 | A woman in armor |  |
OLD GARGOYLE.
OLD GARGOYLE lived in a shelf of the
mountain. His cabin was a frail affair—
built of poles and roofed with clapboards
and stones—which he had constructed
himself; working like some old enchanter in the
dark, so that it appeared sprung, fungus-like,
from the mountain, the growth of a night. How
long it had stood in its cranny of the hill, and
how long Old Gargoyle had inhabited it, no
native could surely declare. Some people were
of opinion that Old Gargoyle settled on the
mountain thirty years ago, while others wouldn't
take oath, but they “kalkilated it warn't on'y
'bout twenty.” Whether he had gloomed twenty
or thirty years on his eyrie, however, he seemed
destined to find his lot an immortal one. The
sons of men in the valleys below him died and
were gathered to their fathers; their children
wedded and perpetuated the race; changes were
roads cut through the vast armies of the forest;
more cabins built; grimy fellows took up the
daily habit of delving in pits for iron and coal,
and casting the same into furnace fires; the
jealousies and vanities, from which even barbarous
society is not free, rolled beneath Old Gargoyle's
feet. Still he sat upon the mountain,
like a torn and draggled eagle bending his shagroofed
eye downward, and outwardly changing
little.
Though the people called him “Old Gargoyle”
he was not an aged man. “Old” in
connection with him was used as an adjective
of contempt. He was little past that period
which happy men call “the prime of life,” and
he must have been comparatively young when
he first piled up his lonely altar on the mountain.
His hermit life and eccentric appearance
covered him with lichen.
He was a sinewy man, shaggy as a bison
with hair and beard—with two coal-like eyes
burning through his bush. He was not particular
with his tailor—whose name, in fact, was
Old Gargoyle—and who covered him with a
suit of sackcloth coarse as grape-vine. He
wore the most uncivilized hats man has ever
invented; and as for shoes, he pegged up various
skins to serve him in such capacity. His
shoulders were a little bent; he had taciturn
habits, and scarcely noticed any greeting proffered
so that he was a formidable object to
meet when he tore through the brush across the
mountain, going to or from his work.
The interior of Gargoyle's cabin was a mystery
to all the inhabitants of the valley. Aged
grannies who disseminated from chimney corners
the superstitions of the elders, advanced the
theory that Gargoyle's housekeeping was done
by some of those ladies who are supposed to be
able to turn the broomstick defensive into the
broomstick progressive, and to prance on the
same through the air; and that he was in familiar
communication with that gentleman against
whom the vulgar entertain a prejudice, principally
on account of some natural deformity of
the feet, and his retention of our ancestral appendage,
the tail. They warned their various
grandsons, did these grannies, not to go a-nigh
Old Gargoyle's den—when perambulating up
the mountains after wintergreen or laurel or
larks of any kind—“for there was no tellin'
what mischief he might work 'em with that eye
of his'n! He had just such an eye as that witch
down the Rocky Branch had, that used to lay
in a dead swound while her spirit went out of
the winder in the shape of a bumble-bee, to
work witchcrafts. And many's the one kin recollect
how that witch made an eejiot of Taverner's
child by stingin' him on the head while he lay
in his cradle under the very cradle-quilt his
And how she cast her evil eye on stock and
it tuck disease and al'ays died! And how she
al'ays swallered the bumble-bee ag'in when it
come buzzin' back from its goin's-out!”
Or, if Old Gargoyle was unable to cast the wiles
of the Rocky Branch witch over them, he might
send the hoofed and tailed one after them—
whom one of the grannies had once surely
seen. “Oh, yes! Young folks had lots of new-fangled
notions since these singin' masters and
school-teachers had come around, but she knew
what she had seen! It was easy to say there
warn't no sech things and it was all imagination,
but if you had vainly curled your har and gone
to bed hopin' to kink in the mornin', and had
seen him come through the winder, and heard
his hoofs clatter on the floor and could 'a put
your finger out and touched his hary hide while
he stood twistin' the papers on your head, you'd
believe, too, that Satan was around!”
