_
Sursum corda is the word--so here goes! I am determined to be blithe and keep the salt of humor sprinkled thick across the butter-crock of concession. Dinky-Dunk watches me with a guarded and wary eye and Pauline Augusta does not always approve of me. Yesterday, when I got on Briquette and made that fire-eater jump the two rain-barrels put end to end Dinky-Dunk told me I was too old to be taking a chance like that. So I promptly and deliberately turned a somersault on the prairie-sod, just to show him I wasn't the old lady he was trying to make me out. Gershom, who'd just got back with the children and was unhitching Calamity Kate, retreated with his eyebrows up, toward the stable. And on the youthful face of Pauline Augusta I saw nothing but pained incredulity touched with reproof, for Poppsy is not a believer in the indecorous. She has herself staidly intimated that she'd prefer the rest of the family to address her as "Pauline Augusta" instead of "Poppsy" which still so unwittingly creeps into our talk. So hereafter we must be more careful. For Pauline Augusta can already sew a fine seam and array her seven dolls with a preciseness and neatness which is to be highly commended.
On Saturday, when we motored into Buckhorn for supplies, I escorted Pauline Augusta to Hunk Granby, the town barber, to have her hair cut Dutch. Her lip quivered and she gave every indication of an outbreak, for she was mortally afraid of that strange man and his still stranger clipping-machine. But I spotted a concert-guitar on a bench at the back of Hunk's emporium and as it was the noon-hour and there was no audience, I rendered a jazz
obbligato to the snip of the scissors.
"Say, Birdie, you'll sure have me buck and wing dancin' if you keep that up!" remarked the man of the shears. I merely smiled and gave him
Texas Tommy,
cum gusto, whereupon he acknowledged he was having difficulty in making his feet behave. We became quite a companionable little family, in fact, as the bobbing process went on, and when Dinky-Dunk called for us as he'd promised he was patently scandalized to find his superannuated old soul-mate sight-reading
When Katy Couldn't Katy Wouldn't--it was a new one to me--in the second ragged plush shaving-chair of a none too clean barber-shop festooned with lithographs which would have made old Anthony Comstock turn in his grave. But you have to be feathered to the toes like a ptarmigan in this northern country so that rough ways and rough winds can't strike a chill into you. The barber, in fact, refused to take any money for Dutching my small daughter's hair, proclaiming that the music was more than worth it. But my husband, with a dangerous light in his eye, insisted on leaving four bits on the edge of the shelf loaded down with bottled beautifiers, and escorted us out to the muddy old devil-wagon where Dinkie sat awaiting us.
"Dinky-Dunk," I said with a perfectly straight face as we climbed in, "what is it gives me such a mysterious influence over men?"
Instead of answering me, he merely ground his gears as though they had been his own teeth. So I repeated my question.
"Why don't you ask that school-teacher of yours?" he demanded.
"But what," I inquired, "has Gershom got to do with it?"
He turned and inspected me with such a pointed stare that we nearly ran into a Bain wagon full of bagged grain.
"You don't suppose I can't see that that beanpole's fallen in love with you?" he rudely and raucously challenged.
"Why, I feel exactly like a mother to that poor boy," I innocently protested.
"Mother nothing!" snorted my lord and master. "Any fool could see he's going mushy on you!"
I pretended to be less surprised than I really was, but it gave me considerable to think over. My husband was wrong, in a way, but no woman feels bad at the thought that somebody is fond of her. It's nice to know there's a heart or two at which one can still warm one's outstretched hands. The short-cut to ruin, with a man, is the knowledge that women are fond of him. But let a woman know that she is not unloved and she walks the streets of Heaven, to say nothing of nearly breaking her neck to make herself worthy of those transporting affections.
