The Story of Dago.
by Annie Fellows-Johnston.
CHAPTER I.
THIS IS THE STORY THAT DAGO TOLD TO THE MIRROR-MONKEY ON MONDAY.
Here I am at last, Ring-tail! The boys have gone to school, thank fortune, and little Elsie has been taken to kindergarten. Everybody in the house thinks that I am safe up-stairs in the little prison of a room that they made for me in the attic. I suppose they never thought how easy it would be for me to swing out of the open window and climb down the lightning-rod. Wouldn"t Miss Patricia be surprised if she knew that I am down here now in the parlour, talking to you, and sitting up here among all these costly, breakable things!
I have been wanting to get back into this room ever since that first morning that I slipped in and found you sitting here in the looking-gla.s.s, but the door has been shut every time that I have tried to come in. Do you remember that morning? You were the first ring-tail monkey that I had seen since I left the Zoo, and you looked so much like my twin brother, who used to swing with me in the tangled vines of my native forests, and pelt me with cocoanut-sh.e.l.ls, and chatter to me all day long under those hot, bright skies, that I wanted to put my arms around you and hug you; but the looking-gla.s.s was between us.
Some day I shall break that gla.s.s, and crawl back behind there with you.
It is a pity that you are dumb and do not seem to be able to answer me, for if you could talk to me about the old jungle days I would not be so homesick. Still, it is some comfort to know that you are not deaf, and I intend to come in here every morning after the children go to school; that is, every morning that I find the door open. I"ve had a very exciting life in the past, and I think that you"ll find my experiences interesting.
Of course I"ll not begin at the beginning, for, being a ring-tail monkey yourself, you know what life is like in the great tropical forests. Perhaps it would be better to skip the circus part, too, for it was a very unhappy time that followed, after I was stolen from home by some men who came on a big ship, and carried me away to be sold to a travelling showman.
It makes my back ache to this day to think of the ring-master"s whip.
I was as quick to learn as any of the other monkeys who were in training, but an animal who has done nothing all his life but climb and play can"t learn the ways of a human being all in one week. I was taught to ride a pony and drive a team of greyhounds, and to sit at a table and feed myself with a silver folk. One half-hour I was made to be a gentleman, and wear a dress suit, and tip my hat to the ladies, and the next I would be expected to do something entirely different; be a policeman, maybe, and arrest a rowdy dog in boxing-gloves. Oh, I couldn"t begin to tell you the things I was expected to do, from drilling like a soldier to wheeling a doll carriage and smoking a pipe. Sometimes when I grew confused, and misunderstood the signals and did things all wrong, the ring-master would swing his whip until it cracked like a pistol, and shout out, in a terrible voice, "Oh, you stupid little beast! What"s the matter with you?" That always frightened me so that it gave me the shivers, and then he would shout at me again until I was still more confused and terrified, and couldn"t do anything to please him.
Stupid little beast indeed! I wished sometimes that I could have had him captive, back in the jungles of the old home forest, just to have seen which would have been the stupid one there. How long would it have taken him to have learned an entirely different way of living, I wonder. How many moons before he could swing by his hands and hunt for his food in the tree-tops? He might have learned after awhile where the wild paw-paws hang thickest, and where the sweetest, plumpest bananas grow; but when would he ever have mastered all the wood-lore of the forest folk,--or gained the quickness of eye and ear and nose that belongs to all the wise, wild creatures? Oh, how I longed to see him at the mercy of our old enemies, the Snake-people! One of those pythons, for instance, "who could slip along the branches as quietly as moss grows." That would have given him a worse fit of shivers than the ones he used to give me.
I"ll not talk about such a painful subject any longer, but you may be sure that I was glad when something happened to the show. The owner lost all his money, and had to sell his animals and go out of the business. After that I had a very comfortable winter in a zoological garden out West, near where we stranded. Then an old white-haired man from California bought me to add to his private collection of monkeys.
He had half a dozen or so in his high-walled garden.
It was a beautiful place, hot and sunny like my old home, and full of palm-trees and tangled vines and brilliant flowers. The most beautiful thing in it was a great rose-tree which he called Gold of Ophir. It shook its petals into a splashing fountain where goldfish were always swimming around and around, and it was hard to tell which was the brightest, the falling rose-leaves, or the tiny goldfish flashing by in the sun.
There was a lady who used to lie in a hammock under the roses every day and smile at my antics. She was young, I remember, and very pretty, but her face was as white as the marble mermaid in the fountain. The old gentleman and his wife always sat beside her when she lay in the hammock. Sometimes he read aloud, sometimes they talked, and sometimes a long silence would fall upon them, when the splashing of the fountain and the droning of the bees would be the only sound anywhere in the garden.
