Ma Pettengill Read online

  VI

  THE PORCH WREN

  So it befell, in a shining and memorable interlude that there wastalk of the oldest living boy scout, who was said to have rats in hiswainscoting; of the oldest living debutante, who was also a porch wren;and of the body snatcher. Little of the talk was mine; a query now andagain. It was Ma Pettengill's talk, and I put it here for what it may beworth, hoping I may close-knit and harmonize its themes, so diverseas that of the wardrobe trunk, the age of the earth, what every womanthinks she knows, and the Upper Silurian trilobites.

  It might be well to start with the concrete, and baby's picture seemsto be an acceptable springboard from which to dive into the recital. Itcame in the evening's mail and was extended to me by Mrs. Lysander JohnPettengill, with poorly suppressed emotion. The thing excited no emotionin me that I could not easily suppress. It was the most banal of allsnapshots--a young woman bending Madonna-wise above something carefullyswathed, flanked by a youngish man who revealed a self-conscious smirkthrough his carefully pointed beard. The light did harshly by the bentfaces of the couple and the disclosed fragment of the swathed thing wasa weakish white blob.

  I need not say that there must be millions of these pathetic revealmentsburdening our mails day by day. I myself must have looked coldly uponover a thousand.

  "Well, what of it?" I demanded shortly.

  "I bet you can't guess what's in that bundle!" said my hostess in a largeplayful manner.

  I said what I could see of it looked like a half portion of plain boiledcauliflower, but that in all probability the object was an infant, ahuman infant--or, to use a common expression, a baby. Whereupon the ladydrew herself up and remarked in the clipped accent of a parrot:

  "No, sir; it's a carboniferous trilobite of the Upper Silurian."

  This, indeed, piqued me. It made a difference. I said was it possible?Mrs. Pettengill said it was worse than possible; it was inevitable. Sheseemed about to rest there; so I accused her of ill-natured jesting andtook up the previous day's issue of the Red Gap _Recorder_, meaning toappear bored. It worked.

  "Well, if Professor Oswald Pennypacker don't call his infant that, youcan bet your new trout rod he calls it something just as good. Mebbe Ibetter read what the proud mother says."

  "It would be the kind thing before you spread evil reports," I murmuredin a tone of gentle rebuke.

  So the woman polished her nose glasses and read a double sheet oflong up-and-down calligraphy--that is, she read until she explodedin triumphant retort:

  "Ha! There now! Don't I know a thing or two? Listen: 'Oswald is soenraptured with the mite; you would never guess what he calls it--"Mylittle flower with bones and a voice!"' Now! Don't tell me I didn't haveOswald's number. I knew he wouldn't be satisfied to call it a baby; he'dbe bound to name it something animal, vegetable, or mineral. Ain't it thetruth? 'Little flower with bones and a voice!' What do you know aboutthat? That's a scientist trying to be poetic.

  "And here--get this: She says that one hour after the thing was born thehappy father was caught by the doctor and nurse seeing if it could holdits own weight up on a broomstick, like a monkey. She says he was acutelydistressed when these authorities deprived him of the custody of hischild. Wouldn't that fade you? Trying to see if a baby one hour old couldchin itself! Quite all you would wish to know about Oswald."

  I hastily said no; it was not nearly all I wanted to know about Oswald.I wanted to know much more. Almost any one would. The lady once morestudied the hairy face with its bone-rimmed glasses.

  "Shucks!" said she. "He don't look near as proud in this as he does inthat one he sent me himself--here, where is that thing?"

  From the far end of the big table she brought under the lamp a basketof Indian weave and excavated from its trove of playing cards, tobaccosacks, cigarette papers, letters, and odd photographs another snapshotof Oswald. It was a far different scene. Here Oswald stood erect besidethe mounted skeleton of some prehistoric giant reptile that dwarfed yetleft him somehow in kingly triumph.

  "There now!" observed the lady. "Don't he look a heap more egregious bythat mess of bones than he does by his own flesh and blood? Talk aboutpride!"

  And I saw that it was so. Here Oswald looked the whole world in the face,proud indeed! One hand rested upon the beast's kneecap in a proprietarycaress. Oswald looked too insufferably complacent. It was the look to beforgiven a man only when he wears it in the presence of his first-born.If snapshots tell anything at all, these told that Oswald was the fatherof a mammoth sauropod and had merely dug up the baby in a fossil bedsomewhere.

  "That's where the man's heart really lies," said his stern critic,"even if he does drivel about his little flower with bones and a voice!Probably by now he's wishing the voice had been left out of his littleflower." Impressively she planted a rigid forefinger on the print of themounted skeleton.

  "That there," she glibly rattled off, "is the organic remains of athree-toed woolly bronsolumphicus of the carboniferous limestone, orUpper Silurian trilobite period. I believe I have the name correct.It was dug up out of a dry lake in Wyoming that years ago got to bemere loblolly, so that this unfortunate critter bogged down in it. Thepoor thing passed on about six million or four hundred million yearsago--somewhere along there. Oswald and his new father-in-law dug itfrom its quiet resting place in the old cemetery. Such is theirthrilling work in life.

  "This father-in-law is just an old body snatcher that snoops roundrobbing the graves of antiquity and setting up his loot in their museumat the university. No good telling that old ghoul to let the dead rest.He simply won't hear of it. He wants remains. He wants to have 'em outin the light of day and stick labels on their long-peaceful skulls. Hedon't act subdued or proper about it either, or kind of buttery sad, likea first-class undertaker. He's gleeful. Let him find the skeleton ofsomething as big as a freight car, that perished far in the dead past,and he's as tickled as a kid shooting at little sister with his new airgun.

