Rudder Grange Read online

  CHAPTER XV. IN WHICH TWO NEW FRIENDS DISPORT THEMSELVES.

  "The nex' mornin' was fine an' nice," continued Pomona, "an' after ourbreakfast had been brought to us, we went out in the grounds to take awalk. There was lots of trees back of the house, with walks among 'em,an' altogether it was so ole-timey an' castleish that I was as happy asa lark.

  "'Come along, Earl Miguel,' I says; 'let us tread a measure 'neath thesemantlin' trees.'

  "'All right,' says he. 'Your Jiguel attends you. An' what might ournoble second name be? What is we earl an' earl-ess of?'

  "'Oh, anything,' says I. 'Let's take any name at random.'

  "'All right,' says he. 'Let it be random. Earl an' Earl-ess Random. Comealong.'

  "So we walks about, I feelin' mighty noble an' springy, an' afore longwe sees another couple a-walkin' about under the trees.

  "'Who's them?' says I.

  "'Don't know,' says he, 'but I expect they're some o' the otherboarders. The man said he had other boarders when I spoke to him abouttakin' us.'

  "'Let's make-believe they're a count an' count says I. 'Count an'Countess of--'

  "'Milwaukee,' says he.

  "I didn't think much of this for a noble name, but still it would dowell enough, an' so we called 'em the Count an' Countess of Milwaukee,an' we kep' on a meanderin'. Pretty soon he gets tired an' says he wasagoin' back to the house to have a smoke because he thought it was timeto have a little fun which weren't all imaginations, an' I says to himto go along, but it would be the hardest thing in this world for me toimagine any fun in smokin'. He laughed an' went back, while I walked on,a-makin'-believe a page, in blue puffed breeches, was a-holdin' up mytrain, which was of light-green velvet trimmed with silver lace.Pretty soon, turnin' a little corner, I meets the Count and Countess ofMilwaukee. She was a small lady, dressed in black, an' he was a big fatman about fifty years old, with a grayish beard. They both wore littlestraw hats, exac'ly alike, an' had on green carpet-slippers.

  "They stops when they sees me, an' the lady she bows and says'good-mornin',' an' then she smiles, very pleasant, an' asks if I wasa-livin' here, an' when I said I was, she says she was too, for thepresent, an' what was my name. I had half a mind to say the Earl-essRandom, but she was so pleasant and sociable that I didn't like to seemto be makin' fun, an' so I said I was Mrs. De Henderson.

  "'An' I,' says she, 'am Mrs. General Andrew Jackson, widow of theex-President of the United States. I am staying here on businessconnected with the United States Bank. This is my brother,' says she,pointin' to the big man.

  "'How d'ye do?' says he, a-puttin' his hands together, turnin' his toesout an' makin' a funny little bow. 'I am General Tom Thumb,' he saysin a deep, gruff voice, 'an' I've been before all the crown-ed heads ofEurope, Asia, Africa, America an' Australia,--all a's but one,--an' I'mwaitin' here for a team of four little milk-white oxen, no bigger thantall cats, which is to be hitched to a little hay-wagon, which I am toride in, with a little pitch-fork an' real farmer's clothes, onlysmall. This will come to-morrow, when I will pay for it an' ride away toexhibit. It may be here now, an' I will go an' see. Good-bye.'

  "'Good-bye, likewise,' says the lady. 'I hope you'll have all you'rethinkin' you're havin', an' more too, but less if you'd like it.Farewell.' An' away they goes.

  "Well, you may be sure, I stood there amazed enough, an' mad too when Iheard her talk about my bein' all I was a-thinkin' I was. I was sure myhusband--scarce two weeks old, a husband--had told all. It was too bad.I wished I had jus' said I was the Earl-ess of Random an' brassed itout.

  "I rushed back an' foun' him smokin' a pipe on a back porch. I chargedhim with his perfidy, but he vowed so earnest that he had not told thesepeople of our fancies, or ever had spoke to 'em, that I had to believehim.

  "'I expec',' says he, 'that they're jus' makin'-believe--as we are.There aint no patent on make-believes.'

  "This didn't satisfy me, an' as he seemed to be so careless about it Iwalked away, an' left him to his pipe. I determined to go take a walkalong some of the country roads an' think this thing over for myself.I went aroun' to the front gate, where the woman of the house wasa-standin' talkin' to somebody, an' I jus' bowed to her, for I didn'tfeel like sayin' anything, an' walked past her.

  "'Hello!' said she, jumpin' in front of me an' shuttin' the gate.'You can't go out here. If you want to walk you can walk about in thegrounds. There's lots of shady paths.'

  "'Can't go out!' says I. 'Can't go out! What do you mean by that?'

  "'I mean jus' what I say,' said she, an' she locked the gate.

