Little Nell went alone and lay down in the sand with his back against a rock. Tailor was prostrate up there in the grass. Never mind. Nothing was to be done. The whole situation was too colossal. Then into his zone came Walkley the invincible.
“Walkley!” yelled Little Nell. Walkley came quickly, and Little Nell lay weakly against his rock and talked. In thirty seconds Walkley understood everything, had hurled a drink of whiskey into Little Nell, had admonished him to lie quiet, and had gone to organize and manipulate. When he returned he was a trifle dubious and backward. Behind him was a singular squad of volunteers from the Adolphus, carrying among them a wire-woven bed.
“Look here, Nell!” said Walkley, in bashful accents; “I’ve collected a battalion here which is willing to go bring Tailor; but—they say—you—can’t you show them where he is?”
“Yes,” said Little Nell, arising.
When the party arrived at Siboney, and deposited Tailor in the best place, Walkley had found a house and stocked it with canned soups. Therein Shackles and Little Nell reveled for a time, and then rolled on the floor in their blankets. Little Nell tossed a great deal. “Oh, I’m so tired. Good God, I’m tired. I’m—tired.”
In the morning a voice aroused them. It was a swollen, important, circus voice saying, “Where is Mr. Nell? I wish to see him immediately.”
“Here I am, Rogers,” cried Little Nell.
“Oh, Nell,” said Rogers, “here’s a dispatch to me which I thought you had better read.”
Little Nell took the dispatch. It was: “Tell Nell can’t understand his inaction; tell him come home first steamer from Port Antonio, Jamaica.”
May, 1899
[The Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 79, pp. 577–592.]
* Wounds in the Rain.
THE LONE CHARGE OF WILLIAM B. PERKINS*
He could not distinguish between a five-inch quick-firing gun and a nickel-plated ice pick, and so, naturally, he had been elected to fill the position of war correspondent. The responsible party was the editor of the Minnesota Herald. Perkins had no information of war, and no particular rapidity of mind for acquiring it, but he had that rank and fibrous quality of courage which springs from the thick soil of Western America.
It was morning in Guantanamo Bay. If the marines encamped on the hill had had time to turn their gaze seaward, they might have seen a small newspaper dispatch boat wending its way toward the entrance of the harbor over the blue, sunlit waters of the Caribbean. In the stern of this tug Perkins was seated upon some coal bags, while the breeze gently ruffled his greasy pajamas. He was staring at a brown line of entrenchments surmounted by a flag, which was Camp McCalla. In the harbor were anchored two or three grim, gray cruisers and a transport. As the tug steamed up the radiant channel, Perkins could see men moving on shore near the charred ruins of a village. Perkins was deeply moved; here already was more war than he had ever known in Minnesota. Presently he, clothed in the essential garments of a war correspondent, was rowed to the sandy beach. Marines in yellow linen were handling an ammunition supply. They paid no attention to the visitor, being morose from the inconveniences of two days and nights of fighting. Perkins toiled up the zigzag path to the top of the hill, and looked with eager eyes at the trenches, the field pieces, the funny little Colts, the flag, the grim marines lying wearily on their arms. And still more he looked through the clear air over 1,000 yards of mysterious woods from which emanated at inopportune times repeated flocks of Mauser bullets.
Perkins was delighted. He was filled with admiration for these jaded and smoky men who lay so quietly in the trenches waiting for a resumption of guerilla enterprise. But he wished they would heed him. He wanted to talk about it. Save for sharp inquiring glances, no one acknowledged his existence.
Finally he approached two young lieutenants, and in his innocent Western way he asked them if they would like a drink. The effect on the two young lieutenants was immediate and astonishing. With one voice they answered, “Yes, we would.” Perkins almost wept with joy at this amiable response, and he exclaimed that he would immediately board the tug and bring off a bottle of Scotch. This attracted the officers, and in a burst of confidence one explained that there had not been a drop in camp. Perkins lunged down the hill, and fled to his boat, where in his exuberance he engaged in the preliminary altercation with some whiskey. Consequently he toiled again up the hill in the blasting sun with his enthusiasm in no wise abated. The parched officers were very gracious, and such was the state of mind of Perkins that he did not note properly how serious and solemn was his engagement with the whiskey. And because of this fact, and because of his antecedents, there happened the lone charge of William B. Perkins.
