A Jolly Fellowship, Frank Richard Stockton [best way to read an ebook TXT] 📗

"There wasn't any other way to do it, and so I did it this way," he said. "I'm sorry, really, to have to tie you up so, because I wouldn't like it myself, and I wouldn't have put that handkerchief over your mouth if you had agreed to keep quiet, but I don't want anybody coming in here until you've promised."[198]

"Promise!" I thought; "I'll never promise you that while the world rolls round."

"I know you can't say anything with that handkerchief over your mouth; but you don't have to speak. Your toes are loose. When you're ready to promise never to call me Rectus again, just wag your big toe, either one."

I stiffened my toes, as if my feet were cast in brass. Rectus moved his chair a little around, so that he could keep an eye on my toes. Then he looked at his watch, and said:

"It's seven o'clock now, and that's an hour from breakfast time. I don't want to keep you there any longer than I can help. You'd better wag your toe now, and be done with it. It's no use to wait."

"Wag?" I thought to myself. "Never!"

"I know what you're thinking," he went on. "You think that if you lie there long enough, you'll be all right, for when the chambermaid comes to do up the room, I must let her in, or else I'll have to say you're sick, and then the Chippertons will come up."

That was exactly what I was thinking.

"But that wont do you any good," said he, "I've thought of all that."

He was a curious boy. How such a thing as this should have come into his mind, I couldn't imagine. He must have read of something of the kind. But to think of his trying it on me! I ground my teeth.

He sat and watched me for some time longer. Once or twice he fixed the handkerchief over my mouth,[199] for he seemed anxious that I should be as comfortable as possible. He was awfully kind, to be sure!

"It isn't right that anybody should have such a name sticking to them always," he said. "And if I'd thought you'd have stopped it, I wouldn't have done this. But I knew you. You would just have laughed and kept on."

The young scoundrel! Why didn't he try me?

"Yesterday, when the governor met us, Corny called me Rectus, and even he said that was a curious name, and he didn't remember that I gave it to him, when he wrote that paper for us."

Oh, ho! That was it, was it? Getting proud and meeting governors! Young prig!

Now Rectus was quiet a little longer, and then he got up.

"I didn't think you'd be so stubborn," he said, "but perhaps you know your own business best. I'm not going to keep you there until breakfast is ready, and people want to come in."

Then he went over to the window, and came back directly with a little black paint-pot, with a brush in it.

"Now," said he, "if you don't promise, in five minutes, to never call me Rectus again, I'm going to paint one-half of your face black. I got this paint yesterday from the cane-man, on purpose."

Oil-paint! I could smell it.

"Now, you may be sure I'm going to do it," he said.

Oh, I was sure! When he said he'd do a thing, I[200] knew he'd do it. I had no doubts about that. He was great on sticking to his word.

He had put his watch on the table near by, and was stirring up the paint.

"You've only three minutes more," he said. "This stuff wont wash off in a hurry, and you'll have to stay up here by yourself, and wont need any tying. It's got stuff mixed with it to make it dry soon, so that you needn't lie there very long after I've painted you. You mustn't mind if I put my finger on your mouth when I take off the handkerchief; I'll be careful not to get any in your eyes or on your lips if you hold your head still. One minute more. Will you promise?"

What a dreadful minute! He turned and looked at my feet. I gave one big twist in my bandages. All held. I wagged my toe.

"Good!" said he. "I didn't want to paint you. But I would have done it, sure as shot, if you hadn't promised. Now I'll untie you. I can trust you to stick to your word,—I mean your wag," he said, with a grin.

It took him a long time to undo me. The young wretch had actually pinned long strips of muslin around me, and he had certainly made a good job of it, for they didn't hurt me at all, although they held me tight enough. He said, as he was working at me, that he had torn up two old shirts to make these bandages, and had sewed some of the strips together the afternoon before. He said he had heard of something like this being done at a school. A pretty school that must have been![201]

He unfastened my arms first,—that is, as soon as he had taken the handkerchief off my mouth,—and the moment he had taken the bandage from around my ankles, he put for the door. But I was ready. I sprang out of bed, made one jump over his bed, around which he had to go, and caught him just at the door.

He forgot that he should have left my ankles for me to untie for myself.

