The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 14 August 1913, Page 5

The Storyteller

OLD GIGGLES' AND 'CAPIAIN BLUE As Emily, carrying her suit case, came down the grassy slope, she stopped, and stood a moment looking at the old house that lay before her at the bottom of 'Blue's Hole'— the rest of the town of Welford facetiously called the hollow. Her glance swept drearily over the forlorn place, and then fastened with something like a shock of disgust on a queer figure in the doorway. Some words the girl had said at the time of her mother s second marriage, five years before, came back to her: 'As if it wasn't bad enough to be a Blue at Blue's Hole without marrying a Witham—and Old Giggles at that!' Among the townspeople the nickname, 'Old Giggles' had quite supplanted Abel Witham's right name. It had been bestowed on him for his habit of chuckling behind his hand whenever he was embarrassed. I hat trick, added to his singular dress and shiftless ways, had gradually gained for him the undeserved reputation of being half-witted. He chuckled now at the sight of the girl. 'I guess you ain't come home none too soon, Emily. Your ma, she's got to be considerable of an invalid.' 'No wonder Emily's tone was withering as she glanced about. ' All the same, it was pretty hard on

me to have to give up my place just as I was beginning to get somewhere.' "■_- • .' --• She brushed past him into the house, and went to her mother, who, seated at the window in a broken rocking-chair, had; been watching for her. ; 'lt's lucky you've come, Emily,' said the sick woman.; and then began to cry querulously. " ' Of course I had to come as soon as I got youl letter., Are you'; worse, mother?' ' • Emily bent over the dishevelled figure in the chair with a feeling of unspeakable discouragement. It seemed that even a Blue need not have come to this. Her mother's hair'hung, about her face and her faded print wrapper was not only ragged, but dirty. Everything about the room, from the broken chair to the rusty cook-stove, spoke not so much of poverty as of neglect and 'slackness.' .. Presently Mrs. Witham raised her head, and met such a look of distress on her daughter's face that she tried feebly to be cheerful. ■■ * 'I ain't so bad now, Emily, but land ! I feel so good for nothing. If you hadn't come home, I couldn't have kept my head above water much longer I guess.' - 5 - ' ' You must lie "down, mother. I'll get the bed ready.' ; Emily opened the door into the. little, bedroom off the kitchen; she gasped when she saw the dust and disorder within. . • ' Mercy, what a looking, room ! You'll have to let me put you on the lounge till I can clean it up. Doctor Kennard is coming to-night, and I can't have him see you in such a hole as that. Wait, I'll brusk your hair and bathe your face and hands, and get von out of that dress!' ... b J ~ Mrs. Witham breathed a sigh of relief when at last she found herself lying in a clean bed in a tidy well-aired room. 'I didn't know whether you could find any clean sheets; Abel does 'mix things up so when I'm sick. Why, I do believe you got them out of your trunk it came yesterday. This must be one of your own nightgowns, too, Emmie. What handsome trimming !';"'"':. Doctor Kennard's verdict, although not alarming, was in a sense discouraging; it destroyed Emily's last faint hope that she might be free, after she had nursed her mother back to health. ' There's nothing serious the matter,' he declared. ' She's not fit for hard work, that's all. But with somebody to look out for her and make her life easy, she will get along comfortably, and live out her days.' His keen eyes studied the girl for a moment. Since she was fifteen years old he had not seen this daughter of the Blues—the race of ne'er-do-wells, second only to the" Withams in shiftlessness; somehow she upset his conviction of the utter worthlessness of the family. _ The doctor departed: Old Giggles stood in the kitchen door, looking at the supper-table. ' I'd kinder got used to thinkin' I was chief cook and bottle-washer myself/ he explained with a chuckle. ' The house looks as if you had been—a little too long,' Emily retorted. 'I wouldn't have believed a human being with two hands could have put up with such a state of things.' ' City folks are mighty finicky,' observed Old Giggles, with calm disdain. The next morning Emily faced her new life with set lips, but a sinking heart. 'The house could be cleaned— only I had a Hercules to do it. The farm could be made to yield us a living, if I could get it worked. But Old Giggles is hopeless. And he's part of the life here; he can't be weeded out and thrown away.' [.'-■:■.' : . : As she went about her work she watched the man curiously. He seemed to do nothing all day long,- and he did his idling in the most shiftless and exasperating fashion. Everything about the * place was going to waste. The farm was uncultivated; thirty fertile acres were overrun with moss and blueberry bushes. Old Giggles'sat in the barn door and whittled; in answer to Emily's impatient reminder that it was time to begin

