Lonely O'Malley

“ When he later found out that the two boys had spent the entire morning at the swimming-hole, he sniffed once more, with zest, at the advanced dissolution of the back-yard potato pile, hunched up a contemplative shoulder, gazed down at his swollen toe and wondered if after, all that meant another black mark in the big red ledger.
During those idle, empty days which intervened between berry-picking time and the midsummer holidays, when the boys of Chamboro would be turned loose on the world again. Lonely O'Malley was more and more driven in on himself. ”

“ Houses were opening up sleepily, shutters were being taken down from shop-windows, the streets were wakening to their first stir of life. And during that morning Lonely had already lived through so much! He had seen the elephants unloaded, and herded, and fed, the canvas unrolled, the main-top hoisted, the two sawdust rings laid out, the camels watered and groomed, the wagons of crimson and gold unhooded,—and last of all, he had taken the final step which led to the eternal glory and glitter of the circus tumbler. ”

“ And Lonely felt so bad about it all that he wondered whether or not he was drawing near to an untimely death,—and to be on the safe side, secretly made his will, up in the hay-loft, and duly signed it in his own blood.
The migration from Cowansburg had not been of a kind to suit Lonely's spirit. It had been effected slowly, placidly, and laboriously, by means of a venerable old wagon from which two hub-bands and five wheel spokes were conspicuously absent, together with a raw-boned, long-haired, and ineffably meek-spirited steed of gigantic proportions, answering to the name of Plato. ”

“ The only thorn in his rose of perfect joy was the discovery that he had to be togged up as a young woman. But already it was too late to draw back, for as he entered the many-odored little dressing-tent, thronged with trunks and boxes and dresses and women busily engaged in flinging silver-spangled finery over their bare shoulders, Lonely was promptly seized by Cavarolla, the Queen of the Tight Rope, and as peremptorily and calmly deprived of his outer raiment as though he had been a head of lettuce being made ready for the cook-tent dinner. ”

“ The Doctor walked slowly over and put his kindly old hand on Lonely's sandy, bedraggled, and very unhappy head.
"Lonely, I 'm proud of you!" was all he said. But it was enough. He looked down into the boy's rebellious and unfathomable eyes, still slightly unsteady from the effects of Miss Arabella's too potent cherry brandy. Then he looked out at the quiet river, and at the huddled logs and the spot over which had hovered so closely the wing of tragedy. "You 're not cut out for a hero, my boy, but you almost made one!" ”

“ And even though there may be those who claim that Lonely went back among the unregenerate, it was not that our poor hero stood an especially and hopelessly bad boy: it was only the code that was wrong, the tradition that was still pagan and puerile. ”

“ Then, touched with a common infection of grief, Lonely assisted in the disinterring of the remains, and was meekly luxuriating in the sorrow consequent upon a second and even more magnificent burial service, when Chamboro's young band of adventurers, drifting somewhat disconsolately and wearily homeward from their truant day on the river, lined quietly up at the fence, and took in the mourning group with the silence of unspeakable contempt. ”

“ Being a real and genuine circus biscuit, it was, obviously, something too consecrated to eat.
The fat woman laughed at this, and a moment later the whole table seemed smiling at Lonely, who drew back a little, abashed. Yet behind the cheery and grateful unconcern of his answering grin he had decided that at the first grain of encouragement from them he would forsake his home and his family and his half-finished air-ship, and run away with them for all time, to carry water and hay to the elephants for the rest of a happy, happy life. ”

“ Tied to the tail-board of the wagon with a piece of clothes-line, had followed Lonely's faithful goat, Gilead,—a stubbornly home-loving creature, who, on different occasions, had been duly sold or traded to nineteen youths of Cowansburg, only at the first opportunity to return to his original owner, with a blind and indomitable instinct that was as profitable as it was touching.
Lonely, for this overland journey through a new and unknown country, had armed himself with great care and forethought. ”

“ Alone, making his hot and dusty way out to the circus grounds, without his ticket and without money. Lonely experienced that chilling reaction which always came in the wake of one of his "grand moments." Three times he was swept forlornly past the ticket-seller, without so much as catching the eye of his old-time friend; twice he was driven wrathfully and promptly outside the ropes. And time was flying. The crowd grew smaller, the shadows grew a little longer, the draught-horses placidly munched their hay, the sound of muffled music crept out through the rippling canvas. ”

