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Juliana Horatio Ewing >> Jackanapes
JACKANAPES
By
JULIANA HORATIO EWING
Illustrated by
Amy Sacker
BOSTON
L. C. PAGE and COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
COPYRIGHT, 1895
BY
JOSEPH KNIGHT COMPANY
* * * * *
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
"Last noon beheld them full of life,
Last eve in beauty's circle proudly gay."
CHAPTER II.
"And he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old nurse."
CHAPTER III.
"If studious, copie fair what time hath blurred,
Redeem truth from his jawes."
CHAPTER IV.
"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man
lay down his life for his friends."
CHAPTER V.
"Then, said he, 'I am going to my Father's.'"
CHAPTER VI.
"Und so ist der blaue Himmel groesser als jedes
Gewoelk darin, und dauerhafter dazu."
* * * * *
ILLUSTRATIONS
"BUT SHE REMEMBERED THE LITTLE MISS JESSAMINE" _Frontispiece_
TITLEPAGE
"NEXT DAY JANE HAD HEARD MORE"
AT THE POND
"JACKANAPES COULD HARDLY SLEEP FOR SPECULATING"
"HE WAS DISPOSED TO TALK CONFIDENTIALLY"
THE GENERAL'S GRANDSON
THE BOY TRUMPETER
TAILPIECE
FINIS
* * * * *
"_If I might buffet for my love, or bound my horse for her
favors, I could lay on like a butcher, and sit like a
Jackanapes, never off_!"
KING HENRY V, Act 5, Scene 2.
* * * * *
JACKANAPES
CHAPTER I.
Last noon beheld them full of lusty life,
Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay,
The midnight brought the signal sound of strife,
The morn the marshalling in arms--the day
Battle's magnificently stern array!
The thunder clouds close o'er it, which when rent
The earth is covered thick with other clay,
Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,
Rider and horse:--friend, foe,--in one red burial blent.
Their praise is hymn'd by loftier harps than mine:
Yet one would I select from that proud throng.
---- to thee, to thousands, of whom each
And one as all a ghastly gap did make
In his own kind and kindred, whom to teach
Forgetfulness were mercy for their sake;
The Archangel's trump, not glory's, must awake
Those whom they thirst for.--BYRON.
Two Donkeys and the Geese lived on the Green, and all other residents
of any social standing lived in houses round it. The houses had no
names. Everybody's address was, "The Green," but the Postman and the
people of the place knew where each family lived. As to the rest of
the world, what has one to do with the rest of the world, when he is
safe at home on his own Goose Green? Moreover, if a stranger did come
on any lawful business, he might ask his way at the shop.
Most of the inhabitants were long-lived, early deaths (like that of
the little Miss Jessamine) being exceptional; and most of the old
people were proud of their age, especially the sexton, who would be
ninety-nine come Martinmas, and whose father remembered a man who had
carried arrows, as a boy, for the battle of Flodden Field. The Grey
Goose and the big Miss Jessamine were the only elderly persons who
kept their ages secret. Indeed, Miss Jessamine never mentioned any
one's age, or recalled the exact year in which anything had happened.
She said that she had been taught that it was bad manners to do so "in
a mixed assembly."
The Grey Goose also avoided dates, but this was partly because her
brain, though intelligent, was not mathematical, and computation was
beyond her. She never got farther than "last Michaelmas," "the
Michaelmas before that," and "the Michaelmas before the Michaelmas
before that." After this her head, which was small, became confused,
and she said, "Ga, ga!" and changed the subject.
But she remembered the little Miss Jessamine, the Miss Jessamine with
the "conspicuous" hair. Her aunt, the big Miss Jessamine, said it was
her only fault. The hair was clean, was abundant, was glossy, but do
what you would with it, it never looked like other people's. And at
church, after Saturday night's wash, it shone like the best brass
fender after a Spring cleaning. In short, it was conspicuous, which
does not become a young woman--especially in church.
Those were worrying times altogether, and the Green was used for
strange purposes. A political meeting was held on it with the village
Cobbler in the chair, and a speaker who came by stage coach from the
town, where they had wrecked the bakers' shops, and discussed the
price of bread. He came a second time, by stage, but the people had
heard something about him in the meanwhile, and they did not keep him
on the Green. They took him to the pond and tried to make him swim,
which he could not do, and the whole affair was very disturbing to all
quiet and peaceable fowls. After which another man came, and preached
sermons on the Green, and a great many people went to hear him; for
those were "trying times," and folk ran hither and thither for
comfort. And then what did they do but drill the ploughboys on the
Green, to get them ready to fight the French, and teach them the
goose-step! However, that came to an end at last, for Bony was sent to
St. Helena, and the ploughboys were sent back to the plough.