the farmwork, he said he ' guessed he'd put in a patch o' pertaters some time.' - :-..■•■'• ' I do believe I could stand it better if it wasn't for his looks,' the girl said to herself one day. 'I think he gets himself up that way on purpose to madden me.' .■■ • v •• Abel was clothing himself from the contents of an old sea-chest, a relic of his early life as a sailor. The chest, which seemed to have no bottom, contained garments of extraordinary age and shape. From time to time he unearthed such as he wanted, and wore them till they were ragged; his hats might have been filched from neighboring scarecrows. The.girl, fresh from the lively, hopeful existence she had left behind in the city, felt a sudden smarting of the eyelids as she looked at him. Old Giggles represented the outward and visible sign of her degradation —for it seemed to her degrading to he tied to a life such as this, and to know that she belonged to it. Yet after the first moments of despair, a glimmer of hope came to her. ' It's bad enough,' she said to herself. 'But if I had money I could make it better. I could hire a man to do some work, and I could have the house repaired and painted, so that mother could have something like a home. Poor mother, what would she say to find herself in a clean,, pretty house such as other women about here have! It's worth trying for.' She tried hard she plunged into a very fury of housecleaning. Yet at the end of the first fortnight she could not see that she had made any headway in her fight against the disorder. At dusk one day Abel came in of his own accord, without having been summoned to supper as usual. In the kitchen doorway he stopped and stared about in a discomfited fashion. Emily was flat on her face on the old lounge, and every line of her prostrate figure expressed such despair that even Abel was alarmed. He tiptoed across the room and spoke to her. ' Sick, Emily?' he asked. She lifted her tear-stained face and looked at him. 'No, Abel,' she said. 'l'm only discouraged. I've worked all this time, and the place looks more like a pig's shack than ever. If I had twenty backs and broke them all I couldn't make it decent.' Abel glanced round the room, then back to the woeful figure on the lounge. 'Women,' he ruminated, softly, 'are plumb-full of curious notions That was all the comfort Emily got from him that night. The next morning, however, she was awakened by a commotion in the rooms below, and when she came downstairs, she found Old Giggles scrubbing the kitchen floor as vigorously as ever he had swabbed the decks of the Ella Maria in his sailor days., ' What on earth are you doing, and what's happened to the stove?' demanded Emily. ' Blacked it. I never noticed 'twas getting so plaguy rusty. You run in and see to your mother. Coffee's made, and I'll set the table in a minute. You're cap'n to-day, Emily; Cap'n Blue— your title. You give your orders, and the crew will carry 'em out. I'll scour the ridgepole and put a clean ruffle round the chimney if you say the word.' They made a great change in the looks of the place that morning. Abel was strong, and proved to be an efficient helper. The old habits of thoroughness that he had learned on shipboard had apparently come back to him. ' Been quite a while since I put my mind on this kind of thing,' he explained. Emily stopped polishing a window-pane to look at him curiously. ' What kind of things do you generally put your mind on, Abel? I haven't really known much about you all these years. How did you come to be—' J 'How did I come to be shiftless ?'. Abel calmly finished the sentence. ' People round here say I was bom that way. When my parents died, I was put out to a family that knocked me round and worked the gimp out of me 'fore I was old enough to have much.

