Читать книгу The Jingo - George Randolph Chester - Страница 5

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In the three days that passed before the fine-looking stranger could be removed to the palace, he became very well acquainted with the five people, who, in their perfect hospitality, undertook to nurse him in relays. He smiled quizzically every time Bezzanna and the king and plump Aunt Gee-gee came on watch, and made unceasing attempts to get into verbal communication with them. He mended less rapidly when Tedoyah and the prince were with him, for the boy was a restless youngster, and his clumsy attempts to move quietly were worse than if he had turned handsprings, which were his natural mode of locomotion. The prince was even more disquieting, for he was too polite, too courteously ready to render assistance.

At such times the stalwart patient, looking out over the blue sea and waiting for his other nurses to come, had much time between healing naps for the consideration of his interrupted business journey, and also for speculation concerning his present environment. These did not seem to be poor people--they seemed, on the contrary, to be persons of quality and breeding and social standing; and yet, why did they have dinky little candles in the shape of a grooved ball and set in a silver cup made expressly for the purpose? If it was too much trouble to drop down a wire for an electric light why didn't they at least bring a lantern or an auto lamp? He didn't like that silver candle-cup. It looked too permanent, as if they were used to that and nothing else. If they didn't have electric lights it looked bad for his chances of reaching a cable--and his firm would be worried about him.

Another thing! Why, when the fire went out, did they bring some more in an earthen pot? Why didn't they use matches? He noticed that everybody went out to look at the sun or the moon when they wanted to see how the time was passing. None of the men smoked. Nobody brought a magazine or a newspaper along. Why didn't the girl slip into a corner now and then and dab a chamois skin on her face with the aid of a mirror? Not that her face needed any fixing, because it was right in every particular--but just because!

About one thing, however, he had firmly made up his mind. When he got well he did not intend to wear those ridiculous strips of cloth wound round his legs. He intended to have pants!

On the day he was raised by ropes to the top of the cliff and carried into the palace he made up his mind just as firmly to another thing which he had as carefully thought out, and he told the princess about it as soon as he woke up from the four-hour sleep which the fatigue of that trip had given him.

"Betsy Ann," he cheerfully observed to the bright-eyed young person who sat quietly watching him. She was working a sapphire-blue scalloped edge on an endless strip of dark red cloth, which looked suspiciously as if it were intended to adorn the legs of the new guest. "I've decided not to learn your language, because I haven't room for any more purely ornamental knowledge." He told her this as earnestly as if she knew a word of what he was saying, but with a twinkle in his eye which made amends for a lack of language. "So you have to learn American."

"All right!" she gaily agreed, having picked up that phrase for a starter during the last three days, and she rose to bring him what he wanted--as soon as she could find out what it was.

He gleefully shook hands with her on that; and, having no better means of communication for the present, they laughed at each other in quite a friendly fashion, keeping it up much longer than was really necessary.

"We're going to start right now," he assured her. "I have to bounce out of this and locate the real city, so I can get off a cablegram, as soon as I'm patched up enough to travel; but before I go I want to have a few heart-to-heart conversations with you and Black Whiskers--Onion, I think you call him--and the kid, and Lady Gee-gee and Old Scout."

"Thanks Old Scout?" she inquired eagerly, happy that he had asked for the king.

"No," he laughed, and brought her back with emphatic waves of his hand. "Thanks Old Scout looks like a regular fellow to me, but I don't want him just now. I'd rather give you your first lesson in American. I'd like a drink of water, please."

She looked at him inquiringly, her unruly brown tresses dangling as she cocked her head on one side, and her red lips parted in a quizzical half smile.

"All right," she said pleasantly, after thinking the matter over.

"Fine work!" he complimented her, and they both laughed again. "A drink of water, please."

He so evidently wanted something that she confidently fixed his pillows. They needed fixing, anyhow, and she thumped and punched and patted about them the way a woman does, and helped him lift his head so that she could thump and pat some more where the head had been lying; and she fluttered delightfully round him until she had made him quite comfortable indeed--except that his face was flushed. That may have been, however, because her own dark red cheek had brushed so close to his.

