Part 9

"Whatever th' mate said was drowned by th' row th' sailors was makin', though he bellowed like a frisky bull. Th' old man didn't seem a bit frightened; droppin' one o' th' Colts inter his pocket, he roars, 'Silence'; and steps over to th' berth where Joe Harper, th' bo'sun, was sittin' upright, stiff as a poker, an' his eyes fairly startin' out er his head wi' terror.

"'Now, then, Harper,' he says, an' judgin' by his face th' skipper was 'bout as mad as a bear with a sore head. 'What th' blazes does it mean? Have yeh all gone mad?'

"But th' bo'sun, he was too scared to do more than gape at th' skipper like a codfish three days out er water, an th' old man gits a bit madder.

"'Answer, yeh damn rascal,' he shouted; an' he grabs Harper by th' shoulder an' shakes him until his teeth fairly rattled. But th' bo'sun couldn't say a word.

"'If this ain't enough t' drive a man crazy,' th' skipper yells; 'McClosky, have yeh lost yer senses like all these condemned rascals here? What's th' meanin' o' it?'

"'Don't know, sir; I heard 'em ravin' an' screamin' like lunatics, but I can't get a word out of 'em. Think they must all have become mad,' an' th' mate kicked Towers again t' relieve his feelin's.

"He'd just finished speakin' when suthin' busted underneath th' bo'sun. Harper screams, th' skipper gives a jump an' lets go of his arm, an' Harper falls out er his berth as if he'd been suddenly shot dead, only he was makin' a row like a man suddenly attacked wi' D.T.'s. And at that all th' other miserable wretches on th' floor starts worse than ever.

"Th' skipper pulls himself together, an' goin' t' th' bo'sun's bunk, leans over an' examines it. He poked about f'r a bit, put his fingers into a stream of suthin' that was fallin' from th' bunk to th' floor, an' then by th' light o' th' swingin' oil lamp, I see his face turn a blazin' crimson. I see him take suthin' outer th' bed, an' then he swings round an' faces th' men.

"'Yeh low down, thievin', chicken-hearted, blank, blank scoundrels,' he yells, an' his voice was that loud an' so full o' passion th' sailors were scared into quietness. 'Yeh miserable sneakin' apologies for men! So this is what's th' matter, is it? By gum! If I don't have every mother's son of ye clapped into jail soon as we reach Kingstown, call me a crimson Dutchman. Blown up, are ye? I wish t' th' Lord some of ye had been. Sailors, yeh calls yeh-selves! Why, by gosh! yeh haven't enough spirit t' rob a mouse. What's that yeh say, Towers? Infernal machines, eh? Dyin'! If yeh don't all get a move on ye in double quick time, some of yeh will be. Git out o' my sight, ye blubberin' babies; I'm sick an' ashamed of ye.'

"A more sick an' unhappy lookin' drove I never saw when th' men got on their legs again an' found out they weren't hurt a little bit; an' discovered what it was had caused th' explosions. They wouldn't look at each other; an' they daren't speak or else there'd have been fightin'.

"I went about in fear of my life for days, but they did nothin'; though if they'd known that I--quite innocent o' mischief, yeh understand--had put a dozen grains or so of rice inter every bottle o' stout--amazin' stuff rice for causin' fermentation in hot climates--they wouldn't have stopped short at mere profanity. My life wouldn't have been worth a moment's purchase."

X

THE ADOPTED SON

A Tale of Peasant Life

From the French of GUY de MAUPASSANT

THE two cottages stood side by side at the foot of a hill near a little seaside resort. The two peasants labored hard on the unproductive soil to rear their little ones, of which each family had four.

In front of the adjoining doors the whole troop of urchins sprang and tumbled about from morning till night. The two eldest were six years old, and the two youngest were about fifteen months; the marriages, and afterward the births, having taken place nearly simultaneously in both families.

The two mothers could hardly distinguish their own offspring among the lot, and as for the fathers, they were altogether at sea. The eight names danced in their heads; they were always getting them mixed up; and when they wished to call one child, the men often called three names before getting the right one.