Out of the experience of all these past perils
did grandmothers exhort, while they smoked
with the chimneys by which they sat. But
youthful man is prone to disobedience; and the
urchins were as mad after Old Gargoyle as
modern navigators after the Northwest Passage.
They knew he was a perilous mystery, but all
the more they yearned to explore him.
In squads of four or five they crept up towards
his lair; hushing their chirp as they
each jacket—ready to fly if his shaggy head
but appeared. Summer and winter they ventured,
but even when they knew him to be absent,
there was such horror about the spot he
inhabited, that no one got within stone's throw
of it until after many campaigns.
Old Gargoyle often darted unexpectedly out
of his hut when they believed him miles away,
and sent them yelling and revolving over each
other down the steep! Yet did this omnipresence
but increase the charm of his terrors. He
resented their prowling, and often threw stones
at the heads he detected growing out of rocks!
But sundry wary and Indian-like youths spied
out much concerning him, and on their testimony
rests such accounts as remain of Old
Gargoyle's haunt and habits.
His door was hinged in wooden sockets, and
when it turned it revealed one smoke-black
room. The floor was made of puncheons, and
a fire-place of stones was built in the wall opposite
the door. He had chinked his pole-house
with clay of the hills, which hardened is proof
against ordinary weather, and the mountain
sheltered him from the north. His uncovered
rafters were swaying poles, on which he hung
clothes and bedding; in dismal twilights those
poles had the appearance of affording roost to a
family of collapsed mummies.
A rude cupboard leaned against his left-hand
of his inner man, he frequently, without boiling
of kettle, or any human, cheerful preparation, sat
down before the unwholesome cupboard like a
ghoul, and with a sheath-knife carved sufficient
food to silence his cravings.
A bed-frame made of twisted saplings graced
the right side of his domicile, and never was
whiteness seen on the pedestal of Old Gargoyle's
dream-structures. Blankets and buffalo robes
made his bed, and he evidently stirred it but
seldom.
In a torrent-like stream, flinging itself down
the steeps not far from the cabin, Old Gargoyle
washed his hairy body and his clothes. If the
boys ever surprised him in the act of doing his
month's laundry work, he stoned them with
special fury.
To be let alone was all he appeared to ask of
the world, and he lived his solitary, miserable
life without giving sign that he needed aught of
his fellow-man.
The furnace-men with whom he worked were
divided in opinion concerning him. That he
was a steady and sinewy laborer they all agreed;
that he spent nothing in debauchery was equally
evident; that he was open-handed toward any
needy fellow-workman they saw repeatedly,
when he stepped forward with all his hoard to
relieve sick families, or to maintain those disabled
in the iron-works. Yet he was not a
no desire to be such. One faction of them
thought him a lunatic—none but an insane
person would carry out such a course of life as
his. And the other faction dubbed him daft—
a harmless though formidable looking “natural.”
Perhaps Old Gargoyle heard their talk about
him. But he heard as if he heard not. He
did his work like a Vulcan, and went his ways,
lowering and shaggy, with deeper than contempt
in his heart for the opinions of his fellow-men.
Sometimes of a bright summer Sunday, when
an itinerant preacher gathered a flock in the log
school-house to enjoy a vigorous Bible pounding
and ex-pounding, Old Gargoyle came slowly
down the mountain and sat under the wisdom of
such apostle.
He was at these times an object of greater
interest to the valley-dwellers than the preacher's
text. Fat and stolid farmers bent looks of
sleepy patronage on the hermit of their region,
and their good wives had much ado—hush-h-hing
and fanning—to keep the children from indicating
aloud the strong points of Old Gargoyle.
Then did valley belles toss their heads
and giggle. For it was a standing joke among
them to accuse one another of “setting your
cap for Old Gargoyle!”