Everybody lived in fear of Bony in those days, especially the naughty
children, who were kept in order during the day by threats of, "Bony
shall have you," and who had nightmares about him in the dark. They
thought he was an Ogre in a cocked hat. The Grey Goose thought he was
a fox, and that all the men of England were going out in red coats to
hunt him. It was no use to argue the point, for she had a very small
head, and when one idea got into it there was no room for another.
Besides, the Grey Goose never saw Bony, nor did the children, which
rather spoilt the terror of him, so that the Black Captain became more
effective as a Bogy with hardened offenders. The Grey Goose remembered
_his_ coming to the place perfectly. What he came for she did not
pretend to know. It was all part and parcel of the war and bad times.
He was called the Black Captain, partly because of himself, and partly
because of his wonderful black mare. Strange stories were afloat of
how far and how fast that mare could go, when her master's hand was on
her mane and he whispered in her ear. Indeed, some people thought we
might reckon ourselves very lucky if we were not out of the frying-pan
into the fire, and had not got a certain well-known Gentleman of the
Road to protect us against the French. But that, of course, made him
none the less useful to the Johnson's Nurse, when the little Miss
Johnsons were naughty.
"You leave off crying this minnit, Miss Jane, or I'll give you right
away to that horrid wicked officer. Jemima! just look out o' the
windy, if you please, and see if the Black Cap'n's a-com-ing with his
horse to carry away Miss Jane."
And there, sure enough, the Black Captain strode by, with his sword
clattering as if it did not know whose head to cut off first. But he
did not call for Miss Jane that time. He went on to the Green, where
he came so suddenly upon the eldest Master Johnson, sitting in a
puddle on purpose, in his new nankeen skeleton suit, that the young
gentleman thought judgment had overtaken him at last, and abandoned
himself to the howlings of despair. His howls were redoubled when he
was clutched from behind and swung over the Black Captain's shoulder,
but in five minutes his tears were stanched, and he was playing with
the officer's accoutrements. All of which the Grey Goose saw with her
own eyes, and heard afterwards that that bad boy had been whining to
go back to the Black Captain ever since, which showed how hardened he
was, and that nobody but Bonaparte himself could be expected to do him
any good.
But those were "trying times." It was bad enough when the pickle of a
large and respectable family cried for the Black Captain; when it came
to the little Miss Jessamine crying for him, one felt that the sooner
the French landed and had done with it the better.
The big Miss Jessamine's objection to him was that he was a soldier,
and this prejudice was shared by all the Green. "A soldier," as the
speaker from the town had observed, "is a bloodthirsty, unsettled sort
of a rascal; that the peaceable, home-loving, bread-winning citizen
can never conscientiously look on as a brother, till he has beaten his
sword into a ploughshare, and his spear into a pruning-hook."
On the other hand there was some truth in what the Postman (an old
soldier) said in reply; that the sword has to cut a way for us out of
many a scrape into which our bread-winners get us when they drive
their ploughshares into fallows that don't belong to them. Indeed,
whilst our most peaceful citizens were prosperous chiefly by means of
cotton, of sugar, and of the rise and fall of the money-market (not to
speak of such salable matters as opium, firearms, and "black ivory"),
disturbances were apt to arise in India, Africa and other outlandish
parts, where the fathers of our domestic race were making fortunes for
their families. And, for that matter, even on the Green, we did not
wish the military to leave us in the lurch, so long as there was any
fear that the French were coming.[1]
[Footnote 1: "The political men declare war, and generally for
commercial interests; but when the nation is thus embroiled with its
neighbors the soldier ... draws the sword, at the command of his
country.... One word as to thy comparison of military and commercial
persons. What manner of men be they who have supplied the Caffres with
the firearms and ammunition to maintain their savage and deplorable
wars? Assuredly they are not military.... Cease then, if thou would'st
be counted among the just, to vilify soldiers."--W. NAPIER, Lieut.
General, _November_, 1851.]
To let the Black Captain have little Miss Jessamine, however, was
another matter. Her Aunt would not hear of it; and then, to crown all,
it appeared that the Captain's father did not think the young lady
good enough for his son. Never was any affair more clearly brought to
a conclusion.
