The Robber Bridegroom Read online

  'Which of us shall marry him?" they asked one another, and fell to giggling.

  "Let us send him up the eldest," said the mother, "for she has waited the longest/' and so that was decided.

  "Be ready at sunup for the kidnaping," said

  Goat, "and be sure one of your little fingers is as sweet as a rose, or nothing will be doing/*

  At the same time, Clement and Salome were riding in the little cart over the plantation, which by now had all been harvested.

  "Next year," said Salome, and she shaded her eagle eye with her eagle claw, and scanned the lands from east to west, "we must cut down more of the forest, and stretch away the fields until we grow twice as much of everything. Twice as much indigo, twice as much cotton, twice as much tobacco. For the land is there for the taking, and I say, if it can be taken, take it"

  "To encompass so much as that is greedy/' said Clement. "It would take too much of time and the heart's energy/'

  "All the same, you must add it on," said Salome. "If we have this much, we can have more/' And she petted the little nut-shaped head of the peacock on her lap.

  "Are you not satisfied already?" asked her husband.

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  "Satisfied!" cried Salome. "Never, until we have got rid of this house which is little better than a Kentuckian's cabin, with its puncheon floor, and can live in a mansion at least five stories high, with an observatory of the river on top of that, with twenty-two Corinthian columns to hold up the roof/'

  "My poor wife, you are ahead of yourself," said Clement, and he felt of her forehead to see if it were hot. And indeed it was burning like fire, for Salome worked her brain day and night to think up her wishes.

  "I am doing well enough," said Salome. "It is you whose hand is cold."

  "Then it is cold with grief," said Clement.

  "Oh, now that that lazy, extravagant daughter of yours is no longer here," said Salome, "we shall be able to count much more on our plans, for now you have no one to will the money to, and so we may as well spend it at once."

  "Hold your tongue, wife!" cried Clement, and he raised up and almost put his hands upon her, but he could not, for the poor contamination of

  THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM 101 her heart broke out through her words until it showed even on her skin, like the signs of the pox, and he could not punish her.

  Then Salome, having Clement in her power, sent him out to make fresh application to the Governor for more acres, and resigned to that, he rode away to Rodney.

  And there, staying once more at the inn where the landlord with the trembling ears kept hospitality for the travelers, Clement chanced to see Jamie Lockhart again, dressed as fine as anyone out of New Orleans in his button-sewn coat with the sleeves knotted around him cape-wise.

  Now the truth is, Jamie had neglected poor Clement entirely, being so taken up with his daughter, and had never ridden back to do the thing he had promised, but only put it off. So he ran forward now to clasp his hand, and sat him down in the grogshop and bought him a glass of the best Kentucky whisky. Then he told him, as his excuse, that his business had

  102 THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM carried him all of a sudden to New Orleans on the very night when he saw him last, where he had been from then till now, as busy as he had ever been in his life, and that he had therefore been unable to ride after the bandit who had frightened his daughter.

  "However," said Jamie, "drink down bravely, for it is my belief that the fellow will do her no more harm if he did not do it at first thoughts/'

  "Alas," said Clement, "while you were gone, he thought of it, for my child is stolen away."

  Then the salt tears ran down his cheeks, and Jamie's heart was reached by the old man's sorrow, and after buying him another glass of whisky he spent the night in the same bed again without stealing a cent from him. Indeed, since he had not stolen it yet, he doubted if he ever would, for the old man had trusted the evil world and was the kind of man it would break your heart to rob.

  "I have just succeeded in enlarging my plantation twice over," said Clement, when they met

  THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM 103 again in the morning, "though the size of anything whatever has nothing to do with the peace of mind. My wife will build a tower to overlook the boundaries of her land, while I ride its woods and know it to be a maze without end, for my love is lost in it."

  So, in his soft feeling, Jamie declared before he knew it that he would track down this beast if it was the last thing he did, blow his brains out, and marry the poor daughter in the bargain.

  For never once, due to the seven rampant brothers which his own kidnaped bride brought into the conversation now and again (whenever he recalled that he was promised to another), did the thought alight on Jamie's head that she might be for one moment the same as Clement's thumb-sucking child. It was the habit of the times for heiresses to disappear, as though swallowed up, and one more or less did not cause Jamie to stop and take notice.

  "Tonight/' said Jamie now, rising to his feet, "I will ride the woods to the north of here, and

  you must ride them to the south, and if the man

  has been running ahead of you, we will head him

  off."

  Clement shook his hand, and when he could speak, it was to say once more, "Save her, and she is yours still/'

  On the plantation, Clement, inspired by Jamie to the hope of making a rescue that very night, ate a whole roast pig for supper and set out on horseback just as the stars began to come out.

  He rode south on the Old Natchez Trace and then took another trail branching off to the deepest woods, a part he had never searched before. The wind shook the long beards of the moss. The lone owls hooted one by one and flew by his head as big as barrels. Near-by in the cane the wildcats frolicked and played, and on he rode, through the five-mile smell of a bear, and on till he came all at once to the bluff where deep down, under the stars, the dark brown wave of the Mississippi was rolling by. That was the place where he had found the river and married

  THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM 105 Salome. And if he had but known it, that was the place where Jamie Lockhart had carried his daughter, there under the meeting trees at the edge.