  "Bones in his weakness--and periods of geology. He likes period bonesthe way some folks like period furniture; and rocks and geography andLower Triassics, and so forth. He knows how old the earth is within afew hundred million years; how the scantling and joists for it was puttogether, and all the different kinds of teeth that wild animals have.He's a scientist. Oswald is a scientist. I was a scientist myself twosummers ago when they was up here.

  "By the time they left I could talk a lot of attractive words. I couldspeak whole sentences so good that I could hardly understand myself. Ofcourse after they left I didn't keep up my science. I let myself getrusty in it. I probably don't know so much more about it now than youwould. Oh, perhaps a little more. It would all come back to me if I tookit up again."

  So I said that I had nothing to do for an hour or so, and if she wouldnot try to be scientific, but talk in her own homely words, I mightconsent to listen; in this event she might tell the whole thing, omittingnothing, however trifling it might seem to her, because she was no properjudge of values. I said it was true I might be overtaken by sleep, sincemy day had been a hard one, reaching clear to the trout pool under thebig falls and involving the transportation back to seventeen rainbowtrout weighing well over seventeen pounds, more or less, though feelingmuch like more. And what about Oswald and the primeval ooze, and soforth. And would it be important if true? The lady said--well, yes, andno; but, however--

  He's Professor Marwich up at the university--this confirmed old coronerI'm telling you about. Has a train of capital letters streaming alongafter he's all through with his name. I don't know what they mean--doctorof dental surgery, I guess, or zoology or fractions or geography, orwhatever has to do with rocks and animals and vertebraes. He ain't a badold scout out of business hours. He pirooted round here one autumn abouta dozen years ago and always threatened to come back and hold some moreof these here inquests on the long departed; but I heard nothing untiltwo summers ago. He wrote that he wanted to come up to do field work.That's the innocent name he calls his foul trade by. And he wanted t
obring his assistant, Professor Pennypacker; and could I put them up?

  I said if they would wait till haying was over I could and would. Heanswered they would wait till my hay was garnered--that's the pretty wordhe used--and could he also bring his mouthless chit with him? I didn'tquite make him. He writes a hand that would never get by in a businesscollege. I thought it might be something tame he carried in a cage, andwould stay quiet all day while he was out pursuing his repulsivepractices. It didn't sound troublesome.

  I never made a worse guess. It was his daughter he talked about thatway. She was all right enough, though astounding when you had expectedsomething highly zoological and mouthless instead of motherless. She wasa tall roan girl with the fashionable streamline body, devoted to theukulele and ladies' wearing apparel. But not so young as that sounds. Hergeneral manner of conduct was infantile enough, but she had tired eyesand a million little lines coming round 'em, and if you got her in astrong light you saw she was old enough to have a serious aim in life.

  She did use massage cream and beauty lotions with a deep seriousnessyou wouldn't suspect her of when she sat out in the hammock in themoonlight and scratched this ukulele and acted the part of a mere porchwren. That was really the girl's trade; all she'd ever learned. Mebbeshe had misspent her early youth, or mebbe she wasn't meant for anythingelse--just a butterfly with some of the gold powder brushed off and thewings a little mite crumpled.

  Gee! How times have changed since I took my own hair out of a braid!In them fond old days when a girl didn't seem attractive enough formarriage she took up a career--school-teaching probably--and was lookedat sidewise by her family. It's different now. In this advanced day agirl seems to start for the career first and take up marriage only whenall other avenues is closed. She's the one that is now regarded by herbrainy sisters as a failure. I consider it an evil state for the worldto be in--but no matter; I can't do anything about it from up here, withhaytime coming on.

  Anyway, this Lydia girl had not been constructed for any career requiringthe serious use of the head; and yet so far she had failed in the otherone. She was on the way to being an outcast if she didn't pull somethingdesperate pretty soon. She was looking down on thirty, and I bet hermanner hadn't changed a bit since she was looking up to twenty.

  Of course she'd learned things about her game. Living round a college shemust of tried her wiles on at least ten graduating classes of young men.Naturally she'd learned technique and feminine knavery. She was stillflirty enough. She had a little short upper lip that she could lift withgreat pathos. And the party hadn't more than landed here when I saw thatat last she did have a serious aim in life.

  It was this here assistant to her father, who was named Professor OswaldPennypacker; and he was a difficult aim in life, because he didn't need awife any more than the little dicky birds need wrist watches. You seenhis picture there. About thirty-five he was and had devoted all his yearsto finding out the names of wild animals, which is said to be one of ourbest sciences. He hadn't got round to women yet. A good snappy skeletonof one might of entertained him if he could of dug it up himself andcalled it a sedimentary limestone; but he had never trifled with one thatwas still in commission and ornamented with flesh and clothes.

  And fussy! I wish you could of seen that man's room after he hadcarefully unpacked! A place for everything, and he had everything,too--everything in the world. And if someone switched his soap over towhere his tooth paste belonged it upset his whole day. The Chink neverdared to go into his room after the first morning. Oswald even made hisown bed. Easy to call him an old maid, but I never saw any woman sufferas much agony in her neatness.

  His shoes had to be in a row, and his clothes and hats and caps had tobe in a row, and there was only one hook in the room his pyjamas couldlawfully hang on, and his talcum powder had to stand exactly betweenthe mosquito dope and the bay rum, which had to be flanked precisely byhis manicure tools and succeeded by something he put on his hair, whichwas going the way of all flesh. If some marauder had entered his room inthe night and moved his compass over to where his fountain pen belongedhe would of woke up instantly and screamed.