Now, as Perkins went down the hill, something happened. A private in those high trenches found that a cartridge was clogged in his rifle. It then becomes necessary with most kinds of rifles to explode the cartridge. The private took the rifle to his captain, and explained the case. But it would not do in that camp to fire a rifle for mechanical purposes and without warning, because the eloquent sound would bring six hundred tired marines to tension and high expectancy. So the captain turned, and in a loud voice announced to the camp that he found it necessary to shoot into the air. The communication rang sharply from voice to voice. Then the captain raised the weapon and fired. Whereupon—and whereupon—a large line of guerillas lying in the bushes decided swiftly that their presence and position were discovered, and swiftly they volleyed.
In a moment the woods and the hills were alive with the crack and sputter of rifles. Men on the warships in the harbor heard the old familiar flut-flut-fluttery-fluttery-flut-flut-flut from the entrenchments. Incidentally the launch of the Marblehead, commanded by one of our headlong American ensigns, streaked for the strategic woods like a galloping marine dragoon, peppering away with its blunderbuss in the bow.
Perkins had arrived at the foot of the hill, where began the arrangement of 150 marines that protected the short line of communication between the main body and the beach. These men had all swarmed into line behind fortifications improvised from the boxes of provisions. And to them were gathering naked men who had been bathing, naked men who arrayed themselves speedily in cartridge belts and rifles. The woods and the hills went flut-flut-flut-fluttery-fluttery-flut-fllllluttery-flut. Under the boughs of a beautiful tree lay five wounded men thinking vividly.
And now it befell Perkins to discover a Spaniard in the bush. The distance was some five hundred yards. In a loud voice he announced his perception. He also declared hoarsely that if he only had a rifle he would go and possess himself of this particular enemy. Immediately an amiable lad shot in the arm said: “Well, take mine.” Perkins thus acquired a rifle and a clip of five cartridges.
“Come on!” he shouted. This part of the battalion was lying very tight, not yet being engaged, but not knowing when the business would swirl around to them.
To Perkins they replied with a roar. “Come back here, you damned fool. Do you want to get shot by your own crowd? Come back, —— ——!” As a detail, it might be mentioned that the fire from a part of the hill swept the journey upon which Perkins had started.
Now behold the solitary Perkins adrift in the storm of fighting, even as a champagne jacket of straw is lost in a great surf. He found it out quickly. Four seconds elapsed before he discovered that he was an almshouse idiot plunging through hot, crackling thickets on a June morning in Cuba. Sss-s-swing-sing-ing-pop went the lightning-swift metal grasshoppers over him and beside him. The beauties of rural Minnesota illuminated his conscience with the gold of lazy corn, with the sleeping green of meadows, with the cathedral gloom of pine forests. Sshsh-swing-pop! Perkins decided that if he cared to extricate himself from a tangle of imbecility he must shoot. The entire situation was that he must shoot. It was necessary that he should shoot. Nothing would save him but shooting. It is a law that men thus decide when the waters of battle close over their minds. So with a prayer that the Americans would not hit him in the back nor t
he left side, and that the Spaniards would not hit him in the front, he knelt like a supplicant alone in the desert of chaparral, and emptied his magazine at his Spaniard before he discovered that his Spaniard was a bit of dried palm branch.
Then Perkins flurried like a fish. His reason for being was a Spaniard in the bush. When the Spaniard turned into a dried palm branch, he could no longer furnish himself with one adequate reason.
Then did he dream frantically of some anthracite hiding-place, some profound dungeon of peace where blind mules live placidly chewing the far-gathered hay.
“Sss-swing-wing-pop! Prut-prut-prrrut!” Then a field gun spoke. “Boom-ra-swow-ow-ow-ow-pum.” Then a Colt automatic began to bark. “Crack-crk-crk-crk-crk-crk,” endlessly. Raked, enfiladed, flanked, surrounded, and overwhelmed, what hope was there for William B. Perkins of the Minnesota Herald?