After a while I spunked up and ran away-to sea. There they worked out and thumped out what gimp I had left; and some way or other, since I came ashore there hasn't seemed to be much worth doin' 'cept to sit in the sun and whittle, and think that there ain't a soul after me with a belay in'-pin.' The grim little autobiography touched the girl. We've both got mother to think of now, Abel,' she said. Old Giggles turned back suddenly. - "; ' That's so. I ain't done right by Mary. She's had it too hard. What's the next job, Cap'n Blue?' Things went better after that. •' > 'Captain Blue' coaxed Abel to do some ploughing, and to plant a garden on the sunny slope behind the house. She emptied her lean purse to buy enough wire netting to enclose a yard for the hens, whose unchecked depredations had almost made the place a desert. 'lt's such a pretty place, too —this sunny little intervale,' Emily said. And our land is the best in town. We can raise corn higher than your head on that strip next to the river. Why, plenty of city people would think we had a gold mine : n this thirty acres!' ' Farmin' is thunderin' hard work,' was Abel's comment. But he ploughed an extra piece for oats and planted the acre of corn before his new zeal should have a chance to evaporate. - . lEmily took charge of the garden when things began to come up. 'Work comes hard to my "crew," and I-mustn't push him too much,' she reflected. V « From the first, the garden came to be her refuge; among the springing rows of green things she worked away many bitter thoughts of her lost chance in life. It was fortunate, she said to herself, that her narrow little world was beginning to smile on her, for she would never have any other. She tried less successfully to work away her natural youthful longing for the companionship of persons of her own age. One day she was in the garden, pulling weeds with an energy that presently attracted Abel's attention. ' Don't work so like fury, cap'n,'. he said. ' There's plenty more time after to-day. Did I ever tell you,' he added, that my great-grandfather was one of the men who defended this town against an Indian attack two hundred years ago this July?' 'No, Abel. Are you studying history?' ' None to hurt, but the town is. The centennial celebration comes next week. All the descendants of the men who fought the Indians are goin' to sit on the platform.' ' Are you going to?' Nobody asked me, but maybe they will.- You couldn't find time to fix up that old brown suit of clothes, could you, Cap'n Blue?' A sudden inspiration came to Emily. You shall have a new suit, Abel,' she said. ' Why didn't I think of it before? I believe those brown clothes are the very ones your great-grandfather wore when he routed the red men. We haven't used the money that came for the early peas. Yes, you shall have a new suit from head to heels, and a new hat.' To her amusement, Old Giggles looked delighted, although somewhat abashed. ' You're mighty good to me, Emily,' he said. ' Nonsense! Didn't you help plant and pick those peas and take them to market? We're partners, Abel. You don't seem to realise your value. I couldn't possibly get along without you.' Old Giggles made no reply, but she knew by his expression that he would not forget what she had said. ' I ought to have told him before,' she thought to herself. ' I'm sure it's true enough. He's the only real prop I've got, and he's not such a feeble reed as the neighbors think. It's funny that even Abel has hankerings after fame, but it's a little bit pitiful, too. Of course they won't ask him to sit on the platform. I wish they would, but they'd be horrified at the idea of displaying Old Giggles among the Welford celebrities.' The committee did not ask him; but Emily coaxed him to wear his new suit and hat on the anniversary.

