It was my Uncle Obadiah who first opened my eyes to the mysteries of the animal world. In so doing he flung wide a door into happiness which many a wiser man has neglected. He derived nearly all his pleasures from the cheerful little things of life. A curious sympathy existed between him and the lower creation. All the cats and dogs in the district were his friends. He attributed to them almost human personalities, and gave them special names of his own choosing. It was a wonderful day for me when he first made me realize that all-surrounding was a kingdom of beasts and birds of which I, who had always been ruled, might be ruler.
In the paddock which lay between the garden and orchard, he had his own especial kingdom. His subjects were a cow, a goat, some very domestically inclined rabbits, about a hundred hens, and innumerable London sparrows. The latter he had trained to fly down from the trees and settle on his shoulders when he whistled.
Early in the morning we would go there together; the first duty of the day was to feed the menagerie. How distinctly I can recall those scenes—the dewy lawn, dappled golden by sunlight falling through leaves, the droning of bees setting forth from hives on their day’s excursion, the smoke slowly rising in the summer stillness from distant chimney-pots, and my uncle’s voice making excited guesses at how many eggs we should gather.
Eggs represented almost his sole contribution to the family income. Among his many Eldorados was the persistent belief that he could make his fortune at poultryraising. He would talk to me about it for hours as we worked in the garden, like a man inspired, making lightning calculations of the sums he would one day realize. He was continually experimenting and crossing breeds with a view to producing a more prolific strain of layers. He had a dream that one day he would produce the finest strain of fowl in the world. He would call it The Spreckles —his name would be immortalized. He would be justified in the eyes of Aunt Lavinia; and success would justify him in the eyes of all men.
Meanwhile my aunt declared that Obad spent more time and thought on that blest live-stock than he would ever see back in money. “Obad” was her contraction for his name; when she spoke to him sharply it sounded like her opinion of his character. But, in her own way, she was fond of him. Perhaps she had come to love his very failings as we do the faults of our friends. She was secretly proud of her own capacity; her thwarted mother-instinct found an outlet in the sense of his dependence. Nevertheless, the great fundamental cleavage lay between them: she lived in an anxious world where tradesmen’s bills required punctual payment; his world was a careless playground in which no defeat was ever final. She was stable in her moods, self-reliant and tenaciously courageous. He was forever changing: with adults he was like a house in mourning, shuttered, austere, grave; but should a youngster pass by, the blinds were jerked aside and a laughing face peered out.
His most important make-believe was that he was a benefactor of humanity. He held honorary positions of secretary to various philanthropic societies—The Society for the Housing of Gipsies; The Society for the Assisting of Decrepit. Ladies, etc. The positions were honorary because he could find no one willing to pay him. He worked for nothing because he was ashamed of being forever out of employment. He got great credit for his services among charitable people; the annual votes of thanks which he received helped to bolster up his self-respect throughout the year.
As I grew older and more observant, I used to wonder what had induced my aunt to marry him. Again it was my Grandmother Cardover who told me, “He spuffled Lavinia into it, my dear.” It seems that he caught her by the vast commercial and humanitarian possibilities of one of his many plans. When she awoke to the fact that her husband was not a man, but the incarnation of perpetual boyhood, she may have been disappointed, but she did not show it. Like a sensible woman, instead of crying her eyes out, she set about earning a livelihood. Uncle Obad had one marketable asset—his religion and the friends he gained by it. She took a decayed mansion in Charity Grove and established a Christian Boarding House. All her lodgers were young men, and by that proud subterfuge of poverty they were known as paying-guests.
The only Christian feature that I can remember about her establishment was that my uncle said grace before all meals at which the lodgers were present. At the midday meal, from which they were absent, it was omitted. The Christian Boarding House idea caught on with provincial parents whose sons were moving up to the city for the first time; it seemed to guarantee home morals. The sons soon perceived how matters stood and buried their agnostic prejudices beneath good feeding.
A general atmosphere of obligation was created by my aunt in her husband’s favor; she always spoke as though it was very kind of so public a man as Mr. Spreckles to squander his scanty privacy by letting paying-guests share his roof. She made such a gallant show with what she earned that everyone thought her husband had a private fortune, which enabled him to live in such style and give so much time to charitable works. She would hint as much in conversing with her friends, and invariably feigned the greatest pride and contentment in his activities. Thanks to his spuffling and her courage, there were not five people outside the family who ever guessed the true circumstances.
But when all is said, the real business of my Uncle Obad’s life was not philanthropy or running a boardinghouse, but poultry-raising. It was he who gave me the old white hen, without which I might never have met Ruthita. My money-making instincts were roused by his talk of the profits to be derived from eggs. I was enthusiastic to follow in his footsteps. To this end, at the hour of parting, when I was returning to Pope Lane, he gave me an ancient white Leghorn. He did not tell me she was ancient; he recommended her to me as belonging to a strain that could never get broody.
On the long drive home across London, my grief at leaving Charity Grove was partly mitigated by my new possession. It was a tremendous experience to feel that I had it in my power to make a live thing, even though it were but a hen, sad or happy. I discussed with Uncle Obad all the care that was necessary for egg-production. I got him to work out sums for me. If my hen were to lay an egg every other day throughout the year, how much money would I make by selling each egg to my father at a penny? I felt that the foundations of my financial fortunes were secure. The genuineness of my expectations made my uncle restless and ashamed; he knew that the hen had passed her first youth, and suggested that pepper in her food might help matters.