  And then his new wardrobe trunk! This was a great and holy joy thathad come into his bleak life; all new and shiny and complicated, witha beautiful brass lock, one side for clothes on correct hangers and theother side full of drawers and compartments and secret recesses, wherehe could hide things from himself. It was like a furnished flat, thattrunk. And this was his first adventure out in the great cruel worldwith it. He cherished it as a man had ought to cherish his bride.

  He had me in to gaze upon it that first afternoon. You'd of thought hewas trying to sell it to me, the way he showed it off. It stood on end,having a bulge like a watermelon in the top, so no vandal could standit up wrong; and it was wide open to show the two insides. He opened upevery room in it, so I could marvel at 'em. He fawned on that trunk. Andat the last he showed me a little brass hook he had screwed into theside where the clothes hangers was. It was a very important hook. He hungthe keys of the trunk on it; two keys, strung on a cord, and the cordneatly on the hook. This, he told me, was so the keys would neverget lost.

  "I always have a dread I may lose those keys," says he. "That would be acatastrophe indeed, would it not? So I plan to keep them on that hook;then I shall always know where they are."

  The crafty wretch! He could wake up in the night and put his hand onthose keys in the dark. Probably he often done so. I spoke a few simplewords of praise for his sagacity. And after this interesting lecture onhis trunk and its keys, and a good look at the accurate layout of his onemillion belongings, I had his number. He was the oldest living boy scout.

  And this poor girl with the designful eyes on him was the oldestliving debutante. I learned afterward that the great aim of scienceis classification. I had these two classified in no time, like I'dbeen pottering away at science all my life. Why, say, this Oswaldperson even carried a patent cigar lighter that worked! You must of seenhundreds of them nickel things that men pay money for. They work fine inthe store where you buy 'em. But did you ever see one work after the mangot it outside, where he needed it? The owner of one always takes it out,looking strained and nervous, and presses the spring; and nothing happensexcept that he swears and borrows a match. But Oswald's worked everytime. It was uncanny! Only a boy scout could of done it.

  So they got settled and the field work begun next day. The two men wouldride off early to a place about five miles north of here that used to bean ancient lake--so I was told. I don't know whether it did or not. It'sdry enough now. It certainly can't be considered any part of our presentwater supply. They would take spades and hammers and magnifying glassesand fountain pens, and Oswald's cigar lighter and some lunch, and comeback at night with a fine mess of these here trilobites and vertebrae;and ganoids and petrified horseflies, and I don't know what all; mebbeoyster shells, or the footprints of a bird left in solid rock, or theoutlines of starfish, or a shrimp that was fifty-two million years oldand perfectly useless.

  They seemed to have a good time. And Oswald would set up late writingremarks about the petrified game they had brought in.

  I didn't used to see much of 'em, except at night when we'd gather forthe evening meal. But their talk at those times did wonders for me. Allabout the aims of science and how we got here and what of it. The Profwas a bulky old boy, with long gray hair and long black eyebrows, andthe habit of prevailing in argument. Him and Oswald never did agree onanything in my hearing, except the Chink's corn muffins; and they lookedkind of mad at each other when they had to agree on them.

  Take the age of this earth on which we make our living. They never gotwithin a couple of hundred million years of each other. Oswald was strongfor the earth's being exactly fifty-seven million years old. Trust him tohave it down fine! And the old man hung out for four hundred million.They used to get all fussed up about this.

  They quoted authorities. One scientist had figured close and found it wasfifty-six million ye
ars. And another, who seemed to be a headliner in theworld of science, said it was between twenty million and four hundredmillion, with a probability of its being ninety-eight million. I kind ofliked that scientist. He seemed so human, like a woman in a bean-guessingcontest at the county fair. But still another scientist had horned inwith a guess of five hundred million years, which was at least easy toremember.

  Of course I never did much but listen, even when they argued this thingthat I knew all about; for back in Fredonia, New York, where I went toSunday-school, it was settled over fifty years ago. Our dear old pastortold us the earth was exactly six thousand years old. But I let the poorthings talk on, not wanting to spoil their fun. When one of 'em said theworld was made at least fifty-seven million years ago I merely said itdidn't look anywhere near as old as that, and let it go.

  We had some merry little meals for about a month. If it wasn't the ageof God's footstool it would be about what we are descended from, thebest bet in sight being that it's from fishes that had lungs and breathedunder water as easy as anything, which at least put dimmers on that oldmonkey scandal in our ancestry. Or, after we moved outside on the porch,which we had to do on account of Oswald smoking the very worst cigars hewas able to find in all the world, they would get gabby about all thingsin the world being simply nothing, which is known to us scientists asmetaphysics.

  Metaphysics is silly-simple--like one, two, three. It consists of subjectand object. I only think I'm knitting this here sock. There ain't anysock here and there ain't any me. We're illusions. The sound of thatChink washing dishes out in the kitchen is a mere sensation inside myhead. So's the check for eighty dollars I will have to hand him on thefirst of the month--though the fool bank down in Red Gap will look onit with uneducated eyes and think it's real. Philosophers have dug intothese matters and made 'em simple for us. It took thousands of books todo it; but it's done at last. Everything is nothing. Ask any scientist;he'll make it just as clear to you as a mist in a fog.

  And even nothing itself ain't real. They go to that extreme. Not evenempty space is real. And the human mind can't comprehend infinite space.I got kind of hot when one of 'em said that. I asked 'em right offwhether the human mind could comprehend space that had an end to it. Ofcourse it can't comprehend anything else but infinite space. I had 'em,all right; they had to change the subject. So they switched over to freewill. None of us has it.

