Dabney

“ Dabney's linen closet? We've got to have something." He shivered in a little wind that blew under the rose vine with a frosty gust. I was just observing that he was attired in his pajama jacket and gray flannel trousers, and that his bare heels and ankles declared themselves above and at the back of his slippers, when my eyes were drawn to my father's face and rested there. My heart stood still while I watched it change. All the pain and appetite, straining as a beast strains at a leash, faded from his face. The deathly pallor vanished and the color of human blood returned. ”

“ But, after he had finished his breakfast and gone out, his mother remarked:
"It's really all right, girls. I almost fear I've been neglecting Dabney. He isn't a little boy [Page 557] any more."
"He isn't a man yet," exclaimed Samantha, "and he talks slang dreadfully."
"But then he does grow so!" remarked Keziah.
"Mother," said Pamela, "couldn't you get Dab to give Dick the slang, along with the old clothes?"
"We'll see about it," replied Mrs. Kinzer.
It was very plain that Dabney's mother had begun to take in a new idea about her son. ”

“ Charlie continued. "They were after Dabney for something they thought he had in the chest. They offered to take a thousand dollars for their share and let him off. That's why he was so crazy to raise the money. When they found the chest empty they thought I had the thing, or knew where Dabney had concealed it; and now they are after me!"
Old Charlie stopped again and wiped his face.
"I don't want to die, Abner," he added, "like Dabney—in the bed. What shall I do?"
"There is only one thing to do," replied my uncle. "Put the money by the elm in the meadow." ”

“ I said fiercely under my breath as I noticed that in Dabney's hand swung the ice bucket where I had been accustomed to see it swing for years, [Pg 134] but which I had not seen him carry before since I came home. "And that's how you help him fight to come back," I arraigned myself with bitter scorn. "You have no faith nor spiritual sources yourself, and you throw him back into degradation when something is helping him crawl out. What's helping him? No matter what it is, you are a coward to obstruct it." ”

“ Later, when he had completed his task, and one of the two narrow outlets from the shop in front was satisfactorily blocked with the wares from without, and all the floor about reeked with the grimy drippings of the oilskins, Mrs. Dabney summoned him to the desk in the rear.
“I think you may go home now,” she said to him, with the laconic abruptness to which he was so well accustomed. “You have a home, haven't you?” ”

“ Holden nodded.
"A well-adjusted person does. Dabney's the same person. He's the same fool. But he'll get along all right. A psychiatrist can't change a personality! All he can do is make it adjust to the world about so the guy doesn't have to be tucked away in a straight-jacket. In that sense, Dabney is adjusted."
"You've played a dirty trick on him," said Cochrane. "You've stabilized him, and that's the rottenest trick anybody can play on anybody! ”

“ Mrs. Brane was saying, “has been sent over by Mrs. Rodman, one of our distant neighbors, to enliven our dulness. He wants to study my husband's Russian library, and, as my husband made it an especial request that his books should not be lent, this means that we shall see Mr. Dabney very often. Dr. Haverstock has been looking Robbie over. The poor little fellow's nerves are in a pretty bad condition—”
“You'll let me see him, won't you?” murmured young Dabney; “I rather adore young children.”
“Oh,” laughed the big doctor in his noisy way, “any one who hasn't red hair may see Robbie. ”

“ It was, therefore, every way correct and becoming for Dabney Kinzer's widowed mother and his sisters to be the plump and hearty beings they were, and all the more discouraging to poor Dabney that no amount of regular and faithful eating seemed to make him resemble them at all in that respect.
Mrs. Kinzer excused his thinness to her neighbors, to be sure, on the ground that he was "such a growing boy;" but, for all that, he caught himself wondering, now and then, if he would never be done with that part of his trials. For rapid growth has its trials. ”

“ Kinzer assented somewhat thoughtfully. Dabney had not complained of anything; but while he had praised the village, the scenery, the academy, the boys, and had covered two full sheets of paper, he had not said a word about the table of his boarding-house.
"He is such a growing boy," she said to herself. "I do hope they will give him enough to eat." ”