When they talked, it was always of the same thing: the children she had left at home,--Stuart and Phil and little Elsie. I did not listen as closely as I might have done had I known what a difference those children were to make in my life. I little thought that a day was coming when they were to carry me away from the beautiful garden that I had grown to love almost like my old home. But I heard enough to know that they were as mischievous as the day is long, and that they kept their poor old great-aunt Patricia in a woful state of nervous excitement from morning till night. I gathered, besides, that their father was a doctor, away from home much of the time. That was why their great-aunt had them in charge.
Their mother had come out to her father"s home in California to grow strong and well. The sun burned a pink into the blossoms of the oleander hedges, and the wind blew life into the swaying branches of the pepper-trees, but neither seemed to make her any better. After awhile she could not even be carried out to her place in the hammock.
Then they sent for Doctor Tremont and the children.
The first that I knew of their arrival, the two boys came whooping down the paths after the gardener, shouting, "Show us the monkeys, David! Show us the monkeys! Which one is Dago, and which one is Matches?"
I did not want to come down for fear that Stuart might treat me as he had done Elsie"s kitten. I had heard a letter read, which told how he had tried to cure it of fits. He gave it a shock with his father"s electric battery, and turned the current on so strong that he killed it. Not knowing but that he might try some trick on me, I held back until I saw him feeding peanuts to Matches. I never could bear her.
She is the only monkey in the garden that I have never been on friendly terms with, so I came down at once to get my share of peanuts, and hers, too, if possible.
I must say that I took a great fancy to both the boys; they were so friendly and good-natured. They each had round chubby faces, and hard little fists. There was a wide-awake look in their big, honest, gray eyes, and their light hair curled over their heads in little tight rings. Elsie was only five,--a restless, dimpled little bunch of mischief, always getting into trouble, because she would try to do everything that her brothers did.
The gardener fished her out of the fountain twice in the week she was there. She was reaching for the goldfish with her fat little hands, and toppled in, head first. Phil began the week by getting a bee-sting on his lip, and a bite on the cheek from a parrot that he was teasing.
As for Stuart, I think he had climbed every tree on the place before the first day was over, and torn his best clothes nearly off his back.
The gardener had a sorry time of it while they stayed. He complained that "a herd of wild buffalo turned loose to rend and destroy" would not have done as much damage to his fruit and flowers as they. "Not as they means to do it, I don"t think," he said. "But they"re so chock-full of _go_ that they fair runs away with their selves." The gardener"s excitement did not long last, however.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
There came a day when there was no noise in the garden. The boys wandered around all morning without playing, now and then wiping their eyes on their jacket sleeves, and talking in low tones. Once they threw themselves down on the gra.s.s and hid their faces, and cried and sobbed, until their grandfather came out and led them away. The blinds were all drawn next morning, and the gardener came and cut down nearly all his lilies, and great armfuls of the Gold of Ophir roses to carry into the house.
Another quiet day went by, and then there was such a rumbling of carriage wheels outside the garden, that I climbed up a tree and looked over the high walls. There was a long, slow procession winding up the white mountain road toward a far-away grove of pines. I knew then what had happened. They were taking the children"s mother to the cemetery, and they would have to go home without her. "Poor children,"
I thought, "and poor old great-aunt Patricia."
The next evening I heard the old gentleman tell David to bring Matches and me into the house. The next thing I knew I was dropped into a big bandbox with holes in the lid, and somebody was buckling a shawl-strap around it. Then I heard the old gentleman say to Doctor Tremont, "Tom, I don"t want to add to the inconveniences of your journey, but I should like to send these monkeys along to help amuse the boys. Maybe they"ll be some comfort to them. Dago is for Stuart, and Matches is for Phil. It would be a good idea to keep them in their boxes to-night on the sleeping-car. They are unusually well behaved little animals, but it would be safer to keep them shut up until the boys are awake to look after them."
You can imagine my feelings when I realised that I was to be sent away. I shrieked and chattered with rage, but no one paid any attention to me. I was obliged to settle down in my box in sulky silence. In a little while I could feel myself being carried down the porch steps. Then the carriage door slammed and we jolted along in the dark for a long time. I knew when we reached the depot by the bright light streaming through the holes in my box-lid. I was carried up the steps into the sleeping-car, and for the next quarter of an hour it seemed to me that my box changed position every two minutes. The porter was getting us settled for the night He was about to poke the box that held me under the berth where little Elsie and her nurse were to sleep, when Stuart called him from the berth above, into which he had just climbed. So I was tossed up as if I had been an ordinary piece of baggage, the porter little knowing what was strapped so carefully inside the bandbox.
Doctor Tremont and Phil had the section just across the aisle from ours, and Phil carried his box up the step-ladder himself, and stowed Matches carefully away in one corner before he began to take off his shoes. When the curtains were all drawn and the car-lights turned down low so that every one could sleep, Stuart sat up and began unbuckling the strap around my box. I knew enough to keep still when he took the lid off and gently stroked me. I had no intention of being sent back to the baggage-car, if keeping quiet would help me to escape the conductor"s eyes.
