Sid Merrick

“ John's face set. All the wrongs which Sid had perpetrated since the Halloween party—the earlier sodas, the persistence which had culminated in the theater affair, the baseball election, and his arrogance since that time—clamored for revenge. He'd get even, he would. He'd go back and punch Sid's face in, and muss that new suit, and throw his baseball gloves up on a house roof. Then Mr. Sid would quit monkeying with his girl. ”

“ In those quiet days at Larkland she began to grow up and to realize, with bitter disappointment, that she was likely to grow up a girl. She talked of this sometimes at twilight with her godmother, and was much comforted.
"For thou mayst have all the true virtues of a lad, dear little heart," Lady Sybil would say. "Thou canst be brave and truthful as any of thy brothers, not fearing to bear hard knocks, but fearing to bestow them on any that be weaker than thyself. I do not chide thee that thou wouldst be a man, my Merrylips, but I would have thee more than that—a gentleman." ”

“ My, but you’ve got ’em bad for a fellow who wouldn’t look at a girl all winter!”
“It isn’t a girl,” and Sid’s voice was still oddly calm. “I’ve got to go, that’s all—don’t bother me—you chaps.”
There was such a sudden snap to the last words—something so different from Sid’s usual gentle manner—that Phil and Tom looked at each other in surprise. Then, as if realizing what he had said, Sid added:
“It’s something I can’t talk about—just yet. I’ve got to go—I promised—that’s all. I’ll be back soon—I guess.”
“How about Proc. Zane?” asked Tom, for the proctor of Randall College was very strict. ”

“ It was through that plateau of pine timber that their route north to the Canyon Cheyo would lie, and somewhere, cut deep in the plateau, would be that valley of the ancient cliff dwellers that they all wished to see. As Sid studied the huge panorama an overwhelming desire for solitude came over him. He wanted to be alone, to take for himself the Indian boy’s three days of trial and to face life and his future for a time with wide open eyes, alone and uncounseled. Like them, he wanted to ask questions of life and learn what it all was going to mean for him. ”

“ The tall boy led him over to show him the pueblo of the Old People, but even then, before its mouth Scotty hesitated, with rifle cocked, before venturing to peer down. He could bear the reproach in Sid’s eyes unblushingly, for to him Sid seemed casehardened, foolhardy almost. His own cave man within him was no such subdued creature as Sid’s, but was alert and tense as a deer, for a subtle sixth sense persisted in warning him that something lurked around [242] that pueblo that was a deadly menace. It might be imagination; it might be a finer instinct for danger ”

“ The rest of Merrick's life up to the time that I met him at Liverpool Street Station was one dull record of degradation and squalor. He was dragged from town to town and from fair to fair as if he were a strange beast in a cage. A dozen times a day he would have to expose his nakedness and his piteous deformities before a gaping crowd who greeted him with such mutterings as "Oh! what a horror! What a beast!" He had had no childhood. He had had no boyhood. He had never experienced pleasure. He knew nothing of the joy of living nor of the fun of things. ”

“ When they were tired, Lady Sybil and Merrylips would sit by the hearth and roast crabs or crack nuts, and Merrylips, like a little gentleman, would pick out the nut-meats for Lady Sybil.
By day, in the pale sunlight, they would walk in the garden and scatter crumbs for the birds that found it hard to live in the rimy days of winter. Or they would stroll through tiny Cuckstead village, where Lady Sybil would talk with the cottage women, and Merrylips would talk with the rosy village lads of lark-traps and badger hunts and the best way in which to cover a hand-ball. ”

“ He's blond, you know; he's as fresh as a girl, but he has an uncommonly set look at times, when he's serious or a bit disgusted about something. He has a set in his temper, too. I should not care to have Sid hear our story—not till after he had seen you, Esmée. Perhaps even then he could not understand. He has never loved a woman, except his mother. He doesn't know what a man's full-grown passion means. ”

“ Sid waved his arm to Honanta and his bucks to jump in and join in the search for the leak, but they stood back, arms folded, eying him gloomily. Childlike, in many ways, is the Indian mind! Before anything whose cause they cannot reason out they stand helpless. Only Niltci followed Sid and Scotty into the water, and that from blind obedience. ”

