SILENCE OF SIMEON SAYLES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 88, 15 April 1899, Page 6 (Supplement)

SILENCE OF SIMEON SAYLES.

'I wish to goodness, Simeon Sayles, ' that you would shut up and keep shut up!' said Myra Sayles,. in a weary tone, and speaking as if the words were forced from her against her will. 'You do, hey?' replied her brother. Simeon, sharply and irritably. He.had been scolding about some trifling matter for nearly half an hour, and his sister Myra had listened in patient silence. Now she spoke because he had said something peculiarly annoying, and when he had replied so sharply, she said: 'Yes, I mean it, Simeon Sayles. I get so sick and tired of your eternal scolding and blaming that I just wish sometimes you'd shut your mouth and never open it again while you live.' 'You do, hey?' 'Yes, I do.' There, was sullen silence in the room Tor three or four minutes; the wrinkles on Simeon's brow deepened and his lips were pi-essed more and more tightly together. Suddenly he opened them with a snap and a defiant toss of his head. 'Very well, Myra Sayles, I will "shut up," and I'll stay "shut up," and you'll see how you like it.' 'I'll Lave some peace then,' replied Myra, shortly. Yet she looked at her brother curiously.

The Sayleses were noted in the country round about for rigidly adhering to every resolution they made. The thought now came into Myra's mind, 'Will lie do it?' She had not meant him to take her remark literally. Simeon was .as rron-willed as any of the family, and yet Myra felt that he could not keep such a vow long. It was necessary for him to talk. So she said:

'I giiess you'll be gabbling away fast enough before night. There's no such good luck as your keeping still very longI.' Simeon made no reply, but took his old straw hat from a nail behind the door and went out into the barn-yard, walking very erect, but with little jerks, indicating that the Sayles temper was high in him. 'Now he'il go out to the barn and putch around there a while, and maybe putch all evening in the house, and then talk a blue streak all day to-morrow to make up for the time he's lost keeping still. I declare, if tlu> men-folks can't be the tryinggst!'

She stitched away steadily on the shee,t she was turning until the clock struck six, when she jumped up hastily. 'Mercy,' she exclaimed, 'I'd no idea it was so late! I hope to goodness the fire hasn't gone out. I must get the kettle on and supper ready. I did intend making some of the flannel •cakes Simeon likes so much, to put him in a good humour, but I don't believe I shall have time-now.'

Nevertheless, there was a plate of steaming hot 'flannel-cakes' and a bowl of maple syrup before Simeon's plate when he came in to supper hnTf an hour later.

He ate the cakes in stubborn silence.

'Are you going over to Seth Badger's after supper,' Myra asked, 'to see him about helping you cut that grass to-morrow?' . After waiting iri vain for an answer, Myra said:

'I want to know if you do go, because I want to send Mrs Badger a waist pattern of hers I borrowed last

week.'

No reply, from Simeon. His sister gave her head an impatient toss, and they finished the meal in silence, When it was done Simeon went to a little, table in a corner of the room, pulled out the drawer, and took from it a scrap of blank paper and the stub of a lead-pencil.

Myra took the supper dishes into the kitchen; when she came into the rooni again Simeon handed her the scrap of paper. On it was written: 'I'm a-going over to Badger's now.'

Myra dropped the bit of paper to the "floor and stared hard at her brother.

'Well, Simeou Sayles!' she said at last. 'I call this carrying matters pretty- far. Before I'd make myself so ridiculous, I'd—What you going to do when you get over to Badger's? You'll look smart writing out what you've got to say over there, now won't you? You'll make yourself the laughing-stock of the country if you go-around writing out what you've got to say, when you've got as good a tongue in your head as anybody.' Simeon made no reply, but picked up the bit of pencil and wrote on another scrap of paper: 'Whare is the patera?' 'I think you'd better learn to spell before you go to conversing* in writing.—spelling "where" with an "a," and "pattern"with only one "t"! If you don't get sick and tired of this sort of torn-foolery before two days, I miss my guess, Simeon Sayles!'

Whether he grew tired of it or not, Simeon Sayles said all he had to say in writing from that time forth. His. only reply to his sister's ridicule and remonstrances was written in these words: 'You sed you wisht I'd shut up my mouth and keep it shut, and I'm a-going to do it.' He bought a little blank book, in which he kept a pencil, and all his communications to the world and to individuals were made through the medium of this book and pencil.