  "I was so mad that I could have pushed her over an' broke the gate, butI thought that if there was anything of that kind to do I had a husbandwhose business it was to attend to it, an' so I runs aroun' to him totell him. He had gone in, but I met Mrs. Jackson an' her brother.

  "'What's the matter?' said she, seein' what a hurry I was in.

  "'That woman at the gate,' I said, almost chokin' as I spoke, 'wont letme out.'

  "'She wont?' said Mrs. Jackson. 'Well, that's a way she has. Four timesthe Bank of the United States has closed its doors before I was able toget there, on account of that woman's obstinacy about the gate. Indeed,I have not been to the Bank at all yet, for of course it is of no use togo after banking hours.'

  "'An' I believe, too,' said her brother in his heavy voice, 'that shehas kept out my team of little oxen. Otherwise it would be here now.'

  "I couldn't stand any more of this an' ran into our room where myhusband was. When I told him what had happened, he was real sorry.

  "'I didn't know you thought of going out,' he said, 'or I would havetold you all about it. An' now sit down an' quiet yourself, an' I'lltell you jus' how things is.' So down we sits, an' says he, jus' ascarm as a summer cloud, 'My dear, this is a lunertic asylum. Now, don'tjump,' he says; 'I didn't bring you here, because I thought you wascrazy, but because I wanted you to see what kind of people they was whoimagined themselves earls and earl-esses, an' all that sort o' thing,an' to have an idea how the thing worked after you'd been doing it agood while an' had got used to it. I thought it would be a good thing,while I was Earl Jiguel and you was a noble earl-ess, to come to a placewhere people acted that way. I knowed you had read lots o' books aboutknights and princes an' bloody towers, an' that you knowed all aboutthem things, but I didn't suppose you did know how them same thingslooked in these days, an' a lunertic asylum was the only place whereyou could see 'em. So I went to a doctor I knowed,' he says, 'an' gota certificate from him to this private institution, where we could stayfor a while an' get posted on romantics.'

  "'Then,' says I, 'the upshot was that you wanted to teach a lesson.'

  "'Jus' that,' says he.

  "'All right,' says I; 'it's teached. An' now let's get out of this asquick as we kin.'

  "'That'll suit me,' he says, 'an' we'll leave by the noon train. I'll goan' see about the trunk bein' sent down.'

  "So off he went to see the man who kept the house, while I falls topackin' up the trunk as fast as I could."

  "Weren't you dreadfully angry at him?" asked Euphemia, who, having aromantic streak in her own composition, did not sympathize altogetherwith this heroic remedy for Pomona's disease.

  "No, ma'am," said Pomona, "not long. When I thought of Mrs. GeneralJackson and Tom Thumb, I couldn't help thinkin' that I must have lookedpretty much the same to my husband, who, I knowed now, had only beenmakin'-believe to make-believe. An' besides, I couldn't be angry verylong for laughin, for when he come back in a minute, as mad as a Marchhare, an' said they wouldn't let me out nor him nuther, I fell tolaughin' ready to crack my sides.

  "'They say,' said he, as soon as he could speak straight, 'that we can'tgo out without another certificate from the doctor. I told 'em I'd gomyself an' see him about it but they said no, I couldn't, for if theydid that way everybody who ever was sent here would be goin' out thenext day to see about leavin'. I didn't want to make no fuss, so I toldthem I'd write a letter to the doctor and tell him to send an
orderthat would soon show them whether we could go out or not. They saidthat would be the best thing to do, an so I'm goin' to write it thisminute,'--which he did.

  "'How long will we have to wait?' says I, when the letter was done.

  "'Well,' says he, 'the doctor can't get this before to-morrow mornin',an' even if he answers right away, we won't get our order to go outuntil the next day. So we'll jus' have to grin an' bear it for a day an'a half.'

  "'This is a lively old bridal-trip,' said I,--'dry falls an' a lunerticasylum.'

  "'We'll try to make the rest of it better,' said he.

  "But the next day wasn't no better. We staid in our room all day, for wedidn't care to meet Mrs. Jackson an' her crazy brother, an' I'm sure wedidn't want to see the mean creatures who kept the house. We knew wellenough that they only wanted us to stay so that they could get moreboard-money out of us."

  "I should have broken out," cried Euphemia. "I would never have staidan hour in that place, after I found out what it was, especially on abridal trip."

  "If we'd done that," said Pomona, "they'd have got men after us, an'then everybody would have thought we was real crazy. We made up ourminds to wait for the doctor's letter, but it wasn't much fun. An' Ididn't tell no romantic stories to fill up the time. We sat down an'behaved like the commonest kind o' people. You never saw anybody sickerof romantics than I was when I thought of them two loons that calledthemselves Mrs. Andrew Jackson and General Tom Thumb. I dropped Miguelaltogether, an' he dropped Jiguel, which was a relief to me, an' I tookstrong to Jonas, even callin' him Jone, which I consider a good dealuglier an' commoner even than Jonas. He didn't like this much, but saidthat if it would help me out of the Miguel, he didn't care.