“ Merrick, I may say, was now one of the most contented creatures I have chanced to meet. More than once he said to me: "I am happy every hour of the day." This was good to think upon when I recalled the half-dead heap of miserable humanity I had seen in the corner of the waitingroom at Liverpool Street. Most men of Merrick's age would have expressed their joy and sense of contentment by singing or whistling when they were alone. Unfortunately poor Merrick's mouth was so deformed that he could neither whistle nor sing. ”

“ This godmother Merrylips knew only by name, as the Lady Sybil Fernefould, her mother's old friend, a dread and distant being to whom, in her mother's letters, she was trained to send her duty. She had never seen Lady Sybil, nor, after the gift of the doll, did she wish to see her.
Through the summer days that followed Merrylips was busy with matters of deeper interest than dolls and godmothers. She rode on the great wains, loaded with corn, that lumbered behind the straining horses to the barns of Walsover. She helped to gather fruit—plums and pears and rosy apples. ”

“ He can't show himself, for fear of arrest, and that has made him very vindictive. Sid tried to get his address, but Merwell wouldn't give it, and he left Sid very suddenly, thinking maybe that some one would put the police on his track. ”

“ Don’t I know what white men will do to possess themselves of a mine? What won’t they do!” he exclaimed bitterly. “You are all our enemies!”
“Not I!” retorted Sid, stoutly. “I am an ethnologist—no miner! The study of your people is my lifework, chief. Sympathy for them has become my ruling passion. Since I came here, my [199] one idea has been to preserve this place forever as your home. I’ll seal my friend’s lips forever about this mine——”
Sid stopped hastily, for he had made a slip that he had not intended. It did not escape Honanta, however. ”

“ There at Monksfield, that day when I found Dick—I knew then that I was fain to be a girl.
"And some things too," she added, in a lower voice, "a girl may have perchance that belong not to a boy. Oh, godmother, is't strange and wicked that I should think so?"
"Nay, not strange," said Lady Sybil, "nor all wicked, perchance. Only see to it that thou still art brave and true, even as a lad."
"Or as you are, sweet godmother," whispered Merrylips. "Surely you are as brave and loyal, every whit, as if you were a soldier like my father. And I'll try to be such a gentlewoman as you—indeed I'll try!" ”

“ Sid sat down, with non-committal aloofness. She put her arm around his rigid shoulders, and whispered.
“You are the greatest goose that ever lived. I never kissed Jack Meriden. I love you—not as a man loves, but as a woman loves.”
“I love you the same way,” answered Sid, the storm-clouds suddenly swept from his face, “there is only one way of—loving. The other thing needs another name.”
And, with that, Rosamund snapped to the door of his cage forever. ”

“ He was oddly changed and yet oddly like the Sid that Kipps had known. He had the old broad face and mouth, abundantly freckled, the same short nose, and the same blunt chin, the same odd suggestion of his sister Ann without a touch of her beauty; but he had quite a new voice, loud and a little hard, and his upper lip carried a stiff and very fair moustache.
Kipps shook hands. "I was jest thinking of you, Sid," he said, "jest this very moment, and wondering if ever I should see you again, ever. And 'ere you are!"
"One likes a look round at times," said Sid. "How are you, old chap?" ”

“ A claim that gave exclusive ownership; vast engineering works; ships; an organization that would take all this metal for one man’s enrichment—that was the white man’s way!
“Come, we must go find Scotty, Niltci,” said Sid despondently, leading him away.
Honanta bid them good-by, assuring them that Big John was doing well. Sid went down the cave tunnel feeling like a traitor. His worst problem was still ahead of him, he thought.
But the Great Mystery had planned otherwise, in His inscrutable ways. For, when they reached the lair where Big John had fallen, Vasquez was gone! ”

“ Sid was rather an odd character, somewhat quiet, much given to study, and to delving after the odd and unusual. One of his fads was biology, and another, allied to it, nature study. He would tramp all day for a sight of some comparatively rare bird, nesting; or walk many miles to get a picture of a fox, or a ground-hog, just as it darted into its burrow. ”