But war is a spirit. War provides for those that it loves. It provides sometimes death and sometimes a singular and incredible safety. There were few ways in which it was possible to preserve Perkins. One way was by means of a steam boiler.
Perkins espied near him an old, rusty steam boiler lying in the bushes. War only knows how it was there, but there it was, a temple shining resplendent with safety. With a moan of haste, Perkins flung himself through that hole which expressed the absence of the steam pipe.
Then, ensconced in his boiler, Perkins comfortably listened to the ring of a fight which seemed to be in the air above him. Sometimes bullets struck their strong, swift blow against the boiler’s sides, but none entered to interfere with Perkins’s rest.
Time passed. The fight, short anyhow, dwindled to prut … prut … prut-prut … prut. And when the silence came, Perkins might have been seen cautiously protruding from the boiler. Presently he strolled back toward the marine lines with his hat not able to fit his head for the new bumps of wisdom that were on it.
The marines, with an annoyed air, were settling down again when an apparitional figure came from the bushes. There was great excitement.
“It’s that crazy man,” they shouted, and as he drew near they gathered tumultuously about him and demanded to know how he had accomplished it.
Perkins made a gesture, the gesture of a man escaping from an unintentional mudbath, the gesture of a man coming out of battle, and then he told them.
The incredulity was immediate and general. “Yes, you did! What? In an old boiler? An old boiler? Out in that brush? Well, we guess not.” They did not believe him until two days later, when a patrol happened to find the rusty boiler, relic of some curious transaction in the ruin of the Cuban sugar industry. The patrol then marveled at the truthfulness of war correspondents until they were almost blind.
Soon after his adventure Perkins boarded the tug, wearing a countenance of poignant thoughtfulness.
July, 1899
[McClure’s Magazine, Vol. 13, pp. 279–282.]
* Wounds in the Rain.
THE ANGEL CHILD*
I
Although Whilomville was in no sense a summer resort, the advent of the warm season meant much to it, for then came visitors from the city—people of considerable confidence—alighting upon their country cousins. Moreover, many citizens who could afford to do so escaped at this time to the seaside. The town, with the commerical life quite taken out of it, drawled and drowsed through long months, during which nothing was worse than the white dust which arose behind every vehicle at blinding noon, and nothing was finer than the cool sheen of the hose sprays over the cropped lawns under the many maples in the twilight.
One summer the Trescotts had a visitation. Mrs. Trescott owned a cousin who was a painter of high degree. I had almost said that he was of national reputation, but, come to think of it, it is better to say that almost everybody in the United States who knew about art and its travail knew about him. He had picked out a wife, and naturally, looking at him, one wondered how he had done it. She was quick, beautiful, imperious, while he was quiet, slow, and misty. She was a veritable queen of health, while he, apparently, was of a most brittle constitution. When he played tennis, particularly, he looked every minute as if he were going to break.
They lived in New York, in awesome apartments wherein Japan and Persia, and indeed all the world, confounded the observer. At the end was a cathedral-like studio. They had one child. Perhaps it would be better to say that they had one CHILD. It was a girl. When she came to Whilomville with her parents, it was patent that she had an inexhaustible store of white frocks, and that her voice was high and commanding. These things the town knew quickly. Other things it was doomed to discover by a process.
Her effect upon the children of the Trescott neighborhood was singular. They at first feared, then admired, then embraced. In two days she was a Begum. All day long her voice could be heard directing, drilling, and compelling those freeborn children; and to say that they felt oppression would be wrong, for they really fought for records of loyal obedience.
All went well until one day was her birthday.
On the morning of this day she walked out into the Trescott garden and said to her father, confidently, “Papa, give me some money, because this is my birthday.”
He looked dreamily up from his easel. “Your birthday?” he murmured. Her envisioned father was never energetic enough to be irritable unless some one broke through into that place where he lived with the desires of his life. But neither wife nor child ever heeded or even understood the temperamental values, and so some part of him had grown hardened to their inroads. “Money?” he said. “Here.” He handed her a five-dollar bill. It was that he did not at all understand the nature of a five-dollar bill. He was deaf to it. He had it; he gave it; that was all.