“ The chorus of boy voices grew fainter and far away. They passed down through the watery Flats, and out through the wooded gloom of the Upper River.
Only now and then Lonely could hear a low little burst of laughter and calling, a muffled shout or two. Through the clear, opalescent air he caught sight of the smoke from their bonfire. He watched it drift and fade and melt down the river valley. A dog barked in the distance, dismally. The sun mounted higher and higher in the cloudless sky.
"'Laska Alice, do you know what you 've up and done?" sternly demanded Lonely. ”

“ There Miss Arabella and the Widow Starbottle buzzed solicitously about him, imagining that his all too obvious unhappiness was something of the body, and not of the soul. Even Lionel Clarence's mother wanted to know if Lonely did not feel proud of himself, and asked him for the fourth time just how he did it, and patted him on the head, and said he was one of Nature's little noblemen. ”

“ The newly arrived grandmother, indeed, would not even allow Lonely on the premises, and daily reported that Lionel Clarence's fever was worse, and flurried and worried about, drawing blinds, and issuing orders, and demanding silence. And Lionel, imprisoned in his hot and stuffy little room, looked petulantly out at the dreamy blue sky, and heard the play-cries and the street sounds, and hunted for cool spots on his pillow, and whined and cried a great deal, and devoutly wished that after all he had run off with the circus and been a pink lemonade man. ”

“ A chorus of youthful laughter went up at this ineffectual and frenzied sally.
"Who 's fightin' with females?" inquired Pud Jones.
Then some one tossed a dead sunfish neatly against the starched white blouse of the Preacher's son.
Piggie Brennan, finding a loose picket on the fence, wrenched it off, and deftly and contemptuously flung it for Lonely's shins. Lonely jumped and missed the blow. The laughing band fell back, and went listlessly and carelessly on its way. He was not even worth fighting with! ”

“ One of Lonely's sorest trials, in his efforts to lead a new life, was his diurnal watering of the decrepit Plato—a task, by the way, out of which he had once wrung not a little excitement. For Plato, whether because of some mere caprice of the spirit, some mysterious weakness of the flesh, or some pertinacious association of idea, or, perhaps, even some long-continued abuse at the hands of a former owner, had to be soundly kicked in the stomach before he would drink a pail of water. ”

“ If the man in the derby hat had told Lonely to take his pick of all the Shetland ponies and ride off home with it, he could not have given that wide-eyed and resilient-spirited young adventurer any keener sense of bliss. ”

“ Yet, as the bake-shop window became refilled with chocolate mice in little cardboard boxes, and balls of pop-corn, and all-day suckers, and appetizing-looking bulls-eyes, and candies of various colors and kinds, Annie Eliza's devotion to Lonely became more and more demonstrative and more and more compelling. ”

“ Whether or not Lonely was about to faint, history will never record. Whether or not it was the stern old face of Cap'n Steiner which brought back a rush of very recent memories and caused that artful simulation of utter weariness, far be it from his present biographer to say.
But he was promptly given a generous, an almost too generous, drink of cherry brandy, and even before Pauline Augusta was carried off to bed in the quiet, cool house, his old-time self-content had returned to him. Yet he was glad to be let alone. ”

“ Babies were held up to flatten their little noses against the pane, to drum and paw ineffectually at the highly colored confections within. Small boys tarried to smack their lips over the box of chocolate mice. And as half a dozen times a day Lonely sauntered airily in and out of the magic door behind which lay all this wealth, it is no wonder that sly advances were made to him, and that Bettie Doyle gave him her agate alley, and that Lulu Barrison extended to him a generous and significant invitation to come and witness the poisoning of their cat. ”

“ And still later, in the stable-loft, they delighted Annie Eliza and three of her little girl friends with a terrific sword combat, in which Lonely, arrayed in swimming-trunks, magnificently bled to death—by means of a cow's bladder filled with raspberry vinegar, purloined from the unsuspecting Mrs. Sampson's cellar.
Indeed, as Lonely more and more realized that he was foredoomed to the companionship of Lionel Clarence, he took the Preacher's son more and more in hand, doing his best to make a man of him. ”