  That made me hot again. I told 'em to try for even five minutes and seeif they could act as if they didn't have the power of choice. Of courseI had 'em again. Mebbe there ain't free will, but we can't act as ifthere wasn't. Those two would certainly make the game of poker impossibleif folks believed 'em.

  I nearly broke up the party that night. I said it was a shame young menwas being taught such stuff when they could just as well go to some goodagricultural college and learn about soils and crops and what to do incase of a sick bull. Furthermore, I wanted to know what they would do toearn their daily bread when they'd got everything dug up and labelled.Pretty soon they'd have every last organic remains put into a catalogue,the whole set complete and unbroken--and then what? They'd be out of ajob.

  The Prof laughed and said let the future take care of itself. He said wecouldn't tell what might happen, because, as yet, we was nothing reallybut supermonkeys. That's what he called our noble race--supermonkeys!So I said yes; and these here philosophers that talked about subject andobject and the nothingness of nothing reminded me of monkeys that gethold of a looking-glass and hold it up and look into it, and then sneakone paw round behind the glass to catch the other monkey. So he laughedagain and said "Not bad, that!"

  You could kid the Prof, which is more than I can say for Oswald. Oswaldalways took a joke as if you'd made it beside the casket holding all thatwas mortal of his dear mother. In the presence of lightsome talk poorOswald was just a chill. He was an eater of spoon-meat, and finicking.He could talk like Half Hours With the World's Best Authors, and yet hadnothing to say but words.

  Still, I enjoyed them evenings. I learned to be interested in vitalquestions and to keep up with the world's best thought, in companywith these gents that was a few laps ahead of it. But not so with themotherless chit. This here Lydia made no effort whatever to keep up withthe world's best thought. She didn't seem to care if she never perfectedher intellect. It would of been plain to any eye that she was spreadinga golden mesh for the Oswald party; yet she never made the least clumsyeffort to pander to his high ideals.

  She was a wonder, that girl! All day she would set round the house,with her hair down, fixing over a lace waist or making fudge, and notappearing to care much about life. Come night, when the party was due toreturn, she would spry up, trick herself out in something squashy, withthe fashionable streamlike effect and a pretty pair of hammock stockingswith white slippers, and become an animated porch wren. That seemed tobe the limit of her science.

  Most motherless chits would of pretended a feverish interest in theday's hunt for fossil cockroaches, and would even of gone out to chipoff rocks with a hammer; but not Lydia. She would never pretend to theleast infatuation for organic remains, and would, like as not, strike upsomething frivolous on her ukulele while Oswald was right in the middleof telling all about the secret of life. She was confident all the time,though, like she already had him stuffed and mounted. She reminded me ofthat girl in the play What Every Woman Thinks She Knows.

  Lydia had great ideas of cooking, which is an art to ensnare males. Shesaid she was a dandy cook and could make Saratoga chips that was all tothe Kenosha--whatever that meant. Think of it--Saratoga chips! Over eighthundred ways to cook potatoes, and all good but one; and, of course,she'd have to hit on this only possible way to absolutely ruin potatoes.She could cook other things, too--fudge and stuffed eggs and cheesestraws, the latter being less than no food at all. It gives you a lineon her.

  I suppose it was all you could expect from a born debutante that had beenbrought up to be nice to college boys on a moonlit porch, allowing themto put another sofa pillow back of her, and wearing their class pins, andso forth. And here she was come to thirty, with fudge and cheese strawsand the ukulele still bounding her mental horizon, yet looking far aboveher station to one of Oswald's serious magnitude.

  I never have made out what she saw in him. But then we never do. Sheused to kid about him--and kid him, for that matter. She'd say to me:"He does care frightfully about himself, doesn't he?" And she said tome and said to him that he had mice in his wainscoting. Mice or rats,I forget which. Any wise bookmaker would of posted her up in this raceas a hundred-to-one shot. She had plenty of blandishment for Oswald, butnot his kind. She'd try to lure him with furtive femininity and plaintivemelodies when she ought to have been putting on a feverish interest inorganic fauna. Oswald generally looked through or past her. He give awhole lot more worry to whether his fountain pen would clog up on him.They was both set in their ways, and they was different ways; it lookedto me like they never could meet. They was like a couple of trained sealsthat have learned two different lines of tricks.

  Of course Oswald was sunk at last, sunk by a chance shot; and therewas no doubt about his being destroyed, quantities of oil marking thesurface where he went down. But it seemed like pure chance. Yet, if youbelieve Oswald and scientific diagnosis, he'd been up against it sincethe world was first started, twenty million or five hundred million yearsago--I don't really know how many; but what's a few million years betweenscientists? I don't know that I really care. It's never kept me wakefula night yet. I'd sooner know how to get eighty-five per cent. of calves.

  Anyway, it was Oswald's grand new wardrobe trunk that had beenpredestined from the world's beginning to set him talkative about hislittle flower with bones and a voice; this same new wardrobe trunk thatwas the pride of his barren life and his one real worry because hemight sometime lose the keys to it.

  It's an affecting tale. It begun the night Oswald wanted the extra tableput in his room. They'd come in that day with a good haul of the oldestinhabitan
ts round here that had passed to their long rest three millionyears ago--petrified fishworms and potato bugs, and so forth, and rockswith bird tracks on 'em. Oswald was as near human as I'd seen him, onaccount of having found a stone caterpillar or something--I know it hada name longer than it was; it seemed to be one like no one else had, andwould therefore get him talked about, even if it had passed away threemillion years before the Oregon Short Line was built.