"All right, Betsy Ann," he thanked her when she had stepped back and surveyed her work with admiration. "Water, please. Water!" And this time he illustrated the word.

"Water," she repeated, with a gleeful nod of understanding, and hurried away.

His eyes followed the swing of her graceful figure to the door, where she turned and, meeting his gaze, gave him a parting glance of great friendliness, which left him very comfortable indeed.

While she was gone he took his first good survey of his room. It was a cheerful apartment, with blue cloth on the floor and upon the walls, the tops and the bottoms of the wall panels ornamented with scrolls of gold. There was a big fireplace, with a huge vase of dark red flowers on its shelf, and richly quaint furniture stood about in the agreeable confusion of articles that have been recently and logically used.

It was all very nice and comfortable, and even impressive; but there was something he missed tremendously. Was it wires? There wasn't a wire about the room--electric light, telephone, push-button--or any hint of the use or need of a wire; and he had come from the most extensively wired city in the most extensively wired country in the world! The two big windows were wide open to the pleasant spring breeze; and he could see, from where he lay, down over the green hill and the smiling valley to the town; but in all that pretty landscape there was no trace of a wire, no gaunt and warped poles, no uncompromising cluster of straight black lines to break the monotony of the graceful view. No wires anywhere! Great Scott! How lonesome their absence did make the landscape! He would have given much to have seen again just one blue trolley spark!

His gaze came back into the room, but again the unrest returned to him. It was something besides wires he missed--something very important! Bezzanna bustled in and triumphantly presented him with a bowl of broth!

"Water!" she joyously informed him, pointing to it.

He ate it gratefully, for he was beginning to know hunger; and when he had finished he wiped his lips contentedly with the napkin she had brought him, and said quite calmly:

"Water, please."

"Water!" she repeated, happy in his increasing appetite, and pointed to the bowl.

"No; water!" he insisted, smiling and shaking his head; and again he made the gesture of drinking.

She understood him perfectly now, and, after they had sufficiently laughed their friendliness and good humor to each other, she hurried away to bring it for him, while he fell to wondering again what the deuce it was he missed so dreadfully.

They were both pleased that she had the word water fastened into her vocabulary forever, and he spent the next hour in solid instruction. She learned an immense number of words that day--chair, and table, and bed, and the American names, in fact, of nearly everything in the room. She was both an apt and an eager pupil, with a good memory, a quick ear and a glib tongue; and she kept his mental faculties on the jump by pointing first to one object and then to another in anxious inquiry of its name. Finally, with a laugh, she pointed to him.

"Jimmy Smith," he informed her, with his finger vertical to his breast.

"Jimmysmith," she repeated, and changed her laugh to a giggle. Apparently the sound amused her.

"No; Jimmy!--Smith!" he corrected.

"Jimmysmith," she painstakingly repeated, but still giggled.

"Oh, just say Jimmy, then!" he compromised, half vexed. "I don't see why the name Smith should be a grand giggle all over the world. Jimmy!"

"Jimmy," she echoed, apparently much relieved. She seemed to like that name better, for she said it over and over musingly, listening to it critically; and her eyes softened.

It was the Smith part of it she had thought funny--confound it! As if in comment upon his very thought, her eyes suddenly snapped and pointing to him, she said:

"Smith!"

He could have choked her for that devilish trick, stunningly pretty as she was; but he did not dare show his annoyance, for he was quite sure that then she would keep it up, since the nearer convalescent he became the less sympathetic she grew.

She presently stopped her malicious dimpling over his discomfiture to point at him and wave her hand in a comprehensive sweep toward the horizon. By the time she had gone through this graceful performance two or three times, he recovered from the pleasure of watching her do it enough to comprehend that she wished to know where he came from; and he told her with great promptness and vigor:

"America!"

