"He then struck me----" William continued, but the Court interrupted him.
"Here, here. You"ve already had enough to kill ten men."
"That"s what I was about to say, your honor, and I will not harrow your honor"s feelings by telling more of his awful a.s.sault. Seeing that I was suffering in this manner, my mother approached with an oar, when she--her" (indicating Nannie by pointing fixedly and by a stony glare) "rushed upon her fiercely and caused her dog also to charge upon her, which he did so savagely as to decompose her raiment. In some way the oar flew out of her hand, and she was most disrespectfully whirled around and around, so that she is yet dizzy-headed."
Here madam put her hand to her brow in confirmation.
"I was then taken by the scruff of the neck down to the pier, and whether I fell in the lake or not I cannot say, but I was wet!"
Here the on-lookers shouted with laughter.
"My mother was then disrespectfully helped in and we were sent adrift."
He ended in a high-toned, pitiful whine suggestive of a dog"s song on a moonlight night, but this plaint was drowned in the roars of laughter raised by the audience.
Madam Anderson confirmed and embellished this tale, but Steve"s and Nannie"s narrative, giving the circ.u.mstances of the case, their purchase of the place, the annoyances to which these people had subjected them, the warning that had been sounded to keep them at arm"s length, and the continued disregard of all this, sufficed, in the opinion of the Court, to acquit them and fix the burden of the expenses entailed by the suit upon the Anderson shoulders.
One would have supposed that this episode would have satisfied Nannie for awhile, but she was tireless, and must needs start out to sit hens soon after the Andersons were laid low. Now, of all unreasoning, stupid, obstinate, contrary beasts, a sitting hen is well qualified to carry off the first prize. Nannie had been told that when a hen began to puff up her feathers until she was swollen to about three times her natural size, and make a noise that sounded as if she had tried to say something and the word caught on a hook in her throat, she was ready to sit. Having three feathered animals in this condition, and having coaxed Steve into buying some Plymouth Rock eggs at the trivial sum of three dollars a sitting, Nannie proceeded to capture the hens and put them upon nests of her own placing, wholly ignorant of the fact that if there is one thing above all others in which a hen must have her say, it was in the choice of residence during this vexatious period.
From the moment that Nannie put the hens upon the eggs she led a life of unexampled activity. No sooner would she turn her back than the various madams would rise, and with distended feathers and gurgling clucks dismount from the nests and begin to stalk around the yard, in defiance of directions to the contrary. The number of times that Steve was pushed under one side of the house in pursuit of the escaped--lunatic, I had almost said, and told to remain there while Nannie ran around and crawled under the other side to head her off, would pa.s.s belief. As a matter of course she was never caught by this double-barreled attack, but always stalked out from some unexpected crevice and promenaded the yard as if she owned the premises. The next move on Steve"s and Nannie"s part would be to drive her nestward. The result of this was always to land her in some place precisely opposite; for the moment she was headed properly she would tilt her wings and break into a fat, wheezy little run in the direction just contrary to the one indicated by common sense and lawful authority.
One day, after an hour of this sport, Nannie lost patience, and picking up stones, pelted the feathered truant until she fled out of sight--in the wrong direction.
"Let her eggs cool!" she exclaimed with a burst of pa.s.sionate tears.
"I don"t care if they get as cold as an iceberg! I wish they"d freeze her stiff the next time she sits on them!"
Steve began a mild protest, but Nannie turned to walk into the house, when she caught sight of Madam Hen No. 2 off her nest and stalking around with the same offensive strut as that of No. 1.
This was too much for her own nervous system, and she rushed upon the offending hen, and kept up this pace with such vigor that at the end of ten minutes she had run her down, taken her literally in hand, borne her squawking into the barn, jammed her down on the nest, and roofed it with boards, which she nailed on with rocks. This done, she returned to the house in a state of savage quiet (if I may be allowed a contradictory term), feeling herself fiercely secure of at least one sitting.
She was not, however, for madam spared no effort till she burst her bonds, brought the rocks down upon the heads of herself and her prospective family, and they all died the death together.
"There"s some satisfaction in that," said Nannie. "The stupid, nasty, mean old thing went with the eggs!"