“ He had just ordered the red-and-white clown not to make faces at Annie Eliza, when a piercing scream came from that young woman of unmatched loveliness, who sat on a white stool in the snake-cage, with languid serpents coiled and twined about her spangled hips. For somebody had fed chewing-tobacco to the snakes, and they had gone mad, and were squeezing their mistress to death, squeezing her until she grew visibly longer foot by foot, before Lonely's very eyes. ”

“ It was a good two hours later, when Lonely was in the midst of his regular Saturday morning task of washing down the bake-shop windows, that the entire town gang hove in sight, jingling the earliest pocket-money of the season after assisting, at the rate of a penny a box, in gathering the first harvest from Old Sam Kettlewell's strawberry patches. ”

“ Even the impending advent of the circus scarcely shook the tranquil and enfeebled spirit of Lonely out of its Dorian sloth and content. He still read the bills dreamily, but found the old thrill to be wanting. When one particularly resplendent pageant appeared on the street side of the Barrisons' barn, however, it moved him to suggest pensively to Annie Eliza that they get up a circus of their own. ”

“ It was only after exacting a promise that nothing more should be said of the black raspberry bushes, that Lonely dragged Gilead away; and, having made a bird-snare into which even the Chamboro sparrows resentfully declined to poke their heads, he once more loitered ill at ease about his own yard, a bitter and rebellious young Ishmaelite, seeing that Alaska Alice did not fall out of her cart, and making sure that the omnivorous Plato did not extend his browsing exercises to the family furniture. ”

“ Suffice it to record that Lonely, feeling still confident of his powers, beheld Annie Eliza emerge timidly from her gate, and fearing the fray might end before her arrival on the field of action, held off for a temporizing moment or two. His reward for this was a prodigious punch on the nose, which, naturally enough, started that organ bleeding profusely, and through the tears that it brought to his eyes, sadly interfered with his sight. This fact Piggie took immediate advantage of, with three quickly repeated home-thrusts. ”

“ And all might still have been well, had not Alaska Alice set up a sudden, energetic, and inopportune wail, which grew into a bawl, and from a bawl became a paroxysm.
A shout of derisive laughter swelled up from the street. A tomato can hit Lonely on the shin-bone, a pebble or two cut through the canvas of the little tent.
"Soak the gypsies!" cried Redney McWilliams, as he took one last sly fling at the meek-eyed Plato. ”

“ Even Annie Eliza herself was not altogether disinterested in her attachment, and, with, perhaps, quite unconscious venality, admired Lonely's muscles in public, and ran errands for him, and herded Gilead and Plato when necessary, and showed to the envious denizens of the street that she was the lady of Lonely's favor. ”

“ Once more the mother of Lionel Clarence sighed helplessly.
"Do you fight?" "I've quit fightin', in this town!" answered Lonely, the scarred and victorious, an Alexander with no more worlds to conquer.
And although the outcome of their private talk talk was somewhat uncertain, and the most that she could report to her husband was "That he at least lives up to his barbarian code," she finally decided that Lionel Clarence should be handed over to the temporal care of Lonely. ”

“ Indeed, such a settled smile of meek and wistful melancholy played about his features that Lionel Clarence demanded to know what was making him such a stiff, and had lurking suspicions that Lonely had been eating Bordeaux Mixture again off the Gubtills' gooseberry bushes.
The Preacher's son thought that this supper was to be a rare treat, and that, being the official recognition of his newly found chum, it would find Lonely in his lightest and most engaging vein.
Never was boy more doomed to bitter disappointment. ”

“ But as there were still many points of dogma about which Lonely was almost ludicrously unschooled, Mr. Sampson invited the boy to attend his regular Wednesday evening class.
Lonely had judiciously disposed of his collection of birds' eggs, wondering how he had the heart, even in his unregenerate days, to indulge in an amusement so cruel to any of God's creatures. He had likewise for all time given up smoking, and one rainy afternoon in the Barrisons' stable even reproved Lionel Clarence for his surreptitious and unseemly indulgence in the weed. ”