  Clement's horse stopped, and all of a sudden there was a rustle of the leaves and a ghost or a shape went by behind him. In the next moment Clement was riding in pursuit, for he thought it was the bandit now for sure, and he rode and rode furiously, though it seemed to him that he had lost the way and that he was only charging in a circle; and this had happened to him before. But then he heard the same sound, and he brought his horse to a stop and jumped off his back. And although up until that moment he had thought all he defended too sacred for the privilege of violence, he now flung himself forward with such force that the wind left his body for a moment. He ran headlong through the dark, and then it seemed he clasped the very sound itself in his arms. He could feel the rude powerful grip of a giant or a spirit, and once he was brushed by a feather such as the savages

  io6 THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM wore, and they threshed about and beat down the earth for a long time. It was as dark as it could possibly be, for the stars seemed to have gone in and left the naked night overhead, and so Clement wrestled with his monster without any aid from the world at all. He tossed it to the ground and it flew up again, he bent it back with all his strength and it would not yield, it fought with the arms of a whirlwind and flung him on the ground, and he was about to give up, but then it clung to him like the Old Man of the Sea and he could not get out from under. At last with a great crash he threw himself upon it and it went down, and he sat there holding it down where it lay with his own body for the rest of the night, not daring to close his eyes for his concern, and for thinking he had won over wickedness. And it was not till the eye of the red sun looked over the ridge that Clement saw he had fought all night with a willow tree.

  In the meanwhile, Jamie was riding the woods to the north and wishing he were home instead.

  THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM 107 He
had just started to stain his face with the berry juice when he heard all of a sudden the sounds of screaming come out of a cave in the hillside.

  "There, I have found the witless thing, without even trying," he said; "for it would be like her to scream at her bandit the whole night through and give him no peace, out of pure perversity." And he rode straight up to the door of the cave and threw a rock against it.

  "One at a time!" came a voice from the inside. "If you're the next sister, you must wait till tomorrow!"

  And "Oh! Oh! Oh!" came the screaming.

  "Open up," cried Jamie. "If you're after doing a murder, I can give you aid."

  "Can you now?" asked the Little Harp, for of course it was he inside with one of Goat's six sisters, and he came to the door and peeped through the chink.

  "Here, you see, is the very rope to tie her up with," said Jamie, holding up nothing in the dark.

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  Then the Little Harp let him in, and Jamie followed him back in the cave to where he had one of Goat's sisters standing straight up in the middle of the floor with her apron tied over her head.

  "Well, proud, dirty thing/' said Jamie to her, for he had no doubt it was Clement's dim-witted daughter, and he gave her a mock kiss, "what are you doing inside there?"

  "Oh! Oh! Oh!" she screamed back.

  "She does nothing but scream," said the Little Harp. "That is her gift, and I would just as soon try to sleep in the room with a hyena."

  "Why did you tie her up so snug?" asked Jamie. "You let the more dangerous hands and feet go free and only confine the harmless head."

  "Oh, I have her blindfolded because she is so ugly," said the Little Harp. "I had her kidnaped sight unseen and test untested, you see, being given to understand she was in demand by another bandit, and never knowing that this was the masterpiece I would get. But as soon as I saw her little finger, I told her to go drown herself in the river."

  THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM 109

  "Oh!" screamed this sister of Goat's.

  "But when I told her that," continued the Little Harp, "she told me that she was only one of six thriving sisters, all as strong as oxen, and that the whole company of them would come up here after me and beat my head to a pulp if I did not untie her."

  "Ah yes, the brand of that speech is familiar to me," said Jamie, and he only laughed at the poor creature's fury, and gave her another peck that she did not know was coming.

  "If you were to take your rope and tie the remainder of her up," said Little Harp, "do you suppose that would make her hush, or put her out of order for a little while?"

  "That is a brilliant solution you have got there," said Jamie, thinking to have some fun with the two sillies, since the night was wasted anyway, and so he drew his hands around the girl's middle and gave her a little squeeze. But if she had screamed loudly enough before to be heard in church at Rodney, she screamed loudly enough next to be heard down at Fort Rosalie.

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  "That was wrong/' said the Little Harp. "I would give anything for you not to have done that."

  "There, we have got her started going louder instead of softer/' said Jamie, "and I fear there will be no stopping her now. She will go on in this direction, getting louder and louder, until the rocks of this cave will come falling in, and bury us all alive. Why, my friend, don't you marry her instead?"

  "Though it would keep me from deafness and a landslide, I would not do it/' said the Little Harp, shaking his tiny head.

  "Well, then," said Jamie, looking about, and thinking on the side that a bandit, however slow-witted, who could not do better than this cave must have something amiss somewhere. "How about putting the maiden in the trunk?"

  "No! No! No! Never!" cried the Little Harp, and he ran and held the lid down. "For oh, the noise leaks out of the trunk too!" And he put his ear to the lock. "Listen!" he said.

  But Jamie heard nothing at all, and at this

  THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM in show of silliness he thought it was time to change his tune. So he went to snatch up the girl without further dilly-dallying and take her home to Clement.

  But the Little Harp came waddling forward like an old goose, and there held up in his right hand was the carving knife.

  "I won't marry her/' said he. "So come let's kill her! I'll hold her down, and you slice her down the center."

  At this the poor girl nearly lost her voice, but she recovered it in time to scream a flock of bats down from the ceiling before she toppled over like the dead at their touch.

  Jamie jumped with all his might on the Little Harp and dragged him in the corner.

  "The game is over," said Jamie, "and the joke is told. You are not the fool I took you to be, but another fool entirely, and I ought to break all your bones where you need them most. Now tell me your name and I will tell you to get out of the country."

  "My name is Little Harp, and my brother's

  THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM name is Big Harp, but they cut off his head in Rodney and stuck it on a pole/'

  ''Then get out of the country/* said Jamie, "for I have heard of the Harps, that ran about leaving dead bodies over the countryside as thick as flies on the dumpling/'

  "Aha, but I know who you are too/' said Little Harp, sticking out his tongue in a point, and his little eyes shining. 'Tour name is Jamie Lock-hart and you are the bandit in the woods, for you have your two faces on together and I see you both/'

  At that, Jamie staggered back indeed, for he allowed no one who had seen him as a gentleman to see him as a robber, and no one who knew him as a robber to see him without the dark-stained face, even his bride.

  He half pulled out his little dirk to kill the Little Harp then and there. But his little dirk, not unstained with blood, held back and would not touch the feeble creature. Something seemed to speak to Jamie that said, "This is to be your burden, and so you might as well take it." So

  THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM n ? he put the little dirk back and contented himself with one more blow with his arm, to knock the Little Harp's wind out for an hour or so.

  Then he picked up the girl and set her up on his horse, still dead in her faint and sitting up as nice and stiff as a bird that is looked at by a snake, and so without bothering to unwrap her, Jamie took her off to Clement's house.

  By now it was daylight, and he stopped and took the stain off the one side of his face and tied his coat about him, and then he knocked at the door.

  "Here is your daughter/' he said to Clement, and the old man nearly died with joy, but then he saw the foot sticking out and then the rough red hand. "My daughter has skin as white as a lily," he said, "and her foot is small.

  "Oh, God in Heaven/' he said, and then the apron fell off of its own accord and he saw the poor fish face looking at him. "Jamie Lockhart, you have rescued the wrong daughter. This is none of mine."

  Then there was general misery, except for

  11 4 THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM Goat's sister, who was rather pleased than sorry, now that the whole thing was over and she was not lying at the bottom of the river, and she went off home to tell the rest of her sisters the horrible things that had happened to her.

  "But the worst of all/' said Jamie to himself, as he stopped in the black ravine and stained his face again, "is that I have let the Little Harp go." He wondered now why he had done it, and he said, "This is going to be a burden to me," for he knew that by the time he got home, the Little Harp would have moved in.

  T

  IHE NEXT MORNING, after the double failure to rescue his daughter from the bandit in the woods, Clement was sitting with his wife on his little veranda. All at once the front gate opened with a little sound, and there came Rosamond up the path.

  They could hardly believe their eyes, until she

  had come and given them a kiss apiece.

  u6 THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM

  "Well, where is your husband?" asked the stepmother.

  "He sent his respects to my parents/' said Rosamond, "but he is
too busy to come himself."

  Salome looked first at Rosamond's belt and then at her countenance, and was mortified to see no signs of humility in either place.

  "Haughty and proud as ever, I see/' she remarked, getting up to pace about her in a circle, "though the whole world knows you are no better than that gully girl who ran to the cave of the Little Harp and got blinders tied on her head for her trouble."

  But Rosamond took out the presents she had brought back to them, very fine and expensive articles indeed, speaking well for her prosperity, and handed them out.

  As for Clement, he embraced his daughter time after time, and was so filled with the joy of seeing her that he could not think up a single question to ask her.

  So Salome said, "I dare say your robber-bridegroom has got enough of you and sent you packing."

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  "No, stepmother/' said Rosamond, "for he will not let me leave his side/*

  "Then he keeps you a prisoner, does he?" cried Salome. "Just as I thought!"

  "No, stepmother," said Rosamond, "for I stay of my own accord. But I thought of my father to whom I had not said good-by and it was more than I could bear, and I began to beg and to beg until at last this very morning I received permission to come here. But it is for a short time only."

  "I dare say when you return you will find that your bird has flown," said the stepmother next, for she pretended to know a great deal about the way of bandits.

  "No, stepmother. We have a trust in one another that this separation cannot break," said Rosamond, but her stepmother only began to smile and ponder, and ponder and smile.

  "Tell me, my ladybird," said Clement when he could speak through his delight and see through his tears, "are you happy?"

  "Yes, Father," said Rosamond. "Although my husband is a bandit, he is a very good one."