The Cassowary Part 20

The white-robed boys sang their recessional, and she became perhaps clearer and more comprehensive of mind than before she entered the church--certainly more equipoised than she had been for days.

Meditatively alive to the quiet of this Sunday noon, Miss Margaret Selwyn, as she neared the centre of the city, stopped short and looked about her. Where was she?

The pavement of the street was gray-blue, spotted with white, and gleaming here and there with the iridescent living tints of bird plumage. The air was winged by soft forms, and a crowd of idlers were scattering grains of corn upon the ground to lure and keep in sight the most graceful creatures that live between the sky and earth.

Against a sky as blue as that of Venice two snow-white pigeons were flying straight down the street toward their companions. A swarthy Italian stood with the birds almost under his feet, but, save the dark face of the street-vender, the pigeons and the perfect sky, the picture involuntarily imaged in Miss Selwyn's mind was all away and awry.

Here was no stately tower, remote and solitary as a recluse in a worldly throng; no Byzantine temple delighted her eye with its warm and gracious humanity of suggestion. The vast sunny s.p.a.ce of the Venetian square, with its columned coffee-houses and shops, was in spirit and in truth far removed from here. St. Mark's, and the place where the dream of a moment had arisen in an impressionable mind, might have been on two different planets, so opposed were they in every outline, spirit and detail--save one: the fluttering, flying, eager, unafraid pigeons.

The sun shot side glances down through the thoroughfare and really did some good on this day, because this was the day of the Nazarene, and even the money-seekers on this day had abandoned in their affairs the consumption of bituminous coal. That is why on Sunday, in one of the greatest cities in the world, the air is clear and the breath better.

That is one reason why, on Sunday, the American cousins of the "pigeons of St. Mark's" come fluttering from somewhere about the city, from only the Maker of them knows where, and dip downward out of the ether trustingly to the feet of the pa.s.ser-by, be he thug or preacher.

Miss Selwyn had never heard of the vast flock of doves which dwell in security among the towering buildings of the city. Their wings flash across wide darkling streets all day, welcome to every careworn man who watches, for a moment, their graceful flight. They were here before her now--there, parading strutting, looking up hopefully toward the men about them, each eagerly seeking the next flip of the corn. They were--and are to-day--because of some gracious instinct in humanity, the best casual street exemplification of what is best in human nature.

They dripped and dropped from somewhere almost simultaneously. There was one who strutted the most struttingly and whose only really justifiable claim was that from crown to midway of his body he had such iridescent purple as all the sh.e.l.l-opening fishermen of Tyre and Sidon never devised half-way. There was another one, a quaint little maiden, who will probably marry some English n.o.bleman of the birds, snow-white, with strange geometrical lines crisscross about her back, and who was almost duplicated by a dozen or two others of her breed. There were two rufous things, the red of whose top and back lapsed into a white beneath, almost as exquisitely as blends the splendid red hair of a woman into the ever accompanying white of the skin beneath. There were little drizzled things, pert, like bantams, off-breeds which had introduced themselves into the community. And there was nothing but just a tossing about among those beautiful creatures upon the pavement there, nothing but an Oliver Twistish clamor for "more" from those who stood above them, to whom they were doing more good than they could know.

On week days the pigeons fly out in foraging parties to the railway yards and the neighborhood of the huge grain elevators. They can be seen glancing above the tall buildings, far flying, specks of gleaming light, along the hollow s.p.a.ces above the streets as they go and come from their feeding places. The crowded ma.s.ses of wagons, street cars, carriages, horses and hurrying people keep the pigeons from the street where they are most at home together for six days. But on the seventh, when the burden of labor is lifted or a brief s.p.a.ce from the shoulders of toiling mankind, the pigeons rally in force upon one of the most busy, prosaic, care-breeding corners in the great spreading city by the lake. And every Sunday come, as surely, men and boys to feed the air-travelers and look at them with the worship all men feel for natural beauty and grace.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HE WAS UNCONSCIOUS AS A CHILD"]