“ Dab's beginning to know so much, he can't talk."
"I'm not just comfortable about Dick," said Dabney.
"Oh! he'll come out all right: the corn's mostly shelled, and the woodpile can't last forever. He doesn't know how to run a sewing-machine. She tried making him read aloud to her and Almira, last night; but Dick thinks she won't ask him to do it again. Don't be troubled about Richard: his future is safe." ”

“ No hope! There, the bell rang! A soft tap on her door; not Alice’s merry rub-a-dub. A young slave and sister announced the cousin. Mary sprang to her feet: “I won’t see him,” she almost screamed; “tell him that!” cried she, advancing upon her late pupil in Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” with looks so fierce and gestures so vehement as to drive her back in alarm upon the door which she had just entered with a smile.
“Yes, ma’am, yes, ma’am,” stammered the Pilgrim, fumbling over the door-knob in her confused effort to escape. ”

“ Loot and murder are not the pastimes of a gentleman. The Spanish Main is not safe. But is Virginia safe? Is any spot safe? Eh, Abner? Show it to me if you know it!" And he plunged off into the deep broom sedge.
So it came about that an evil Frenchman with a cutlass in his teeth, and a vile old rum-soaked creature with a broken nose and a brace of pistols, got entangled in the common fancy with Dabney's legend. ”

“ It may seem strange to the reader that I should not have left “The Pines.” It seems strange to me now. But there was more than one reason for my courage or my obstinacy. First, I felt that after Dabney's extraordinary treatment of me, treatment which he made no attempt to explain and for which he made no apology, my honor demanded that I should stay in the house and clear up the double mystery of the locked door that opened, and of the strand of red-gold hair that was wrapped around poor little Robbie's fingers. ”

“ Let us return to that little parlor on Leigh Street, from the windows of which, four years ago, we caught our first glimpse of the man who has played so large a part in our story. It is full of people, now,—half a dozen elderly men, all the rest women. Of the men, one is a minister, with a face so singularly gentle that his smile is a sort of subdued sunbeam.
The countenances of the women all wear looks of happy expectancy. Mr. and Mrs. Poythress are there, and Lucy. Mr. and Mrs. Rolfe, but not Mary. And others whom the reader, to her cost, does not know. ”

“ For a long moment he lay perfectly still and looked into my eyes and I saw a wonder grow in his that spread all over his whole face.
"Some kind of a God must have created a [Pg 330] woman like that in you. Almost I believe. Call Goodloe quick, and your father." And then he closed his eyes and I could see a deathly weakness stealing over him. I called the nurse and sent her for father and Gregory Goodloe, and to old Dabney who had come to wait by the door I whispered to bring Martha and the boy and keep them in the room beyond. ”

“ Wherever else they may have been, they were not in the Argo. The Don and Mary were there; and in the then infancy of naval architecture row-boats were not built large enough to hold, comfortably, two pairs of lovers.
Mary was seated in the boat, he lounging around it; now leaning against the gunwale, now stalking idly to and fro in the shining sand, rejoicing in his youth. They talked of the passing sea-gulls, the twittering bluebirds, the rippling waves, the rosy clouds, the generous sunlight,—of everything, of nothing, it mattered not; for love hath power to transfigure the plainest things. ”

“ It's no use, girls. Dabney's a growing boy in more ways than one. Dabney, I shall want you to go over to the Morris house with me after breakfast. Then you may hitch up the ponies, and we'll do some errands around the village."
DAB GIVES DICK HIS OLD CLOTHES.
Dab Kinzer's sisters looked at one another in blank astonishment, and Samantha would have left the table if she had only finished her breakfast.
Pamela, as being nearest to Dab in age and sympathy, gave a very admiring look at her brother's second "good fit," and said nothing. ”

“ Charley smiled. “How fearfully and wonderfully is woman made! You first ask me for information which I do not possess, but which it appears you do, then answer your own question; then when I am about to say something, you tell me what I am about to say; and then—with a little shriek—discover the mare’s nest I am about to reveal! No, I was not going to say ‘neither Lucy nor Mary,’ nor yet that the Don was married. I was about to make a proposition to you. Are you really very anxious to have it decided whether it is Mary or Lucy?” ”

