At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern

by Myrtle Reed

  VIII

  More

  _Blue as sapphires were the eyes of Elaine, and her fair cheek was likethat of an apple blossom. Set like a rose upon pearl was the dewy,fragrant sweetness of her mouth, and her breath was that of the roseitself. Her hands--but how shall I write of the flower-like hands ofElaine? They seemed all too frail to hold the reins of her palfrey, muchless to guide him along the rocky road that lay before her._

  _Safely sheltered in a sunny valley was the Castle of Content, whereinElaine's father reigned as Lord. Upon the hills close at hand were theorchards, which were now in bloom. A faint, unearthly sweetness came withevery passing breeze, and was wafted through the open windows of theCastle, where, upon the upper floor, Elaine was wont to sit with her maidsat the tapestry frames._

  _But, of late, a strange restlessness was upon her, and the wander-lustsurged through her veins._

  _"My father," she said, "I am fain to leave the Castle of Content, and setout upon the Heart's Quest. Among the gallant knights of thy retinue,there is none whom I would wed, and it is seemly that I should set out tofind my lord and master, for behold, father, as thou knowest, twenty yearsand more have passed over my head, and my beauty hath begun to fade."_

  _The Lord of the Castle of Content smiled in amusement, that Elaine, thebeautiful, should fancy her charms were on the wane. But he was ever eagerto gratify the slightest wish of this only child of his, and so he gavehis ready consent._

  _"Indeed, Elaine," he answered, "and if thou choosest, thou shalt go, butthese despised knights shall attend thee, and also our new fool, who hathcome from afar to make merry in our court. His motley is of an unfamiliarpattern, his quips and jests savour not so much of antiquity, and hissongs are pleasing. He shall lighten the rigours of thy journey and cheerthee when thou art sad."_

  _"But, father, I do not choose to have the fool."_

  _"Say no more, Elaine, for if thou goest, thou shall have the fool. It ismost fitting that in thy retinue there shouldst be more than one to wearthe cap and bells, and it is in my mind to consider this quest of thinesomewhat more than mildly foolish. Unnumbered brave and faithful knightsare at thy feet and yet thou canst not choose, but must needs fare onwardin search of a stranger to be thy lord and master."_

  _Elaine raised her hand. "As thou wilt, father," she said, submissively."Thou canst not understand the way of a maid. Bid thy fool to preparehimself quickly for a long journey, since we start at sunset."_

  _"But why at sunset, daughter? The way is long. Mayst not thy mission waituntil sunrise?"_

  _"Nay, father, for it is my desire to sleep to-night upon the ground. Thetapestried walls of my chamber stifle me and I would fain lie in the freshair with only the green leaves for my canopy and the stars for my taperlights."_

  _"As thou wilt, Elaine, but my heart is sad at the prospect of losingthee. Thou art my only child, the image of thy dead mother, and my oldeyes shall be misty for the sight of thee long before my gallant knightsbring thee back again."_

  _"So shall I gain some hours, father," she answered. "Perhaps my sunsetjourneying shall bring my return a day nearer. Cross me not in this wish,father, for it is my fancy to go."_

  _So it was that the cavalcade was made ready and Elaine and her companyleft the Castle of Content at sunset. Two couriers rode at the head, tosee that the way was clear, and with a silver bugle to warn travellers tostand aside until the Lady Elaine and her attendants had passed._

  _Upon a donkey, caparisoned in a most amusing manner, rode Le Jongleur,the new fool of whom the Lord of the Castle of Content had spoken. Hismotley, as has been said, was of an unfamiliar pattern, but was none theless striking, being made wholly of scarlet and gold. The Lady Elainecould not have guessed that it was assumed as a tribute to the trappingsof her palfrey, for Le Jongleur's heart was most humble and loyal, thoughleaping now with the joy of serving the fair Lady Elaine._

  _The Lord of Content stood at the portal of the Castle to bid the retinueGodspeed, and as the cymbals crashed out a sounding farewell, heimpatiently wiped away the mist, which already had clouded his vision.Long he waited, straining his eyes toward the distant cliffs, where, oneby one, the company rode upward. The valley was in shadow, but the longlight lay upon the hills, changing the crags to a wonder of purple andgold. To him, too, came the breath of apple bloom, but it brough no joy tohis troubled heart._