The first of the two dwellings, coming from the direction of the sea-bath, Belleport, was occupied by the Tuvaches, who had three girls and one boy; the other house sheltered the Vallins, who had one girl and three boys.

They all subsisted with difficulty on soup, potatoes, and the open air. At seven o'clock in the morning, then at noon, then at six o'clock in the evening, the housewives got their nestlings together to give them their food, as the goose-herds collect their charges. The children were seated, according to age, before the wooden table, varnished by fifty years of use; the mouths of the youngest hardly reaching the level of the table. Before them was placed a deep dish filled with bread, soaked in the water in which the potatoes had been boiled, half a cabbage, and three onions; and the whole line ate until their hunger was appeased. The mother herself fed the smallest.

A little meat, boiled in a soup, on Sunday, was a feast for all; and the father on this day sat longer over the repast, repeating: "I should like this every day."

One afternoon, in the month of August, a light carriage stopped suddenly in front of the cottages, and a young woman, who was driving the horses, said to the gentleman sitting at her side:

"Oh, look, Henri, at all those children! How pretty they are, tumbling about in the dust, like that!"

The man did not answer, being accustomed to these outbursts of admiration, which were a pain and almost a reproach to him. The young woman continued:

"I must hug them! Oh, how I should like to have one of them--that one there--the little bit of a one!"

Springing down from the carriage, she ran toward the children, took one of the two youngest--that of the Tuvaches, and lifting it up in her arms, she kissed him passionately on his dirty cheeks, on his frowzy hair daubed with earth, and on his little hands, which he swung vigorously, to get rid of the caresses which displeased him.

Then she got up into the carriage again, and drove off at a lively trot. But she returned the following week, and seating herself on the ground, took the youngster in her arms, stuffed him with cakes, gave bon-bons to all the others, and played with them like a young girl, while the husband waited patiently in the frail carriage.

She returned again; made the acquaintance of the parents, and reappeared every day with her pockets full of dainties and of pennies.

Her name was Madame Henri d'Hubieres.

One morning, on arriving, her husband alighted with her, and without stopping with the children, who now knew her well, she entered the peasants' cottage.

They were busy splitting wood to cook the soup. They straightened up, much surprised, offered chairs, and waited expectantly.

Then the woman, in a broken, trembling voice, began:

"My good people, I have come to see you, because I should like--I should like to take--your little boy with me----"

The country people, too stupefied to think, did not answer.

She recovered her breath, and continued: "We are alone, my husband and I. We should keep it--Are you willing?"

The peasant woman began to understand. She asked:

"You want to take Charlot from us? Oh, no, indeed!"

Then M. d'Hubieres intervened:

"My wife has not explained clearly what she means. We wish to adopt him, but he will come back to see you. If he turns out well, as there is every reason to expect, he will be our heir. If we, perchance, should have children, he will share equally with them; but if he should not reward our care, we should give him, when he comes of age, a sum of twenty thousand francs, which shall be deposited immediately in his name, with a notary. As we have thought also of you, we should pay you, until your death, a pension of one hundred francs a month. Have you quite understood me?"

The woman had arisen, furious.

"You want me to sell you Charlot? Oh, no, that's not the sort of thing to ask of a mother! Oh, no! That would be an abomination!"

The man, grave and deliberate, said nothing; but approved of what his wife said by a continued nodding of his head.

Mme. d'Hubieres, in dismay, began to weep, and turning to her husband, with a voice full of tears, the voice of a child used to having all its wishes gratified, she stammered:

"They will not do it, Henri, they will not do it."

Then he made a last attempt: "But, my friends, think of the child's future, of his happiness, of----"

The peasant woman, however, exasperated, cut him short:

"It's all considered! It's all understood! Get out of this, and don't let me see you here again--the idea of wanting to take away a child like that!"