I guess the people in the next rooms must have thought there was something of a rumpus in our room when I caught him.

There was considerable coolness between Colbert and me after that. In fact, we didn't speak. I was not at all anxious to keep this thing up, for I was satisfied, and was perfectly willing to call it square; but for the first time since I had known him, Colbert was angry. I suppose every fellow, no matter how good-natured he may be, must have some sort of a limit to what he will stand, and Colbert seemed to have drawn his line at a good thrashing.

It wasn't hard for me to keep my promise to him, for I didn't call him anything; but I should have kept it all the same if we had been on the old terms.

Of course, Corny soon found out that there was something the matter between us two, and she set herself to find out what it was.

"What's the matter with you and Rectus?" she asked me the next day. I was standing in the carriage-way before the hotel, and she ran out to me.

"You mustn't call him Rectus," said I. "He doesn't like it."[202]

"Well, then, I wont," said she. "But what is it all about? Did you quarrel about calling him that? I hate to see you both going about, and not speaking to each other."

I had no reason to conceal anything, and so I told her the whole affair, from the very beginning to the end.

"I don't wonder he's mad," said she, "if you thrashed him."

"Well, and oughtn't I to be mad after the way he treated me?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "It makes me sick just to think of being tied up in that way,—and the black paint, too! But then you are so much bigger than he is, that it don't seem right for you to thrash him."

"That's one reason I did it," said I. "I didn't want to fight him as I should have fought a fellow of my own size. I wanted to punish him. Do you think that when a father wants to whip his son he ought to wait until he grows up as big as he is?"

"No," said Corny, very gravely. "Of course not. But Rectus isn't your son. What shall I call him? Samuel, or Sam? I don't like either of them, and I wont say Mr. Colbert. I think 'Rectus' is a great deal nicer."

"So do I," I said; "but that's his affair. To be sure, he isn't my son, but he's under my care, and if he wasn't, it would make no difference. I'd thrash any boy alive who played such a trick on me."

"Unless he was bigger than you are," said Corny.

"Well, then I'd get you to help me. You'd do it; wouldn't you, Corny?"[203]

She laughed.

"I guess I couldn't help much, and I suppose you're both right to be angry at each other; but I'm awful sorry if things are going on this way. It didn't seem like the same place yesterday. Nobody did anything at all."

"I tell you what it is, Corny," said I. "You're not angry with either of us; are you?"

"No, indeed," said she, and her face warmed up and her eyes shone.

"That's one comfort," said I, and I gave her a good hand-shake.

It must have looked funny to see a boy and a girl shaking hands there in front of the hotel, and a young darkey took advantage of our good-humor, and, stealing out from a shady corner of the court, sold us seven little red and black liquorice-seed for fourpence,—the worst swindle that had been worked on us yet.[204]

It's of no use to deny the fact that Nassau was a pretty dull place, just about this time. At least Corny and I found it so, and I don't believe young Mr. Colbert was very happy, for he didn't look it. It's not to be supposed that our quarrel affected the negroes, or the sky, or the taste of bananas; but the darkeys didn't amuse me, and my recollection of those days is that they were cloudy, and that I wasn't a very good customer down in the market-house by the harbor, where we used to go and buy little fig-bananas, which they didn't have at the hotel, but which were mighty good to eat.

Colbert and I still kept up a frigid reserve toward each other. He thought, I suppose, that I ought to speak first, because I was the older, and I thought that he ought to speak first because he was the younger.

One evening, I went up into my room, having absolutely nothing else to do, and there I found Colbert, writing. I suppose he was writing a letter, but there[205] was no need of doing this at night, as the mail would not go out for several days, and there would be plenty of time to write in the daytime. He hadn't done anything but lounge about for two or three days. Perhaps he came up here to write because he had nothing else to do.

There was only one table, and I couldn't write if I had wanted to, so I opened my trunk and began to put some of my things in order. We had arranged, before we had fallen out, that we should go home on the next steamer, and Mr. and Mrs. Chipperton were going too. We had been in Nassau nearly a month, and had seen about as much as was to be seen—in an ordinary way. As for me, I couldn't afford to stay any longer, and that had been the thing that had settled the matter, as far as Colbert and I were concerned. But now he might choose to stay, and come home by himself. However, there