The third sitting materialized, and a lovelier brood of chicks was never seen. Steve was surprised and even touched as he stood watching Nannie in her delight. There was something really womanly in the way in which the girl coddled the pretty creatures, holding them close to her face and calling them all the sweet, tender little names in which a woman"s heart goes out to the infantile and the helpless.
Looking and thinking, several things came into Steve"s mind, and one evening he essayed to bring about a better understanding betwixt his erratic little wife and himself. But alas! though possessed of an unusually tender heart and of unusually fine intuitions, yet occasionally Steve was a man, pure and simple, and this was one of the occasions. Just as Nannie was sitting down to dinner he said:
"Nannie, I"ve been wondering what is it that makes you act so?"
"I don"t act!" stormed Nannie, who was ablaze in a minute. "It"s you who act! You treat me as if I were a two-year-old child!" Then, in a gust of changed emotion, she took a step nearer to him and cried out:
"I don"t want to be bad, but"--she turned now toward the door, and as she went out looked backward over her shoulder and added impishly--"I am, and I"m "fraid I"m going to be."
And off she went--off to the barn, and the next moment there was a lonely, yearning child-wife sobbing her heart out on Sarah Maria"s neck.
Evidently there was a bond between these two, for Nannie was neither hooked nor kicked, and when Sarah Maria behaved peacefully at both ends it was manifest that her heart was touched.
X
Steve returned from town the evening following Nannie"s outburst with a mind heavy laden. That had been his mental condition, indeed, much of the time since he turned farmer, and I may add that his thoughts occasionally ran in a sarcastic vein--a course ordinarily foreign to him. Shortly before that crucial point in his career, his marriage to Nannie, Randolph Chance had loaned him a beautiful idyl, termed "Liberty and a Living." Randolph himself had read this as a thirsty man reads of cool, rock-paved brooks; Steve read it as a poet, a dreamer, but it would no doubt have had a marked effect upon his character had he not closely followed it up with Charles Dudley Warner"s "Summer in a Garden," much as one would chase a poison with its antidote, only in this case the order was reversed, the latter resembling the poison, since it awoke in his mind gloomy forebodings and inspired satirical reflections upon the universal mother.
Tuned to this key, he was no doubt ill-prepared, while turning the clod, to receive into his soul the sweet influences of rural life, and by reason of their elevating beauty, to be fortified against those drawbacks and trials with which all paths abound.
Truth to tell, Steve was discouraged. He had begun to realize that he had on his hands not only a small farm, for the tillage of which he was ill-contrived, but a large child as well, whose rearing and developing---- Just here he came to a sudden halt in his thought, and an odd word leaped in:
"Cooking!"
Then the name of that newspaper clipping of which Randolph once told him--
"How to Cook Wives."
"Well, how in thunder?" he asked himself, and walked homeward from the station.
Ere he arrived he saw Nannie at the door. She was screaming something which, on his approach, he found to be--
"Sarah Maria is lost!"
Had Steve said "thank Heaven!" he would merely have been speaking out of the fullness of his heart. Instead of that, he wheeled like an automaton and retraced his steps. He knew where to look for her.
There she was, as usual, down near the track, and as Steve approached she stepped squarely on, and with a set gaze awaited the speedy coming of the city-bound train. Of course she knew it would kill her, but like Samson of old she would have the satisfaction of taking a few acquaintances with her.
Steve dragged her off and managed to get her home, and thus for the present prevented the sin of self-destruction.
That very evening, after Nannie, like the cow, was corralled (and we may use this term without reproach, since she had been rampant all day), a small figure slipped from out the house and hastened to the garden. His little face, frowsy as is the manner of his breed, was uplifted, and his saucy little eyes gleamed with fire. He had probably observed that the peas were flourishing and that they were the one living result of Steve"s heroic labors, unless perhaps we except the corn, which was still several miles distant from fruitage. No doubt all this was clear to Brownie, and that was why he took such fiendish delight in his work of demolition. The naughty little eyes twinkled; the naughty little mouth opened to emit his short-breathed pants; and the naughty little tongue hung out as he pranced and leaped, rolled and gamboled over the cast-down and dejected peas. Finally he chewed and tore the fragments that remained, and then gave himself a shake--by no means so severe as he deserved--and strutted into the house with a "They"re-done-for!" air, quite exasperating to witness when one considered how the poor peas were lying out there p.r.o.ne upon their faces in the dust, crushed to earth, unlike truth, to rise no more.