"America!" she said, and he watched her narrowly. If she had giggled that time he would have been through with her forever. Since she had taken it with sufficiently grave intelligence, however, he condescended to explain his attitude in the matter.

"You see, I'm ready to fight for the respect due that name, Betsy Ann," and observing that he was about to make a speech, Bezzanna sat comfortably by his bedside and made ready to listen. She liked to hear him talk, for his voice was deep and mellow in spite of its present weakness, and she enjoyed its many inflections. They were very musical. "I used to stand by and hear travelers state that other countries had it over the good old United States of America in this particular, and that one, and the other, until, at one time in my pup age, I was actually almost ashamed of my country. I really believed--and I hope I may be forgiven for it--that Americans were crude, impolite, money-chasing creatures, with no soul for art, music or any of the finer things in life. When the Eureka Machinery Company, of Brooklyn and New York, took me in as a junior partner, they put me in charge of the foreign sales department. I've been traveling three years, Betsy Ann; and I'm so violent for the United States of America that I have to carry a strait-jacket in my handiest luggage. If anybody tells me that any nation or any person under the sun has anything on America or Americans I make him take me right to the spot and show me; and they've never proved it yet! As a strictly unprejudiced observer, I am bound to say, in mere candor and justice, that America is the only country on the globe worth claiming as a birthplace. Its men are the bravest, the brainiest, the healthiest, the most wholesome, the most chivalrous and the most honest its women are the prettiest, the brightest, the gamest, the most charming, the most lovable and the most companionable of any in the universe; and, as a nation, we have the rest of creation skinned as bare as a Mexican dog in all the arts, sciences, manufactures, commercial enterprises, finer feelings, courtesy, courtship, justice, squareness and patriotism.

"Now look me squarely in the eye, Betsy Ann!" And he held up an impressive forefinger. "I want you to see that I'm giving this to you straight and honest, out of the depths of a surcharged heart. It isn't because I get so homesick that I could sob every time I see a stray dollar bill, but because I'm a man of mature sober deliberation, that I relieve myself of these burning facts! You just take it from your Uncle Jimmy that God-bless-America is some country! And don't you forget it! With these few words, I thank you for your kind attention," and he sank back exhausted, but satisfied.

"All right!" agreed Bezzanna, with a long breath. "All right, Smith!" and, laughing, she rose to examine the weather. Like a well-regulated spring day anywhere in the world, this one had tired of being sunshiny and had now decided to rain a while. The rain was sweeping up the valley at a merry gait, turning the blue of the sky and the green of the meadows alike into misty gray. Already the trees in the park were beginning to rustle their welcome to the shower; and in about three minutes, if it were not prevented, the water would be streaming in on the pretty blue carpet.

In graceful haste, Bezzanna, as a preparation for shutting out the storm, hurried into another room, returned with a pot of fire in a silver basket, and lighted the candle-balls on the mantel; then she crossed swiftly to the wide-open windows and closed them with the heavy wooden shutters that had been concealed behind the long blue draperies.

For a moment Jimmy Smith, of Brooklyn and New York, United States of America, gasped at this abrupt transition from day to night, and then suddenly he had the solution to the puzzle of what he had missed so poignantly.

"Glass!" he exclaimed. "By George, there isn't an ounce of glass in the place."

He looked hastily about him to make sure. There were no windows, no mirrors, no globes or shades for the lights--not one of the thousand odd little trinkets that are made of crystal; and he remembered that during his illness he had never been given anything out of a bottle or drinking glass!

Into what sort of place had he fallen? He remembered now that the queer thing he had felt but had not been able to analyze when he looked down at the town, and which made it so dull and soft and dead, was the entire absence of sparkling reflection from glazed objects.

It was an appalling discovery for him to make! Why, if none of these people used glass or matches to say nothing of electricity--there wasn't one chance in a million that he would find a cable or a wireless station in the whole dead country! What on earth would the Eureka Machinery Company do about that hurry-up Antwerp contract which he had been sent to nail down? He turned his face to the wall and groaned!