Complete Works of Stephen Crane

by Stephen Crane

  “Well, we ain’t goin’ to hurt your old stable, are we?” asked Jimmie, ironically.

  “Dat you ain’t, Jim! Not so long’s I keep my two eyes right plumb squaah pinted at ol’ Jim. No, seh!” Peter began to chuckle in derision.

  The two vagabonds stood before him while he informed them of their iniquities as well as their absurdities, and further made clear his own masterly grasp of the spirit of their devices. Nothing affects children so much as rhetoric. It may not involve any definite presentation of common-sense, but if it is picturesque they surrender decently to its influence. Peter was by all means a rhetorician, and it was not long before the two children had dismally succumbed to him. They went away.

  Depositing the stove in the snow, they straightened to look at each other. It did not enter either head to relinquish the idea of continuing the game. But the situation seemed invulnerable.

  The angel child went on a scouting tour. Presently she returned, flying. “I know! Let’s have it in the cellar! In the cellar! Oh, it’ll be lovely!”

  The outer door of the cellar was open, and they proceeded down some steps with their treasure. There was plenty of light; the cellar was high-walled, warm, and dry. They named it an ideal place. Two huge cylindrical furnaces were humming away, one at either end. Overhead the beams detonated with the different emotions which agitated the tea party.

  Jimmie worked like a stoker, and soon there was a fine bright fire in the stove. The fuel was of small brittle sticks which did not make a great deal of smoke.

  “Now what’ll we cook?” cried little Cora. “What’ll we cook, Jim? We must have something to cook, you know.”

  “Potatoes?” said Jimmie.

  But the angel child made a scornful gesture. “No. I’ve cooked ‘bout a million potatoes, I guess. Potatoes aren’t nice any more.”

  Jimmie’s mind was all said and done when the question of potatoes had been passed, and he looked weakly at his companion.

  “Haven’t you got any turnips in your house?” she inquired, contemptuously. “In my house we have turnips.”

  “Oh, turnips!” exclaimed Jimmie, immensely relieved to find that the honor of his family was safe. “Turnips? Oh, bushels an’ bushels an’ bushels! Out in the shed.”

  “Well, go an’ get a whole lot,” commanded the angel child. “Go an’ get a whole lot. Grea’ big ones. We always have grea’ big ones.”

  Jimmie went to the shed and kicked gently at a company of turnips which the frost had amalgamated. He made three journeys to and from the cellar, carrying always the very largest types from his father’s store. Four of them filled the oven of little Cora’s stove. This fact did not please her, so they placed three rows of turnips on the hot top. Then the angel child, profoundly moved by an inspiration, suddenly cried out,

  “Oh, Jimmie, let’s play we’re keepin’ a hotel, an’ have got to cook for ‘bout a thousand people, an’ those two furnaces will be the ovens, an’ I’ll be the chief cook—”

  “No; I want to be chief cook some of the time,” interrupted Jimmie.

  “No; I’ll be chief cook my own self. You must be my ‘sistant. Now I’ll prepare ’em — see? An’ then you put ’em in the ovens. Get the shovel. We’ll play that’s the pan. I’ll fix ‘em, an’ then you put ’em in the oven. Hold it still now.”

  Jim held the coal-shovel while little Cora, with a frown of importance, arranged turnips in rows upon it. She patted each one daintily, and then backed away to view it, with her head critically sideways.

  “There!” she shouted at last. “That’ll do, I guess. Put ’em in the oven.”

  Jimmie marched with his shovelful of turnips to one of the furnaces. The door was already open, and he slid the shovel in upon the red coals.

  “Come on,” cried little Cora. “I’ve got another batch nearly ready.”

  “But what am I goin’ to do with these?” asked Jimmie. “There ain’t only one shovel.”

  “Leave ‘m in there,” retorted the girl, passionately. “Leave ‘m in there, an’ then play you’re comin’ with another pan. ‘Tain’t right to stand there an’ hold the pan, you goose.”

  So Jimmie expelled all his turnips from his shovel out upon the furnace fire, and returned obediently for another batch.

  “These are puddings,” yelled the angel child, gleefully. “Dozens an’ dozens of puddings for the thousand people at our grea’ big hotel.”

