Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools Part 11

With the prosperity of the camp came a desire for further improvement.

It was proposed to build a hotel in the following spring, and to invite one or two decent families to reside there for the sake of The Luck, who might perhaps profit by female companions.h.i.+p. The sacrifice that this concession to the s.e.x cost these men, who were fiercely skeptical in regard to its general virtue and usefulness, can only be accounted for by their affection for Tommy. A few still held out. But the resolve could not be carried into effect for three months, and the minority meekly yielded in the hope that something might turn up to prevent it.

And it did. The winter of 1851 will long be remembered in the foot hills. The snow lay deep on the Sierras, and every mountain creek became a river, and every river a lake. Each gorge and gulch was transformed into a tumultuous watercourse that descended the hillsides, tearing down giant trees and scattering its drift and debris along the plain. Red Dog had been twice under water, and Roaring Camp had been forewarned. "Water put the gold into them gulches," said Stumpy. "It's been here once and will not be here again!" And that night the North Fork suddenly leaped over its banks and swept up the triangular valley of Roaring Camp. In the confusion of rus.h.i.+ng water, cras.h.i.+ng trees, and crackling timber, and the darkness which seemed to flow with the water and blot out the fair valley, but little could be done to collect the scattered camp.

When the morning broke, the cabin of Stumpy, nearest the river-bank, was gone. Higher up the gulch they found the body of its unlucky owner; but the pride, the hope, the joy, The Luck, of Roaring Camp had disappeared.

--BRET HARTE (adapted.)

[Footnote: Where is the scene of the story laid? What is the probable time? It was Bret Harte's peculiar power to find tenderness and fineness of feeling among rough men. Where do you see these things in this story?

Does the story show "poetic insight"? Cf. Hawthorne's definition.

[Footnote: "What is called poetic insight is the gift of discerning, in this sphere of strangely mingled elements, the beauty and majesty that are compelled to a.s.sume a garb so sordid."--House of the Seven Gables, Chap. II.] Why did the miners insist on "frills" for Tommy? Does the change wrought in Roaring Camp seem to you to be reasonable? What was the real "luck" that Tommy brought to Roaring Camp?]

THE STORY OF MUHANNAD DIN

The polo-ball was an old one, scarred, chipped, and dinted. It stood on the mantelpiece among the pipe-stems which Imam Din, khitmatgar, was cleaning for me.

"Does the Heaven-born want this ball?" said Imam Din deferentially.

The Heaven-born set no particular store by it; but of what use was a polo-ball to a khitmatgar?

"By Your Honour's favour, I have a little son. He has seen this ball, and desires it to play with. I do not want it for myself."

No one would for an instant accuse portly old Imam Din of wanting to play with polo-b.a.l.l.s. He carried out the battered thing into the verandah; and there followed a hurricane of joyful squeaks, a patter of small feet, and the thud-thud-thud of the ball rolling along the ground.

Evidently the little son had been waiting outside the door to secure his treasure. But how had he managed to see that polo-ball?

Next day, coming back from office half an hour earlier than usual, I was aware of a small figure in the dining-room--a tiny, plump figure in a ridiculously inadequate s.h.i.+rt which came, perhaps, half-way down the tubby stomach. It wandered round the room, thumb in mouth, crooning to itself as it took stock of the pictures. Undoubtedly this was the "little son."

He had no business in my room, of course; but was so deeply absorbed in his discoveries that he never noticed me in the doorway. I stepped into the room and startled him nearly into a fit. He sat down on the ground with a gasp. His eyes opened, and his mouth followed suit. I knew what was coming, and fled, followed by a long, dry howl which reached the servants' quarters far more quickly than any command of mine had ever done. In ten seconds Imam Din was in the dining-room. Then despairing sobs arose, and I returned to find Imam Din admonis.h.i.+ng the small sinner, who was using most of his s.h.i.+rt as a handkerchief.

"This boy," said Imam Din judicially, "is a budmash [Footnote: Budmash: a disreputable fellow.]--a big budmash. He will, without doubt, go to the jail-khana for his behaviour." Renewed yells from the penitent, and an elaborate apology to myself from Imam Din.

"Tell the baby," said I, "that the Sahib [Footnote: Sahib: a respectful t.i.tle given to Europeans by the natives of India.] is not angry, and take him away." Imam Din conveyed my forgiveness to the offender, who had now gathered all his s.h.i.+rt round his neck, stringwise, and the yell subsided into a sob. The two set off for the door. "His name," said Imam Din, "is Muhammad Din, and he is a budmash." Freed from present danger, Muhammad Din turned round in his father's arms, and said gravely, "it is true that my name is Muhammad Din, Tahib, but I am not a budmash. I am a man!"