Old Gargoyle set his face to the preacher and
listened while his eyes gleamed. Few discourses
comment from him. In those days the evangelist
of the wilderness was often a man with more
tongue than either heart or brain; who greatly
enjoyed spreading his little stock of learning
before a gaping congregation, and fixing anathema
on all denominations except his own. He
gave them one Bible sentence and a thousand
pulpit oaths, one grain of solid word, and the
accumulated chaff of a lifetime. So Old Gargoyle's
taste was not to be cavilled at in that he
disagreed often with his clergy. But he once
startled all the children near him, and set them
going like music-boxes of many tunes, so that
their mothers made a procession carrying them
out—by clenching his fist and hitting his seat
hard, at the same time gritting his teeth with
bruin force, while the preacher preached forgiveness
of all enemies under any and all circumstances.
Thus did Old Gargoyle live, in the sight
though not the company of this people, year by
year. He appeared to change so little, to withstand
so hardily the hill blasts of winter and
every shock of time, that it became a joke in
the valley that Old Gargoyle was going to live
forever, unless the rocks piled above him came
down, proving at once his death and funeral.
The iron foundry closed its works one stormy
November evening, and those men who lived
near, congratulated themselves, for a struggle
Old Gargoyle took to his path. He had cleft
many a rain storm in his life, and cared very
little for stinging cold or whirling wind. Other
men lingered around the furnace's red heart, and
spoke of camping down under present shelter,
and making a night of it, instead of breasting
the weather to their homes. They had wives
and children waiting for them; Old Gargoyle
had desolation and darkness. Yet they would
stay and he would go. It made no difference
to him where he was. And he never shunned a
wrestle with the elements.
Through thick undergrowth he pushed, trying
to find his beaten path as often as lightning
glared upon the world. His eyes shone like a
panther's; when he found it, he was obliged to
swim the beating air with all the strength of his
arms and legs.
Rain roared upon the mountain, and the
booming of gathering floods could be heard
below.
In such a storm one can scarcely recall the
world as light and dry and green; a dull certainty
prevails in one's mind that it will never
be so again; the raging and roaring and danger
will last forever!
He had a four miles wrestle, and he fought
every inch of his ground. Lightning zig-zagged
past his eyes, and its thunder seemed to burst
nearer and more terrible than the last. Streams
of water sprang under his feet, and flamed up
at him in the glare. Drenched and breathless
he felt his way—now in the path, now creeping,
lost under the laurel growth. The mountain
looked strange to him when a cloven sky revealed
it; unknown rocks and foreign crowns of tree-trunks
turned his head; hour after hour he was
buffeted about, till even his hardy body and
defiant soul were beaten. Before him and behind
him, again and again rose the long, whistling
sound of trees beginning to fall—that cry
of the dryad driven from home!—and the after
thunder of their groaning through neighboring
limbs.
He heard a cry of some perishing animal. It
was like the scream of a wounded horse; whatever
it was, he felt it might be uttering his
death-note with its own, until another cannonading
glare revealed his cabin standing on its
shelf.
The wind hurled him against the door, and he
fell down on his floor in the water which had
streamed through, hours before, and which had
drenched out the embers he left covered with
ashes in his fire-place.
With his back against the shut door, he sat
and panted, too exhausted to strike a light.
The house was a dismal shell, and very inadequate
protection from a storm which shook
heard stones and clapboards flying off the roof
in showers.
But by degrees, sense of danger and sense of
fatigue were swallowed up in another sense—
that of some human presence. He could hear
no inward sound, and burst of lightning revealed
no unusual object to him but that some
one was there with him in that cabin, he felt
powerfully convinced.
Groping warily around, he grasped everything
within reach, but each time withdrew his
hand unsatisfied.
He crept to his cupboard and felt among the
miscellaneous articles kept in strange contact
there, for matches, or for flint and steel and tinder;
and after long and silent endeavor, he
smote a light suddenly above his head, and
looked around his cabin.
The old clothes were alone on their perch;
his bed was untenanted; nobody sat on his one
bench—but there! at the foot of his bed, heaped
down as if it had been thrown, was a man's
body.
Old Gargoyle sheltered his light with one
hand, and turned this body over to identify it.