Miss Selwyn had chanced upon this unique function, the pigeons' Sunday banquet. Here were no appealing graces of architecture and Venetian balm of atmosphere. The rough pavement on which the yellow corn was scattered was a contrast to the smooth and perfect floor of the great Piazza. On one side was the inevitable American drug store, plain, matter-of-fact, yet giving, by its crimson and purple window globes, the only touch of pure color in that part of the street. Across the way was a hotel. A clothing store, with its paraphernalia of advertis.e.m.e.nt, occupied another corner. It was Clark and Madison Streets.

Miss Selwyn saw every detail of this scene at a glance, and then her eyes were fastened upon one figure.

Standing among the others was Henry Bryant. His straight, powerful figure, commanding in presence and pose, seemed to separate him, in a way, from the men around him. But, like all the onlookers, he bought corn and scattered the grain on the ground, watching the pigeons as they cl.u.s.tered around his largess. He was as unconscious as a child, and as gentle, about his simple pleasure. His face was a little worn and changed by the suffering of the days of separation from her--Margaret's eyes were quick to see that.

That was the man from whom she had separated after a wordy war over wordy books. That was her lover over there. His whole look, att.i.tude and occupation appealed to her tenderness. Love rushed tumultuously onward, a tide of irresistible strength, sweeping away every carefully-built structure of repulse and every barrier of opinion. Their quarrel was forgotten. Yet the reserve of a proud nature and of custom kept Miss Selwyn from crossing over to speak to Bryant.

She walked home with a springing step. Once the thought came into her mind that Bryant might go away somewhere at once; that the message she was hurrying to send him might not reach him, and at the idea she felt faint and disheartened. She stopped and, for an instant, almost turned back, but, checking herself with a smile at her own impatience and trivial forebodings, she held on her homeward way again.

She could see her lover, and see him as plainly as when he was in reality before her, all unconscious of her presence, half absent-mindedly and all tenderly scattering grain for the cooing, fluttering pigeons at his feet.

The next morning, Bryant, looking over his mail with little relish--for much of the interest in living was out of him just then--found a letter which aroused him most effectually from his mood of listlessness. It said:

DEAR: I am "blue-mouldy for want of a batin'." Come to me.

MARGARET.

CHAPTER XXII

ABERCROMBIE'S WOOING

None but could smile upon the spinster and be glad of the little tale she told. Half the world knows of the pigeons so nourished on one of the most crowded corners in the heart of a great, turbulent city, but none had thought before of what might accompany this exhibition of the fact that there is still a regard for beings of the lower and less grasping life. Very pleasant was the conversation and very understanding were the comments, but the Colonel, like many a commander of the past, from Joshua down, noted the swift pa.s.sing of the hours of day and was insatiate for more of what might be attained before it was too late. He called upon the Banker. That gentleman, easy, suave and really a good specimen of the cla.s.s which inclines us to save by taking care of our savings--and only rarely departing with them--was quite equal to the demand at the paying-teller's window. "I have listened," he said, "to these accounts, some of adventure, some of fancy, some of love and persistence, and it has occurred to me that even I might contribute something to the general fund. Oddly enough, as coming from me, what I shall tell is a story of love and courage and persistence all combined.

It is not a tale of some far country, but one of our modern life, a tale of true lovers whose union was opposed but who came together at last in spite of obstacles. I think we may term it

ABERCROMBIE'S WOOING

Mr. Gentil Abercrombie is a fine fellow, quick-witted, and amiable, with prospects in the world, but he is not, as yet, wealthy. Last spring he fell in love with Miss Frances Dobson, and the young lady seemed not entirely oblivious of the fact nor altogether displeased with it. The affair appeared prosperous to the hopeful Abercrombie until the middle of June, when the Dobson family moved to their country home at a modest little watering place not far from the city, leaving the suitor in a position he did not like. A resolute gentleman, though, is Mr.

