THE PASSING OF THE GRATCHER; AND ANOTHER

From year to year the perfect father came to Edom to be a week with his children.  And though from visit to visit there were external variations in him, his genial and refreshing spirit was changeless.  When his garments were appreciably less regal, even to the kind eye of his younger son; when his hat was not all one might wish; the boots less than excellent; the priceless watch-chain absent, or moored to a mere bunch of aimless keys, though the bounty from his pockets was an irregular and minute trickle of copper exclusively, the little boy strutted as proudly by his side, worshipping him as loyally, as when these outer affairs were quite the reverse.  Yet he could not avoid being sensible of the fluctuations.

One year the parent would come with the long hair of one who, having been brother to the red Indian for years, has wormed from his medicine man the choicest secret of his mysterious pharmacopaeia, and who would out of love for suffering humanity place this within the reach of all for a nominal consideration.

Another year he would be shorn of the sweeping moustache and much of the tawny hair, and the little boy would understand that he had travelled extensively with a Mr. Haverly, singing his songs each evening in large cities, and being spoken of as “the phenomenal California baritone.”  His admiring son envied the fortunate people of those cities.

Again he would be touring the world of cities with some simple article of household use which, from his luxurious barouche, he was merely introducing for the manufacturers ­perhaps a rare cleaning-fluid, a silver-polish, or that ingenious tool which will sharpen knives and cut glass, this being, indeed, one of his prized staples.  It appeared ­so the little boy heard him tell Milo Barrus ­that few men could resist buying a tool with which he actually cut a pane of glass into strips before their eyes; that one beholding the sea of hands waving frantically up to him with quarters in them, after his demonstration, would have reason to believe that all men had occasion to slice off a strip of glass every day or so.  Instead of this, as an observer of domestic and professional life, he believed that out of the thousands to whom he had sold this tool, not ten had ever needed to cut glass, nor ever would.

There was another who continued indifferent to the personal estate of this father.  This was Grandfather Delcher, who had never seen him since that bleak day when he had tried to bury the memory of his daughter.  When the perfect father came to Edom the grandfather went to his room and kept there so closely that neither ever beheld the other.  The little boy was much puzzled by this apparently intentional avoidance of each other by two men of such rare distinction, and during the early visits of his father he was fruitful of suggestion for bringing them together.  But when he came to understand that they remained apart by wish of the elder man, he was troubled.  He ceased then all efforts to arrange a meeting to which he had looked forward with pride in his office of exhibiting each personage to the other.  But he was grieved toward his grandfather, becoming sharp and even disdainful to the queer, silent old man, at those times when the father was in the village.  He could have no love and but little friendliness for one who slighted his dear father.  And so a breach widened between them from year to year, as the child grew stouter fibre into his sentiments of loyalty and justice.

Meantime, age crept upon the little boy, relentlessly depriving him of this or that beloved idol, yet not unkindly leaving with him the pliant vitality that could fashion others to be still more warmly cherished.

With Nancy, on afternoons when cool shadows lay across the lawn between their houses, he often discussed these matters of life.  Nancy herself had not been spared the common fate.  Being now a mere graceless rudiment of humanity, all spindling arms and legs, save for a puckered, freckled face, she was past the witless time of expecting to pick up a bird with a broken wing and find it a fairy godmother who would give her three wishes.  It was more plausible now that a prince, “all dressed up in shiny Prince Clothes,” would come riding up on a creamy white horse, lift her to the saddle in front of him and gallop off, calling her “My beautiful darling!” while Madmasel, her uncle, and Betsy, the cook, danced up and down on the front piazza impotently shouting “Help!” She suspected then, when it was too late, that certain people would bitterly wish they had acted in a different manner.  If this did not happen soon, she meant to go into a convent where she would not be forever told things for her own good by those arrogantly pretending to know better, and where she could devote a quiet life to the bringing up of her children.

The little boy sympathised with her.  He knew what it was to be disappointed in one’s family.  The family he would have chosen for his own was that of which two excellent views were given on the circus bills.  In one picture they stood in line, maddeningly beautiful in their pink tights, ranging from the tall father and mother down through four children to a small boy that always looked much like himself.  In the other picture these meritorious persons were flying dizzily through the air at the very top of the great tent, from trapeze to trapeze, with the littlest boy happily in the greatest danger, midway in the air between the two proud parents, who were hurling him back and forth.

It was absurd to think of anything like this in connection with a family of which only one member had either courage or ambition.  One had only to study Clytie or Grandfather Delcher a few moments to see how hopeless it all was.