As he turned it, its pain roused its unconscious
inhabitant, who groaned and tried to drag
himself up. He had cast off much of his clothing
before he swooned; one of his legs presented a
startling angle.
Old Gargoyle helped him and set him up
against the wall.
He was a man of perhaps Gargoyle's age, but
of very different appearance. Drenched though
he was and distorted in feature, an air of gentility
was yet around him. The garments tossed
from him were of the world's cut, and so were
his hair and beard.
“I got lost on that cursed wood road,” he
muttered, trying to rouse himself and explain
his position to this person who had evidently
come to his assistance. “Rock fell down,
half crushing my horse. I escaped—hurt, however—leg
broken, I believe—oh! give me something
to take away this deadly faintness!”
“Yes!” Gargoyle stood up and found a
sheltered socket for his light. “I'll give you
something!” He folded his arms and put himself
in front of the face he had detected. “I've
been keepin' something for you this many a
year!”
The stranger roused himself and stared at
Gargoyle with fascinated eyes. “Who are you?”
breathed the stranger.
Gargoyle crossed his cabin, seized his gun and
levelled it at the man's head.
“Straighten up thar!” he commanded. “I
want to hit you in that fine front brain of
your'n!”
In the same instant the stranger recognized
his eyes.
The gun clicked; no report followed; for it
had been thoroughly soaked by the storm.
“Never mind!” cried Gargoyle, dropping
it and seizing his long knife from its sheath,
“water won't cool the spirit out of this? But I
want you to answer me first!”
“I'm wounded!” pleaded the stranger, “I
can't defend myself!”
“You're not a man!” snarled Gargoyle,
“you're a beast that ought to be shot if you
tracked in blood! You know what you did to
me! I wasn't got up your style, but I wasn't
Old Gargoyle up in the mountain in them days.
I was a law-abiding citizen, and I had a wife and
two children that I ought to have this minute,
and would have had—What did you do with
her?”
“Give me some brandy!” begged the
stranger, “I am fainting—give me something
that will keep me from sinking into unconsciousness,
and I'll tell you all I know!”
Gargoyle, keeping a jealous eye on his guest,
went to his cupboard and found brandy, which
he administered quickly.
“I have no weapons,” said the stranger, reviving
and noticing his distrust; “I lost my pistols
when I was unhorsed, and am completely
at your mercy.”
His voice had a whining cadence which the
with the brandy, winced at the pain in his leg,
and would have made further overtures to comfort.
“I crept here I scarcely know how!” he
groaned.
“Tell me what you did with her and them!”
grated Gargoyle, sitting resolutely down before
him, and fixing glittering eyes on his finer
hands, his civilized face. “I don't care how
you came here; I know you'll go away in a
consid'able different shape! You're the man I
looked for far and near, but couldn't find nowhar.
Never thought you'd come along yourself
if I'd only sit and wait! Now speak up
loud!”
“What must I tell?” murmured the stranger,
closing his eyes and leaning weakly against the
cabin-side.
“You know!” roared Gargoyle; “what did
you do with her and them, I tell ye! Look at
me!”
They looked at each other. The fitful candle
showed plainly enough that they were opposites.
The stranger was of the “long man” type; the
brilliant but the weak, the intellectual but self-adoring,
the bombastic but mean man.
Gargoyle, on the contrary, was that type of
man who is either a god or a beast among his
contemporaries; strongly built, strong in his
sensibilities; strong in that degree of mind
their lives upon one person or object, and are
defrauded of that person or object, they are terrible
to meet, and if vengeance be not given into
their hands, they turn and gnaw their own hearts
out.
Both men were past the prime of life. One
had the rough of the wilderness upon him, and
the other a false social polish which gave him
great advantage in appearance.
But while Gargoyle looked at his enemy, the
years appeared to roll off him; he straightened,
and was a younger man. Like a tiger couchant,
he watched his lengthy adversary.