It was supper-time when I arrived home. I let the hen loose on the lawn to stretch her legs. My father was busy as usual, but he delayed a little longer over the meal in honor of my home-coming.
Some of the things I blurted out about my uncle must have revealed to him the comradeship that lay between us. He had risen from the table, but he sat down again. “You have known your uncle just a fortnight,” he said, “and yet you seem to have told him more about yourself than you have told me in all these years. Why is it, Dante? You’re not afraid of me? It can’t be that.” We were both of us shy. He reached over and took my hand, repeating, “It can’t be that.”
He knew that it was that and so did I. Yet he was hungry for my affection. He was making an unaccustomed effort to win my confidence and draw me out. But he spoke to me as though I was a grown man, whereas my uncle to get near me had become himself a child. If he had only talked to me about my white hen, I should have chattered. But I was awed by his embarrassment, and remained silent and unresponsive.
He went on to tell me that all the time he was away from me in his study he was working for my sake. “I want to have the money to give you a good start in life. I never had it. You must succeed where I have failed.”
I understood very little of what he was saying except that money and success seemed to be the same. That was the way Uncle Obad had talked about poultry-raising. I had no idea where money came from or how it was obtained. I must have asked him some question about it, for I recall one of the phrases he used in replying, “A man succeeds not by what he does, but by the things at which he has aimed.”
The red sun fell behind the trees while we talked, peered above my father’s shoulder, and sank out of sight. It was dusk when I ran into the garden.
I felt prisoned again—the door into the lane was locked and the walls were all about me. The lamp in my father’s study was kindled and flung a bar of light across the shrubbery. He was working to get the money that I might be allowed to work. I didn’t like the idea. I didn’t want to work. Why couldn’t one drive always through the sunshine, pulling up at taverns and sitting beside gipsy camp-fires?
I commenced to search for the white hen and so forgot these economic complications. Here and there I came across places where she had been scrabbing, but I could see her nowhere. At last I discovered her roosting on the branch of an apple-tree which grew close by the wall at the end of the garden. I spoke to her kindly, but she refused to come down. She was too high up for me to reach her from the ground. When I scattered grain, she blinked at me knowingly, as much as to say, “Surely you don’t think I’m as big a fool as that.” It seemed to me that she was grieving for all the cocks and hens to whom she had said farewell. She was embittered against me because she was solitary. I explained to her that, if she’d lay eggs, I’d buy her a husband. She remained skeptical of my good intentions. There was nothing for it—but to climb. I could hear the leaves shaking and the apples bumping on the ground; my hand was stretched out to catch her when, with a hoarse scream of defiance, she flapped her wings and disappeared into the great nothingness over our neighbor’s wall.
Unless the white hen had blazed the trail, I might have remained in the walled-in garden for years without ever daring to discover a way out. I was too excited at this crisis to measure my temerity. In my fear of losing her I did a thing undreamt of and unplanned—I swung myself from the branch on to the top of the brickwork and dropped on the other side. A bed of currant bushes broke my fall. I got upon my feet scratched and dazed.
The first thing I saw was a long stretch of grass bordered by flowers. At the end of it was a small two-storied house, gabled and with verandas running round it. In one of the upper-story windows a light was burning; all the rest was in darkness. In the middle of the lawn I could see my white hen strutting in a very stately manner. I stole up behind her, but she began clucking. In my fear of discovery, I lost all patience and commenced to chase her vigorously. I ran her at last into a bed of peas, where she became entangled. I had her in my arms when I heard a voice, “Who are you?”
Turning suddenly, I found that a little girl was standing close behind me.
“My name’s Dante.”
“And mine’s Ruthita.”
We stared at one another through the dusk. I had never spoken to a little girl and for some reason, difficult to explain, commenced to tremble. It was not fear that caused it, but something strong and emotional.
“Dante,” she whispered. “How pretty!” Then, “Where do you live?”
I jerked my thumb in the direction of the wall.
“You climbed over?”
I nodded. She laughed softly. “Could you do it again? Oh, do come often, often. I’m so lonely, and we could play together.”
Just then the voice of Hetty began to call in the distance,
“Dan-tee, Dan-tee, where are you? Come to bed di-rectly.”
Her voice drew nearer. She was searching for me, and passed quite close to us on the other side of the wall. We could hear the indignant rustle of her skirt and her heavy breathing with bending down so low to peer under bushes.
Ruthita came near to me so that I had my first glimpse of her eyes in the dark—eyes which were always to haunt me. Her hands were clasped against her throat in eagerness—she seemed to be standing tiptoe. “Don’t tell,” she pleaded. “It’s our secret. But come again to-morrow.”
I promised.
She watched me scrambling for a foot-hold in the wall. When I sat astride it, just before I vanished, she waved her hand.
The white hen had lost her importance in my thoughts;
I bundled her into the tool-house, and then surrendered to Hetty. Hetty was very cross. She wanted to discover where I had been hiding, but I wouldn’t tell her. When she left me, I crept out of bed and knelt beside the window for a long time gazing down into the blackness.
Far away a bird was calling. The tall trees waved their arms. The moon leapt out of clouds, and the branches reached up to touch her with their fingers. A little beam of light struggled free and ran about the garden. I tried to tell myself it was Ruthita.
The garden seemed less of a prison now—rather a place of magic and enchantment.