The neighbours aaid that 'the Sayleses always were a queer lot, anyhow;' that some of Simeon's ancestors had been rather eccentric, and that Simeon himself had never seemed quite like other, men. No matter how true this may have been, his sister Myra was a thoroughly wellbalanced woman, with a large fund of strong common-sense, and her brother's freak caused her great secret mortification and distress, although she had declared at the beginning of it: 'It will be an actual rest to me to get rid of your eternal scolding!' But Simeon had not scolded 'eternally,' as Myra felt obliged to confess to herself in her reflective moments. He was, indeed, somewhat infirm of temper, and sometimes gave himself up to prolonged fits of petulance, but there had been days and even weeks at a time when Simeon had been as serene of mind and as companionable as any man. He and his sister Myra had sat side by side on the little'porch over the front door of their old red farmhouse throughout many a peaceful summer evening, quietly talking over the past and the future, The long winter evenings had often been filled with a quiet happiness and peace for

them both, as they sat at the same | heavth-stoue at which their parents had sat, Myra with her' knitting and Simeon reading aloud or smoking his pipe in peace. They had nearly always eaten their meals in harmony; and now, as they sat at the table facing each other in hard, cold silence, there 'were times when, al- : though neither would have confessed it to the other, their food almost j choked them. ■

'This freak of his is harder to put up with at the table than at any other place or time,' his sister confessed to a sympathetic neighbour. 'Sometimes it just seems as if I'd fly. There he sits as mum as a grindstone. Sometimes I try to rattle away just as if nothing was the matter, but I can never keep it up very long. I've tried all sorts of litle tricks to catch him unawares and make him speak once, but he won't be caught. One day, just when he'd come in from the field, I smelt something burning1 so strong that I said, "I do believe the house is on lire," and he opened his mouth as it to speak, and then clapped it shut again and whipped out that .abominable little book and wrote, "Whare?"

'I was so put out that I flung the book clear out into the gooseberry bushes. I really doubt if he ever does speak again .in this world; and the prospect is pleasant for me, isn't it?'

The two lived alone in the old red farmhouse in which they had been born fifty' years before. They were without kith or kin in the world, with the exception of a much younger sister named Hope, who had married a prosperous young farmer and had gone out West to live. It had been a time of great sorrow to them when this pretty, young sister had married Henry Norton and gone from the old house. They rejoiced in her happiness, of course, and were quite sure that Hope had 'done well,' but it was none the lesa hard to give her up.

She was only twenty-one years old at the time, and so much younger than her brother and sister that their affection for her was much, like that of a father and mother for an only child. They had lavished the tenderest love of their lives on Hope, and their affection had not lessened by her absence. In the years since they had seen Hope's pretty face and heard her cheery voice, they often talked of her.

Myra had always stood as a strong wall between Hope and harm or trouble of any kind, and this loving thoughtfulness had kept her from writing a word to her sister about their brother's strange silence.

'I wouldn't have Hope- know it for anything,' Myra had said; 'it- would worry the child so. And there's no danger of Simeon writing it. He'd be ashamed to.'

During all of the fall and through one whole long, wretched winter the iron-willed Simeon kept his resolve not to speak, and a decided shake of his head or a written 'No' was his reply to Myra's often repeated question, 'Don't you ever intend to speak again'?'

One day in May a neighbour, coming from the town, brought Myra a letter that gave to her troubled heart the wildest -thrill of joy it had known for many a day. Hope was coming home! She had written to say that she would arrive on Wednesday of the following week with her little girl of three years, and that tj^iey would spend the entire summer in the old home.

Catching up her sun-bonnet, Myra ran all the way to the distant field in which Simeon was at work, holding the letter out as she ran and calling out before she reached him:

'0 Simeon! Simeon! A letter from Hope! She's coming- home! She'll be here next week with her little Grace, that we've never seen! Only think of it, Hope's coming home!'

Simeon was ploughing-. He reined up his horses with a jerk, and opened and shut his mouth three or four times; but no sound came from his lips. His face wore a half-wild, halffrightened look, and his hand trembled as he held it out for the letter.

'Simeon! Simeon I' cried Myra, with quivering voice and tearful eyes, 'surely you'll have to speak now?'

He shook his head slowly and sadly as he sat down on the plough to read the letter. He handed it back in silence and turned away his head when he saw the tears streaming down Myra's cheeks, and he bit his lip until it almost bled when he heard her sob as she turned to go back to the house.

TV'lien lie came to dinner he read the letter again, but he and Myra ate in silence.