Then Mme. d'Hubieres bethought herself that there were two children, quite little, and she asked, through her tears, with the tenacity of a wilful and spoiled woman:

"But is the other little one not yours?"

Father Tuvache answered: "No, it is our neighbors'. You can go to them, if you wish." And he went back into his house whence resounded the indignant voice of his wife.

The Vallins were at table, in the act of slowly eating slices of bread which they parsimoniously spread with a little rancid butter on a plate between the two.

M. d'Hubieres recommenced his propositions, but with more insinuations, more oratorical precautions, more guile.

The two country people shook their heads, in sign of refusal, but when they learned that they were to have a hundred francs a month, they considered, consulting one another by glances, much disturbed. They kept silent for a long time, tortured, hesitating. At last the woman asked: "What do you think about it, man?" In a sententious tone he said: "I say that it's not to be despised."

Then Mme. d'Hubieres, trembling with anguish, spoke of the future of their child, of his happiness, and of the money which he could give them later.

The peasant asked: "This pension of twelve hundred francs, will it be promised before a notary?"

M. d'Hubieres responded: "Why, certainly, beginning with to-morrow."

The woman, who was thinking it over, continued:

"A hundred francs a month is not enough to deprive us of the child. That child would be working in a few years; we must have a hundred and twenty francs."

Stamping with impatience, Mme. d'Hubieres granted it at once, and as she wished to carry off the child with her, she gave a hundred francs as a present, while her husband drew up a writing. And the young woman, radiant, carried off the howling brat, as one carries away a wished-for knick-knack from a shop.

The Tuvaches, from their door, watched her departure; mute, severe, perhaps regretting their refusal.

Nothing more was heard of little Jean Vallin. The parents went to the notary every month to collect their hundred and twenty francs, and they were angry with their neighbors, because Mother Tuvache grossly insulted them, repeating without ceasing from door to door, that one must be unnatural to sell one's child; that it was horrible, nasty, and many other vile expressions. Sometimes she would take her Chariot in her arms with ostentation, exclaiming, as if he understood:

"I didn't sell _you_, I didn't! I didn't sell _you_, my little one! I'm not rich, but I don't sell my children!"

The Vallins lived at their ease, thanks to the pension. That was the cause of the inappeasable fury of the Tuvaches, who had remained miserably poor. Their eldest son went away into service; Charlot alone remained to labor with his old father, to support the mother and two younger sisters which he had.

He had reached twenty-one years, when, one morning, a brilliant carriage stopped before the two cottages. A young gentleman, with a gold watch chain, got out, giving his hand to an aged, white-haired lady. The old lady said to him: "It is there, my child, at the second house." And he entered the house of the Vallins, as if he were at home.

The old mother was washing her aprons; the infirm father slumbered at the chimney-corner. Both raised their heads, and the young man said:

"Good morning, papa; good morning, mamma!"

They both stood up, frightened. In a flutter, the peasant woman dropped her soap into the water, and stammered:

"Is it you, my child? Is it you, my child?"

He took her in his arms and hugged her, repeating: "Good morning, mamma," while the old man, all in a tremble, said, in his calm tone which he never lost: "Here you are, back again, Jean," as if he had seen him a month before.

When they had got to know one another again the parents wished to take their boy out through the neighborhood, and show him. They took him to the mayor, to the deputy, to the cure, and to the schoolmaster.

Charlot, standing on the threshold of his cottage, watched him pass.

In the evening, at supper, he said to the old people: "You must have been stupid to let the Vallins's boy be taken."

The mother answered, obstinately: "I wouldn't sell _my_ child."

The father said nothing. The son continued:

"It is unfortunate to be sacrificed like that." Then Father Tuvache, in an angry tone, said:

"Are you going to reproach us for having kept you?" And the young man said, brutally:

"Yes, I reproach you for having been such simpletons. Parents like you make the misfortune of their children. You deserve that I should leave you."

The old woman wept over her plate. She moaned, as she swallowed the spoonfuls of soup, half of which she spilled: "One may kill one's self to bring up children."

