Finding that I had still some leisure before me, I got a book from my
room and repaired to the bench in the garden. But I did not read; I had
but opened the book when my attention was arrested by sounds from the
other side of the high fence--low and tremulous croonings of distinctly
African derivation:
"Ah met mah sistuh in a-mawnin',
She 'uz a-waggin' up de hill SO slow!
'Sistuh, you mus' git a rastle in doo time,
B'fo de hevumly do's cloze--iz!'"
It was the voice of an aged negro; and the simultaneous slight creaking
of a small hub and axle seemed to indicate that he was pushing or
pulling a child's wagon or perambulator up and down the walk from the
kitchen door to the stable. Whiles, he proffered soothing music: over
and over he repeated the chant, though with variations; encountering in
turn his brother, his daughter, each of his parents, his uncle, his
cousin, and his second-cousin, one after the other ascending the same
slope with the same perilous leisure.
"Lay still, honey." He interrupted his injunctions to the second-cousin.
"Des keep on a-nappin' an' a-breavin' de f'esh air. Dass wha's go' mek
you good an' well agin."
Then there spoke the strangest voice that ever fell upon my ear; it was
not like a child's, neither was it like a very old person's voice; it
might have been a grasshopper's, it was so thin and little, and made of
such tiny wavers and quavers and creakings.
"I--want--" said this elfin voice, "I--want--Bill--Hammersley!"
The shabby phaeton which had passed my cousin's house was drawing up to
the curb near Beasley's gate. Evidently the old negro saw it.
"Hi dar!" he exclaimed. "Look at dat! Hain' Bill a comin' yonnah des
edzacly on de dot an' to de vey spot an' instink when you 'quiah fo'
'im, honey? Dar come Mist' Dave, right on de minute, an' you kin bet yo'
las hunnud dollahs he got dat Bill Hammersley wif 'im! Come along,
honey-chile! Ah's go' to pull you 'roun in de side yod fo' to meet 'em."
The small wagon creaked away, the chant resuming as it went.
Mr. Dowden jumped out of the phaeton with a wave of his hand to the
driver, Beasley himself, who clucked to the horse and drove through his
open carriage-gates and down the drive on the other side of the house,
where he was lost to my view.
Dowden, entering our own gate, nodded in a friendly fashion to me, and I
advanced to meet him.
"Some day I want to take you over next door," he said, cordially, as I
came up. "You ought to know Beasley, especially as I hear you're doing
some political reporting. Dave Beasley's going to be the next governor
of this state, you know." He laughed, offered me a cigar, and we sat
down together on the front steps.
"From all I hear," I rejoined, "YOU ought to know who'll get it." (It
was said in town that Dowden would "come pretty near having the
nomination in his pocket.")
"I expect you thought I shifted the subject pretty briskly the other
day?" He glanced at me quizzically from under the brim of his black felt
hat. "I meant to tell you about that, but the opportunity didn't occur.
You see--"
"I understand," I interrupted. "I've heard the story. You thought it
might be embarrassing to Miss Apperthwaite."
"I expect I was pretty clumsy about it," said Dowden, cheerfully. "Well,
well--" he flicked his cigar with a smothered ejaculation that was half
a sigh and half a laugh; "it's a mighty strange case. Here they keep on
living next door to each other, year after year, each going on alone
when they might just as well--" He left the sentence unfinished, save
for a vocal click of compassion. "They bow when they happen to meet, but
they haven't exchanged a word since the night she sent him away, long
ago." He shook his head, then his countenance cleared and he chuckled.
"Well, sir, Dave's got something at home to keep him busy enough, these
days, I expect!"
"Do you mind telling me?" I inquired. "Is its name 'Simpledoria'?"
Mr. Dowden threw back his head and laughed loudly. "Lord, no! What on
earth made you think that?"
I told him. It was my second success with this narrative; however, there
was a difference: my former auditor listened with flushed and breathless
excitement, whereas the present one laughed consumedly throughout.
Especially he laughed with a great laughter at the picture of Beasley's
coming down at four in the morning to open the door for nothing on sea
or land or in the waters under the earth. I gave account, also, of the
miraculous jumping contest (though I did not mention Miss Apperthwaite's
having been with me), and of the elfin voice I had just now overheard
demanding "Bill Hammersley."
"So I expect you must have decided," he chuckled, when I concluded,
"that David Beasley has gone just plain, plum insane."
"Not a bit of it. Nobody could look at him and not know better than
that."
"You're right THERE!" said Dowden, heartily. "And now I'll tell you all
there is TO it. You see, Dave grew up with a cousin of his named
Hamilton Swift; they were boys together; went to the same school, and
then to college. I don't believe there was ever a high word spoken
between them. Nobody in this life ever got a quarrel out of Dave
Beasley, and Hamilton Swift was a mighty good sort of a fellow, too. He
went East to live, after they got out of college, yet they always
managed to get together once a year, generally about Christmas-time; you
couldn't pass them on the street without hearing their laughter ringing
out louder than the sleigh-bells, maybe over some old joke between them,
or some fool thing they did, perhaps, when they were boys. But finally
Hamilton Swift's business took him over to the other side of the water
to live; and he married an English girl, an orphan without any kin. That
was about seven years ago. Well, sir, this last summer he and his wife
were taking a trip down in Switzerland, and they were both
drowned--tipped over out of a rowboat in Lake Lucerne--and word came
that Hamilton Swift's will appointed Dave guardian of the one child they
had, a little boy--Hamilton Swift, Junior's his name. He was sent across
the ocean in charge of a doctor, and Dave went on to New York to meet
him. He brought him home here the very day before you passed the house
and saw poor Dave getting up at four in the morning to let that ghost
in. And a mighty funny ghost Simpledoria is!"
"I begin to understand," I said, "and to feel pretty silly, too."
"Not at all," he rejoined, heartily. "That little chap's freaks would
mystify anybody, especially with Dave humoring 'em the ridiculous way he
does. Hamilton Swift, Junior, is the curiousest child I ever saw--and
the good Lord knows He made all children powerful mysterious! This poor
little cuss has a complication of infirmities that have kept him on his
back most of his life, never knowing other children, never playing, or
anything; and he's got ideas and ways that I never saw the beat of! He
was born sick, as I understand it--his bones and nerves and insides are
all wrong, somehow--but it's supposed he gets a little better from year
to year. He wears a pretty elaborate set of braces, and he's subject to
attacks, too--I don't know the name for 'em--and loses what little voice
he has sometimes, all but a whisper. He had one, I know, the day after
Beasley brought him home, and that was probably the reason you thought
Dave was carrying on all to himself about that jumping-match out in the
back-yard. The boy must have been lying there in the little wagon they
have for him, while Dave cut up shines with 'Bill Hammersley.' Of
course, most children have make-believe friends and companions,
especially if they haven't any brothers or sisters, but this lonely
little feller's got HIS people worked out in his mind and materialized
beyond any I ever heard of. Dave got well acquainted with 'em on the
train on the way home, and they certainly are giving him a lively time.
Ho, ho! Getting him up at four in the morning--"
Mr. Dowden's mirth overcame him for a moment; when he had mastered it,
he continued: "Simpledoria--now where do you suppose he got that
name?--well, anyway, Simpledoria is supposed to be Hamilton Swift,
Junior's St. Bernard dog. Beasley had to BATHE him the other day, he
told me! And Bill Hammersley is supposed to be a boy of Hamilton Swift,
Junior's own age, but very big and strong; he has rosy cheeks, and he
can do more in athletics than a whole college track-team. That's the
reason he outjumped Dave so far, you see."
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