  And Oswald went on to ask if he could have this extra table in his room,because these specimens of the disturbed dead was piling up on him and hewanted to keep 'em in order. He had lighted one of his terrible cigars;so I said I would quickly go and see about a table. I said that with hisvenomous cigar going I would quickly have to go and see about somethingor else have my olfactory nerve resected, which was a grand scientificphrase I had brightly picked out and could play with one finger. It meanshaving something done so you can't smell any more.

  The Prof laughed heartily, but Oswald only said he hadn't supposed Iwould feel that way, considering the kind of tobacco my own cigaretteswas made of, though he was sorry and would hereafter smoke out of doors.He took a joke like a child taking castor oil. Anyway, I went out andfound a spare table in the storeroom, and the Chink took it to Oswald'sroom.

  The fateful moment was at hand for which Nature had been conspiring allthese ages. The Chink held the table up against him, with the legssticking out, and Oswald went ahead to show him where to put it. Closeby the door, inside his room, was the lovely, yawning new trunk. Oswaldmust of been afraid one of the table legs would spear it and mar its fairvarnish. He raised one hand to halt the table, then closed the trunktenderly, snapped the lock, and moved it over into the corner, beyondchance of desecration.

  Then he give careful directions for placing the table, which had to becarried round the foot of the bed and past another table, which heldmarine fossils and other fishbones. It was placed between this tableand still another, which held Oswald's compass and microscope and hiskill-kare kamp stove and his first-aid kit and his sportsman's beltsafe--all neatly arranged in line. I had followed to see if there wasanything more he needed, and he said no, thank you. So I come out hereto look over my mail that had just come.

  Ten minutes later I felt the presence of a human being and looked up tosee that Oswald, the oldest living boy scout, was dying on his feet inthe doorway there. His face looked like he had been in jail three years.I thought he had seen a ghost or had a heart shock. He looked as if hewas going to keel over. He had me scared. Finally he dragged himself overto the table here and says faintly:

  "I believe I should like a severe drink of whisky!"

  I didn't ask any questions. I saw it must be some private grief; so I gotthe whisky. It happened I had just one bottle in the house, and that wassome perfectly terrible whisky that had been sent me by mistake. It wasliquid barbed wire. Even a little drink of it would of been severe. Twodrinks would make you climb a tree like a monkey. But the stricken Oswaldseemed able to outfight it. He poured out half a tumblerful, drunk itneat and refused water. He strangled some, for he was only human afterall. Then he sagged down on the couch and looked up at me with a feebleand pathetic grin and says:

  "I'm afraid I've done something. I'm really afraid I have."

  He had me in a fine state by this time. The only thing I could think ofwas that he had killed the Prof by accident. I waited for the horribledetails, being too scared to ask questions.

  "I'm afraid," he says, "that I've locked the keys of my new trunk insideof it. I'm afraid I really have! And what does one do in such a case?"

  I nearly broke down then. I was in grave danger of fatal hysterics.I suffered from the reaction. I couldn't trust myself; so I got overto the door, where my face wouldn't show, and called to the Prof andLydia. I now heard them out on the porch. Then I edged outside thedoor, where people wouldn't be quite so scared if I lost control ofmyself and yelled.

  Then these two went in and listened to Oswald's solemn words. The Profhelped me out a lot. He yelled good. He yelled his head off; and undercover of his tumult I managed to get in a few whoops of my own, so thatI could once more act something like a lady when I went in.

  Lydia, the porch wren, was the only one to take Oswald's bereavement atall decent. The chit was sucking a stick of candy she had shoved downinto a lemon. Having run out of town candy, one of the boys had fetchedher some of the old-fashioned stick kind, with pink stripes; she wouldram one of these down to the bottom of a lemon and suck up the juicethrough the candy. She looked entirely useless while she was doing this,and yet she was the only one to show any human sympathy.

  She asked the stricken man how it happened, and he told the wholehorrible story--how he always kept the keys hanging on this littlebrass hook inside the trunk so he would know where they was, and how hehad shut the trunk in a hurry to get it out of the way of the table legs,and the spring lock had snapped. And what did one do now--if anything?

  "Why, it's perfectly simple! You open it some other way," says Lydia.

  "Ah, but how?" says Oswald. "Those trunks are superbly built. How canone?"

  "Oh, it must be easy," says Lydia, still clinging to her candy sour."I'll open it for you to-morrow if you will remind me."

  "Remind you?" says Oswald in low, tragic tones. You could see he wasnever going to think of anything else the rest of his life.

  By this time the Prof and I had controlled our heartless merriment; so weall traipsed in to the scene of this here calamity and looked at the shuttrunk. It was shut good; no doubt about that. There was also no doubtabout the keys being inside.

  "You can hear them rattle!" says the awed Oswald, teetering the trunk onone corner. So each one of us took a turn and teetered the trunk back andforth and heard the imprisoned keys jingle against the side where theywas hung.

  "But what's to be done?" says Oswald. "Of course something must be done."That seemed to be about where Oswald got off.

  "Why, simply open it some other way," says Lydia, which seemed to beabout where she got off, too.

  "But how?" moans the despairing man. And she again says:

  "Oh, it must be too simple!"

  At that she was sounding the only note of hope Oswald could hear; andright then I believe he looked at her fair and square for the first timein his life. He was finding a woman his only comforter in his darkesthour.

  The Prof took it lightly indeed. He teetered the trunk jauntily and says:

  "Your device was admirable; you will always know where those keys are."Then he teetered it again and says, like he was lecturing on a platform:"This is an ideal problem for the metaphysical mind. Here, veritably,is life itself. We pick it up, we shake it, and we hear the tantalizingkey to existence rattle plainly just inside. We know the key to be there;we hear it in every manifestation of life. Our problem is to think itout. It is simple, as my child has again and again pointed out. Sit therebefore your trunk and think effectively, with precision. You will thenthink the key out. I would take it in hand myself, but I have had a hardday."