' You must go with me, Abel mother can't walk E so far,' she said. ' • -She knew it was a proud moment for Old Giggles when he entered the crowded town hall beside his wife's daughter. To Abel's simple mind Emily was a princess miraculously dropped into his life from, that fairyland, ' the city.' Indeed, she carried herself like one "as she walked with .him to the very front of the —for they were late, and had to run a long gauntlet of amazed glances before they found two vacant seats. She glanced at him as he sat beside her, and found that his eyes had fastened at once on the platform, where were the descendants of the town's defenders in the Indian fight. , * counted with them,' she said to herself, ' Why couldn't they have asked him?' The exercises were long and tedious, and the two contrived to slip out quietly during the singing and cheering at the close. . . 'Let's sit in the band-stand to see the people come out,' proposed Abel. 'They are going to fall into line with the Indian-fighters on ahead, and march to the place where the tablet's to be put up.' The band-stand was across the square, . and they had just climbed into it when they became aware of a commotion in the town hall. Careful persons had suggested that the old building was unsafe for such a gathering. But it was the only place large enough, and the new town hall, then being built, was as yet unfinished. Now as the audience began to leave the hall, there was a creaking sound and a settling of the floor at the front of the room; then a cry of alarm and a rush for the doorway. The entrance was high above the street. Fortunately, the steps held, and the audience had passed out of the hall when a crash behind filled the air with noise and dust. ' The old floor's fallen down into the cellar,' Abel announced. ' Steady, cap'n, they're all out safe.' But Emily started forward w'th a sharp cry 'O, Abel, the children !' The old building had a second floor that had been fitted up to serve as a rest room. Emily knew that many of the smallest children had been up there asleep while their mothers attended the exercises below. The collapse of the first floor had pulled the rickety building awry. A long rent in the front wall showed that the second floor was sagging dangerously, and a broken beam protruded at the edge of the roof. ' The whole thing is comin' down!' muttered Abel. Then he understood the meaning of Emily's cry; a child's curly head appeared at one of the upper windows. A wild clamor rose from the crowd that filled the street. Mothers, frantic with fear for the lives of their children, rushed toward the entrance of the tottering building they fought with the men who tried to keep them out of danger. And then, before any one knew what was happening, a queer figure appeared on the broken front wall above their heads. . It was Old Giggles climbing up to the second floor, apparently as unconcerned as if he had been climbing to the masthead of the Ella Maria in calm weather. He took no notice of the uproar till he sat astride the sill of the window where a moment before the child had looked out. Then he put his hands to his mouth, and shouted, 'Fetch a horse-blanket, quick!' People hastened to do his bidding. Presently strong hands were holding blankets by the corners, and one by one the babies fell safely from the grasp of the man at the window. The old building was swaying and settling. Fifteen children had been dropped to safety when the walls suddenly bulged, and something inside went down with a crash. Abel dived into the obscurity behind the window. He reappeared with three children in his arms and one clinging to his coat. Those four were saved, and

Abel went back once more. He emerged with the last child in his arms, the doctor's four-year-old son. w . ■; As he flung the child out, the building crashed in a heap, and the man went.down inside the ruin.; little later, when four men, -bearing Old. Giggles on a litter, started down the street. -" They carried him into the front room of the old house in Blue's Hole—and there the doctor pulled him through. ..--..--'■ '" You told me you couldn't do without me, Emily,' Abel said, with a whimsical smile at his nurse as she fastened a bandage on his arm. 'So you've got to put up with me no knowin' how many years. Withams are tough, I tell you. Do you b'lieve, cap'n, that right up on top o' that teeterin' buildin' I thought of what you said. It came into my head like a flash, " Why/ there's Emily begins to think lam somebody. She as good as said Old Giggles was worth his salt. Walked mo right up front, too, 'fore the whole town, just as if she was my own girl. I'll back her up in it; I'll prove she was right; yes, sir, I'll do it for Cap'n Blue.' ■-. Abel was well enough to be carried to the platform of the new town hall when they finished the interrupted anniversary celebration. In fact, the town had unanimously agreed not to have it till he could be -present. He was not strong yet, however, and that day he almost made up his mind that fame was not what he had been led to suppose. He looked much oppressed when the silver hero medal was presented to him. The hall was crowded, and almost every person there was determined to shake his hand. He brightened up at last when Emily came and laid a peremptory grasp on his arm. ' Where away now, cap'n V he asked. ' Home,' she answered. ' That's good, Cap'n Blue,' said Abel.