"The ex-hermit smiled, and drew a paper from his pocket. "Before we obey your orders, my dear sister-in-law," he remarked, "I wish to call your attention to a little business matter. You will remember that when I was here with you, acting as your a.s.sistant, you found great difficulty in paying me my salary. The first year you told me to take it out of the customs duties. The sum I received was not equal to the amount due me, but I made no complaint. The second year I was obliged to rely on the taxes on internal production; but as you required most of the income from this source, I found myself very short of money at the end of the year. The third year I was obliged to rely upon the taxes on pew-rents; and that, as you are aware, yielded me almost nothing. After that you paid me no salary at all. Here is my bill for the money due me. But if you cannot conveniently pay me, I will agree, in the presence of these good friends, to postpone the settlement until the next time I lay my eyes upon you. If you do not then pay me, I shall then levy upon your personal possessions."
"The Dowager glared at the Princess Ferrando, and, having shaken her long forefinger at that beautiful young lady, she departed, and was never seen in the palace again."
Here Jonas folded the paper.
"Is that the end?" asked the Daughter of the House.
"That is all there is of it," said Jonas, sententiously.
"I thought," said the Daughter of the House, "that the story would tell how he governed his rented princ.i.p.ality, and if he ever got his own. I worked it out in my mind like a flash that he would govern so well that his own people would go to him and beg him to govern them."
"I think," said the Next Neighbor, "that if that princ.i.p.ality was governed at all, it was by that scheming wife."
"There"s two ways of ending a story," said Pomona. "One is to wind it up, and the other is to let it run down. Now when a story is running down as if it was a clock, it"s often a good deal longer than you think before it stops; so we thought we would wind this one up right there."
Euphemia laughed. "But if you wind it up," she said, "you help it to keep on going."
For a moment Pomona looked embarra.s.sed; but she quickly recovered herself. "I don"t mean to wind it up like a clock," she said, "but to wind it up like an old-fashioned clothes-line which isn"t wanted again until you have some more things to hang on it."
The Husband of Euphemia stated it as his opinion that that was an excellent way to stop a story; but Euphemia did not agree with him. "I think," she said, "that a story of that kind ought to end with a moral.
They nearly always do."
Pomona now looked at Jonas, and Jonas looked at Pomona.
"Several times, when we was writing the story," said Pomona, "I had a notion that Jone was trying to squeeze a moral into it here and there; but he didn"t say nothing about it, and I didn"t ask him, and if there"s anything more to say about it, it"s for him to do it."
Jonas smiled. "My opinion about morals to stories is that the people who read them ought to work them out for themselves," said he. "Some people work out one kind of moral, and others work out another kind. It was a pretty big job to write that story, which I had to do the most of, and I don"t think I ought to be called on to put in any moral, which is a good deal like being asked to make bread for the man who buys my wheat."
Pomona looked down at the ground, then up to the sky, and then she remarked:
"If you wouldn"t mind hearing a little bit of a story, I"d like to tell you one." No one had any wish to object, and she began: "Once there was a young married man who went to his business in a canoe; every morning he paddled himself down to his business, and every afternoon he paddled himself back. About half-way down the beautiful stream on which he lived there was a little point of rocks projecting out into the water, and the young man was obliged to paddle his canoe very near the opposite sh.o.r.e in order to get out of the way. This was troublesome, and after a while he got tired of it. It would be very much pleasanter, he thought, if he could paddle along the middle of the stream, without thinking about the rocks. So when, one morning, he was in a great hurry, he said to himself that he would steer his canoe right straight against that point of rocks and break it off. After that he would have a clear pa.s.sage up and down the stream. So as soon as he got near enough he carried out his plan.
That young man did not go to his office that morning, and the fragments of his canoe was picked up by a poor family and used for kindling-wood.
Now," she added, looking deliberately at Jonas, "if you can find a good moral to that story we"d be glad to hear it."
It was very evident to the listeners that Pomona had given a shrewd guess as to the moral of the story Jonas had read, if, indeed, he had had in his mind any moral at all--and that her own was an offset to it, or so intended. So the Next Neighbor came to the rescue.
"I have a great dislike," she announced, "to morals of all sorts. I prefer never to think of morals. They are very perplexing, and often worse than useless. But if there are any morals to those two stories, I should say that the first story has something to do with women who manage too much; and the second, in some occult manner, deals with men who try to reform their wives."