  Then Lydia releases her candy long enough to say how about findingsome other trunk keys that will unlock it. Oswald is both hurt and madehopeful by this. He don't like to think his beautiful trunk could respondto any but its rightful key; it would seem kind of a slur against itsintegrity. Still, he says it may be tried. Lydia says try it, of course;and if no other key unlocks it she will pick the lock with a hairpin.Oswald is again bruised by this suggestion; but he bears up like a man.And so we dig up all the trunk keys and other small keys we can find andtry to fool that trunk. And nothing doing!

  "I was confident of it," says Oswald; he's really disappointed, yet proudas Punch because his trunk refuses coldly to recognize these strangekeys.

  Then Lydia brings a bunch of hairpins and starts to be a burglar. Shesays in clear tones that it is perfectly simple; and she keeps on sayingexactly this after she's bent the whole pack out of shape and not won atrick. Yet she cheered Oswald a lot, in spite of her failures. She ne
verfor one instant give in that it wasn't simple to open a trunk without thekey.

  But it was getting pretty late for one night, so Oswald and Lydia knockedoff and set out on the porch a while. Oswald seemed to be awakeningto her true woman's character, which comes out clad in glory at timeswhen things happen. She told him she would sure have that trunk openedto-morrow with some more hairpins--or something.

  But in the morning she rushed to Oswald and said they would have theblacksmith up to open it. He would be sure to open it in one minute witha few tools; and how stupid of her not to of thought of it before! Iliked that way she left Oswald out of any brain work that had to be done.So they sent out to Abner to do the job, telling him what was wanted.

  Abner is a simple soul. He come over with a hammer and a cold chisel tocut the lock off. He said there wasn't any other way. Oswald listenedwith horror to this cold-blooded plan of murder and sent Abner sternlyaway. Lydia was indignant, too, at the painful suggestion. She said Abnerwas a shocking old bounder.

  Then Oswald had to go out to his field work; but his heart couldn'tof been in it that day. I'll bet he could of found the carcass of apetrified zebra with seven legs and not been elated by it. He hadonly the sweet encouragement of Lydia to brace him. He was dependingpathetically on that young woman.

  He got back that night to find that Lydia had used up another pack ofhairpins and a number of the tools from my sewing machine. All had beenblack failure, but she still said it was perfectly simple. She never lostthe note of hope out of her voice. Oswald was distressed, but he had toregard her more and more like an object of human interest.

  She now said it was a simple matter of more keys. So the next day I sentone of the boys down to Red Gap; and he rode a good horse to its finishand come back with about five dozen nice little trunk keys with sawededges. They looked cheerful and adequate, and we spent a long, jollyevening trying 'em out. Not one come anywhere near getting results.

  Oswald's trunk was still haughty, in spite of all these overtures. Oswaldwas again puffed up with pride, it having been shown that his trunk wasno common trunk. He said right out that probably the only two keys in allthe world that would open that lock was the two hanging inside. He neverpassed the trunk without rocking it to hear their sad tinkle.

  Lydia again said, nonsense! It was perfectly simple to open a trunkwithout the right key. Oswald didn't believe her, and yet he couldn'thelp taking comfort from her. I guess that was this girl's particulargenius--not giving up when everyone else could see that she was talkinghalf-witted. Anyway, she was as certain as ever, and I guess Oswaldbelieved her in spite of himself. His ponderous scientific brain toldhim one thing in plain terms, and yet he was leaning on the words of achit that wouldn't know a carboniferous vertebra from an Upper Siluriangerumpsus.

  The keys had gone back, hairpins was proved to be no good, and scientificanalysis had fell down flat. There was the trunk and there was the keysinside; and Oswald was taking on a year in age every day of his life. Hewas pretty soon going to be as old as the world if something didn'thappen. He'd got so that every time he rocked the trunk to hear the keysrattle he'd shake his head like the doctor shakes it at a moving-picturedeathbed to show that all is over. He was in a pitch-black cavern milesunderground, with one tiny candle beam from a possible rescuer faintlyshowing from afar, which was the childish certainty of this oldest livingdebutante that it was perfectly simple for a woman to do somethingimpossible. She was just blue-eyed confidence.

  After the men left one morning on their hunt for long-defunct wood ticksand such, Lydia confided to me that she was really going to open thattrunk. She was going to put her mind on it. She hadn't done this yet,it seemed, but to-day she would.

  "The poor boy has been rudely jarred in his academic serenity," says she."He can't bear up much longer; he has rats in his wainscoting right now.It makes me perfectly furious to see a man so helpless without a woman.Today I'll open his silly old trunk for him."

  "It will be the best day's work you ever done," I says, and she nearlyblushed.

  "I'm not thinking of that," she says.

  The little liar! As if she hadn't seen as well as I had how Oswald wasregarding her with new eyes. So I wished her good luck and started outmyself, having some field work of my own to do that day in measuringa lot of haystacks down at the lower end of the ranch.

  She said there would be no luck in it--nothing but cool determinationand a woman's intuition. I let it go at that and went off to see thatI didn't get none of the worst of it when this new hay was measured.I had a busy day, forgetting all scientific problems and the uphill fightour sex sometimes has in bringing a man to his just mating sense.

  I got back about five that night. Here was Miss Lydia, cool and negligenton the porch, like she'd never had a care in the world; fresh dressed insomething white and blue, with her niftiest hammock stockings, andtinkling the ukulele in a bored and petulant manner.