The next best life to be aspired to was that of a house-painter, who could climb about unchided on the frailest of high scaffolds, swing from the dizziest cupola, or sway jauntily at the top of the longest ladder ­always without the least concern whether he spilled paint on his clothes or not.

Then, all in a half-hour, one afternoon, both he and Nancy seemed to cross a chasm of growth so wide that one thrilled to look back to the farther side where all objects showed little and all interests were juvenile.  And this phenomenon, signalised by the passing of the Gratcher, came in this wise.  As they rested from play ­this being a time when the Gratcher was most likely to be seen approaching by him of the Gratcher-eye, the usual alarm was given, followed by the usual unbreathing silence.  The little boy fixedly bent his magic eye around the corner of the house, the little girl scrambling to him over the grass to clutch one of his arms, to listen fearfully for the setting of the monster’s crutches at the end of each stride, to feel if the earth trembled, as it often distinctly did, under his awful tread.

Wider grew the eyes of both at each “Now he’s nearer still!” of the little boy, until at last the girl must hide her head lest she see that awful face leering past the corner.  For, once the Gratcher’s eye met yours fairly, he caught you in an instant and worked his will.  This was to pick you up and look at you on all sides at once with the eyes in his finger-ends, which tickled you so that you lost your mind.

But now, at the shrillest and tensest report of progress from the gifted watcher, all in a wondrous second of realisation, they turned to look into each other’s eyes ­and their ecstasy of terror was gone in the quick little self-conscious laughs they gave.  It was all at once as if two grown-ups had in a flash divined that they had been playing at a childish game under some spell.  The moment was not without embarrassment, because of their having caught themselves in the very act and frenzy of showing terror of this clumsy fiction.  Foolishly they averted their glances, after that first little laugh of sudden realisation; but again their eyes met, and this time they laughed loud and long with a joy that took away not only all fears of the Gratcher forever, but their first embarrassment of themselves.  Then, with no word of the matter whatsoever, each knowing that the other understood, they began to talk of life again, feeling older and wiser, which truly they were.

For, though many in time wax brave to beard their Gratcher even in his lair, only the very wise learn this ­that the best way to be rid of him is to laugh him away ­that no Gratcher ever fashioned by the ingenuity of terror-loving humans can keep his evil power over one to whom he has become funny.

The passing of the Gratcher had left no pedestal crying for another idol.  In its stead, for his own chastening and with all reverence, the little boy erected the spirit of that God which the Bible tells of, who is all-wise and loving, yet no sentimentalist, as witness his sudden devastations among the first-born of all things, from white rabbits to men.

But an idol next went down that not only left a wretched vacancy in the boy’s pantheon, but fell against his heart and made an ugly wound.  It was as if he had become suddenly clear-seeing on that day when the Gratcher shrivelled in the blast of his laugh.

A little later came the father on his annual visit, and the dire thing was done.  The most ancient and honoured of all the idols fell with a crash.  A perfect father was lost in some common, swaggering, loud-voiced, street-mannered creature, grotesquely self-satisfied, of a cheap, shabby smartness, who came flaunting those things he should not have flaunted, and proclaiming in every turn of his showy head his lack of those things without which the little boy now saw no one could be a gentleman.

He cried in his bed that night, after futile efforts to believe that some fearful change had been wrought in his father.  But his memory of former visits was scrupulously photographic ­phonographic even.  He recalled from the past certain effects once keenly joyed in that now made his cheeks burn.  The things rioted brutally before him, until it seemed that something inside of him strove to suppress them ­as if a shamed hand reached out from his heart to brush the whole offense into decent hiding with one quick sweep.

This time he took care that Nancy should not meet his father.  Yet he walked the streets with him as before ­walking defiantly and with shame those streets through which he had once led the perfect father in festal parade, to receive the applause of a respectful populace.  Now he went forth awkwardly, doggedly, keen for signs that others saw what he did, and quick to burn with bitter, unreasoning resentment, when he detected that they did so.  Once his father rallied him upon his “grumpiness”; then he grew sullen ­though trying to smile ­thinking with mortification of his grandfather.  He understood the old man now.

He was glad when the week came to an end.  Bruised, bewildered, shamed, but loyal still and resentful toward others who might see as he did, he was glad when his father went ­this time as Professor Alfiretti, doing a twenty-minute turn of hypnotism and mind-reading with the Gus Levy All-Star Shamrock Vaudeville, playing the “ten-twenty-thirties,” whatever they were!