Stuart stroked me for a moment, and then, cautiously drawing aside his curtains, thrust his head out and looked up and down the aisle.
Everything was quiet. Then he gave the softest kind of a whistle, so faint that it seemed little more than the echo of one; but Phil heard, and instantly his head was poked out between his curtains.
Stuart held me up and grinned. Immediately Phil held up Matches and grinned. After a funny pantomime by which, with many laughable gestures, each boy made the other understand that he intended to allow his pet freedom all night, they drew in their heads and lay down.
Stuart wanted me to sleep on the pillow beside him, but I was still sulky, and retired to my box at his feet. In spite of the jar and rumble of the train I slept soundly for a long time. It must have been somewhere about the middle of the night when I was awakened all of a sudden by a fearful crash and the feeling that I was pitching headlong down a frightful precipice.
The next instant I struck the floor with a force that nearly stunned me. When I gathered my wits together I found myself in the middle of the aisle, bruised and sore, with the bandbox on top of me.
We had been going with the usual terrific speed of a fast express, down steep mountain grades, sweeping around dizzy curves, and now we had come to a sudden stop without reason or warning. It gave the train such a tremendous jar that windows rattled, baggage lurched from the racks, the porter sprawled full-length on the floor as I had done, and more than one head was b.u.mped unmercifully against the hard woodwork of the berths. Everybody sprang up to ask what was the matter. Babies cried and women scolded and men swore. All I could do was to whimper with pain and fright until Stuart came scrambling after me. My shoulder was bruised and my head aching, and no one can imagine my terrible fright at such a rude awakening. If I had not been in the box, I might have saved myself when the crash came, but I was powerless to catch at anything when it went b.u.mp over on to the floor.
The brakeman and conductor came running in to see what was the matter.
n.o.body knew why the train had stopped. It was several minutes before they discovered the cause, but I had found out while Stuart was climbing back to bed with me. Swinging by her hands from the bell-rope which ran down the centre of the car, was that miserable little monkey, Matches, making a fool of herself and everybody else. Who but that little imp of mischief would have done such a thing as to get up in the middle of the night and go through a lot of gymnastic exercises on the bell-rope? It was her swinging and jerking on the rope that rang the bell and brought the engine to that sudden stop.
I don"t know how the doctor settled it with the conductor. I know that there was a great deal said, and Matches and I were both sent back to the baggage-car. All the rest of the journey I had an aching head and a bruised shoulder to keep me in mind of that hateful little Matches, and I resolved long before we reached home that I would do something to get even with her, before we had lived together a week.
CHAPTER II.
WHAT DAGO SAID TO THE MIRROR-MONKEY ON TUESDAY.
Ring-tail, what do you think of Miss Patricia? I"m afraid of her. The night we came home she met us in the hall, looking so tall and severe in her black gown, with those prim little bunches of gray curls on each side of her face, that I went under a chair. Then I thought I must have misjudged her, for there were tears in her eyes when she kissed the children, and I heard her whisper as she turned away, "poor little motherless lambs!" Still I have seen so many people in the course of my travels that I rarely make a mistake in reading character. As soon as she caught sight of me I knew that my first thought had been right. Her thin Roman nose went up in the air, and her sharp eyes glared at me so savagely that I could think of nothing else but an old war eagle, with arrows in its talons. You may have seen them on silver dollars.
"Tom Tremont," she exclaimed, "you don"t mean to say that you have brought home a _monkey_!" I wish you could have heard the disgust in her voice. "Of all the little pests in the world, they are certainly the worst!"
"Yes, Aunt Patricia," he answered. "They"ve been a great pleasure to the boys."
"_They!_" she gasped. "You don"t mean to say that there are _two_!"
Then she saw Matches climbing up on Phil"s shoulder, and words failed her.
"Yes; their grandfather gave each of the boys one of his pets. He said that they would be company for them on the way home, and would help divert their thoughts from their great loss. They grieved so, poor little lads."
That softened Miss Patricia again, and she said nothing more about our being pests. But when she pa.s.sed me she drew her skirts aside as if she could not bear to so much as brush against me, and from that hour it has been war to the knife between us.
Matches and I were given a little room up in the attic under the eaves, but at first we were rarely there during the day. The boys took us with them wherever they went. We had been there some time before we were left alone long enough for me to do any exploring.
It was almost dark when that first chance came. I prowled around the attic awhile. Then I climbed out of the window and swung down by the vines that covered that side of the house, to the shutters of the room below. It happened to be Miss Patricia"s room. As I perched on the top of the shutters, leaning over and craning my neck, I could see Miss Patricia sitting there in the dusk beside her open window. Her hands were folded in her lap, and she was rocking gently back and forth in a high-backed rocking-chair, with her eyes closed.