Then the boy said, roughly: "I'd rather not have been born than be what I am. When I saw the other my heart stood still. I said to myself: 'See what I should have been now!'" He arose: "See here, I feel that I would do better not to stay here, because I should bring it up against you from morning till night, and I should make your life miserable. I shall never forgive you that, you know!"

The two old people were silent, downcast, in tears.

He continued: "No, the thought of that would be too hard. I'd rather go look for a living somewhere else."

He opened the door. A sound of voices entered. The Vallins were celebrating the return of their child.

XI

PROVIDENCE AND MRS. URMY

The Story of an International Marriage

By ARMIGER BARCLAY and OLIVER SANDYS

LADY HARTLEY (_nee_ Miss Persis Van Ness) gave a little gasp. In her excitement the paper rustled noisily to her knee.

"O-h! Have you seen this?" She shot the _Morning Post_ across the breakfast table to Mrs. Rufus P. Urmy, with her finger marking a paragraph.

Mrs. Urmy glanced at it. "I guess it ought to corral him right away," she said, with the merest suspicion of embarrassment. "You see, it's Jeannette's last chance. Two seasons in England and never a catch, so I----"

"_You_ did it?" Lady Hartley looked at her friend in round-eyed wonder.

"I--I had to do something," allowed Mrs. Urmy, with a dawning suspicion that perhaps she had, after all, run afoul of British conventions, which she found as difficult of comprehension as her regular morning study of Debrett.

"But Jeannette!"

"That's so. Jeannette'll raise Cain." Mrs. Urmy got up from the table. "It's this a-way, Persis. I reckon I fixed your little affair up with Lord Hartley to home, and you've got to thank me for it. Now, I'm trying to do the same for my girl. She can't, or she won't, play her own hand. Every chance she's had she's let slide, and I allow she's got to marry a title before I go back to the States. Some one's got to hustle when Providence isn't attending to business, and as there's nobody else to do it, I've taken on the contract." She pointed to the paragraph. "I own up I don't see just how, but there wasn't much time, and it was the best I could do."

Lady Hartley slowly reread the incriminating paragraph:

"A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly take place between the Earl of Chilminster, of Sapworth Hall, Wilts, and Miss Jeannette L. Urmy, of Boston, Massachusetts."

"It knocks me out!" she murmured, lapsing into the Western idiom which a whole week spent in the society of her bosom friend was bound to call up. "But why Lord Chilminster?" She pronounced the name Chilster.

"Why won't he do? Isn't he the real thing? I picked him out in my sample book of the aristocracy, and when I fitted the name on to Jeannette--the Countess of Chilminster--it sounded quite elegant."

"Then it wasn't because you knew I knew him?" demanded Mrs. Urmy's hostess with growing amazement.

Mrs. Urmy's face took on a blank expression.

"You've heard me mention the name. That's how it's pronounced," explained Lady Hartley. "His place isn't far from here."

"You don't say! The way these British titles are pronounced is enough to make you doubt your own eyesight. I didn't know. But if he's a friend of yours that'll likely make it all the easier."

"Lord Chilminster!" Lady Hartley spoke in an awed tone.

She felt it would be useless to make Mrs. Urmy understand the enormity of her offence against good taste, and presently her astonishment gave way to amusement.

"Lavinia," she rippled, "as a matchmaker you take the cake! I don't believe----" She paused, listening. "Hush! Here's Jeannette!"

Miss Jeannette Urmy came in through the open French window. She was dressed in a natty little cotton frock, looked fresh and chic, and only pleasantly American. Perhaps she inherited her good looks and refined tastes from "popper" Urmy, deceased, in which case that gentleman must have committed one serious error of taste and judgment when he selected Jeannette's mother for his better half.

"My! You're late, Jeannette!" observed Mrs. Urmy, shooting a quick glance at Lady Hartley.

At the same moment, both ladies, by common consent, sauntered toward the door. They knew Jeannette's temperament. A crisis, such as the announcement in the _Morning Post_ was sure to evoke, was one at which they were not anxious to assist.

