by Howard Pyle
“Go!” — Through his ear the summons stung
As if a battle-trump had rung;
The slumbering instincts long unstirred
Start at the old familiar word;
It thrills like flame through every limb —
What mean his twenty years to him?
The savage blow his rider dealt
Fell on his hollow flanks unfelt;
The spur that pricked his staring hide
Unheeded tore his bleeding side;
Alike to him are spur and rein, —
He steps a five-year-old again!
Before the quarter pole was past,
Old Hiram said, “He’s going fast.”
Long ere the quarter was a half,
The chuckling crowd had ceased to laugh;
Tighter his frightened jockey clung
As in a mighty stride he swung,
The gravel flying in his track,
His neck stretched out, his ears laid back,
His tail extended all the while
Behind him like a rat-tail file!
Off went a shoe, — away it spun,
Shot like a bullet from a gun;
The quaking jockey shapes a prayer
From scraps of oaths he used to swear;
He drops his whip, he drops his rein,
He clutches fiercely for a mane;
He’ll lose his hold — he sways and reels —
He’ll slide beneath those trampling heels!
The knees of many a horseman quake,
The flowers on many a bonnet shake,
And shouts arise from left and right,
“Stick on! Stick on!” “Hould tight! Hould tight!”
“Cling round his neck and don’t let go—”
“That pace can’t hold, — there! steady! whoa!”
But like the sable steed that bore
The spectral lover of Lenore,
His nostrils snorting foam and fire,
No stretch his bony limbs can tire;
And now the stand he rushes by,
And “Stop him! — stop him!” is the cry.
Stand back! he’s only just begun, —
He’s having out three heats in one!
“Don’t rush in front! he’ll smash your brains;
But follow up and grab the reins!”
Old Hiram spoke. Dan Pfeiffer heard,
And sprang impatient at the word;
Budd Doble started on his bay,
Old Hiram followed on his gray,
And off they spring, and round they go,
The fast ones doing “all they know.”
Look! twice they follow at his heels,
As round the circling course he wheels,
And whirls with him that clinging boy
Like Hector round the walls of Troy;
Still on, and on, the third time round!
They’re tailing off! they’re losing ground!
Budd Doble’s nag begins to fail!
Dan Pfeiffer’s sorrel whisks his tail!
And see! in spite of whip and shout,
Old Hiram’s mare is giving out!
Now for the finish! at the turn,
The old horse — all the rest astern, —
Comes swinging in, with easy trot;
By Jove! he’s distanced all the lot!
That trot no mortal could explain;
Some said, “Old Dutchman come again!”
Some took his time, — at least they tried,
But what it was could none decide;
One said he couldn’t understand
What happened to his second hand;
One said 2.10; that couldn’t be —
More like two twenty two or three;
Old Hiram settled it at last;
“The time was two — too dee-vel-ish fast!”
The parson’s horse had won the bet;
It cost him something of a sweat;
Back in the one-hoss shay he went;
The parson wondered what it meant,
And murmured, with a mild surprise
And pleasant twinkle of the eyes,
“That funeral must have been a trick,
Or corpses drive at double-quick;
I shouldn’t wonder, I declare,
If brother — Jehu — made the prayer!”
And this is all I have to say
About that tough old trotting bay.
Huddup! Huddup! G’lang! — Good-day!
Moral for which this tale is told:
A horse can trot, for all he’s old.
THE BROOMSTICK TRAIN
Look out! Look out, boys! Clear the track!
The witches are here! They’ve all come back!
They hanged them high, — No use! No use!
What cares a witch for a hangman’s noose?
They buried them deep, but they wouldn’t lie still,
For cats and witches are hard to kill;
They swore they shouldn’t and wouldn’t die, —
Books said they did, but they lie! they lie!
— A couple of hundred years, or so,
They had knocked about in the world below,
When an Essex Deacon dropped in to call,
And a homesick feeling seized them all;
For he came from a place they knew full well,
And many a tale he had to tell.
They long to visit the haunts of men,
To see the old dwellings they knew again,
And ride on their broomsticks all around
Their wide domain of unhallowed ground.
In Essex county there’s many a roof
Well known to him of the cloven hoof;
The small square windows are full in view
Which the midnight hags went sailing through,
On their well-trained broomsticks mounted high,
Seen like shadows against the sky;
Crossing the track of owls and bats,
Hugging before them their coal-black cats.
Well did they know, those gray old wives,
The sights we see in our daily drives:
Shimmer of lake and shine of sea,
Brown’s bare hill with its lonely tree,
(It wasn’t then as we see it now,
With one scant scalp-lock to shade its brow;)
Dusky nooks in the Essex woods,
Dark, dim, Dante-like solitudes,
Where the tree-toad watches the sinuous snake
Glide through his forests of fern and brake;
Ipswich River; its old stone bridge;
Far off Andover’s Indian Ridge,
And many a scene where history tells
Some shadow of bygone terror dwells, —
Of “Norman’s Woe” with its tale of dread,
Of the Screeching Woman of Marblehead,
(The fearful story that turns men pale:
Don’t bid me tell it, — my speech would fail.)