From that day dated my acquaintance with Muhammad Din. Never again did he come into my dining-room, but on the neutral ground of the garden, we greeted each other with much state, though our conversation was confined to "Talaam, Tahib" from his side, and "Salaam, Muhammad Din" from mine.

Daily on my return from office, the little white s.h.i.+rt and the fat little body used to rise from the shade of the creeper-covered trellis where they had been hid; and daily I checked my horse here, that my salutation might not be slurred over or given unseemly.

Muhammad Din never had any companions. He used to trot about the compound, [Footnote: Compound: an inclosure containing a house and outbuildings.] in and out of the castor-oil bushes, on mysterious errands of his own. One day I stumbled upon some of his handiwork far down the grounds. He had half buried the polo-ball in the dust, and stuck six shrivelled old marigold flowers in a circle round it. Outside that circle again was a rude square, traced out in bits of red brick alternating with fragments of broken china; the whole bounded by a little bank of dust. The water-man from the well-curb put in a plea for the small architect, saying that it was only the play of a baby and did not much disfigure my garden.

Heaven knows that I had no intention of touching the child's work then or later; but, that evening, a stroll through the garden brought me unawares full on it; so that I trampled, before I knew, marigold-heads, dust-bank, and fragments of broken soap-dish into confusion past all hope of mending. Next morning, I came upon Muhammad Din crying softly to himself over the ruin I had wrought. Some one had cruelly told him that the Sahib was very angry with him for spoiling the garden, and had scattered his rubbish, using bad language the while. Muhammad Din laboured for an hour at effacing every trace of the dust-bank and pottery fragments, and it was with a tearful and apologetic face that he said, "Talaam, Tahib," when I came home from office. A hasty inquiry resulted in Imam Din informing Muhammad Din that, by my singular favour, he was permitted to disport himself as he pleased. Whereat the child took heart and fell to tracing the ground-plan of an edifice which was to eclipse the marigold-polo-ball creation.

For some months the chubby little eccentricity revolved in his humble orbit among the castor-oil bushes and in the dust; always fas.h.i.+oning magnificent palaces from stale flowers thrown away by the bearer, smooth water-worn pebbles, bits of broken gla.s.s, and feathers pulled, I fancy, from my fowls--always alone, and always crooning to himself.

A gaily-spotted sea-sh.e.l.l was dropped one day close to the last of his little buildings; and I looked that Muhammad Din should build something more than ordinarily splendid on the strength of it. Nor was I disappointed. He meditated for the better part of an hour, and his crooning rose to a jubilant song. Then he began tracing in the dust. It would certainly be a wondrous palace, this one, for it was two yards long and a yard broad in ground-plan. But the palace was never completed.

Next day there was no Muhammad Din at the head of the carriage-drive, and no "Talaam, Tahib" to welcome my return. I had grown accustomed to the greeting, and its omission troubled me. Next day Imam Din told me that the child was suffering slightly from fever and needed quinine. He got the medicine, and an English Doctor.

"They have no stamina, these brats," said the Doctor, as he left Imam Din's quarters.

A week later, though I would have given much to have avoided it, I met on the road to the Mussulman burying-ground Imam Din, accompanied by one friend, carrying in his arms, wrapped in a white cloth, all that was left of little Muhammad Din.

--RUDYARD KIPLING.

[Footnote: Point out the characteristics of Muhammad Din that are common to all childhood, and those that are more especially Oriental. Why do you think Muhammad Din always played alone? Note the simple direct way of telling the story. What other stories have been told in this way?

Would you have been able to recognize Muhammad Din from the author's description? Would the destruction of the sand-house be a tragedy to most Western children? Why was it to Muhammad Din? Notice the simple pathos of the ending. Is it made more poignant by being unexpected?]

A CHILD

In Kensington Gardens, [Footnote: Kensington Gardens: in southwest London.] that February day, it was very still. Trees, stripped of every leaf, raised their bare clean twigs towards a sky so grey and so unstirring that there might never have been wind or sun. And on those branches pigeons sat, silent, as though they understood that there was no new life as yet; they seemed waiting, loth to spread their wings lest they should miss the coming of the Spring.

Down in the gra.s.s the tiniest green flames were burning, a sign of the fire flowers that would leap up if the sun would feed them.

And on a seat there sat a child.

He sat between his father and his mother, looking straight before him.

It was plain that the reason why he looked so straight before him was that he really had not strength to care to look to right or left--so white his face was, so puny were his limbs. His clothes had evidently been designed for others, and this was fortunate, for they prevented the actual size of him from being seen. He was not, however, what is called neglected; his face was clean, and the utmost of protection that Fate and the condition of his parents had vouchsafed was evidently lavished on him, for round his neck there was a little bit of draggled fur which should have been round the neck of her against whose thin shabby side he leaned. This mother of his was looking at the ground; and from the expression of her face she seemed to think that looking at the ground was all life had to offer.