  IV

  At the first alarm the painter had fled to the doctor’s office, where he hid his face behind a book and pretended that he did not hear the noise of feminine revelling. When the doctor came from a round of calls, he too retreated upon the office, and the men consoled each other as well as they were able. Once Mrs. Trescott dashed in to say delightedly that her tea party was not only the success of the season, but it was probably the very nicest tea party that had ever been held in Whilomville. After vainly beseeching them to return with her, she dashed away again, her face bright with happiness.

  The doctor and the painter remained for a long time in silence, Trescott tapping reflectively upon the window-pane. Finally he turned to the painter, and sniffing, said: “What is that, Willis? Don’t you smell something?”

  The painter also sniffed. “Why, yes! It’s like — it’s like turnips.”

  “Turnips? No; it can’t be.

  “Well, it’s very much like it.”

  The puzzled doctor opened the door into the hall, and at first it appeared that he was going to give back two paces. A result of frizzling turnips, which was almost as tangible as mist, had blown in upon his face and made him gasp. “Good God! Willis, what can this be?” he cried.

  “Whee!” said the painter. “It’s awful, isn’t it?”

  The doctor made his way hurriedly to his wife, but before he could speak with her he had to endure the business of greeting a score of women. Then he whispered, “Out in the hall there’s an awful—”

  “THE SOLEMN ODOR OF BURNING TURNIPS ROLLED IN LIKE A SEA-FOG”

  But at that moment it came to them on the wings of a sudden draught. The solemn odor of burning turnips rolled in like a sea-fog, and fell upon that dainty, perfumed tea party. It was almost a personality; if some unbidden and extremely odious guest had entered the room, the effect would have been much the same. The sprightly talk stopped with a jolt, and people looked at each other. Then a few brave and considerate persons made the usual attempt to talk away as if nothing had happened. They all looked at their hostess, who wore an air of stupefaction.

  The odor of burning turnips grew and grew. To Trescott it seemed to make a noise. He thought he could hear the dull roar of this outrage. Under some circumstances he might have been able to take the situation from a point of view of comedy, but the agony of his wife was too acute, and, for him, too visible. She was saying: “Yes, we saw the play the last time we were in New York. I liked it very much. That scene in the second act — the gloomy church, you know, and all that — and the organ playing — and then when the four singing little girls came in—” But Trescott comprehended that she did not know if she was talking of a play or a parachute.

  He had not been in the room twenty seconds before his brow suddenly flushed with an angry inspiration. He left the room hastily, leaving behind him an incoherent phrase of apology, and charged upon his office, where he found the painter somnolent.

  “Willis!” he cried, sternly, “come with me. It’s that damn kid of yours!”

  The painter was immediately agitated. He always seemed to feel more than any one else in the world the peculiar ability of his child to create resounding excitement, but he seemed always to exhibit his feelings very late. He arose hastily, and hurried after Trescott to the top of the inside cellar stairway. Trescott motioned him to pause, and for an instant they listened.

  “Hurry up, Jim,” cried the busy little Cora. “Here’s another whole batch of lovely puddings. Hurry up now, an’ put ’em in the oven.”

  Trescott looked at the painter; the
painter groaned. Then they appeared violently in the middle of the great kitchen of the hotel with a thousand people in it. “Jimmie, go up-stairs!” said Trescott, and then he turned to watch the painter deal with the angel child.

  With some imitation of wrath, the painter stalked to his daughter’s side and grasped her by the arm.

  “‘HERE’S ANOTHER BATCH OF LOVELY PUDDINGS’”

  “Oh, papa! papa!” she screamed. “You’re pinching me! You’re pinching me! You’re pinching me, papa!”

  At first the painter had seemed resolved to keep his grip, but suddenly he let go her arm in a panic. “I’ve hurt her,” he said, turning to Trescott.

  Trescott had swiftly done much towards the obliteration of the hotel kitchen, but he looked up now and spoke, after a short period of reflection. “You’ve hurt her, have you? Well, hurt her again. Spank her!” he cried, enthusiastically. “Spank her, confound you, man! She needs it. Here’s your chance. Spank her, and spank her good. Spank her!”

  The painter naturally wavered over this incendiary proposition, but at last, in one supreme burst of daring, he shut his eyes and again grabbed his precious offspring.