She sallied forth to a waiting people—Jimmie Trescott, Dan Earl, Ella Earl, the Margate twins, the three Phelps children, and others. “I’ve got some pennies now,” she cried, waving the bill, “and I am going to buy some candy.” They were deeply stirred by this announcement. Most children are penniless three hundred days in the year, and to another possessing five pennies they pay deference. To little Cora waving a bright green note these children paid heathenish homage. In some disorder they thronged after her to a small shop on Bridge Street hill. First of all came ice cream. Seated in the comic little back parlor, they clamored shrilly over plates of various flavors, and the shopkeeper marveled that cream could vanish so quickly down throats that seemed wide open, always, for the making of excited screams.
These children represented the families of most excellent people. They were all born in whatever purple there was to be had in the vicinity of Whilomville. The Margate twins, for example, were out-and-out prize-winners. With their long golden curls and their countenances of similar vacuity, they shone upon the front bench of all Sunday school functions, hand in hand, while their uplifted mother felt about her the envy of a hundred other parents, and less heavenly children scoffed from near the door.
Then there was little Dan Earl, probably the nicest boy in the world, gentle, fine-grained, obedient to the point where he obeyed anybody. Jimmie Trescott himself was, indeed, the only child who was at all versed in villainy, but in these particular days he was on his very good behavior. As a matter of fact, he was in love. The beauty of his regal little cousin had stolen his manly heart.
Yes, they were all most excellent children, but, loosened upon this candy shop with five dollars, they resembled, in a tiny way, drunken reveling soldiers within the walls of a stormed city. Upon the heels of ice cream and cake came chocolate mice, butterscotch, “everlastings,” chocolate cigars, taffy-on-a-stick, taffy-on-a-slate-pencil, and many semi-transparent devices resembling lions, tigers, elephants, horses, cats, dogs, cows, sheep, tables, chairs, engines (both railway and for the fighting of fire), soldiers, fine ladies, odd-looking men, clocks, watches, revolvers, rabbits, and bedsteads. A cent was the price of a single wonder.
Some of the children, going quite daft, soon had thought to make fight over the spoils, but their queen ruled with
an iron grip. Her first inspiration was to satisfy her own fancies, but as soon as that was done she mingled prodigality with a fine justice, dividing, balancing, bestowing, and sometimes taking away from somebody even that which he had.
It was an orgy. In thirty-five minutes those respectable children looked as if they had been dragged at the tail of a chariot. The sacred Margate twins, blinking and grunting, wished to take seat upon the floor, and even the most durable Jimmie Trescott found occasion to lean against the counter, wearing at the time a solemn and abstracted air, as if he expected something to happen to him shortly.
Of course their belief had been in an unlimited capacity, but they found there was an end. The shopkeeper handed the queen her change.
“Two seventy-three from five leaves two twenty-seven, Miss Cora,” he said, looking upon her with admiration.
She turned swiftly to her clan. “O-oh!” she cried, in amazement. “Look how much I have left!” They gazed at the coins in her palm. They knew then that it was not their capacities which were endless; it was the five dollars.
The queen led the way to the street. “We must think up some way of spending more money,” she said, frowning. They stood in silence, awaiting her further speech.
Suddenly she clapped her hands and screamed with delight. “Come on!” she cried. “I know what let’s do.” Now behold, she had discovered the red-and-white pole in front of the shop of one William Neeltje, a barber by trade.
It becomes necessary to say a few words concerning Neeltje. He was new to the town. He had come and opened a dusty little shop on dusty Bridge Street hill, and although the neighborhood knew from the courier winds that his diet was mainly cabbage, they were satisfied with that meager datum. Of course Reifsnyder came to investigate him for the local Barbers’ Union, but he found in him only sweetness and light, with a willingness to charge any price at all for a shave or a haircut. In fact, the advent of Neeltje would have made barely a ripple upon the placid bosom of Whilomville if it were not that his name was Neeltje.