  "Well, on the mornin' of the next day I went into the little front roomthat they called the office, to see if there was a letter for us yet,an' there wasn't nobody there to ask. But I saw a pile of letters undera weight on the table, an' I jus' looked at these to see if one of 'emwas for us, an' if there wasn't the very letter Jone had written to thedoctor! They'd never sent it! I rushes back to Jone an' tells him, an'he jus' set an' looked at me without sayin' a word. I didn't wonder hecouldn't speak.

  "'I'll go an' let them people know what I think of 'em,' says I.

  "'Don't do that,' said Jone, catchin' me by the sleeve. 'It wont do nogood. Leave the letter there, an' don't say nothin' about it. We'll stayhere till afternoon quite quiet, an' then we'll go away. That gardenwall isn't high.'

  "'An' how about the trunk?' says I.

  "'Oh, we'll take a few things in our pockets, an' lock up the trunk, an'ask the doctor to send for it when we get to the city.'

  "'All right,' says I. An' we went to work to get ready to leave.

  "About five o'clock in the afternoon, when it was a nice time to take awalk under the trees, we meandered quietly down to a corner of the backwall, where Jone thought it would be rather convenient to get over. Hehunted up a short piece of board which he leaned up ag'in the wall, an'then he put his foot on the top of that an' got hold of the top of thewall an' climbed up, as easy as nuthin'. Then he reached down to help mestep onto the board. But jus' as he was agoin' to take me by the hand:'Hello!' says he. 'Look a-there!' An' I turned round an' looked, an' ifthere wasn't Mrs. Andrew Jackson an' General Tom Thumb a-walkin' downthe path.

  "'What shall we do?' says I.

  "'Come along,' says he. 'We aint a-goin' to stop for them. Get up, allthe same.'

  "I tried to get up as he said, but it wasn't so easy for me on accountof my not bein' such a high stepper as Jone, an' I was a good whilea-gettin' a good footin' on the board.

  "Mrs. Jackson an' the General, they came right up to us an' set down ona bench which was fastened between two trees near the wall. An' therethey set, a-lookin' steady at us with their four little eyes, like fourempty thimbles.

  "'You appear to be goin' away,' says Mrs. Jackson.

  "'Yes,' says Jone from the top of the wall. We're a-goin' to take aslight stroll outside, this salu-brious evenin'.'

  "'Do you think,' says she, 'that the United States Bank would be openthis time of day?'

  "'Oh no,' says Jone, 'the banks all close at three o'clock. It's a gooddeal after that now.'

  "'But if I told the officers who I was, wouldn't that make adifference?' says she. 'Wouldn't they go down an' open the bank?'

  "'Not much,' says Jone, givin' a pull which brought me right up to thetop o' the wall an' almost clean down the other side, with one jerk. 'Inever knowed no officers that would do that. But,' says he, a kind o'shuttin' his eyes so that she shouldn't see he was lyin', 'we'll talkabout that when we come back.'

  "'If you see that team of little oxen,' says the big man, 'send 'em'round to the front gate.'

  "'All right,' says Jone; an' he let me down the outside of the wall asif I had been a bag o' horse-feed.

  "'But if the bank isn't open you can't pay for it when it does come,' weheard the old lady a-sayin' as we hurried off.

  "We didn't lose no time agoin' down to that station, an' it's lucky wedidn't, for a train for the city was comin' jus' as we got there, an' wejumped aboard without havin' no time to buy tickets. There wasn't manypeople in our car, an we got a seat together.

  "'Now then,' says Jone, as the cars went abuzzin' along, 'I feel as ifI was really on a bridal-trip, which I mus' say I didn't at that thereasylum.'

  "An' then I said: 'I should think not,' an' we both bust out a-laughin',as well we might, feelin' sich a change of surroundin's.

  "'Do you think,' says somebody behind us, when we'd got throughlaughin', 'that if I was to send a boy up to the cashier he would eithercome down or send me the key of the bank?'

  "We both turned aroun' as quick as lightnin', an' if there wasn't themtwo lunertics in the seat behind us!

  "It nearly took our breaths away to see them settin' there, staring atus with their thimble eyes, an' a-wearin' their little straw hats, bothalike.

  "'How on the livin' earth did you two got here?' says I, as soon as Icould speak.

  "'Oh, we come by the same way you come--by the tem-per-ary stairs,' saysMrs. Jackson. 'We thought if it was too late to draw any money to-night,it might be well to be on hand bright an' early in the mornin'. An' sowe follered you two, as close as we could, because we knew you couldtake us right to the very bank doors, an' we didn't know the wayourselves, not never havin' had no occasion to attend to nothin' of thiskind before.'

