Short Fiction, Herman Melville [read out loud books TXT] 📗

foolish; but carried it off by declaring that this was the cock.

Now, during the preceding autumn I had been to the city, and had chanced to be present at a performance of the Italian Opera. In that opera figured in some royal character a certain Signor Beneventano⁠—a man of a tall, imposing person, clad in rich raiment, like to plumage, and with a most remarkable, majestic, scornful stride. The Signor Beneventano seemed on the point of tumbling over backward with exceeding haughtiness. And, for all the world, the proud pace of the cock seemed the very stage-pace of the Signor Beneventano.

Hark! suddenly the cock paused, lifted his head still higher, ruffled his plumes, seemed inspired, and sent forth a lusty crow. October Mountain echoed it; other mountains sent it back; still others rebounded it; it overran the country round. Now I plainly perceived how it was I had chanced to hear the gladdening sound on my distant hill.

“Good heavens! do you own the cock? Is that cock yours?”

“Is it my cock!” said Merrymusk, looking slyly gleeful out of the corner of his long, solemn face.

“Where did you get it?”

“It chipped the shell here. I raised it.”

“You?”

Hark? Another crow. It might have raised the ghosts of all the pines and hemlocks ever cut down in that country. Marvelous cock! Having crowed, he strode on again, surrounded by a bevy of admiring hens.

“What will you take for Signor Beneventano?”

“Sir?”

“That magic cock⁠—what will you take for him?”

“I won’t sell him.”

“I will give you fifty dollars.”

“Pooh!”

“One hundred!”

“Pish!”

“Five hundred!”

“Bah!”

“And you a poor man.”

“No; don’t I own that cock, and haven’t I refused five hundred dollars for him?”

“True,” said I, in profound thought; “that’s a fact. You won’t sell him, then?”

“No.”

“Will you give him?”

“No.”

“Will you keep him, then!” I shouted, in a rage.

“Yes.”

I stood awhile admiring the cock, and wondering at the man. At last I felt a redoubled admiration of the one, and a redoubled deference for the other.

“Won’t you step in?” said Merrymusk.

“But won’t the cock be prevailed upon to join us?” said I.

“Yes. Trumpet! hither, boy! hither!”

The cock turned round, and strode up to Merrymusk.

“Come!”

The cock followed us into the shanty.

“Crow!”

The roof jarred.

Oh, noble cock!

I turned in silence upon my entertainer. There he sat on an old battered chest, in his old battered gray coat, with patches at his knees and elbows, and a deplorably bunged hat. I glanced round the room. Bare rafters overhead, but solid junks of jerked beef hanging from them. Earth floor, but a heap of potatoes in one corner, and a sack of Indian meal in another. A blanket was strung across the apartment at the further end, from which came a woman’s ailing voice and the voices of ailing children. But somehow in the ailing of these voices there seemed no complaint.

“Mrs. Merrymusk and children?”

“Yes.”

I looked at the cock. There he stood majestically in the middle of the room. He looked like a Spanish grandee caught in a shower, and standing under some peasant’s shed. There was a strange supernatural look of contrast about him. He irradiated the shanty; he glorified its meanness. He glorified the battered chest, and tattered gray coat, and the bunged hat. He glorified the very voices which came in ailing tones from behind the screen.

“Oh, father,” cried a little sickly voice, “let Trumpet sound again.”

“Crow,” cried Merrymusk.

The cock threw himself into a posture. The roof jarred.

“Does not this disturb Mrs. Merrymusk and the sick children?”

“Crow again, Trumpet.”

The roof jarred.

“It does not disturb them, then?”

“Didn’t you hear ’em ask for it?”

“How is it, that your sick family like this crowing?” said I. “The cock is a glorious cock, with a glorious voice, but not exactly the sort of thing for a sick chamber, one would suppose. Do they really like it?”

“Don’t you like it? Don’t it do you good? Ain’t it inspiring? Don’t it impart pluck? give stuff against despair?”

“All true,” said I, removing my hat with profound humility before the brave spirit disguised in the base coat.

“But then,” said I, still with some misgivings, “so loud, so wonderfully clamorous a crow, methinks might be amiss to invalids, and retard their convalescence.”

“Crow your best now, Trumpet!”

I leaped from my chair. The cock frightened me, like some overpowering angel in the Apocalypse. He seemed crowing over the fall of wicked Babylon, or crowing over the triumph of righteous Joshua in the vale of Askelon. When I regained my composure somewhat, an inquisitive thought occurred to me. I resolved to gratify it.

“Merrymusk, will you present me to your wife and children?”

“Yes. Wife, the gentleman wants to step in.”

“He is very welcome,” replied a weak voice.

Going behind the curtain, there lay a wasted, but strangely cheerful human face; and that was pretty much all; the body, hid by the counterpane and an old coat, seemed too shrunken to reveal itself through such impediments. At the bedside sat a pale girl, ministering. In another bed lay three children, side by side; three more pale faces.

“Oh, father, we don’t mislike the gentleman, but let us see Trumpet too.”

At a word, the cock strode behind the screen, and perched himself on the children’s bed. All their wasted eyes gazed at him with a wild and spiritual delight. They seemed to sun themselves in the radiant plumage of the cock.

“Better than a ’pothecary, eh,” said Merrymusk. “This is Dr. Cock himself.”

We retired from the sick ones, and I reseated myself again, lost in thought, over this strange household.

“You seem a glorious independent fellow,” said I.

“And I don’t think you a fool, and never did. Sir, you are a trump.”

“Is there any hope of your wife’s recovery?” said I, modestly seeking to turn the conversation.

“Not the least.”

“The children?”

“Very little.”

“It must be a doleful life, then, for all concerned. This lonely solitude⁠—this shanty⁠—hard work⁠—hard times.”

“Haven’t I Trumpet? He’s the cheerer. He crows through all; crows at the darkest: Glory to God in the highest! Continually he crows it.”

“Just the import I first ascribed to his crow, Merrymusk, when first I heard it from my hill.