But I soon had other things to think of, that afternoon, for Dinkie and I had a little secret shopping to do. And in the midst of it I caught the familiar tawny look which occasionally comes into my man-child's eyes. It's the look of dreaming, the look of brooding wildness where some unknown Celtic great-great-grandfather of a great-great-grandfather stirs in his moorland grave like a collie-dog in his afternoon sleep. And it all arose out of nothing more than a blind beggar sitting on an upturned nail-keg at the edge of the sidewalk and rather miraculously playing a mouth-organ and a guitar at one and the same time. The guitar was a dog-eared old instrument that had most decidedly seen better days, stained and bruised and greasy-looking along the shank. The mouth-organ was held in position by two wires that went about the beggar's neck, to leave his hands free for strumming on the larger instrument. The music he made was simple enough, rudimentary old waltz-tunes and plaintive old airs that I hadn't heard for years. But I could see it go straight to the head of my boy. His intent young face took on the fierce emptiness of a Barres lion overlooking some time-worn desert. He forgot me, and he forgot the shopping that had kept him awake about half the night, and he forgot Buckhorn and the fact that he was a small boy on the streets of a bald little prairie town. He was thousands of years and thousands of miles away from me. He was a king's son in Babylon, commanding the court-musicians to make sweet discourse for him. He was Saul harkening to David. He was a dreamy-eyed Pict listening to music wafted at dusk from a Roman camp about which helmeted sentries paced. He was a medieval prince, falsely imprisoned, leaning from dark and lonely towers to catch the strains of some wandering troubadour from his native Southlands. He was a Magyar chieftain listening to the mountain-side music of valleyed goat-herders with a touch of madness to it. It engulfed him and entranced him and awoke ancestral tom-toms in his blood. And I waited beside him until the afternoon sunlight grew thinner and paler and my legs grew tired, for I knew that his hungry little soul was being fed. His eye met mine, when it was all over, but he had nothing to say. I could see, however, that he had been stirred to the depths,--and by a tin mouth-organ and a greasy-sided guitar!
To-night I found Dinkie poring over the pictures in my Knight edition of Shakespeare. He seemed especially impressed, as I stopped and looked over his shoulder, by a steel engraving of Gerome's
Death of Caesar, where the murdered emperor lies stretched out on the floor of the Forum, now all but empty, with the last of the Senators crowding out through the door. Two of the senatorial chairs are overturned, and Caesar's throne lies face-down on the dais steps. So Dinkie began asking questions about a drama which he could not quite comprehend. But they were as nothing to the questions he asked when he turned to another of the Gerome pictures, this one being the familiar old
Cleopatra and Caesar. He wanted to know why the lady hadn't more clothes on, and why the big black man was hiding down behind her, and what Caesar was writing a letter for, and why he was looking at the lady the way he did. So, glancing about to make sure that Dinky-Dunk was within ear-shot, I did my best to explain the situation to little Dinkie.
"Caesar, my son, was a man who set out in the world to be a great conqueror. But when he got quite bald, as you may see by the picture, and had reached middle age, he forgot about being a great conqueror. He even forgot about being so comfortably middle-aged and that it was not easy for a man of his years to tumble gracefully into love, for those romantic impulses, my son, are associated more with irresponsible youth and are apt to be called by rather an ugly name when they occur in advanced years. But Caesar fell in love with the lady you see in the picture, whose name was Cleopatra and who was one of the greatest man-eaters that ever came out of Egypt. She had a weakness for big strong men, and although certain authorities have claimed that she was a small and hairy person with a very uncertain temper, she undoubtedly set a very good table and made her gentlemen friends very comfortable, for Caesar stayed feasting and forgetting himself for nearly a year with her. It must have been very pleasant, for Caesar loved power, and intended to be one of the big men of his time. But the lady also loved power, and was undoubtedly glad to see that she could make Caesar forget about going home, though it was too bad that he forgot, for always, even after he had lived to write about all the great things he had done in the world, people remembered more about his rather absurd infatuation for the lady than about all the battles he had won and all the prizes he had captured. And the lady, of course----"
But I was interrupted at this point. And it was by Dinky-Dunk.
"Oh, hell!" he said as he flung down his paper and strode out into the other room. And those exits, I remembered, were getting to be a bit of a habit with my harried old Diddums. _