  The spanking was lamentably the work of a perfect bungler. It couldn’t have hurt at all; but the angel child raised to heaven a loud, clear soprano howl that expressed the last word in even mediæval anguish. Soon the painter was aghast. “Stop it, darling! I didn’t mean — I didn’t mean to — to hurt you so much, you know.” He danced nervously. Trescott sat on a box, and devilishly smiled.

  But the pasture call of suffering motherhood came down to them, and a moment later a splendid apparition appeared on the cellar stairs. She understood the scene at a glance. “Willis! What have you been doing?”

  Trescott sat on his box, the painter guiltily moved from foot to foot, and the angel child advanced to her mother with arms outstretched, making a piteous wail of amazed and pained pride that would have moved Peter the Great. Regardless of her frock, the panting mother knelt on the stone floor and took her child to her bosom, and looked, then, bitterly, scornfully, at the cowering father and husband.

  The painter, for his part, at once looked reproachfully at Trescott, as if to say: “There! You see?”

  Trescott arose and extended his hands in a quiet but magnificent gesture of despair and weariness. He seemed about to say something classic, and, quite instinctively, they waited. The stillness was deep, and the wait was longer than a moment. “Well,” he said, “we can’t live in the cellar. Let’s go up-stairs.”

  THE TRIAL, EXECUTION, AND BURIAL OF HOMER PHELPS

  FROM time to time an enwearied pine bough let fall to the earth its load of melting snow, and the branch swung back glistening in the faint wintry sunlight. Down the gulch a brook clattered amid its ice with the sound of a perpetual breaking of glass. All the forest looked drenched and forlorn.

  The sky-line was a ragged enclosure of gray cliffs and hemlocks and pines. If one had been miraculously set down in this gulch one could have imagined easily that the nearest human habitation was hundreds of miles away, if it were not for an old half-discernible wood-road that led towards the brook.

  “Halt! Who’s there?”

  This low and gruff cry suddenly dispelled the stillness which lay upon the lonely gulch, but the hush which followed it seemed even more profound. The hush endured for some seconds, and then the voice of the challenger was again raised, this time with a distinctly querulous note in it.

  “Halt! Who’s there? Why don’t you answer when I holler? Don’t you know you’re likely to get shot?”

  A second voice answered, “Oh, you knew who I was easy enough.”

  “That don’t make no diff’rence.” One of the Margate twins stepped from a thicket and confronted Homer Phelps on the old wood-road. The majestic scowl of official wrath was upon the brow of Reeves Margate, a long stick was held in the hollow of his arm as one would hold a rifle, and he strode grimly to the other boy. “That don’t make no diff’rence. You’ve got to answer when I holler, anyhow. Willie says so.”

  At the mention of the dread chieftain’s name the Phelps boy daunted a trifle, but he still sulkily murmured, “Well, you knew it was me.”

  He started on his way through the snow, but the twin sturdily blocked the path. “You can’t pass less’n you give the countersign.”

  “Huh?” said the Phelps boy. “Countersign?”

  “Yes — countersign,” sneered the twin, strong in his sense of virtue.

  But the Phelps boy became very angry. “Can’t I, hey? Can’t I, hey? I’ll show you whether I can or not! I’ll show you, Reeves Margate!”

  There was a short scuffle, and then arose the anguished clamor of the sentry: “Hey, fellers! Here’s a man tryin’ to run a-past the guard. Hey, fellers! Hey!”

  There was a great noise in the adjacent underbrush. The voice of Willie could be heard exhorting his followers to charge swiftly and bravely. Then they appeared — Willie Dalzel, Jimmie Trescott, the other Margate twin, and Dan Earl. The chieftain’s face was dark with wrath. “What’s the matter? Can’t you play it right? ‘Ain’t you got any sense?” he asked the Phelps boy.

  The sentry was yelling out his grievance. “Now — he came along an’ I hollered at ‘im, an’ he didn’t pay no ‘tention, an’ when I ast ‘im for the countersign, he wouldn’t say nothin’. That ain’t no way.”

  “Can’t you play it right?” asked the chief again, with gloomy scorn.

  “He knew it was me easy enough,” said the Phelps boy.