  _What dangers lay in wait for Elaine as she fared forth upon her wildquest? What monsters haunted the primeval forests through which her pathmust lie? And where was the knight who should claim her innocent andmaidenly heart? At this thought, the Lord of Content shuddered, then wasquickly ashamed._

  _"I am as foolish," he muttered, "as he in motley, who rides at the sideof Elaine. Surely my daughter, the child of a soldier, can make nounworthy choice."_

  _The cavalcade had reached the summit of the cliff, now, and at the brink,turned back. The cymbals and the bugles pealed forth another soundingfarewell to the Lord of the Castle of Content, whom Elaine well knew waswaiting in the shadow of the portal till her company should be entirelylost to sight._

  _The last light shone upon the wonderful mass of gold which rippled to herwaist, unbound, from beneath her close-fitting scarlet cap, and gave heran unearthly beauty. Le Jongleur held aloft his bauble, making it to nodin merry fashion, but the Lord of Content did not see, his eyes beingfixed upon Elaine. She waved her hand to him, but he could not answer, forhis shoulders were shaking with grief, nor, indeed, across the mercilessdistance that lay between, could he guess at Elaine's whispered prayer:"Dear Heavenly Father, keep thou my earthly father safe and happy, tillhis child comes back again."_

  _Over the edge of the cliff and out upon a wide plain they fared. Ribbonsof glorious colour streamed from the horizon to the zenith, and touched toflame the cymbals and the bugles and the trappings of the horses and theshields of the knights. Piercingly sweet, across the fields of blowingclover, came the even song of a feathered chorister, and_--what on earthwas that noise?

  Harlan went to the window impatiently, like one wakened from a dream by ablind impulse of action.

  The village stage, piled high with trunks, was at his door, and from thecavernous depths of the vehicle, shrieks of juvenile terror echoed andre-echoed unceasingly. Mr. Blake, driving, merely waited in supremeunconcern.

  "What in the hereafter," muttered Harlan, savagely. "More old lovers ofDorothy's, I suppose, or else the--Good Lord, it's twins!"

  A child of four or five fell out of the stage, followed by another, wholit unerringly on top of the prostrate one. In the meteoric moment of thefall, Harlan had seen that the two must have discovered America at aboutthe same time, for they were exactly alike, making due allowance for theslight difference made by masculine and feminine attire.

  An enormous doll, which to Harlan's troubled sight first appeared to be aninfant in arms, was violently ejected from the stage and added to thehuman pile which was wriggling and weeping upon the gravelled walk. A cubof seven next leaped out, whistling shrilly, then came a querulous,wailing, feminine voice from the interior.

  "Willie," it whined, "how can you act so? Help your little brother andsister up and get Rebbie's doll."

  To this the lad paid no attention whatever, and the mother herselfassorted the weeping pyramid on the walk. Harlan ran downstairs, feelingthat the hour had come to defend his hearthstone from outsiders. Dick andDorothy were already at the door.

  "Foundlings' Home," explained Dick, briefly, with a wink at Harlan."They're late this year."

  Dorothy was speechless with amazement and despair. Before Harlan had begunto think connectedly, one of the twins had darted into the house andbumped its head on the library door, thereupon making the Jack-o'-Lanternhideous with much lamentation.

  The mother, apparently tired out, came in as though she had left somethingof great value there and had come to get it, pausing only to direct Harlanto pay the stage driver, and have her trunks taken into the rooms openingoff the dining-room on the south side.


  Willie took a mouth-organ out of his pocket and rendered a hithertounknown air upon it with inimitable vigour. In the midst of the confusion,Claudius Tiberius had the misfortune to appear, and, immediatelyperceiving his mistake, whisked under the sofa, from whence the other twindeterminedly haled him, using the handle which Nature had evidentlyintended for that purpose.

  "Will you kindly tell me," demanded Mrs. Carr, when she could make herselfheard, "what is the meaning of all this?"

  "I do not understand you," said the mother of the twins, coldly. "Were youaddressing me?"

  "I was," returned Mrs. Carr, to Dick's manifest delight. "I desire to knowwhy you have come to my house, uninvited, and made all this disturbance."

  "The idea!" exclaimed the woman, trembling with anger. "Will you pleasesend for Mr. Judson?"

  "Mr. Judson," said Dorothy, icily, "has been dead for some time. Thishouse is the property of my husband."

  "Indeed! And who may your husband be?" The tone of the question did notindicate even faint interest in the subject under discussion.

  Dorothy turned, but Harlan had long since beat an ignominious retreat,closely followed by Dick, whose idea, as audibly expressed, was that thewomen be allowed to "fight it out by themselves."

  "I can readily understand," went on Dorothy, with a supreme effort atself-control, "that you have made a mistake for which you are not in anysense to blame. You are tired from your journey, and you are quite welcometo stay until to-morrow."

  "To-morrow!" shrilled the woman. "I guess you don't know who I am! I amMrs. Holmes, Rebecca Judson's own cousin, and I have spent the Summer hereever since Rebecca was married! I guess if Ebeneezer knew you werepractically ordering his wife's own cousin out of his house, he'd risefrom his grave to haunt you!"

  Dorothy fancied that Uncle Ebeneezer's portrait moved slightly. AuntRebecca still surveyed the room from the easel, gentle, sweet-faced, andsaintly. There was no resemblance whatever between Aunt Rebecca and thesallow, hollow-cheeked, wide-eyed termagant, with a markedly recedingchin, who stood before Mrs. Carr and defied her.

  "This is my husband's house," suggested Dorothy, pertinently.

  "Then let your husband do the talking," rejoined Mrs. Holmes,sarcastically. "If he was sure it was his, I guess he wouldn't have runaway. I've always had my own rooms here, and I intend to go and come as Iplease, as I always have done. You can't make me believe that Ebeneezergave my apartments to your husband, nor him either, and I wouldn't adviseany of you to try it."

  Sounds of fearful panic came from the chicken yard, and Dorothy rushedout, swiftly laying avenging hands on the disturber of the peace. One ofthe twins was chasing Abdul Hamid around the coop with a lath, as heexplained between sobs, "to make him lay." Mrs. Holmes bore down uponDorothy before any permanent good had been done.

  "How dare you!" she cried. "How dare you lay hands on my child! Come,Ebbie, come to mamma. Bless his little heart, he shall chase the chickensif he wants to, so there, there. Don't cry, Ebbie. Mamma will get youanother lath and you shall play with the chickens all the afternoon.There, there!"

  Harlan appeared at this juncture, and in a few quiet, well-chosen wordstold Mrs. Holmes that the chicken coop was his property, and that neithernow nor at any other time should any one enter it without his expresspermission.

  "Upon my word," remarked Mrs. Holmes, still soothing the unhappy twin."How high and mighty we are when we're living off our poor dead uncle'sbounty! Telling his wife's own cousin what she's to do, and what sheisn't! Upon my word!"

  So saying, Mrs. Holmes retired to the house, her pace hastened by howlsfrom the other twin, who was in trouble with her older brother somewherein her "apartment."

  Dorothy looked at Harlan, undecided whether to laugh or to cry. "Poorlittle woman," he said, softly; "don't you fret. We'll have them out ofthe house no later than to-morrow."

  "All of them?" asked Dorothy, eagerly, as Miss St. Clair strolled into thefront yard.

  Harlan's brow clouded and he shifted uneasily from one foot to the other."I don't know," he said, slowly, "whether I've got nerve enough to order awoman out of my house or not. Let's wait and see what happens."

  A sob choked Dorothy, and she ran swiftly into the house, fortunatelymeeting no one on her way to her room. Dick ventured out of the barn andcame up to Harlan, who was plainly perplexed.

  "Very, very mild arrival," commented Mr. Chester, desiring to put his hostat his ease. "I've never known 'em to come so peacefully as they haveto-day. Usually there's more or less disturbance."

  "Disturbance," repeated Harlan. "Haven't we had a disturbance to-day?"

  "We have not," answered Dick, placidly. "Wait till young Ebeneezer andRebecca get more accustomed to their surroundings, and then you'll have aFourth of July every day, with Christmas, Thanksgiving, and St. Patrick'sDay thrown in. Willie is the worst little terror that ever went unlicked,and the twins come next."

