Barebone

“ This was two hundred miles north and west of the Gray Loon, and soon Carvel observed that Baree did not face directly south in those moments when the strange call came to him, but south and east. And now, with each day that passed, the sun rose higher in the sky; it grew warmer; the snow softened underfoot, and in the air was the tremulous and growing throb of spring. With these things came the old yearning to Baree; the heart-thrilling call of the lonely graves back on the Gray Loon, of the burned cabin, the abandoned tepee beyond the pool—and of Nepeese. ”

“ Barbran hinted that she was thinking of improving on the Mole’s Hole idea if she could find a suitable location, not so much for the money, of course—her tone implied a lordly indifference to such considerations—as for the fun of the thing.
The Bonnie Lassie was amused but not impressed. What did impress her about Barbran was a certain gay yet restful charm; the sort of difficult thing that our indomitable sculptress loves to catch and fix in her wonderful little bronzes. She set about catching Barbran. ”

“ Howbeit no further harm came to them beyond this, so that the next morning they went their way in peace; and I warrant you Master Neckbone got no kicks that day from them, departing. [Footnote: This incident of the Neckbone is very much like the common nursery tale of Teeny Tiny, in which an old woman takes home a human bone and puts it in the cupboard. It torments her all night by its cries.] ”

“ In the morning, when Barefoot looked early from her window, she started back as though she had suddenly received a blow. “Oh, heavens, what is that?” She rubbed hastily her eyes, and looked again—then asked herself whether she were not dreaming? “Ah, no! there is the horseman who was at the Endringen wedding. He is coming to the village! He is coming for me! No, he does not know me! But he shall know. Ah! no! no! What am I thinking of? He comes nearer and nearer! He is here! But he does not look up!” ”

“ The jaws and chin were covered with a bristly growth, as if shaving had been neglected for a fortnight. The figure did not appear to be thoroughly solid, but to be of the consistency of curd, and the face was of the complexion of curd. As I looked at this object it withdrew, sliding backward in an odd sort of manner, and as though overweighted by the hand, which was the most substantial, indeed the only substantial portion of it. Though the figure retreated stooping, yet it was no longer huddled along by the finger, as if it had no material existence. ”

“ Something greater than mere curiosity began to take possession of Carvel. A whimsical humour became a fixed and deeper thought, an unreasoning anticipation that was accompanied by a certain thrill of subdued excitement. By the time they reached the old beaver-pond the mystery of the strange adventure had a firm hold on him. From Beaver-tooth’s colony Baree led him to the creek along which Wakayoo, the black bear, had fished, and thence straight to the Gray Loon. ”

“ You are a Mentor without a beard,” replied Captain Levee. “But still it requires no beard to discover that I have made an ass of myself. Now, what do you say, shall we take lodgings and live more reputably, for while in this tavern we never shall be able to do so?” ”

“ Mr. Betterlee, watching from the bank, recalled forgotten lore of water-sprites and nereids. The boy circled at the end of the pool and came back, straight into the reflected orb, and for the moment a confusion of senses made it seem to the watcher that the slim, gleaming body was suspended in air, afloat in moonlit heavens. Then the illusion was dispelled, for the swimmer bobbed a dripping head from the ripples, and laughed softly in the stillness.
"Say, why don't you come in, Mister? Honest, the water's great!"
Beneath Mr. Betterlee's immaculate shirt-front a pagan impulse stirred. ”

“ I was walking homeward one afternoon about this time, when I met Barbel, a man I had known well in my early literary career. He was now about fifty years of age, but looked older. His hair and beard were quite gray, and his clothes, which were of the same general hue, gave me the idea that they, like his hair, had originally been black. Age is very hard on a man's external appointments. Barbel had an air of having been to let for a long time, and quite out of repair. ”