But those were "trying times;" and one moon-light night, when the Grey
Goose was sound asleep upon one leg, the Green was rudely shaken under
her by the thud of a horse's feet. "Ga, ga!" said she, putting down
the other leg, and running away.
By the time she returned to her place not a thing was to be seen or
heard. The horse had passed like a shot. But next day, there was
hurrying and skurrying and cackling at a very early hour, all about
the white house with the black beams, where Miss Jessamine lived. And
when the sun was so low, and the shadows so long on the grass that the
Grey Goose felt ready to run away at the sight of her own neck, little
Miss Jane Johnson, and her "particular friend" Clarinda, sat under the
big oak-tree on the Green, and Jane pinched Clarinda's little finger
till she found that she could keep a secret, and then she told her in
confidence that she had heard from Nurse and Jemima that Miss
Jessamine's niece had been a very naughty girl, and that that horrid
wicked officer had come for her on his black horse, and carried her
right away.
[Illustration]
"Will she never come back?" asked Clarinda.
"Oh, no!" said Jane decidedly. "Bony never brings people back."
"Not never no more?" sobbed Clarinda, for she was weak-minded, and
could not bear to think that Bony never, never let naughty people go
home again.
Next day Jane had heard more.
"He has taken her to a Green?"
"A Goose Green?" asked Clarinda.
"No. A Gretna Green. Don't ask so many questions, child," said Jane;
who, having no more to tell, gave herself airs.
Jane was wrong on one point. Miss Jessamine's niece did come back, and
she and her husband were forgiven. The Grey Goose remembered it well,
it was Michaelmastide, the Michaelmas before the Michaelmas before the
Michaelmas--but ga, ga! What does the date matter? It was autumn,
harvest-time, and everybody was so busy prophesying and praying about
the crops, that the young couple wandered through the lanes, and got
blackberries for Miss Jessamine's celebrated crab and blackberry jam,
and made guys of themselves with bryony-wreaths, and not a soul
troubled his head about them, except the children, and the Postman.
The children dogged the Black Captain's footsteps (his bubble
reputation as an Ogre having burst), clamoring for a ride on the black
mare. And the Postman would go somewhat out of his postal way to catch
the Captain's dark eye, and show that he had not forgotten how to
salute an officer.
But they were "trying times." One afternoon the black mare was
stepping gently up and down the grass, with her head at her master's
shoulder, and as many children crowded on to her silky back as if she
had been an elephant in a menagerie; and the next afternoon she
carried him away, sword and _sabre-tache_ clattering war-music at her
side, and the old Postman waiting for them, rigid with salutation, at
the four cross roads.
War and bad times! It was a hard winter, and the big Miss Jessamine
and the little Miss Jessamine (but she was Mrs. Black-Captain now),
lived very economically that they might help their poorer neighbors.
They neither entertained nor went into company, but the young lady
always went up the village as far as the _George and Dragon_, for air
and exercise, when the London Mail[2] came in.
[Footnote 2: The Mail Coach it was that distributed over the face of
the land, like the opening of apocalyptic vials, the heart-shaking
news of Trafalgar, of Salamanca, of Vittoria, of Waterloo.... The
grandest chapter of our experience, within the whole Mail Coach
service, was on those occasions when we went down from London with the
news of Victory. Five years of life it was worth paying down for the
privilege of an outside place.
DE QUINCEY.]
One day (it was a day in the following June) it came in earlier than
usual, and the young lady was not there to meet it.
But a crowd soon gathered round the _George and Dragon_, gaping to see
the Mail Coach dressed with flowers and oak-leaves, and the guard
wearing a laurel wreath over and above his royal livery. The ribbons
that decked the horses were stained and flecked with the warmth and
foam of the pace at which they had come, for they had pressed on with
the news of Victory.
Miss Jessamine was sitting with her niece under the oak-tree on the
Green, when the Postman put a newspaper silently into her hand. Her
niece turned quickly--"Is there news?"
"Don't agitate yourself, my dear," said her aunt. "I will read it
aloud, and then we can enjoy it together; a far more comfortable
method, my love, than when you go up the village, and come home out of
breath, having snatched half the news as you run."
"I am all attention, dear aunt," said the little lady, clasping her
hands tightly on her lap.
Then Miss Jessamine read aloud--she was proud of her reading--and the
old soldier stood at attention behind her, with such a blending of
pride and pity on his face as it was strange to see:--
"DOWNING STREET,
"_June_ 22, 1815, 1 A.M."