Here every one laughed. And then there followed a lively criticism of the story Jonas had read; but they all agreed that it was worthy of Pomona and Jonas, and should be published. When they had reached this conclusion they were summoned to luncheon.
THIS STORY IS TOLD BY
THE DAUGHTER OF THE HOUSE
AND IS CALLED
THE CONSCIOUS AMANDA
VIII
THE CONSCIOUS AMANDA
One morning, as John Gayther was working in the melon-bed, the Daughter of the House came to him, and greeted him with such a glow on her face that John knew she had something pleasant to tell him.
"Yes, miss," John replied to her greeting; "it is a beautiful morning, and I know of something more beautiful than the morning."
"I do not see any very great beauty in muskmelons," said the Daughter of the House, demurely.
"Muskmelons are not in my mind at this minute," John replied, letting the hoe fall upon the ground as he looked at her pretty face, all aglow.
"I have something in my mind, John--a very original story. Papa said yesterday I must tell a story, and I have one all ready. I do not believe you ever heard one like it. Come to the summer-house; mamma and papa are already there."
She tripped away, and John followed her, stopping on the way to pick up a basket of seed-pods. He had just established himself on his stool, facing the family group, and had taken some pods to sh.e.l.l as he listened, when his hand was arrested and all the party silenced by a burst of song from the tall lilac-bushes near the hedge. They could not see the bird, but it was evident that he was enjoying his own melody.
Such pure, sweet notes--now rippling softly, now with a gay little quiver of joy, now a tender prolonged note, now a succession of trills, high and low, that set the air throbbing, and every now and then a great burst of seraphic music, as if his little heart was so full of happiness he was compelled to pour it forth to all who chose to listen. Our party would gladly have listened for a long time, and have omitted the story altogether; but after some minutes of delicious song the strains suddenly ceased, and a little whirring noise in the lilacs indicated that the bird had flown away.
The Daughter of the House gave a deep sigh. "I was afraid to breathe,"
she said, "lest he might fly away."
"I have heard nothing like that this summer," said the Mistress of the House.
"It is the red thrush," said John Gayther, who had listened rapturously.
"A pair of them were here in the early spring. I wonder why this one has come back."
"Perhaps," said the Daughter of the House, "it is one of the young ones come back to visit his birthplace. I am afraid, after that ravishing performance, that my story will sound tame enough."
"It will be a different sort of melody," said the Mistress of the House, looking fondly at her daughter.
"My heroine," began the young lady, "cannot appear in the first person, as if she were telling the story; nor in the second person, as if she were listening to one; nor in the third person, as if she were somewhere else; for, in fact, she was not anywhere. And as there is no such thing as a fourth person in grammar, she cannot be put into any cla.s.s at all."
The captain turned and looked at his daughter. "There seems to be something very foggy about this statement," said he. "I hope the weather will soon clear up, so we can get our bearings."
"We shall see about that," said the young lady. "This heroine of mine, Miss Amanda, never went to sleep. To be sure, she sank into slumber about as often as most people; but when she spoke of having done so she always said she had "lost consciousness." She was very methodical about going to sleep and waking up; and at night, just as she was about to lose consciousness, she always said to herself, "Seven o"clock, seven o"clock, seven o"clock," over and over again until she was really asleep; and in the morning she woke up at seven precisely.
She was not married, and so she was able to live her own life much more independently than if the case had been different. She liked to be independent; and she liked to know as much as she could about everything. In these two things she was generally very successful. But you must not think she was prying or too inquisitive; she was really a very good woman, and very fond of her family, which was composed entirely of brothers and sisters and nephews and nieces.
"She was a very active person, but she was not very strong; and when she was nearly forty years old something happened to her lungs, and her health gave way more and more, until at last there was no hope for her, and she knew she must die."
"Oh, this is an awful way to begin a story!" said the captain. "I don"t like it. You ought not to kill your heroine just as you begin."
"If you want to make any remarks about this story, papa," said the Daughter of the House, "which shall be worth anything, you ought to wait until you hear more of it and begin to understand it. When Miss Amanda found she had a very little while to live, she composed herself comfortably, and began to repeat to herself the words, "Fifty years, fifty years, fifty years," over and over again. This she did until at last she died; and then there was her funeral; and she was buried; and there was a stone put up over her head with her name on it."
John Gayther smiled with approbation. He felt sure he was going to hear a story to his liking. The captain smoked steadily. As he had been advised, he would wait until he felt firm ground beneath him before he made any further remarks. As for the Mistress of the House, she looked at her daughter, and wondered. The story continued: