The Robber Bridegroom Read online

  "Turn again, my )onny y Turn away home."

  "I'll do nothing of the kind/' said Rosamond, who had had enough commands from her stepmother.

  Everything was in the greatest disorder, bags and saddles lay in the middle of the floor, the remains of big fires lay as if suddenly quenched in the fireplaces. Jugs and long knives, coats and boots of all sizes, tallow candles, and a wonderful bridle of silver and gold were lying in a heap. A young rat sat up like a squirrel at the head of the table, in front of a row of dirty, empty plates. And there in the very middle of the table, close beside a platter with the head of a black bear on it, was Rosamond's own beautiful green silk dress, rolled up into a ball like a bundle of so many quilting pieces.

  The first thing she did was to put on her own

  dress, and then, having nothing else to do, she rearranged all the furniture in the rooms and then washed all the plates and the big knives the robbers had been eating with. Then she hung everything on pegs that she could lift up, and shoveled away the ashes and got down on her knees and scrubbed the hearth until it shone brightly. She carried in the wood and laid a new fire, and was just putting the kettle on to boil when she heard a great clatter in the yard, and the robbers were coming home.

  Rosamond hid behind a big barrel in the corner and in they came, with their spotted hounds panting around them. Jamie Lockhart rose up the tallest, his face all covered with the berry juice, just like the day before. He was the leader.

  As soon as they saw what had happened to the house, they all stopped as dead as if they had been knocked on the head from behind.

  "What grandeur is this?" shouted Jamie in anger.

  "What bastard has been robbing the place?"

  cried the others. 'Tor half the things are miss-

  i» ing!

  Then they rushed about turning things over and pulling things down and looking under the tables and stools and between the featherbeds, undoing all of Rosamond's hard work, and at last they found Rosamond sitting behind the barrel, wearing her dress and eating her little cake.

  "The first time we went away without a sentry to watch the door, a woman got in!" they said. "Kill her!" they cried.

  And they were going to kill her, but she said, "Have some cake."

  So each one of them took a piece of cake, and she said she had baked it herself.

  The robbers began to argue about what to do with her then, but Jamie, who was their leader and was called nothing but "the Chief," said, "That business can wait till later. First we must count up our booty and divide it, for that is the order of affairs."

  So they sat down to count up the worth of this and that, with one who could count keeping

  close track of it all, and Rosamond had to wait

  until they had finished.

  "Now," said Jamie. "As to the girl, we must either keep her or kill her, for there is nothing midway about any of this."

  "Kill her," said one, who was the smallest and who had gotten the smallest piece of cake.

  "No, keep her," said the rest, "because she can cook for us and keep the fire up."

  "That is settled then," said Jamie, "according to the vote of the band," and having sent them out to stable the horses, he grabbed Rosamond and kissed her as hard as he could, saying if the vote had gone otherwise he would have put the ones who voted wrong out of the way for keeps, since he was running things around there.

  So Rosamond stayed and kept house for the robbers. And at first the life was like fairyland. Jamie was only with her in the hours of night, and rode away before the dawn, but he spoke as kind and sweet words as anyone ever could between the hours of sunset and sunrise.

  In the daytime, in the silence of noon, while they were all away, she cooked and washed and baked and scrubbed, and sang every song she knew, backwards and forwards, until she was through with them. She washed the robbers' shirts till she wore them out with her washing, and then one evening they brought her home for a surprise a spinning-wheel that had come their way, at great inconvenience, and so she spun and manufactured all they would need for the cold Winter coming. She packed them lunches to take with them in the mornings, a bucket for each, in case they became separated before they would have their food at noon over the fire of an oak tree. And she wove a mat of canes and rushes and made them wipe their feet when they came in at the door.

  So the day was hard but the night canceled out the day. When the moon went sailing like a boat through the heavens, between long radiant clouds, all lunar sand bars lying in the stream, and the stars like little fishes nibbled at the night, then it was time for the bandits to ride home.

  Rosamond waited alone but not afraid. At last they were there, and eating their hot supper, and Jamie came all weary from his riding and robbing, to fling off his sword and his boots and fall on the featherbed, where he would place his head on the softer pillow of her bosom and his face would settle down from all his adventures.

  But when she tried to lead him to his bed with a candle, he would knock her down and out of her senses, and drag her there. However, if Jamie was a thief after Rosamond's love, she was his first assistant in the deed, and rejoiced equally in his good success.

  She begged him every night to wash off the stains from his face so that she could see just once what he really looked like, and she swore that she believed he would be handsome, but he would never do it. He told her that this was for the best of reasons, and she had to be content with that. Sometimes she would wake up out of her first sleep and study his sleeping face, but she did not know the language it was written in. And she would look out the window and see a

  cloud put up a mask over the secret face of the moon, and she would hear the pitiful cries of the night creatures. Then it was enough to make her afraid, as if the whole world were circled by a band of Indian savages, and she would shake poor Jamie until he shouted up out of his sleep, and rouse him up to see his eyes come open. She would often wipe the rain away from his face when he came home, but nothing, it seemed, could penetrate those stains. No matter how she scrubbed, until he would let out a yell, the stains were just as dark as before. And sometimes, because he had told her that he had bound himself to an heiress, she was afraid he might get up and fly away through the window while she was fast asleep; so she would not let him go until up the gentle levee of the morning clouds the sun would climb to touch the brim, and the bandits flew over the ridge.

  The only thing that divided his life from hers was the raiding and the robbing that he did, but that was like his other life, that she could not see, and so she contented herself with loving all

  that was visible and present of him as much as

  she was able.

  The trees were golden under the sky. The grass was as soft as a dream and the wind blew like the long rising and falling breath of Summer when she has just fallen asleep. One day Jamie did not ride away with the others, and then the day was night and the woods were the roof over their heads. The tender flames of the myrtle trees and the green smoke of the cedars were the fires of their hearth. In the radiant noon they found the shade, and ate the grapes from the muscadine vines. The spice-dreams rising from the fallen brown pine needles floated through their heads when they stretched their limbs and slept in the woods. The stream lay still in the golden ravine, the water glowing darkly, the colors of fruits and nuts.

  "Remember your own words/' said the bandits to Jamie, as they were riding away without him to a rendezvous. " Who followeth not up his own work will fail/ "

  "I cannot fail/' said Jamie, and he half pulled out his little dirk.

  For he thought he had it all divisioned off into time and place, and that many things were for later and for further away, and that now the world had just begun.

  "All these treasures are for you," he said to Rosamond at night when the bounty was counted out.

  'Thank you/' she replied, and sorted and stored it all—even labeled it, with the date if she could keep account of it in the dream of time passing. And
though she did not know when she would ever find use for a thousand pieces of English silver or the scalp of a Creek, she took tender care of each item.

  And every night Jamie would come in with a mess of quail, bobolinks, purple finches, or bluebirds, which he would heap on the table and tell her to dress. Once he brought a heron, the color of Venetian glass, and it tasted as wild as a wild pear, but there was not enough of heron breast

  for any to eat except Jamie and Rosamond, and the rest ate buffalo meat in silence, under the smoke of the torches.

  If her dead mother could have seen Rosamond then, she would never have troubled herself to come back one more time from the repose of Heaven to console and protect her, and could have fully given herself over to the joys of Paradise from then on; that is, if she could overlook from that place the fact that Jamie was a bandit; for Rosamond had quite forgotten the locket.

  The only thing that could possibly keep her from being totally happy was that she had never seen her lover's face. But then the heart cannot live without something to sorrow and be curious over.

  Now on the day that he had followed Rosamond to the robbers' house, all had gone well with Goat, and he was right at her heels, if she had turned around she would have been behind him, until she knocked at the robbers' door.

  At first there had been no answer at all, and

  Goat decided they must have come on the wrong day. But then the raven had looked at them and

  said,

  "Turn back, my )onny,

  Turn away home."

  So Goat, who never disobeyed any orders as plain as that, had turned at once and gone back to his mother.

  "Hello, Mother, I'm home again/' said he, butting his way in to the kitchen. "A raven advised me to get back at once: what's the news?"

  "Oh, cark and care/' said his mother. "Did you bring back any money?"

  "No/' said he, "but I expect to receive some at any moment, for the lady I work for is very rich/'

  "Then it's a good thing/' said his mother, "or I would be wishing I had strangled you at birth for all the comfort I get out of you/'

  "Are my six sisters married off yet?" asked Goat.

  "They are just as they were yesterday, and that is unwed," said the mother.

  "You have only to wait until I am paid for my

  work/' said Goat, "and they will come rushing at all six of them as if they were in burning houses/'

  Then he told her good-by and set off up the hill to ask Salome for his pay.

  "What, are you back so soon?" said Salome, when they had hidden in the orchard.

  So he said he was back and that it was soon.

  "Did you follow her this time?" Salome asked.

  So he said yes, he followed her; that is, until a raven spoke up and told him it was time to go home.

  "What raven?" cried Salome, for she did not know what raven he could mean.

  Well, he said, it was simply the raven they kept to answer the door, he supposed, when they were not at home. And now might he have his pay?

  "Go break your neck!" cried Salome. "Your mother should have strangled you in your cradle."

  Goat said that made two that thought so, but that was not many. And he asked what if he

  came back to see her tomorrow, would she pay him then?

  "Oh," said Salome, "when are you going to take your brains out and put them back in straight? Go to this house again, discount anything said to you by a raven, and when you find where Rosamond has gone, see what she does, and whether she cries or not, and come back and tell me."

  "And when you have heard, will you pay me then?" asked Goat.

  "Now you have it in your head," said Salome. "And get gone!"

  Then she boxed both his ears and he set out, first passing through the chicken yard and letting a hen out of the coop, and then through the pigsty, where he let out a little pig with red spots. On second thought, he put both of these and a big red peach into his bag as advance payment to provide against starvation.

  He was going along and going along through the deep woods, and went part of the way with a little wild boar that trotted as proudly as a horse,

  and had almost reached the robbers' house when he saw another place. There, up an avenue of cedar trees, at the entrance of a cave built of rock, sitting by a fire, was a bandit named the Little Harp, and he was just as ugly as it was possible to be. But Goat did not mind that, and sang out, "Good morning, mister! What are you up to? How are you feeling and how is everything with you? Is there anything that I could do for you? And how far is it from here to where the kidnaped young lady goes and raps on the door?"

  Little Harp blinked his eyes and smiled, for nothing pleased him on a fine day like a lack of brains.

  "Come here/' said he, "and stay with me. I will give you work to do/'

  "Gladly," replied Goat, "but I am already working for another, a very rich lady, an old stepmother, who wants me to see that her stepdaughter is well kidnaped by a bandit. But I don't see why a young fellow like me could not take care of two commissions at one time/'

  "That is the way to talk/' said the Little Harp. "You will come up in the world/'

  "How much are you going to pay me every month?" asked Goat, taking a seat on a rock and stretching his legs.

  "Never mind/' said the Little Harp. "Just do whatever I tell you, and you won't regret it."

  "What will you want first/' asked Goat, "if I do work for you?"

  "Well," said Little Harp, "I might take a notion for a big fat hen."

  "If that is all, I don't think that will be very hard/' said Goat, and reaching into his little bag he pulled out the hen, which indeed the Little Harp had been watching with watering mouth from the first moment, if he had not smelled it down the way. So the Little Harp took it. "I must consider," said he. He wrung the hen by the neck, plucked a feather off it, passed it through his little fire, and swallowed it down. "Yes, I believe you could do the work," he said. "You are hired. But now there is one thing that you must remember never to do, as long as you

  work for me. Never open the little trunk you

  will see standing by my featherbed inside the

  cave/'

  "If I do, you may cut off my ears/' promised Goat.

  "You may hear something say, 'Let me out/ " said Little Harp, "but you must answer, 'Not yet!' If you open the trunk even one inch, that will be the end of you/'

  "And will the money stop then too?" asked Goat.

  "Completely," said Little Harp. "There is not a chance in the world of your ever getting another cent once you are dead/'

  "I agree to the terms/' said Goat, and they shook hands.

  "Now," said Goat, "what would you like me to do?"

  "Well," said Little Harp, "I feel a fancy coming over me for a pig with red spots, but if that is impossible to find, don't look for it."

  "Impossible my foot," said Goat. "I can get it for you as easy as breathing," and he pulled out his pig.

  "Go pickle him/' said Little Harp.

  "Would you not rather have a peach?" asked Goat. "For that won't take as long."

  "Yes," said the Little Harp, "I believe I would rather have a peach."

  So he ate the peach on the spot, seed, fuzz, and all, and Goat asked him with the last swallow, "What next?"

  "Next I would like a girl, kidnaped and brought to my door here," said Little Harp. "But I dare say you will not know where to find one/ 1

  "I have no kidnaped girl with me," said Goat, "but I have one in my mind. How soon do you want her?"

  "By tomorrow," said Little Harp.

  "It's as good as over with," said Goat. "You may imagine her now, skipping over the hill."

  "Let me see her little finger first," said Little Harp. "Then, if I like that much, I will take her."

  Goat was so overjoyed that he got up and did a little dance called "Rabbit Hash." Then away he went.

  Little Harp went inside his cave and stretched his feet on the featherbed to wait.

&
nbsp; Then there was a voice which had the sound of coming out of a little trunk, and it said, "Let me out!"

  "Not yet!" cried Little Harp, and he began to cry, "Oh, you do plague me so, to be nothing more than a head wrapped up in blue mud, though I know your eyes and your tongue do stick out as red as fire, the way you came down off the pole in Rodney Square." And he said, "Oh, Big Harp, my brother, please stay in the trunk like a good head, and don't be after me eternally for raiding and murdering, for you give me no rest."

  But the voice said, "Let me out!" all the while, even after the Little Harp fell asleep and went to snoring.

  Back home in the gully, in came Goat, butting his way through the front door, which was locked, and they were all sitting around the table.

  "Good news!" he cried, snatching up a johnny-cake. "Sisters, the time for one of you has come. Arise and prepare yourself, for the time is set for tomorrow."

  "The time for what?" they said.

  "You must listen more closely, if you want to hear wonders," said Goat. "Sisters, all six of you point up your ears, and take this in with the full set of twelve. I am now working on the side for a gentleman up yonder in a cave, and when I said, 'What do you want?* he said first a hen, then a pig, then a peach, and before long he was dead for a wife. And although I do not speak all that runs to the end of my tongue, I conversed with myself behind my hand, and said, 'Here I am with six hopping virgin sisters in my own family, and my own house a nest of women— this job was designed for me in Heaven!' And I rushed here at once with the good news."

  "Well," said the mother, "is he rich?" For she did all the talking for the six daughters.

  "Oh, I am sure he must be rich," answered Goat, "for he has, for one thing, a trunk so

  precious that he talks to it, and lets no one open it even to the extent of an inch/'

  So all the daughters there in a row began to sit up and toss their hair about.

  'Is he handsome?" said the youngest.

  "Well," said Goat, "I would not say outright that the gentleman is stamped with beauty, for when I saw him, his head was no larger than something off the orange tree, his forehead was full of bumps like an alligator's, and two teeth stuck out of his mouth like the broadhorns on a flatboat. He came out walking like a goose and dressed like a wild Indian. But beauty is no deeper than the outside, and besides, all six of you are as weighted down with freckles as a fig tree is with figs, which should render you modest/'