  “That ‘ain’t got nothin’ to do with it,” cried the chief, furiously. “That ‘ain’t got nothin’ to do with it. If you’re goin’ to play, you’ve got to play it right. It ain’t no fun if you go spoilin’ the whole thing this way. Can’t you play it right?”

  “I forgot the countersign,” lied the culprit, weakly.

  Whereupon the remainder of the band yelled out, with one triumphant voice: “War to the knife! War to the knife! I remember it, Willie. Don’t I, Willie?”

  The leader was puzzled. Evidently he was trying to develop in his mind a plan for dealing correctly with this unusual incident. He felt, no doubt, that he must proceed according to the books, but unfortunately the books did not cover the point precisely. However, he finally said to Homer Phelps, “You are under arrest.” Then with a stentorian voice he shouted, “Seize him!”

  His loyal followers looked startled for a brief moment, but directly they began to move upon the Phelps boy. The latter clearly did not intend to be seized. He backed away, expostulating wildly. He even seemed somewhat frightened. “No, no; don’t you touch me, I tell you; don’t you dare touch me.”

  The others did not seem anxious to engage. They moved slowly, watching the desperate light in his eyes. The chieftain stood with folded arms, his face growing darker and darker with impatience. At length he burst out: “Oh, seize him, I tell you! Why don’t you seize him? Grab him by the leg, Dannie! Hurry up, all of you! Seize him, I keep a-say-in’!”

  Thus adjured, the Margate twins and Dan Earl made another pained effort, while Jimmie Trescott manœuvred to cut off a retreat. But, to tell the truth, there was a boyish law which held them back from laying hands of violence upon little Phelps under these conditions. Perhaps it was because they were only playing, whereas he was now undeniably serious. At any rate, they looked very sick of their occupation.

  “Don’t you dare!” snarled the Phelps boy, facing first one and then the other; he was almost in tears—”don’t you dare touch me!”

  The chieftain was now hopping with exasperation. “Oh, seize him, can’t you? You’re no good at all!” Then he loosed his wrath upon the Phelps boy: “Stand still, Homer, can’t you? You’ve got to be seized, you know. That ain’t the way. It ain’t any fun if you keep a-dodgin’ that way. Stand still, can’t you! You’ve got to be seized.”

  “I don’t want to be seized,” retorted the Phelps boy, obstinate and bitter.

  “But you’ve got to be
seized!” yelled the maddened chief. “Don’t you see? That’s the way to play it.”

  The Phelps boy answered, promptly, “But I don’t want to play that way.”

  “But that’s the right way to play it. Don’t you see? You’ve got to play it the right way. You’ve got to be seized, an’ then we’ll hold a trial on you, an’ — an’ all sorts of things.”

  But this prospect held no illusions for the Phelps boy. He continued doggedly to repeat, “I don’t want to play that way!”

  Of course in the end the chief stooped to beg and beseech this unreasonable lad. “Oh, come on, Homer! Don’t be so mean. You’re a-spoilin’ everything. We won’t hurt you any. Not the tintiest bit. It’s all just playin’. What’s the matter with you?”

  The different tone of the leader made an immediate impression upon the other. He showed some signs of the beginning of weakness. “Well,” he asked, “what you goin’ to do?”

  “Why, first we’re goin’ to put you in a dungeon, or tie you to a stake, or something like that — just pertend, you know,” added the chief, hurriedly, “an’ then we’ll hold a trial, awful solemn, but there won’t be anything what’ll hurt you. Not a thing.”

  “FROM THIS BOOT HE EMPTIED ABOUT A QUART OF SNOW”

  And so the game was readjusted. The Phelps boy was marched off between Dan Earl and a Margate twin. The party proceeded to their camp, which was hidden some hundred feet back in the thickets. There was a miserable little hut with a pine-bark roof, which so frankly and constantly leaked that existence in the open air was always preferable. At present it was noisily dripping melted snow into the black mouldy interior. In front of this hut a feeble fire was flickering through its unhappy career. Underfoot, the watery snow was of the color of lead.

  The party having arrived at the camp, the chief leaned against a tree, and balancing on one foot, drew off a rubber boot. From this boot he emptied about a quart of snow. He squeezed his stocking, which had a hole from which protruded a lobster-red toe. He resumed his boot. “Bring up the prisoner,” said he. They did it. “Guilty or not guilty?” he asked.