"That's one in the morning," gasped the Postman; "beg your pardon,
mum."
But though he apologized, he could not refrain from echoing here and
there a weighty word. "Glorious victory,"--"Two hundred pieces of
artillery,"--"Immense quantity of ammunition,"--and so forth.
"The loss of the British Army upon this occasion has
unfortunately been most severe. It had not been possible to
make out a return of the killed and wounded when Major Percy
left headquarters. The names of the officers killed and
wounded, as far as they can be collected, are annexed.
"I have the honor ----"
"The list, aunt! Read the list!"
"My love--my darling--let us go in and--"
"No. Now! now!"
To one thing the supremely afflicted are entitled in their sorrow--to
be obeyed--and yet it is the last kindness that people commonly will
do them. But Miss Jessamine did. Steadying her voice, as best she
might, she read on, and the old soldier stood bareheaded to hear that
first Roll of the Dead at Waterloo, which began with the Duke of
Brunswick, and ended with Ensign Brown.[3] Five-and-thirty British
Captains fell asleep that day on the bed of Honor, and the Black
Captain slept among them.
[Footnote 3: "Brunswick's fated chieftain" fell at Quatre Bras, the
day before Waterloo, but this first (very imperfect) list, as it
appeared in the newspapers of the day, did begin with his name, and
end with that of an Ensign Brown.]
* * * * *
There are killed and wounded by war, of whom no returns reach Downing
Street.
Three days later, the Captain's wife had joined him, and Miss
Jessamine was kneeling by the cradle of their orphan son, a purple-red
morsel of humanity, with conspicuously golden hair.
"Will he live, Doctor?"
"Live? GOD bless my soul, ma'am! Look at him! The young Jackanapes!"
CHAPTER II.
And he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old Nurse.
LONGFELLOW.
The Grey Goose remembered quite well the year that Jackanapes began
to walk, for it was the year that the speckled hen for the first time
in all her motherly life got out of patience when she was sitting. She
had been rather proud of the eggs--they are unusually large--but she
never felt quite comfortable on them; and whether it was because she
used to get cramp, and got off the nest, or because the season was
bad, or what, she never could tell, but every egg was addled but one,
and the one that did hatch gave her more trouble than any chick she
had ever reared.
It was a fine, downy, bright yellow little thing, but it had a
monstrous big nose and feet, and such an ungainly walk as she knew no
other instance of in her well-bred and high-stepping family. And as to
behavior, it was not that it was either quarrelsome or moping, but
simply unlike the rest. When the other chicks hopped and cheeped on
the Green all at their mother's feet, this solitary yellow one went
waddling off on its own responsibility, and do or cluck what the
spreckled hen would, it went to play in the pond.
It was off one day as usual, and the hen was fussing and fuming after
it, when the Postman, going to deliver a letter at Miss Jessamine's
door, was nearly knocked over by the good lady herself, who, bursting
out of the house with her cap just off and her bonnet just not on,
fell into his arms, crying--
"Baby! Baby! Jackanapes! Jackanapes!"
If the Postman loved anything on earth, he loved the Captain's
yellow-haired child, so propping Miss Jessamine against her own
door-post, he followed the direction of her trembling fingers and made
for the Green.
Jackanapes had had the start of the Postman by nearly ten minutes. The
world--the round green world with an oak tree on it--was just becoming
very interesting to him. He had tried, vigorously but ineffectually,
to mount a passing pig the last time he was taken out walking; but
then he was encumbered with a nurse. Now he was his own master, and
might, by courage and energy, become the master of that delightful,
downy, dumpy, yellow thing, that was bobbing along over the green
grass in front of him. Forward! Charge! He aimed well, and grabbed it,
but only to feel the delicious downiness and dumpiness slipping
through his fingers as he fell upon his face. "Quawk!" said the yellow
thing, and wobbled off sideways. It was this oblique movement that
enabled Jackanapes to come up with it, for it was bound for the Pond,
and therefore obliged to come back into line. He failed again from
top-heaviness, and his prey escaped sideways as before, and, as
before, lost ground in getting back to the direct road to the Pond.
[Illustration]
And at the Pond the Postman found them both, one yellow thing rocking
safely on the ripples that lie beyond duck-weed, and the other washing
his draggled frock with tears, because he too had tried to sit upon
the Pond, and it wouldn't hold him.
CHAPTER III.