Abercrombie, and he followed his star, taking apartments at the watering-place hotel, coming into town by train daily and returning in the evening.

The young lady thus sought had the fortune to be the only daughter of her somewhat austere parents, Mr. James Dobson and Mrs. Irene Dobson, each distinctly of the cla.s.s not to be trifled with by any too aspiring suitor. Abercrombie was admitted to the Dobson residence, for he has good social standing--but his reception was not as warm as the weather.

It appeared to each of the lovers early in the season that it was best to be politic, and that Abercrombie was not, as yet, looked upon by the father and mother as a person with that superabundance of worldly goods and of stability of character and wisdom which should appertain to the husband of the Family Pride. Hence it came that Abercrombie made an effort whenever an opportunity offered to become what he remarked to himself as "solid with the old folks." Hence it came, too, that at a certain trying time there arrived in his immediate vicinity a certain quant.i.ty and quality of disaster.

It chanced that on one occasion, Abercrombie, seeking, as usual, to ingratiate himself with the parents, drifted into a discussion concerning the bringing up of children and expressed himself to the effect that, in place of the usual inane though amusing fairy stories and things of that sort, children should in their youth, when the memory fairly petrifies things, be entertained with pleasant tales about natural history and in fact about anything likely to aid most in future equipment for the great struggle in the world. Of natural history he made a point. Well, one evening, in just what poets call the "gloaming,"

Abercrombie, the parents, Frances and young Erastus Dobson were sitting together upon the front porch, when, suddenly, from some inscrutable impulse, Erastus broke out with the exclamation:

"Mr. Abercrombie, tell me a story."

Here was a situation! It flashed upon Abercrombie, that he had, as already mentioned, impressed upon the elder people the fact that, in his opinion, the youthful mind should be loaded with natural history when tales were imposed upon it. There was no alternative. Here were the older people listening and expectant. Here was Erastus, vociferous. Here was his own sweetheart, sitting in the half darkness and wondering if he were equal to the occasion!

Abercrombie quivered for a moment trying to collect his senses which seemed to have been, somehow, "jolted" by Erastus' request, and then suddenly became so desperate and cold-blooded that he could not understand himself.

"Yes, Erastus," he said, affably; "I will tell you a story, most willingly." Then he continued:

"This is the story of the Boy and the Bull and the Horned Hen. Once there was a boy. It has frequently happened that there was a boy, so that it is hardly worth while referring to such a thing now, but, since we have mentioned it, we'll let it go. Tum-a-row! This boy lived in the country and was kind to a Hen. Little did he know that the hen appreciated and remembered it, but she did! One day this boy started to cross a meadow in which was a savage bull, and the boy forgot he had on his red sweater. In the middle of the meadow stood a tree which was blasted and which looked almost like a cone. It was what a young kindergarten teacher might describe as a trunk from which the branches had been riven away in some of Nature's convulsions, probably electric.

Anyhow, the bull started for the boy and the boy started for the tree.

Tum-a-row! The boy reached the tree four and one-third seconds before the bull reached the same place, and the boy began climbing and was at least thirty feet from the ground before the bull arrived. It is needless to say that the boy climbed with much rapidity. The bull followed rapaciously--yes, that's the word--and began climbing also with great rapidity behind the boy, and there was a race to what--if the term may be applied to such a dead trunk of a tree--to the topmast. There the tree sloped to a point, which the boy, climbing with avidity--that's the word,--reached easily, under the stress of circ.u.mstances. The bull, climbing swiftly after, attained a height of between ten and fifteen feet from his intended victim, and then, reaching the slope of compression, as one may say, of the dead tree, suddenly found himself without sufficient grasp and slid down, again and again, as he sought to reach the apex of the cone. The boy, meanwhile, was and properly, too, in a state of utmost fear, as the bull from time to time seemed almost successful in his upward attempts.