The father sat with his eyes shut. He had shabby clothes, a grey face, and a grey collar that had once been white. Above the collar his thin cheeks had evidently just been shaved--for it was Sat.u.r.day, and by the colour of those cheeks, and by his boots, whose soles, hardly thicker than a paper sheet, still intervened between him and the ground, he was seen not to be a tramp or outdoor person, but an indoor worker of some sort, and very likely out of work, who had come out to rest in the company of his wife and family. His eyes being shut, he sat without the pain of looking at a single thing, moving his jaw at intervals from side to side.

And between the man and the woman, the child sat, very still, evidently on good terms with them, not realising that they had brought him out of a warm darkness where he had been happy, out of a sweet nothingness, into which, and soon perhaps, he would pa.s.s again--not realising that they had so neglected to keep pace with things, or that things had so omitted to keep pace with them, that he himself had eaten in his time about one half the food he should have eaten, and that of the wrong sort. By the expression of his face, that pale small ghost had evidently grasped the truth that things were as they had to be. He seemed to sit there reviewing his own life, and taking for granted that it must be what it was, from hour to hour, and day to day, and year to year.

And before me, too, the incidents of his small journey pa.s.sed. I saw him in the morning getting off the family bed, where it was sometimes warm, and chewing at a crust of bread before he set off to school in company with other children, some of whom were stouter than himself; saw him carrying in his small fist the remnants of his feast, and dropping it, or swopping it away for peppermints, because it tired him to consume it, having no juices to speak of in his little stomach. I seemed to understand that, accustomed as he was to eating little, he almost always wanted to eat less, not because he had any wish to die--nothing so extravagant--but simply that he nearly always felt a little sick; I felt that his pale, despondent mother was always urging him to eat, when there were things to eat, and that this bored him, since they did not strike him as worth all that trouble with his jaws. She must have found it difficult indeed to persuade him that there was any point at all in eating; for, from his looks, he could manifestly not now enjoy anything but peppermints and kippered herrings. I seemed to see him in his school, not learning, not wanting to learn anything, nor knowing why this should be so, ignorant of the dispensations of a Providence who--after hesitating long to educate him lest this should make his parents paupers--now compelled his education, having first destroyed his stomach that he might be incapable of taking in what he was taught. That small white creature could not as yet have grasped the notion that the welfare of the future lay, not with the future, but with the past. He only knew that every day he went to school with little in his stomach, and every day came back from school with less.

All this he seemed to be reviewing as he sat there, but not in thought; his knowledge was too deep for words; he was simply feeling, as a child that looked as he looked would naturally be feeling, on that bench between his parents. He opened his little mouth at times, as a small bird will open its small beak, without apparent purpose; and his lips seemed murmuring:

"My stomach feels as if there were a mouse inside it; my legs are aching; it's all quite natural, no doubt!"

To reconcile this apathy of his with recollections of his unresting, mirthless energy down alleys and on doorsteps, it was needful to remember human nature, and its exhaustless cruse [Footnote: Exhaustless cruse. See I Kings XVII: 8-16.] of courage. For, though he might not care to live, yet, while he was alive he would keep his end up, because he must--there was no other way. And why exhaust himself in vain regrets and dreams of things he could not see, and hopes of being what he could not be! That he had no resentment against anything was certain from his patient eyes--not even against those two who sat, one on either side of him--unaware that he was what he was, in order that they who against his will had brought him into being, might be forced by law to keep a self-respect they had already lost, and have the insufficiency of things he could not eat. For he had as yet no knowledge of political economy.

He evidently did not view his case in any petty, or in any party, spirit; he did not seem to look on himself as just a half-starved child that should have cried its eyes out till it was fed at least as well as the dogs that pa.s.sed him; he seemed to look on himself as that impersonal, imperial thing--the Future of the Race.

So profound his apathy!

And, as I looked, the "Future of the Race" turned to his father:

"'Ark at the bird!" he said.

It was a pigeon, who high upon a tree had suddenly begun to croon. One could see his head outlined against the grey unstirring sky, first bending back, then down into his breast, then back again; and that soft song of his filled all the air, like an invocation of fertility.

"The Future of the Race" watched him for a minute without moving, and suddenly he laughed. That laugh was a little hard noise like the clapping of two boards--there was not a single drop of blood in it, nor the faintest sound of music; so might a marionette [Footnote: Marionette: a puppet moved by strings.] have laughed--a figure made of wood and wire.

And in that laugh I seemed to hear innumerable laughter, the laughter in a million homes of the myriad unfed.

So laughed the Future of the richest and the freest and the proudest race that has ever lived on earth, that February afternoon, with the little green flames lighted in the gra.s.s, under a sky that knew not wind or sun--so he laughed at the pigeon that was calling for the Spring.