... If studious, copie fair what time hath blurred,
Redeem truth from his jawes; if souldier,
Chase brave employments with a naked sword
Throughout the world. Fool not; for all may have,
If they dare try, a glorious life, or grave.
* * * * *
In brief, acquit thee bravely: play the man. Look not on
pleasures as they come, but go. Defer not the least vertue:
life's poore span Make not an ell, by trifling in thy woe. If
thou do ill, the joy fades, not the pains. If well, the pain
doth fade, the joy remains.
GEORGE HERBERT.
Young Mrs. Johnson, who was a mother of many, hardly knew which to
pity more; Miss Jessamine for having her little ways and her
antimacassars rumpled by a young Jackanapes; or the boy himself, for
being brought up by an old maid.
Oddly enough, she would probably have pitied neither, had Jackanapes
been a girl. (One is so apt to think that what works smoothest works
to the highest ends, having no patience for the results of friction.)
That Father in GOD, who bade the young men to be pure, and the maidens
brave, greatly disturbed a member of his congregation, who thought
that the great preacher had made a slip of the tongue.
"That the girls should have purity, and the boys courage, is what you
would say, good Father?"
"Nature has done that," was the reply; "I meant what I said."
In good sooth, a young maid is all the better for learning some
robuster virtues than maidenliness and not to move the antimacassars.
And the robuster virtues require some fresh air and freedom. As, on
the other hand, Jackanapes (who had a boy's full share of the little
beast and the young monkey in his natural composition) was none the
worse, at his tender years, for learning some maidenliness--so far as
maidenliness means decency, pity, unselfishness and pretty behavior.
And it is due to him to say that he was an obedient boy, and a boy
whose word could be depended on, long before his grandfather the
General came to live at the Green.
He was obedient; that is he did what his great aunt told him. But--oh
dear! oh dear!--the pranks he played, which it had never entered into
her head to forbid!
It was when he had just been put into skeletons (frocks never suited
him) that he became very friendly with Master Tony Johnson, a younger
brother of the young gentleman who sat in the puddle on purpose. Tony
was not enterprising, and Jackanapes led him by the nose. One summer's
evening they were out late, and Miss Jessamine was becoming anxious,
when Jackanapes presented himself with a ghastly face all besmirched
with tears. He was unusually subdued.
"I'm afraid," he sobbed; "if you please, I'm very much afraid that
Tony Johnson's dying in the churchyard."
Miss Jessamine was just beginning to be distracted, when she smelt
Jackanapes.
"You naughty, naughty boys! Do you mean to tell me that you've been
smoking?"
"Not pipes," urged Jackanapes; "upon my honor, Aunty, not pipes. Only
segars like Mr. Johnson's! and only made of brown paper with a very,
very little tobacco from the shop inside them."
Whereupon, Miss Jessamine sent a servant to the churchyard, who found
Tony Johnson lying on a tomb-stone, very sick, and having ceased to
entertain any hopes of his own recovery.
If it could be possible that any "unpleasantness" could arise between
two such amiable neighbors as Miss Jessamine and Mrs. Johnson--and if
the still more incredible paradox can be that ladies may differ over a
point on which they are agreed--that point was the admitted fact that
Tony Johnson was "delicate," and the difference lay chiefly in this:
Mrs. Johnson said that Tony was delicate--meaning that he was more
finely strung, more sensitive, a properer subject for pampering and
petting than Jackanapes, and that, consequently, Jackanapes was to
blame for leading Tony into scrapes which resulted in his being
chilled, frightened, or (most frequently) sick. But when Miss
Jessamine said that Tony Johnson was delicate, she meant that he was
more puling, less manly, and less healthily brought up than
Jackanapes, who, when they got into mischief together, was certainly
not to blame because his friend could not get wet, sit a kicking
donkey, ride in the giddy-go-round, bear the noise of a cracker, or
smoke brown paper with impunity, as he could.
Not that there was ever the slightest quarrel between the ladies. It
never even came near it, except the day after Tony had been so very
sick with riding Bucephalus in the giddy-go-round. Mrs. Johnson had
explained to Miss Jessamine that the reason Tony was so easily upset,
was the unusual sensitiveness (as a doctor had explained it to her) of
the nervous centres in her family--"Fiddlestick!" So Mrs. Johnson
understood Miss Jessamine to say, but it appeared that she only said
"Treaclestick!" which is quite another thing, and of which Tony was
undoubtedly fond.