  "Jone an' I looked at each other, but we didn't speak for a minute.

  "'Then,' says I, 'here's a pretty kittle o' fish.'

  "'I should kinder say so,' says Jone. 'We've got these here twolunertics on our hands, sure enough, for there ain't no train back toPokus tonight, an' I wouldn't go back with 'em if there was. We mustkeep an eye on 'em till we can see the doctor to-morrow.'

  "'I suppose we must,' said I, 'but this don't seem as much like abridal-trip as it did a while ago.'

  "'You're right there,' says Jone.

  "When the conductor came along we had to pay the fare of them twolunertics, besides our own, for neither of 'em had a cent about 'em.When we got to town we went to a smallish hotel, near the ferry, whereJone knowed the man who kep' it, who wouldn't bother about none of ushavin' a scrap of baggage, knowin' he'd get his money all the same, outof either Jone or his father. The General an' his sister looked a kindo' funny in their little straw hats an' green carpet-slippers, an' theclerk didn't know whether he hadn't forgot how to read writin' when thebig man put down the names of General Tom Thumb and Mrs. ex-PresidentAndrew Jackson, which he wasn't ex-President anyway, bein' dead; butJone he whispered they was travelin' under nommys dess plummys (I toldhim to say that), an' he would fix it all right in the mornin'. An' thenwe got some supper, which it took them two lunertics a long time to eat,for they was all the time forgettin' what particular kind o' businessthey was about, an' then we was showed to our rooms. They had two roomsright across the hall from ours. We hadn't been inside our room fiveminutes before Mrs. General Jack
son come a-knockin' at the door.

  "'Look a-here,' she says to me, 'there's a unforeseen contingency in myroom. An' it smells.'

  "So I went right in, an' sure enough it did smell, for she had turned onall the gases, besides the one that was lighted.

  "'What did you do that for?' says I, a-turnin' them off as fast as Icould.

  "'I'd like to know what they're made for,' says she, 'if they isn't tobe turned on.'

  "When I told Jone about this he looked real serious, an' jus' then awaiter came upstairs an' went into the big man's room. In a minute hecome out an' says to Jone an' me, a-grinnin':

  "'We can't suit him no better in this house.'

  "'What does he want?' asks Jone.

  "'Why, he wants a smaller bed,' says the waiter. 'He says he can't sleepin a bed as big as that, an' we haven't none smaller in this house,which he couldn't get into if we had, in my opinion,' says he.

  "'All right,' says Jone. 'Jus' you go downstairs, an' I'll fix him.' Sothe man goes off, still a-grinnin'. 'I tell you what it is,' says Jone,'it wont do to let them two lunertics have rooms to themselves. They'llset this house afire or turn it upside down in the middle of the night,if they has. There's nuthin' to be done but for you to sleep with thewoman an' for me to sleep with the man, an' to keep 'em from cuttin' uptill mornin'.'

  "So Jone he went into the room where General Tom Thumb was a-settin'with his hat on, a-lookin' doleful at the bed, an' says he:

  "'What's the matter with the bed?'

  "'Oh, it's too large entirely,' says the General. 'It wouldn't do forme to sleep in a bed like that. It would ruin my character as a genuineThumb.'

  "'Well,' says Jone, 'it's nearly two times too big for you, but if youan' me was both to sleep in it, it would be about right, wouldn't it?'

  "'Oh yes,' says the General. An' he takes off his hat, an' Jone saysgood-night to me an' shuts the door. Our room was better than Mrs.General Jackson's, so I takes her in there, an' the fust thing she doesis to turn on all the gases.

  "'Stop that!' I hollers. 'If you do that again,--I'll--I'll break theUnited States Bank tomorrow!'

  "'How'll you do that?' says she.

  "'I'll draw out all my capital,' says I.

  "'I hope really you wont,' says she, 'till I've been there,' an' sheleans out of the open winder to look into the street, but while shewas a-lookin' out I see her left hand a-creepin' up to the gas by thewinder, that wasn't lighted. I felt mad enough to take her by the feetan' pitch her out, as you an the boarder," said Pomona, turning to me,"h'isted me out of the canal-boat winder."

  This, by the way, was the first intimation we had had that Pomona knewhow she came to fall out of that window.

  "But I didn't do it," she continued, "for there wasn't no soft waterunderneath for her to fall into. After we went to bed I kep' awake fora long time, bein' afraid she'd get up in the night an' turn on all thegases and smother me alive. But I fell asleep at last, an' when I wokeup, early in the mornin', the first thing I did was to feel for thatlunertic. But she was gone!"