  "Did you open it?" I says as I went in.

  "Open it?" she says, kind of blank. "Oh, you mean that silly old trunk!Yes, I believe I did. At least I think I did."

  It was good stage acting; an audience would of thought she had forgotten.So I took it as calm as she did and went in to change.

  By the time I got out the men was just coming in, the Prof beingenthusiastic about some clamshells of the year six million B. C. andOswald bearing his great sorrow with an effort to do it bravely.

  Lydia nodded distantly and then ignored the men in a pointed way,breaking out into rapid chatter to me about the lack of society uphere--didn't I weary of the solitude, never meeting people of the rightsort? It was a new line with her and done for effect, but I couldn'tsee what effect.

  Supper was ready and we hurried in to it; so I guess Oswald must offorgot for one time to shake his trunk and listen to the pretty littlekeys. And all through the meal Lydia confined her attentions entirely tome. She ignored Oswald mostly, but if she did notice him she patronizedhim. She was painfully superior to him, and severe and short, like he wasa little boy that had been let to come to the table with the grown-upsfor this once. She rattled along to me about the club dances at home,and how they was going to have better music this year, and how theassembly hall had been done over in a perfectly dandy colour scheme bythe committee she was on, and a lot of girlish babble that took up muchroom but weighed little.

  Oswald would give her side looks of dumb appeal from time to time, forshe had not once referred to anything so common as a trunk. He must offelt that her moral support had been withdrawn and he was left to facethe dread future alone. He probably figured that she'd had to give upabout the trunk and was diverting attention from her surrender. He hardlyspoke a word and disappeared with a look of yearning when we left thetable. The rest of us went out on the porch. Lydia was teasing theukulele when Oswald appeared a few minutes later, with great excitementshowing in his worn face.

  "I can hear the keys no longer," says he; "not a sound of them! Mustn'tthey have fallen from the hook?"

  Lydia went on stripping little chords from the strings while she answeredhim in lofty accents.

  "Keys?" she says. "What keys? What is the man talking of? Oh, you meanthat silly old trunk! Are you really still maundering about that? Ofcourse the keys aren't there! I took them out when I opened it to-day. Ithought you wanted them taken out. Wasn't that what you wanted the trunkopen for--to get the keys? Have I done something stupid? Of course I canput them back and shut it again if you only want to listen to them."

  Oswald had been glaring at her with his mouth open like an Upper Triassiccatfish. He tried to speak, but couldn't move his face, which seemed tobe frozen. Lydia goes on dealing off little tinkles of string music in atired, bored way and turns confidentially to me to say she supposes thereis really almost no society up here in the true sense of the word.

  "You opened that trunk?" says Oswald at last in tones like a tragedian athis big scene.

  Lydia turned to him quite prettily impatient, as if he was somethingshe'd have
to brush off in a minute.

  "Dear, dear!" she says. "Of course I opened it. I told you again andagain it was perfectly simple. I don't see why you made so much fussabout it."

  Oswald turned and galloped off to his room with a glad shout. That showedthe male of him, didn't it?--not staying for words of gratitude to hissaviour, but beating it straight to the trunk.

  Lydia got up and swaggered after him. She had been swaggering all theevening. She acted like a duchess at a slumming party. The Prof and Ifollowed her.

  Oswald was teetering the trunk in the old familiar way, with one earfastened to its shiny side.

  "It's true! It's true!" he says in hushed tones. "The keys are gone."

  "Naughty, naughty!" says Lydia. "Haven't I told you I took them out?"

  Oswald went over and set limply down on his bed, while we stood in thedoorway.

  "How did you ever do it?" says he with shining eyes.

  "It was perfectly simple," says Lydia. "I simply opened it--that's all!"

  "I have always suspected that the great secret of life would be almosttoo simple when once solved," says the Prof.

  "It only needed a bit of thought," says the chit.

  Then Oswald must of had a sudden pang of fear. He flew over and examinedthe lock and all the front surface of his treasure. He was looking forsigns of rough work, thinking she might of broken into it in some coarsemanner. But not a scratch could he find. He looked up at Lydia out ofeyes moist with gratitude.

  "You wonderful, wonderful woman!" says he, and any one could know hemeant it from the heart out.

  Lydia was still superior and languid, and covered up a slight yawn.She said she was glad if any little thing she could do had made lifepleasanter for him. This has been such a perfectly simple thing--very,very far from wonderful.

  Oswald now begun to caper round the room like an Airedale pup, and sayslet's have the keys and open the trunk up, so he can believe his owneyes.

  Then Lydia trifled once more with a human soul. She froze in deep thoughta long minute then says:

  "Oh, dear! Now what did I do with those wretched old keys?"

  Oswald froze, too, with a new agony. Lydia put a hand to her paleforehead and seemed to try to remember. There was an awful silence.Oswald was dashed over the cliff again.

  "Can't you think?" says the wounded man. "Can't you remember? Try! Try!"

  "Now let me see," says Lydia. "I know I had them out in the livingroom--"

  "Why did you ever take them out there?" demands Oswald in great terror;but the heroine pays no attention whatever to this.

  "--and later, I think--I think--I must have carried them into my room.Oh, yes; now I remember I did. And then I emptied my wastebasket into thekitchen stove. Now I wonder if they could have been in with that rubbishI burned! Let me think!" And she thought again deeply.

  Oswald give a hollow groan, like some of the very finest chords in hisbeing had been tore asunder. He sunk limp on the bed again.