The next morning, all unconscious of the ruin of his crop, Steve was deliberately making his toilet, when he was startled by roars of fright. Looking from the window, he perceived a neighbor flying down the road, with Sarah Maria in his wake. The latter had lowered her head--not in shame, I grieve to say, but with malicious intent, as was abundantly evidenced by the height of her tail.
Happily Nannie had seen this procession of two as it pa.s.sed the house, and giving chase with swift steps, had caught Sarah Maria"s long rope and wound it several times around a large tree, thus checking her mad career and saving a worthy citizen for the republic.
The excitement attendant upon all this was very great, especially as the neighbor was for a time firmly resolved to bring action, not being satisfied with the action Sarah Maria had brought, but by dint of much persuasion, both from Steve and also from Randolph Chance, who came to the rescue, he was at length called off, and Steve was so relieved that he was able to note the destruction of his peas with scarce a ripple of emotion.
The calm of the succeeding twenty-four hours was but that which precedes the storm, and the gla.s.sy placidity of Steve"s life for that one day proved to be the deceitful stillness of deep waters. Upon his return from the city he was again greeted with the welcome intelligence that Sarah Maria had raised her head, adjusted her hind legs, whose hinges, owing to much kicking, had been reversed of late, and betaken herself to parts unknown. Worn out as he was with the events of the past week, Steve was unequal to a discreet concealment of his feelings, and the satisfaction he evinced in Nannie"s news was stoutly resented by that singular young person. Indeed, she became so wrought up--crying, upbraiding, and lamenting--that Steve was obliged to console her by promising to advertise the errant beast if she were not found at her usual trysting-place--the railroad track. This he did, repeating the dose daily for a week, at the end of which time he received word that Sarah Maria had temporarily located herself on a farm some forty miles inland. Not being well disposed to a walk of that length, enlivened by Sarah Maria"s society, Steve sent word to forward the lady by freight.
Owing to some mistake her car was switched off about ten miles from the proper station, and thinking that he could bridge that distance, Steve set out on a train early the next evening, and soon found himself in reach of the missing member of his household. She was looking out of the freight car when he arrived, and he noted with a secret qualm that she shook her head disapprovingly when she saw him.
Steve stood and gazed at her for so long that the man in charge there finally asked him what he was waiting for. Steve replied that she looked so happy it seemed a pity to disturb her. The man said that he didn"t regard her as particularly happy, inasmuch as she had all but kicked out one side of the car. Upon hearing which, Steve hastened to a.s.sure him that that was merely a playful way of hers when her spirits were at the highest, but the man said that her spirits were several feet too high for him, and he insisted upon lowering them to _terra firma_. He was so firm and so disagreeable about this that Steve was obliged to advance and join him in the difficult undertaking.
It might seem reasonable to expect that as long as Sarah Maria had testified vigorously to her disapproval of the freight car she would be glad to issue from it, and no doubt that would have been the case had Steve and the station master urged her to remain. The moment, however, that she saw with her eagle eye that they were making preparations for her ejectment, her mind was made up, and she spread her four feet in a manner suggestive of rocks that refuse to fly.
The unhappy men now united their efforts at pulling, but her roots had evidently gone down to China without stopping; next they endeavored to pry her up, but she was manifestly stuck by some glue of unparalleled strength.
By this time the honest sweat was dripping from the brows of both men; Sarah Maria alone was calm. Various devices were used to dislodge her, and at the end of an hour she had moved a trifle further than a glacier does in a similar length of time, and was fully as cold and calm as this natural phenomenon. As she was quite near the opening of the car when she took her stand, in a physical as well as in a moral sense, even the very slight advantage gained by her enemies sufficed to put her in position to make her final exit when, like Sairy Gamp, she was "so dispodged."
"Now," said the station master, who by this time had not so much as a dry thread on him, "if you"ll pull I"ll twist her tail so"s to divert her attention, and I guess we"ll make a go of it."