  "Perhaps you don't understand children," remarked Harlan, with apatronising air, and more from a desire to disagree with Dick than fromanything else. "I've always liked them."

  "If you have," commented Dick, with a knowing chuckle, "you're in a fairway to get cured of it."

  "Tell me about these people," said Harlan, ignoring the speech, anddominated once more by healthy human curiosity. "Who are they and where dothey come from?"

  "They're dwellers from the infernal regions," explained Dick, with an airof truthfulness, "and they came from there because the old Nick turned 'emout. They were upsetting things and giving the place a bad name. Mrs.Holmes says she's Aunt Rebecca's cousin, but nobody knows whether she isor not. She's come here every Summer since Aunt Rebecca died, and poor olduncle couldn't help himself. He hinted more than once that he'd enjoy herabsence if she could be moved to make herself scarce, but it had no moreeffect than a snowflake would in the place she came from. The most hecould do was to build a wing on the house with a separate kitchen anddining-room in it, and take his own meals in the library, with the doorbolted.

  "Willie is a Winter product and Judson Centre isn't a pleasant place inthe cold months, but the twins were born here, five years ago this Summer.They came in the night, but didn't make any more trouble then than theyhave every day since."

  "What would you do?" asked Harlan, after a thoughtful silence, "if youwere in my place?"

  "I'd be tickled to death because a kind Providence had married me toDorothy instead of to Mrs. Holmes. Poor old Holmes is in his well-earnedgrave."

  With great dignity, Harlan walked into the house, but Dick, occupied withhis own thoughts, did not guess that his host was offended.

  After the first excitement was over, comparative peace settled down uponthe Jack-o'-Lantern. Mrs. Holmes decided the question of where she shouldeat, by setting four more places at the table when Mrs. Smithers's backwas turned. Dorothy did not appear at luncheon, and Mrs. Smithersperformed her duties with such pronounced ungraciousness that Elaine feltas though something was about to explode.

  A long sleep, born of nervous exhaustion, came at last to Dorothy'srelief. When she awoke, it was night and the darkness dazed her at first.She sat up and rubbed her eyes, wondering whether she had been dead, ormerely ill.

  There was not a sound in the Jack-o'-Lantern, and the events of the dayseemed like some hideous nightmare which waking had put to rout. Shebathed her face in cool water, then went to look out of the window.

  A lantern moved back and forth under the trees in the orchard, and a tall,dark figure, armed with a spade, accompanied it. "It's Harlan," thoughtDorothy. "I'll go down and see what he's burying."

  But it was only Mrs. Smithers, who appeared much startled when she saw hermistress at her side.

  "What are you doing?" demanded Dorothy, seeing that Mrs. Smithers had duga hole at least a foot and a half each way.

  "Just a-satisfyin' myself," explained the handmaiden, with a note oftriumph in her voice, "about that there cat. 'Ere's where I buried 'im,and 'ere's where there ain't no signs of 'is dead bod
y. 'E's come back to'aunt us, that's wot 'e 'as, and your uncle'll be the next."

  "Don't be so foolish," snapped Dorothy. "You've forgotten the place,that's all, and I don't wish to hear any more of this nonsense."

  "'Oo was it?" asked Mrs. Smithers, "as come out of a warm bed at midnightto see as if folks wot was diggin' for cats found anythink? 'T warn't me,Miss, that's wot it warn't, and I take it that them as follers is asnonsensical as them wot digs. Anyhow, Miss, 'ere's where 'e was buried,and 'ere's where 'e ain't now. You can think wot you likes, that's wot youcan."

  Claudius Tiberius suddenly materialised out of the surrounding darkness,and after sniffing at the edge of the hole, jumped in to investigate.

  "You see that, Miss?" quavered Mrs. Smithers. "'E knows where 'e's been,and 'e knows where 'e ain't now."

  "Mrs. Smithers," said Dorothy, sternly, "will you kindly fill up that holeand come into the house and go to bed? I don't want to be kept awake allnight."

  "You don't need to be kept awake, Miss," said Mrs. Smithers, slowlyfilling up the hole. "The worst is 'ere already and wot's comin' is comin'anyway, and besides," she added, as an afterthought, "there ain't ablessed one of 'em come 'ere at night since your uncle fixed over thehouse."