Hope came a week from that day. Myr^i went to the railroad station three miles distant to meet her.

'It'll be better for me to meet her than for you, if you are bound and determined to keep tip this nonsense while she's here,' said Myra, 'She doesn't know a thing about it; you may be sure I haven't written a word of it to the poor child, and I dread to tell her of it now. ' It's a. shame, a burning shame, Simeon Sayles, for you to spoil Hope's first visit home, just to carry but a silly vow that it was wiclced for you ever to make in the first place. It's a piece of wickedness right straight through!' 11 A visible pallor had come into Simeon's face, at the mention of Hope's little girl. No one knew how much and how tenderly this little girl whom he had never seen had been in his thoughts. He was fond of children, and no child in the world could be as dear to him as this little girl of Hope's. He and Myra had looked forward so eagerly to the time when Hope should bring her to them, and they had read so proudly of all her infantile charms and accomplishments as set forth in Hope's letters!

He stole softly into the seldomopened parlour when Myra was gone. The door stood open now, and all the shades were up, while the room had been made spotless and dustleas, and bright and sweet with Hope's favourite flowers in the old-fashioned vases on the mantel.

Several photographs of Hope's little girl, taken at different stages of her infantile career, were in the album on the parlour table. Simeon took up this album and gazed at these photographs one by one, with unhappy eyes.

He wandered round the house and yard until the time drew near for Myra's return with Hope and little Grace. Then he went down the road to meet them. He had gone perhaps a quarter of a mile when he sat down by the wayside to wait until they should drive around a turn in the road a hundred yards or more distant.

■ He had waited not more than five minutes when he heard the sound of wheels and voices round the curve in the road. He heard the sudden, sweet laugh of a child, and was on his feet in an instant.

■At that same instant a' man on a bicycle dashed past him. Bicycles were still an almost unheard of thing

in that part, of the country. Simeon had never seen but three or four of them, and the appearance of this one whirling 1 along at such a speed startled him.

Its rider sent it flying on down the road, and it whirled around the curve, to the surprise, of Miss Myra and to the terror of old Hector, the horse she was driving1. The reins were lying loosely in Myra's hands, and .before she could gather them up old Hector jumped aside, rearing and plunging, and the next instant he was racing madly down the foad with the reins dragging the ground on either side of

him, while Hope clung to little Grace, and screamed.

'Whoa! Whoa, Hector!', cried Myra, in a voice so awful with terror that it frig-htened old Hector the more. 'Whoa, Hector, whoa!'

This time old-.Hector pricked up his ears, for the voice that spoke Avas a firm, commanding one, and the next moment a strong hand grasped his bridle while the voice repeated:

'Whoa! Whoa!'

It was a harsh, stern voice; but it sounded like the sweetest music in Myra's ears. It was Simeon's; and Simeon was holding to the bit. He held it until old Hector came to a halt, and then he turned and said, calmly:

'Don't be scared, Hope, child; you're all right now. Give me the little one.*

He held out his arms, and Hope put the little girl into them, saying as she did so:.

'It's your Uncle Simmy, dear! Put your arms around his neck and give him a kiss, and let him hear how well you can say "Uncle Simmy." ' A pair of soft little arms stole around Simeon's sunburned neck; a soft little cheek was laid on his rough, bearded one, and when, she had kissed him twice she said:

'Dee Nuncle Thimmy!'

'The blessed little creetur!' he said, winking his eyes and hugging her close to his heart.

And when she and her mother were asleep in Hope's old room that night, Simeon came into the kitchen where Myra was setting some bread to rise and softly humming a gospel hymn of praise put o£ the joy.,ofrier,.heart, and! Simeon said: ; . :. . - ,■ «=

'Well, Myra—' , . . . , 'Well, Simeon?' •"-•■' • '■ -• = 'Well —cr —well, what did Hope say, anyhow, when you told her?'

'When I told her what? Oh, about your—your —la, Simeon, the minute I clapped eyes on that blessed child I knew there wasn't any use in telling Hope anything about it. I knew you'd just have to speak to that baby! So I never lisped a syllable about it to Hope, and she never shall know a word about it if I can help it. I wish you'd fetch me in a basket of nice, dry chips. The moon shines so bright you can see to pick them up. I want a quick fire in the morning, so I can have hot biscuit for Hope's breakfast. She always was so fond of them.' '

And Simeon took the chip-basket and went ont into the moonlight, his long-silent lips softly humming the same song of praise Myra had been singing.

J. L. HAEBOUR.