  "Wouldn't it be awkward if they were in that rubbish?" says Lydia."Do you suppose that fire would destroy the silly things? Let me thinkagain."

  The fiend kept this up for three minutes more. It must of seemed longerto Oswald than it takes for a chinch bug to become a carboniferousJurassic. She was committing sabotage on him in the cruellest way.Then, after watching his death agony with cold eyes and pretending towonder like a rattled angel, she brightens up and says:

  "Oh, goody! Now I remember everything. I placed them right here." And shepicked the keys off the table, where they had been hid under somespecimens of the dead and gone.

  Oswald give one athletic leap and had the precious things out of herfeeble grasp in half a second. His fingers trembled horrible, but hehad a key in the lock and turned it and threw the sides of the grandold monument wide open. He just hung there a minute in ecstasy, fondlingthe keys and getting his nerve back. Then he turns again on Lydia thelook of a proud man who is ready to surrender his whole future life toher keeping.

  Lydia had now become more superior than ever. She swaggered round theroom, and when she didn't swagger she strutted. And she says to Oswald:

  "I'm going to make one little suggestion, because you seem so utterlyhelpless: You must get a nice doormat to lay directly in front of yourtrunk, and you must always keep the key under this mat. Lock the trunkand hide the key there. It's what people always do, and it will be quitesafe, because no one would ever think of looking under a doormat for akey. Now isn't that a perfectly darling plan?"

  Oswald had looked serious and attentive when she begun this talk, but hefinally got suspicious that she was making some silly kind of a joke. Hegrinned at her very foolish and again says: "You wonderful woman!" It wasa caressing tone--if you know what I mean.

  Lydia says "Oh, dear, won't he ever stop his silly chatter about hisstupid old trunk?" It seems to her that nothing but trunk has been talkedof in this house for untold ages. She's tired to death of the very word.Then she links her arm in mine in a sweet girlish fashion and leads meoutside, where she becomes a mere twittering porch wren once more.

  Oswald followed, you can bet. And every five minutes he'd ask her how didshe ever--really now--open the trunk. But whenever he'd ask she would putthe loud pedal on the ukulele and burst into some beachy song about Youand I Together in the Moonlight, Love. Even the Prof got curious anddemanded how she had done what real brains had failed to pull off--andgot the same noisy answer. Later he said he had been wrong to ask. Hesaid the answer would prove to be too brutally simple, and he alwayswanted to keep it in his thought life as a mystery. It looked like he'dhave to. I was dying to know myself, but had sense enough not to ask.

  The girl hardly spoke to Oswald again that night, merely giving him thesecold showers of superiority when he would thrust himself on her notice.And she kept me out there with her till bedtime, not giving the happytrunk owner a chance at her alone. That girl had certainly learned a fewthings beyond fudge and cheese straws in her time. She knew when she hadthe game won.

  Sure, it was all over with Oswald. He had only one more night when hecould call himself a free man; he tried hard enough not to have eventhat. He looked like he wanted to put a fence round the girl, elk-highand bull-tight. Of course it's possible he was landed by the earnest wishto find out how she had opened his trunk; but she never will tell himthat. She discussed it calmly with me after all was over. She said poorOswald had been the victim of scientific curiosity, but really it wastime for her to settle down.

  We was in her room at the time and she was looking at the tiny linesround her eyes when she said it. She said, further, that she was aboutto plan her going-away gown. I asked what it would be, and she said shehadn't decided yet, but it would be something youth-giving. Pretty game,that was! And now Oswald has someone to guard his trunk keys for him--tosay nothing of this here new specimen of organic fauna.

  * * * * *

  Then I talked. I said I was unable to reach the lofty altitude of theProf when even a fair mystery was concerned. I was more like Oswald withhis childish curiosity. How, then, did the young woman open the trunk?Of course, I could guess the answer. She had found she could really do itwith a hairpin, and had held off for effect. Still, I wanted to be told.

  "Nothing easy like that," said Ma Pettengill. "She'd been honest with thehairpins. She didn't tell me till the day before they were leaving. 'Itwas a perfectly simple problem, requiring only a bit of thought,' shesays. 'It was the simple thing people do when they find their front doorlocked. They go round to the back of the house and pry up a kitchenwindow, or something.' She pledged me to secrecy, but I guess you won'tlet it go any farther.

  "Anyway, this is what she done: It was a time for brutal measures, soshe'd had Abner wheel that trunk over to the blacksmith shop and take thehinges off. Abner just loves to do any work he don't have to do, and hehad entered cordially into the spirit of this adventure. It used up hiswhole day, for which he was drawing three dollars from me. He took offone side
of four pair of hinges, opened the trunk at the back far enoughto reach in for the keys, unlocked it and fastened the hinges back onagain.

  "It was some job. These hinges was riveted on and didn't come loose easy.The rear of that trunk must of been one sad mutilation. It probably won'tever again be the trunk it once was. Abner had to hustle to get throughin one day. I wish I could get the old hound to work for me that way.They'd just got the trunk back when I rode in that night. It was nervy,all right! I asked her if she wasn't afraid he would see the many tracesof this rough work she had done.

  "'Not a chance on earth!' says Lydia. 'I knew he would never look at anyplace but the front. He has the mind of a true scientist. It wouldn'toccur to him in a million years that there is any other way but thefront way to get into a trunk. I painted over the rivets and the bruisesas well as I could, but I'm sure he will never look there. He may noticeit by accident in the years to come, but the poor chap will then haveother worries, I hope.'

  "Such was the chit. I don't know. Mebbe woman has her place in the greatworld after all. Anyway, she'll be a help to Oswald. Whatever he ain'tshe is."