“You was my friend,” he prefaced, rubbing
his hard thumb against the knife. “You
thought a heap of my family. Them days I believed
in honor, and seeing you was smarter-tongued
than me, it pleased me to see you make
yourself agreeable among us! A boy and a
girl; pretty little fellows; and a woman, sweet
and good till you got round her. What did
you do with them? Will I have to half-kill you
to make you tell?”
“They died,” replied the stranger, slowly.
“How long ago?” grated Gargoyle, his voice
coming hoarse from the depths of his throat.
“Years. Just after she left with me. The
children took an epidemic disease, and their
mother caught it nursing them, and died with
them.”
“Is that all true?”
“I swear it is all true. Gargoyle, I know you
will kill me, but if you would only consider how
wounded and helpless I am now—”
The meanness of the man, like the weakness
and pleading of a frightened woman, held back
the arm of his manlier antagonist. Moreover,
Gargoyle knew not what was within himself.
Though this man was to his eye a snake whose
head ought to be crushed, though his own
wrongs were piled up to the sky, and he could
scarcely forbear striking, he held his hand and
himself.
“I never meant to injure you so, Gargoyle,”
whined the man.
“Hush up or I'll kill you this minute!”
yelled Gargoyle, tramping about his cabin
floor.
A gust of wind blew out the light. But by
the flashes of the storm, he could yet see his
enemy crouching white and abject by the opposite
wall.
Twice he crossed the floor with the knife
clenched for a blow, and twice he withheld his
hand.
He threw the cabin-door wide and rushed out
into the storm, which after a lull had broken out
again in fury.
He stretched his arms abroad, this mightily
betrayed and scarred man. Nothing but blood
could wipe out the blackness of his story.
Yet Old Gargoyle, alone on the stormy mountain,
now doubling himself and now reaching
upward with strong crying—perhaps recognized
a Maker of Life above all men and all wrongs!
“Keep me from killin' him!” he cried. “I'll
kill him if I see him again! He ought to die!
I will kill him! But, oh! somewhar feel for
me and keep me from killin' him!”
Perhaps, also, the God who rode upon the
storm heard this, and reached down through
the tumultuousness of the man.
A sound like the last thunderings began up the
mountain. Gargoyle heard rushing and crashing.
He stood still and felt the visitation pass
near him, knew the grinding down of his house
when that was struck, estimated the depth to
which the mass of rock fell below him, and remained
motionless in the lull which followed.
He knew that thing had happened which the
valley residents always prophesied. The rocks
hanging above his eyrie had fallen upon it.
What of the man he left inside?
The rain again subsided, and a keen wind
began to cut across the mountain. A late
moon had gotten up in the east, and was trying
to part her way through ragged clouds.
Old Gargoyle heard a human cry, and he knew
whence it came.
Among the ruins of his house something was
struggling. He picked his cautious way among
shoulders.
“I feel crushed across the body!” groaned
the wretch. “Oh, move that stone! Oh, take
those little logs away!”
So, feeling according to direction, did Gargoyle
work and tug with lavish use of his ebbing
strength, saying never a sentence to the enemy
while he untombed him.
There were two men upon the mountain.
One was long and bruised over all his length;
who cried and groaned with feverish pain.
The other was built like Vulcan, but his great
endurance failed this night.
A squad of men, going about to relieve sufferers
from the tornado, next morning found
these two men upon the mountain.
The stranger was alive, though unconscious.
He was held on Gargoyle's knee, and warmed
by Gargoyle's clothing, supplied to his need at
intervals during the night. Yea, Gargoyle had
torn his own shirt to rags and bound up his
enemy's bleeding spots with them.
He sat upright before his witnesses—Old
Gargoyle. Call him a lion done in bronze;
shaggy but kingly.
“Keep me from killin' him!” Old Gargoyle
had cried, and lo! he had lifted his own soul
immeasurable heights above the abject thing he
left alive.
Dead on the mountain sat Old Gargoyle, in
upon his knees, covered his enemy with his
covering, and warmed his enemy with the last
spark of his life!
Grand Old Gargoyle! He was that wonderful
contradiction—that combination of weakness
and power, littleness and glory—A MAN!
| A woman in armor | |