“ Slowly and steadily it went up and down whenever Barber ate or talked—as even Johnnie's small, straight nose would often do. But whenever Big Tom laughed—sneeringly or boastfully or in ugly triumph—the nose would make a sudden, sidewise twist.
But something besides its power to move made it seem a live and separate thing: the longshoreman troubled himself to shave only of a Sunday morning, when, with all the stiff, dark growth cleared away to right and left—for Barber's beard grew almost to his eyes—his nose, though bent and purplish, was fairly like a nose. ”

“ He comes nearer and nearer, but does not look up. A fullblossomed carnation falls from Barefoot's hand, but lands on the valise behind him; he does not see it, and it lies there in the road. Barefoot hurries down and recovers the treacherous token. And now the truth comes over her like the dawning of a terrible day. This is the suitor for Rose—this is he of whom she spoke last evening. And is this man to be deceived?
In the barn, kneeling on the clover which she was going to feed the cows, Barefoot fervently prayed to Heaven to preserve the stranger from ever marrying Rose. ”

“ When we had resumed our seats in the coach, the advocate made some remark upon the impudence of barbers in general.
"But we ought to decide first," said the lady, "whether or not it is slovenly to go bearded."
"Of course it is," said the advocate. "Beard is nothing but a dirty excrescence."
"You may think so," I answered, "but everybody does not share your opinion. Do we consider as a dirty excrescence the hair of which we take so much care, and which is of the same nature as the beard? Far from it; we admire the length and the beauty of the hair." ”

“ A thing which gave me hope was the fact that the beard on the face continued to grow. How could the corpse be dead, I argued, and the beard still grow? I have since learned that this is a perfectly natural phenomenon, that it is quite usual for a man's hair to grow after he has ceased to live.
And now it seemed to me that my clip of despair was filled to the brim, that no further calamity could be added to it, yet the figure had still another horror in store for me. One night as I bent over the corpse I suddenly became conscious that I was not alone in the house. ”

“ With hands held out and groping for the rails of the bedsteads, it is seeking its way. The orb of its belly distends and stretches its shirt like a crinoline, and shortens it. The mass is carried by two little and extremely slender legs, knobbly at the knees, and the color of string. It reaches the next bed, the one which a single ditch separates from mine. On another bed, a shadow is swaying regularly, like a doll. The mass and the shadow are a negro, whose big, murderous head is hafted with a tiny neck. ”

“ The boy glanced at him sidewise, hesitated, and then answered, "Swimmin'."
"Swimming!" said Mr. Betterlee. "At this time of night?"
"Sure!" The boy put his mouth-organ back to his lips and played a few notes softly. "Didn't you ever go swimmin' in moonlight?"
Mr. Betterlee thought hard and owned that he never had.
"It's great," said the lad. "Things—things look different in moonlight. Everything. Trees, leaves, water. It's fun. I do it often. Folks don't know, of course. They wouldn't let me if they knew. I climb out on the shed roof and drop off." ”

“ For hours they were alone, and with each hour there grew stronger in Baree the desire to follow the girl in every movement she made, to crawl close to her when she sat down, to feel the touch of her dress, of her hand—and to hear her voice. ”

“ The skin was tight, and would not come away cleverly with the first tug, as the doctor had expected; nor did any thing white appear, though a sufficiency of red blood manifested itself.
The doctor was greatly surprised. “I see,” said he, “it is somewhat deeper than we had conceived. We have not got deep enough.” Another gash on each side; but the second gash had no better success. Doctor Bathron seemed desperate; but conceiving that in so young a subject one short cut—be it ever so deep—could do no harm, his hand shook, and he gave the scalpel its full force, till he found it touch the bone. ”

“ What she did observe was that the stranger was rather tall, quite erect, broad of shoulder and deep of chest, somewhat too thin for the size of his frame, with a pleasant, lean face of which the conspicuous features were high cheek-bones, a straightly uncompromising nose and a pair of nice eyes of some shade neither dark nor light. ”

“ Now and then a shot sounded far away, but clear and sharp, from where the guests of my lord of Barfield were killing time in the warren.
A labouring man, smock-frocked, billy-cocked, gaitered, and hob-nailed, was clamping down the frozen lane, the earth ringing like iron under iron as he walked. By his side was a fair-haired lad of nine or ten years of age, a boy of frank and engaging countenance, carefully and even daintily dressed, and holding up his head as if he were a lord of the soil and knew it. ”