“ I am not altogether sure yet that you are not up to some mischief.”
“I’ll develop the picture of the fox and show you!” exclaimed Sid eagerly. “And here are some snails I picked up in the swamp,” and with that he plunged his hand into the pocket of his coat and drew out a lot of the slimy creatures. Some of [242] them dropped on the floor and started to crawl away, leaving a shimmering track.
“That will do! The evidence is sufficient, I think!” exclaimed the proctor, who had a horror of such things. “Take them away at once, Mr. ”

“ In a few minutes Sid saw him climbing up below him. He had no fear of height himself. That all belongs to the tenderfoot aloft for the first time. It attacks man in a sickening sort of stage fright at first, whether on cliff, high building, or the upper rigging of a ship. After a time familiarity wears it off and in its place there comes a cheerfulness over the immense outlook, the height and the distant scenery of it all; a joyous sense of freedom that must be part of the bird’s outlook on life. He waited for Big John on the ledge, looking about him interestedly. ”

“ They were under some strain, though, for the life of them, neither Sid nor Phil could tell what it was.
"Why doesn't some one say something?" asked Phil at length, and it was as if some one had broken the silence in a church.
Sid picked up the book he had cast aside. Then he threw it down again, for there sounded the noise of a person coming along the corridor. The Snail came in.
"Well?" gasped Tom, and it was as if he had shouted it, though he spoke in a low, tense voice.
"They're in a bad way," said the Snail slowly, "but there's a chance to pull them through. ”

“ Sid, his son, and Sid’s chum, Scotty, were patching their cruiser moccasins with hand sewing-awls, the former now and then glancing over at his father anxiously.
The Colonel looked peaked and worn,—a thin, gray ghost of his former robust self,—for his duty during the War had been onerous in the extreme, as head of the Army Detail Office at Washington. Sid [2] feared a total collapse of the old Indian fighter, for nothing is harder on the system of a man raised to years of violent outdoor life than a long period of desk work. Sid knew the only road back to health. ”

“ My good Roger!" said a broken voice, which, Merrylips felt, could only in a dream be Lady Sybil's voice. "What shall I do? What can I do? This child—my little lass! She hath fallen ill. I cannot take her with me in my flight. Yet I cannot leave her."
Old Roger answered in a voice that rang through the dream.
"'Tis a sweet little lady and winsome,—ay, and dear unto mine old heart, your Ladyship! But the king's cause is dearer than any child unto us, who are your father's poor servants. Your Ladyship, 'tis to save your wealth for the good cause you go. 'Tis for the king you ride to-night!" ”

“ Go thy ways. I have matters of import to ponder. There's more to running a repertory company than reading the footnotes to Furness."
[154] Martin had just slouched by calling the Half Hour and looking in his solemnity, sneakers, levis and dirty T-shirt more like an underage refugee from Skid Row than Sid's newest recruit, assistant stage manager and hardest-worked juvenile—though for once he'd remembered to shave. I was about to ask Sid who was going to play Lady Mack if Miss Nefer wasn't, or, if she were going to double the roles, shouldn't I help her with the change? ”

“ Swiftly the twilight grew, while the pony slowed to a walk, his feet not making a sound in the soft duff. It was growing eerie and mysterious in here, thought Sid, as a slight shiver ran through him, and [66] he now wished he had stayed out in the open valley. But he fought back that wish as cowardly and foolish. Men did not turn back from what they had once set their hand to!
Then a stick cracked, somewhere behind him. Sid reined up and listened. All was still as death; even the birds had gone to roost in the dim twilight of the chasm. ”

“ The chief was upbraiding him in the most scathing terms in the Apache language, as Sid understood it, for the folly of capturing and bringing here a white man to their stronghold. Sid’s own person was safe according to Indian honor so long as he remained in the enemy camp, but what to do with this white man, now that he was here, would be a matter that only the old men could decide in council. As for the youth, whose name Sid learned was Hano, he was being condemned to the direst penalties for his act. ”

“ Sid stood there and watched him. When the other actors came boiling up behind him, he put his hands on the doorframe to either side so none of them could get past. Their faces peered around him.
And all this while the stranger was saying, "What may this mean? Can such things be? Are all the seeds of time ... wetted by some hell-trickle ... sprouted at once in their granary? Speak ... speak! You played me a play ... that I am writing in my secretest heart. Have you disjointed the frame of things ... to steal my unborn thoughts? Fair is foul indeed. Is all the world a stage? ”