Who would not, will not, if he can,
Bathe in the breezes of fair Cape Ann, —
Rest in the bowers her bays enfold,
Loved by the sachems and squaws of old?
Home where the white magnolias bloom,
Sweet with the bayberry’s chaste perfume,
Hugged by the woods and kissed by the sea!
Where is the Eden like to thee?
For that “couple of hundred years, or so,”
There had been no peace in the world below;
The witches still grumbling, “It isn’t fair;
Come, give us a taste of the upper air!
We’ve had enough of your sulphur springs,
And the evil odor that round them clings;
We long for a drink that is cool and nice, —
Great buckets of water with Wenham ice;
We’ve served you well up-stairs, you know;
You’re a good old — fellow — come, let us go!”
I don’t feel sure of hi
s being good,
But he happened to be in a pleasant mood, —
As fiends with their skins full sometimes are, —
(He’d been drinking with “roughs” at a Boston bar.)
So what does he do but up and shout
To a graybeard turnkey, “Let ’em out!”
To mind his orders was all he knew;
The gates swung open, and out they flew
“Where are our broomsticks?” the beldams cried.
“Here are your broomsticks,” an imp replied.
“They’ve been in — the place you know — so long
They smell of brimstone uncommon strong;
But they’ve gained by being left alone, —
Just look, and you’ll see how tall they’ve grown.”
— “And where is my cat?” a vixen squalled.
“Yes, where are our cats?” the witches bawled,
And began to call them all by name:
As fast as they called the cats, they came:
There was bob-tailed Tommy and long-tailed Tim,
And wall-eyed Jacky and green-eyed Jim,
And splay-foot Benny and slim-legged Beau,
And Skinny and Squally, and Jerry and Joe,
And many another that came at call, —
It would take too long to count them all.
All black, — one could hardly tell which was which,
But every cat knew his own old witch;
And she knew hers as hers knew her, —
Ah, didn’t they curl their tails and purr!
No sooner the withered hags were free
Than out they swarmed for a midnight spree;
I couldn’t tell all they did in rhymes,
But the Essex people had dreadful times.
The Swampscott fishermen still relate
How a strange sea-monster stole their bait;
How their nets were tangled in loops and knots,
And they found dead crabs in their lobster-pots.
Poor Danvers grieved for her blasted crops,
And Wilmington mourned over mildewed hops.
A blight played havoc with Beverly beans, —
It was all the work of those hateful queans!
A dreadful panic began at “Pride’s,”
Where the witches stopped in their midnight rides,
And there rose strange rumors and vague alarms
‘Mid the peaceful dwellers at Beverly Farms.
Now when the Boss of the Beldams found
That without his leave they were ramping round,
He called, — they could hear him twenty miles,
From Chelsea beach to the Misery Isles;
The deafest old granny knew his tone
Without the trick of the telephone.
“Come here, you witches! Come here!” says he, —
“At your games of old, without asking me!
I’ll give you a little job to do
That will keep you stirring, you godless crew!”
They came, of course, at their master’s call,
The witches, the broomsticks, the cats, and all;
He led the hags to a railway train
The horses were trying to drag in vain.
“Now, then,” says he, “you’ve had your fun,
And here are the cars you’ve got to run.
The driver may just unhitch his team,
We don’t want horses, we don’t want steam
You may keep your old black cats to hug,
But the loaded train you’ve got to lug.”
Since then on many a car you’ll see
A broomstick plain as plain can be;
On every stick there’s a witch astride, —
The string you see to her leg is tied.
She will do a mischief if she can,
But the string is held by a careful man,
And whenever the evil-minded witch
Would cut some caper, he gives a twitch.
As for the hag, you can’t see her,
But hark! you can hear her black cat’s purr,
And now and then, as a car goes by,
You may catch a gleam from her wicked eye.
Often you’ve looked on a rushing train,
But just what moved it was not so plain.
It couldn’t be those wires above,
For they could neither pull nor shove;
Where was the motor that made it go
You couldn’t guess, but now you know.
Remember my rhymes when you ride again
On the rattling rail by the broomstick train!
Sir Christopher (1901) by Maud Wilder Goodwin
A ROMANCE OF A MARYLAND MANOR IN 1644
Illustrated by Howard Pyle
CONTENTS
PREFACE
CHAPTER I. ROBIN HOOD’S BARN
CHAPTER II. ST. GABRIEL’S AND ST. INIGO’S
CHAPTER III. BLESSING AND BANNING
CHAPTER IV. THE LORD OF THE MANOR
CHAPTER V. PEGGY
CHAPTER VI. THE KING’S ARMS
CHAPTER VII. IN GOOD GREEN WOOD
CHAPTER VIII. A CLUE
CHAPTER IX. A REQUIEM MASS
CHAPTER X. THE ORDEAL BY TOUCH
CHAPTER XI. THE GREATER LOVE
CHAPTER XII. HOW LOVERS ARE CONVINCED
CHAPTER XIII. A CHANGE OF VENUE
CHAPTER XIV. IN WHICH FATE TAKES THE HELM
CHAPTER XV. DIGITUS DEI
CHAPTER XVI. LIFE OR DEATH
CHAPTER XVII. ROMNEY
CHAPTER XVIII. THE EMERALD TAG
CHAPTER XIX. THE ROLLING YEAR
CHAPTER XX. A BIRTHNIGHT BALL
CHAPTER XXI. A ROOTED SORROW
CHAPTER XXII. CANDLEMAS EVE
CHAPTER XXIII. “HEY FOR ST. MARY’S, AND WIVES FOR US ALL!”
