

"Poor Ogla-Moga!" said Miss Slopham; "he wants something to drink.

Give him a gla.s.s of ice-water, Bridget, and have it perfectly clear.

It may remind him of the water he used to drink from the brooks of his far-off forest home;" and here Miss Slopham, in her turn, wiped a tear from her eye. Indeed, the crystal particle was apparently so surprised to find itself on the good lady's cheek that it seemed to disappear of its own accord.

Ogla-Moga looked at the innocent gla.s.s of Croton that was handed him with undisguised disdain; but he swallowed his thoughts, whatever they were, with the water, and signified that his meal was ended.

And now for the first time the extent of the task she had undertaken became apparent to Miss Slopham. What was to be done with this terrible infant from the prairies during the week of seclusion that her plan made necessary? She lived alone, except for the companionship of Bridget, and it was asking a good deal of a timid and shrinking nature like Miss Slopham's to take into her little household a gentleman who rolled his eyes in such an alarming manner. Then, too, there were the proprieties, against which sins could not be committed even in the name of reform. Yet what else was there to be done? He could not be sent to a hotel: that meant publicity, and perhaps recapture by the emissaries of a cruel and unsympathetic government.

She could not ask a friend to take him in. He could not be sent anywhere without danger. Finally a brilliant thought struck her just as she was on the verge of distraction, with Ogla-Moga's big eyes fastened on her all the while. There was the janitor of the apartment-house. He might easily be induced to take a boarder, and he would be discreet. Ogla-Moga could be kept in retirement in his rooms.

She would act at once upon the idea. And yet what was she to say? How was she to account for the presence of this stranger in her little household? Ah! he needed clothes. His present costume was an impossible one. She would begin with this subject with the janitor's wife, and feel her way gradually. So she made her way to the top of the house.

It would be hard to say who was in the greatest flutter when the janitor's door was opened upon her, Miss Slopham, whose maiden bosom was agitated with strange embarra.s.sments, or Mrs. Doherty, who was not accustomed to receive calls from the ladies of the house. The former was so confused that she walked against a chair and knocked it over, gave a little scream, and stepped on the baby, which was sprawling on the floor, whereat the baby screamed, and she screamed, and Mrs.

Doherty screamed--all of which did not tend to diminish the mental excitement of either of the ladies, especially as Mrs. Doherty had up to that moment been trying to dust off a chair with one hand while she held another baby with the other arm, and motioned with her head to a little girl--or perhaps she ought to be called a baby--who had charge of still two other babies, to take them out of the room. Poor Miss Slopham thought she had never seen so many babies in her life before, and the spectacle somehow only increased her bewilderment. So perhaps it was not to be wondered at that when she had sunk into a chair she should begin the conversation with the extraordinary and utterly unprecedented question:

"Oh, Mrs. Doherty, could you--a--could you--a--lend me--a--a pair of pantaloons?"

"A pair of what, Miss Slopham?" said the astounded Mrs. Doherty, in a low voice which expressed both the proper deference of the janitor's wife and the natural amazement of the woman.

"Oh, of course, I--I didn't mean to say that," poor Miss Slopham stammered, in hopeless embarra.s.sment. "The fact is, there's a gentleman down-stairs--a friend of mine, you know--he has no home, and very few clothes--and I want to get you to help me. He's down-stairs now, and he's going to stay--I don't see how I am going to help it--and I must get a suit of clothes for him this afternoon. I suppose you think this is all very queer," said the poor lady in breathless confusion, with a little nervous laugh, thinking to herself at the same time that it certainly _was_ very queer.

"I'm not at all sure that I understand ye, ma'am," said the bewildered woman, looking about her in an alarmed sort of way, as if she wondered whether Miss Slopham was quite a safe woman to be alone with.

"Oh, how can I explain it?" that lady cried, desperately. "Well," she said, drawing a long breath, "let's begin at the beginning. Of course you understand that I don't want any such clothes for myself?"

"No, ma'am, I suppose not," murmured Mrs. Doherty, evidently suspecting that the other was slightly insane.

"Well, I wanted to ask you about them, because I thought your husband might have some clothes he did not want. I'd pay him a good price for them, and they needn't be very good"--and again Miss Slopham struck that terrible snag of the conversation--"I want them for a gentleman who's got into trouble; I can't tell you what it is, but he's got to keep out of the way of people. And the thing I wanted to ask you most, Mrs. Doherty," she said, in a pleading voice, conscious that she was twisting it all into a sad snarl, "was whether I couldn't get you and Mr. Doherty to take him to board up here with you for a while," and here the good lady sighed a sigh of relief in spite of her misery and confusion. She had at last let the cat out of the bag.

Mrs. Doherty's eyes were growing very large. The man needed new clothes; must have them that afternoon; there was a reason for his keeping out of the way; Miss Slopham would not tell what it was; the man had got into trouble. The idea grew bigger and bigger in Mrs.

Doherty's mind, until at last it burst out with,

"But is it a jail-bird ye've got there, ma'am?"

"No, no," cried Miss Slopham, badly frightened in her turn at the other's fear. "How could you think such a thing? He's a gentleman, you know; quite an important man where he comes from. There are reasons why I can't tell you who he is. He doesn't want anybody to know it either. But a jail-bird! why, wait till you see him, Mrs. Doherty. He looks so gentle, and he's really handsome."

Mrs. Doherty looked at Miss Slopham. Miss Slopham was a wealthy tenant, and paid a large rent, and Mrs. Doherty was only the janitor's wife. But, after all, Mrs. Doherty was a woman, and Miss Slopham was a woman also, and Mrs. Doherty looked at Miss Slopham in the way in which only a woman can look at another woman; looked at her gray and withered curls, and at her face, which had never, in the spring-time of Miss Slopham's youth, been the kind of face which painters celebrate and poets embalm in verse, and said nothing. What she may have thought, or whether she thought anything, was a matter of little consequence, for when the richer lady came to mention the terms at which she rated the hospitality of the Doherty household, Mrs. Doherty showed a positive anxiety to oblige her, and even murmured something about being glad to do anything in their power for such a kind lady.