"Oh, I'm ahead of time," answered Jeannette. "I've been up since six looking for eggs."

"Eggs?" echoed Lady Hartley.

"Yes; I collect birds' eggs." She picked up the newspaper and let her eye wander along the items in the Court Circular. "But getting up early makes me homesick. The best time of my life was when I was a kid, when I hadn't an idea beyond the woods on the old Massachusetts farm, when popper kept his store, and--Oh!"

She had reached the fatal announcement, and sat with parted lips, rigid as stone, while the world seemed toppling about her ears. There was a long pause. Jeannette's lips gradually tightened, and her firm hand crumpled up the paper.

"Mommer!" she exclaimed. "Here, Mommer!" But Mrs. Urmy and Lady Hartley had beaten a diplomatic retreat. Jeannette jumped to her feet, the color flaming in her face, her eyes snapping with indignation. "Oh!" she cried, impotently. "I'll--I'll--oh! what can I do? It must come out! He must apologize. Who did it? Oh, I don't even know him, the--wretch!"

The "chuff-chuff" of a motor-car coming up the drive interrupted her outburst, and she looked up to see it being driven up and halted before the entrance. Lady Hartley had a perfect fleet of cars. Jeannette at once jumped to the conclusion that this was one of them. She had a sudden inspiration. It was running free--ready to start. There was temptation in the soft purr of its engine. The driver, quietly dressed, but not in livery, she appraised as one of Lady Hartley's motor-men.

"Shall I?" she whispered. "Dare I? I can set things straight at once if I do. Persis will be wild with me for going off without a word, but I'll--I'll chance it!"

She ran into the hall, slipped into her motoring coat, and, throwing discretion to the winds, walked out to the front of the house and quickly up to the car.

"How soon can you drive me to Sapworth Hall?" she asked, getting in and pulling the rug around her.

The barefaced appropriation of his car by an unknown young woman almost took Lord Chilminster's breath away. He had, at much inconvenience to himself, motored all the way to Lady Hartley's to contradict and sift an amazing and annoying report that he had discovered in the _Morning Post_. He had heard Lady Hartley mention the name of Urmy as that of a friend of hers, and naturally decided that she was the proper person to consult. But before he had time to get out of his car and ring the bell here was a young person, springing from goodness knows where, mistaking him for a motor-man, and ordering him about. For a moment he was speechless. Then, as the humor of the situation began to appeal to him, so did the good looks of the girl.

"Really," he began. "You see I----"

"Don't talk, get under way!" commanded Jeannette. "Quick! Her ladyship has altered her mind about going out. You've got to take me to Sapworth Hall. It's thirty miles. I want to be there by lunch-time. Do you know the way?"

"I--I think so," stammered Chilminster.

Her bewildering eagerness to be off was infectious. The noble owner of the car felt it. But apart from that, he was quite ready for an adventure in such pleasant company. He forgot all about the object of his visit. Without another word he let in the clutch and started.

Jeannette sank back with a sigh of relief. She credited herself with having secured Persis's car very neatly. The man might, perhaps, get into trouble, but she could make that up to him by a generous tip. Her one idea was to contradict and confute the disgraceful announcement at its fountain-head. It was providential that the unknown Lord Chilminster's place was so near; but had it been ten times as far off, Jeannette, boiling with justifiable indignation, and with her mind made up to exact reparation, would have gone there.

"It's awful! It's unheard of! I--I won't have it! Who can have done it?" she kept repeating through white teeth set viciously. "I'll have it contradicted in large print by this time to-morrow, or the American Ambassador shall----"

She was not quite sure what ambassadors did under similar circumstances, and she left the mental threat unfinished. Anyhow, it was a disgrace to herself, and her sex, if not a slight on her country, and it redoubled her determination to "get even" with the perpetrator of it. She leaned forward to make herself heard.

"Set a killing pace," she called. "I'll make it up to you."