CHAPTER XXIV. THE CALVERT MOTTO
The original frontispiece
TO
BLANCHE WILDER BELLAMY
AND
FREDERICK PUTNAM BELLAMY
PREFACE
ON A BLUFF of the Maryland coast stand a church, a school, a huddle of gravestones, and an obelisk raised to the memory of Leonard Calvert. These alone mark the site of St. Mary’s, once the capital of the Palatinate.
It is near this little town, about the middle of the seventeenth century, that my story begins, among the feuds then raging between Catholic and Protestant, Cavalier and Roundhead, Marylander and Virginian. The Virginians of that day were but a generation removed from the pioneers who suffered in the massacre of 1622; and the sons and daughters of those early settlers whose lives were traced in “The Head of a Hundred”[A] appear in the present romance.
The adventures of Romney Huntoon, of the Brents, and, most of all, of Christopher Neville and Elinor Calvert, furnish the material of my story; but I venture to hope that the reader will feel beneath the incidents and adventures that throbbing of the human heart which has chiefly interested me.
CHAPTER I. ROBIN HOOD’S BARN
THROUGH THE JANUARY twilight a sail-boat steered its course by the light of a fire which blazed high in the throat of the chimney at St. Gabriel’s Manor. Within the hall, circled by the light from the fire, a Danish hound stretched its lazy length on the floor, and, pillowing his head against the dog’s body, lay a boy eight or nine years old.
He was a plain laddie, with a freckled nose, a wide mouth, and round apple cheeks over which flaxen curls tumbled in confusion. His big eyes, the redeeming feature of the face, were just now fixed upon the shadows cast by the motion of his joined hands on the wall. At length the lips parted over a row of baby teeth with a gap in the centre, through which the little tongue showed blood-red, as the boy laughed long and loud.
“Thee, Knut!” he lisped, with that occasional slip of the letter s which was a lingering trick of babyhood and cost him much shame, “is not that broad-shouldered shadow like Couthin Giles? And the tall one, — why, ’tis the very image of Father
Mohl! And the short one ith Couthin Mary. Look how she bows as she goes before the father! And what a fine cowl I have made of my kerchief!”
Unconscious of observation as the boy was, he was being closely watched from two directions. In the shadow of the settle by the fire sat a tonsured priest, holding before him a breviary over the top of which he was contemplating the boy on the floor; opposite the priest, on the landing of the stairs, a woman leaned on the balustrade, following with absorbed interest every movement of the chubby hands, and every expression of the childish face, which bore a burlesqued resemblance to her own. After a moment the woman gathered her skirts closer about her and stealing down the winding stair, crept up behind the boy and clasped both hands playfully over his eyes.
“Who is it?” she asked gaily.
“Mother!” cried the child, wrenching himself free only to jump up and throw himself into the arms outstretched to receive him. “Didst fancy I was like to mithtake thy hands?” he asked. “No, faith! Father Mohl’s hands are long and cold, and Couthin Mary’s fingers are stiff and hard, no more like to thine than a potato to a puff-ball.”
“Hush, Cecil! Hush, little ingrate!” whispered the mother, clapping her hands this time over his lips. “I would not thy Cousin Mary heard that speech for a silver crown.” Nevertheless, she smiled.
Elinor Calvert, as she stood there with one hand on her son’s shoulder and the other bending back his face, looked like some sunshiny goddess. Her dress well became her height. She wore a long petticoat of figured damask, beneath a robe of green stuff. Her bodice, long and pointed, fitted the figure closely, and the flowing sleeves of green silk fell back from round white arms. Around her neck was a string of pearls, bearing a heart-shaped miniature set also in pearls, and held to the left side of her bodice by a brooch of diamonds. Her figure was tall, and crowned by a head nobly proportioned and upheld by a white pillar of throat. Her features were heavily moulded, especially the lips and chin. The golden hair which swept her brow softened its marked width, yet the impression conveyed by the face might have been cold had it not been for the softness of the eyes under their fringe of dark lashes.
In spite of the flashes of gaiety which marked her intercourse with her son, the prevailing expression of Mistress Calvert’s face was sad. Rumor said that there was enough to account for this in the story of her brief married life in England, for Churchill Calvert was a spendthrift and a gambler, who died leaving his widow with her little son a year old, and no other support than the income of a slender dowry.