"But there is a limit to endeavor. The bull, fatigued at last, slid downward to the ground, just as the hen, who, happily for the boy, had noted from the distant barnyard what was going on, came desperately to the rescue. The struggle which ensued was something doubtless without a parallel, or anything else in the way of similitude, in the history of single combats. It was something frightful! The bellowing of the hen, the hissing and cackling of the bull, the scattering of scales from both adversaries as they clashed together, cannot be adequately described.

But the end came quickly. There came a moment, when perspiring and panting, the hen gored the bull with all her might, mind and strength, and he fell lifeless to the ground.

"The moral of this story is, be kind to a hen. Tum-a-row!"

"Why do you say 'Tum-a-row'?" suddenly demanded Erastus.

"Well, I hardly know, myself," said Abercrombie. "I guess it's a sort of accompaniment. It came in an old farmer's song I heard when I was a little boy, in an old song which told about a young man who went 'down in the medder for to mow,' and who 'mowed around till he did feel a pizen sarpint bite him on the heel;' and, every little while, through the song came the word 'Tum-a-row.' That's the reason 'Tum-a-row' comes in so often in the story. It isn't my fault; it just seems to belong.

Tum-a-row!"

"Tell me another! Tell me another!" shouted young Erastus, but there came no sound from the twilight which encompa.s.sed the old people, nor from the gloaming about the sweetheart, though little did it matter.

Abercrombie had pa.s.sed the caring point!

"One more will I tell you," he said, speaking in a resonant and rotund voice, to the wide-mouthed and expectant Erastus. "This is the story of the Dark Forest, the Charcoal Burners, the Witch and the Boa Constrictor.

"Once there was a forest so dark that you cannot conceive of its darkness. Oh! it was just a forest dark from Darkville! It was fringed about with a forest which was somewhat lighter, in which things lived, but nothing lived in the forest itself; it was too black! Among the people who lived in this lighter fringe of forest were some Charcoal Burners. You will always find Charcoal Burners connected with a deep forest story, particularly in the German Medieval Legends. The Charcoal Burners in those stories usually lived in some glade in the middle of the wood, but the Charcoal Burners we are telling about lived on the outside for the reason we have given--but they ought not really to be called 'burners,' because they did not burn anything. Whenever orders came for charcoal they simply took their shovels and went down an aisle into the depth of the inner wood and dug out great hunks of the blackness, which they brought out and stacked upon wagons, and which were conveyed to Vienna and Wiesbaden and Oshkosh and all the other charcoal commercial centers.

"Now all this has nothing to do with the story. These matters about the Charcoal Burners I have related only because it chances that from the Charcoal Burners themselves the real story was gained. We ought to be grateful to them for what they have told.

"Four or five miles east of the Charcoal Burners lived a Boa Constrictor. He was sixty feet long and had a gilt-edged appet.i.te. I don't believe in using slang, and gilt-edged is slightly slangy, but the bald fact stands out that he had a gilt-edged appet.i.te. He lived mostly on wild boars, but, when the supply of wild boars gave out on any occasion, he lived on most anything that came along.

"Now, five miles east of the Boa Constrictor lived a Witch, and she was a witch from Witchville. She was not any common witch, but one whose slightest anathema would just curl your hair. Talk about brimstone! Why brimstone would be just ice cream in any comparison you could make between this witch and other things in the world. She knew her business!

Well, this Witch had three children, two sons and a daughter, nice little children, in their way. It happened, unfortunately, one afternoon, that they strayed into the forest; and this afternoon happened to be the particular afternoon on which the Boa Constrictor had run out of wild boars. He consumed the kids--I beg your pardon; young as you are, I beg your pardon--I meant to say that he devoured the three young children, that he encompa.s.sed them after the constrictor manner.

"By and by, the Witch missed her children and, induced by maternal instinct, went out looking for them, and so came to the abode of the Constrictor. They had been on good enough terms and she approached him affably.