“ When the audience within heard the knob rattle, the excitement was intense. It was dissipated, in an instant, by the sight of Charley bearing the child.
In this wide world there lives not a woman who can look upon a bearded man, with his first infant in his arms, without smiling.
The admiring ohs and ahs made the young mother’s heart beat high with joy. And who shall call her weak, because she forgot that they are to be heard at every christening? In the name of pity, let us sip whatever illusive nectar chance flowers along our stony path may afford! ”

“ BY ALICE FROBISHER, LOVE-EDITOR.
They stood face to face, these two; he with outstretched hand to receive the goblet which she held.
“I’d rather help myself.”
“Why? But of course, if you prefer it.” And he stood aside.
She glanced at his face. “Oh, I didn’t mean to be rude. Help me, then; thank you.” And barely moistening her lips (for somehow a choking sensation seized her) , she handed him back the tumbler.
It is in our premonitions that we women have some compensation for our inferiority in strength to men. It was not an accident that the Pythia and the Sibyl were women. ”

“ I give you my word, I nearly exploded when I caught sight of the Don. There he sat, with an oyster on the end of his fork poised midway between his plate and his mouth, with his eyes riveted on you. Put this down in your book, Mary,—this,—as a maxim on love: ‘Whenever a man forgets the way to his mouth his heart’s in danger.’”
“I will,” said Mary, shaking with laughter.
“Yes,” continued Alice, standing before the glass and taking down her hair, “you have a streak of genius, that’s the truth; but it is not the whole truth.” ”

“ Is the Don, so far as you can see, falling in love with you?”
“With me?” cried Mary, with genuine surprise. “What, pray, will you ask next? Whether, for example, I do not perceive that Mr. Frobisher is enamoured of me? No, you will not ask that. Dear Charles,—well, he is a nice fellow, I must admit,—and would let you do all the talking.” And she gave Alice a squeeze, as girls will do, when talking sweethearts among themselves.
“Mr. Frobisher! Why are you continually harping on him? He has never said a dozen words to me. But mark my words, that Enigma is interested in you. ”

“ The Don paused, smiling.
“What a tone!” exclaimed my grandfather. “Oh!” cried he with intense earnestness, “if—if I could but hear, once again, an artist play upon that violin!”
The smile passed from the Unknown’s face. A strange look came into his eyes, as though his thoughts were far away. His chin relaxed its hold upon the violin and pressed upon his breast. His right arm slowly descended till the tip of the bow almost touched the floor; and there he stood, his eyes fixed upon the ground. A stillness overspread the company. No one moved a muscle save Charley. ”

“ And Charley made two or three rapid strides towards the door, then stopped as suddenly, stopped and stood biting his nails with unconscious vigor, then slowly turned, and, walking up to the mantel-piece, rested his elbow upon it and his cheek upon his hand. The attitude was one of repose; but his quick breathing, his quivering lips, his restless eyes that flashed searchingly, again and again, upon the face of his companion,—these told a different story.
“He is trying to find you,” said the Don, with a sympathetic smile. “Poor old fellow, he seems blind as well as deaf. Hello! ”

“ A man talking with another may look him in the face for an hour without knowing one of his thoughts; a woman will flash a careless glance across your face,—across it—no more,—and read you to the heart.
Alice and Mary beamed upon each other and ejaculated, “Lucy!” But Mary’s eyes had had time to sweep the features of the Don. “Won’t it be charming to have Lucy with us!” said she; but she hardly knew what she said. Her face, turned towards Alice, wore a mechanical smile; but she saw only the Don and the startled, almost dazed look that came over his face on hearing Mr. Whacker’s words. ”

“ Dab Kinzer was a little the proudest boy on Long Island, as he marched along in compliance with her request. He went no further than the gate, to be sure, and then returned for the rest of his rod, but, before he got home, Keziah hurried back from a call on Mrs. Foster, bringing a tremendous account of Dab's heroism, and then his own pride was a mere drop in the bucket compared to that of his mother.
"Dabney is growing wonderfully," she remarked to Samantha. "He'll be a man before any of us know it."
If Dabney had been a man, however, or if Ham Morris or Mr. ”