“ He no longer felt the effect of the bullet that had stunned him, but his senses were undergoing another change now, as strange and unreal as their struggle against that darkness of near-death in the cabin. In a space that had not covered more than an hour the world had twisted itself grotesquely for Baree. That long ago the Willow was sitting before her little mirror in the cabin, talking to him and laughing in her happiness, while he lay in vast contentment on the floor. And now there was no cabin, no Nepeese, no Pierrot. ”

“ He came to his own chair and sat down, his form silhouetted vividly black on the gravel, his gaze fixed upon the avenue beyond, a fairy lane of intense white radiance and somber shadow.
In the act of relighting his cigarette, he paused, dropped the match from his hand and slowly drew himself from the chair. Halfway up the avenue, slowly moving from shadow to light and from light to shadow, coming and going to his sight, was a white-gowned figure—tall, feminine, ethereal. Even as he looked the darkness swallowed it. ”

“ I am over 6 feet high and as thin as a skeleton; every bone in my body, even the neck vertebrae, creak at odd intervals when I move. So that I am not only a skeleton but a badly articulated one to boot. If to this is coupled the fact of the creeping paralysis, you have the complete horror. Even as I sit and write, millions of bacteria are gnawing away my precious spinal cord, and if you put your ear to my back the sound of the gnawing I dare say could be heard. ”

“ How often have I seen it, preceding some sordid or brave tragedy of want and wretchedness in Our Square! What should it mean, though, on Barbran’s sunny face? Puzzling over the question I put it to the Bonnie Lassie.
“Read me a riddle, O Lady of the Wise Heart. Of what is a child of fortune, young, strong, and charming, afraid?”
At the time we were passing the house in which the insecticidal Angel of Death takes carefully selected and certified lodgers.
“I know whom you mean,” said the Bonnie Lassie, pointing up to the little dormer window which was Barbran’s outlook on life. ”

“ We see clearly enough the angry jaws, the curled tail, the weight of the attacking beast falling on the head of its victim, dragging it toward the ground. Nothing is slighted or compromised. We see even the gash in the flesh made by the panther's claws and the drops of blood trickling from the wound. But we have to thank Barye's instinct for refined conception that these features of the work do not claim and hold our attention which is absorbed by the vital line, the gracious sweep of the contours, the lovely surface, and the omission of all irrelevant and unreasonable detail. ”

“ Evening after evening Barbran and Phil Stacey sat in the cellar almost or quite alone. So far as I could judge from my occasional visits of patronage (Barbran furnished excellent sweet cider and cakes for late comers) , they endured the lack of custom with fortitude, not to say indifference. But in the mornings her soft eyes looked heavy, and once, as she was passing my bench deep in thought, I surprised a look of blank terror on her face. One can understand that even a millionaire’s daughter might spend sleepless nights brooding over a failure. ”

“ The rest of the night Baree wandered alone, or at least until the moon was well on the wane. He was a long way from the cabin, and his trail had been an uncertain and twisting one, but he was no longer possessed with the discomforting sensation of being lost. The last two or three months had been developing strongly in him the sense of orientation, that “sixth sense” which guides the pigeon unerringly on its way and takes a bear straight as a bird might fly to its last year’s denning-place.
Baree had not forgotten Nepeese. ”

“ Abundance came both far and near all the Week to see me, and amongst the rest a Surgeon, who persuaded me to have the Bone of my right Leg taken off, to which I gave Consent. On the 25th about 6 in the Morning, when I arose and opened the Cloaths, I found my Legs were fallen from me, and the Pains I then suffered were not worthy to be called Pains; so I dressed it with the same Medicine I made use of before; within two Hours after came several People to visit me. I unbound the Cloaths and the Flesh was closed over the Bone, and the Blood was stopp'd. ”