The Robber Bridegroom (8 page)

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.

io8 THE ROBBER .BRIDEGROOM

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."

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"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.

no THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM

"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.

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"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."

THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM 117

"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."

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"And does he bring you home fine clothes, dozens of beautiful dresses and petticoats too?" asked Salome, and Rosamond knew what she meant, but still she said, "Yes, indeed."

Then Clement thought, "She has met the man who can keep her from lying, and she is entirely out of the habit." And he was puzzled, and thought, "I should like to meet this strict bandit who has taught my daughter to be truthful."

"Where is your home, my child?" he asked.

"It is not far from here/' said Rosamond, "but it might as well be a hundred miles, for it is so deep and dark in the woods, that no one knows

the way out except my husband, who brought

» me.

Now the stepmother drew closer in upon Rosamond as she paced her circle, and said, "Does your husband kill the travelers where they stand, when he has finished with them, and leave them there in their blood, like all the rest?"

"I believe not," replied Rosamond, "but that I could not say, for he has never told me and I never asked him."

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"What? You poor ignorant girl!'* cried the stepmother. "I suppose you will say next that you do not even know his name for he has never told you!"

"That is correct/' replied Rosamond.

"What!" cried the stepmother, and she was drawing in closer still. "You have been kept in darkness! Now do not tell me you have never seen the man by the light of day without his robber's disguise."

For although Goat had failed every time to make his report to Salome, she had divined these things for herself by means of the very wickedness in her heart.

"That is correct too," said Rosamond, and how her stepmother laughed to hear it, like a jay bird in the tree.

"Now tell us," said she finally, and she stood just above Rosamond's head looking down upon her, "whether or not you are truly married, in the eyes of heaven and the church."

So Rosamond looked back and forth between her father and her stepmother, and then, "Oh

120 THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM indeed/' she said. "Father Danny O'Connell married us."

"God help him then," cried Clement, jumping to his feet, "for I see him on every journey I make to Rodney, and he has never told me."

"Ah, then, that is because the good father was drunk the day he married us," said Rosamond.

"Well, then, if he married you in the church, how is it you were not seen by the whole population of Rodney when you came down the steps?" said Salome.

"Oh, he did not marry us in the church," said Rosamond, "but at home in the woods."

"How did he know where to go, if I could not find it?" asked Clement, with his sorrow on his heart.

"That is because he did not go of his own knowledge or control," said Rosamond. "For my husband kidnaped him and brought him there. My husband rode down the streets of Rodney, and there was the priest, and he reached right down and got him like a hawk, and took him home. He was just a little drunk to begin with,

THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM 121 so my husband set him up on his own horse, nicely sideways because of the cloth, and rode him home, and there on the hearth he married us, as drunk as a lord at the time, but very binding in the way he put it."

"How did poor Father O'Connell ever get so bad as that?" asked Clement. "For all that he is a good shot, a horse judge, and a sampler of Madeira, I have never seen Father O'Connell so beside himself he did not know which sinner he was giving an almo to on the streets/'

"It was my husband that got him so drunk," said Rosamond. "First when they came, they had a little bragging contest, each surpassing the other until nobody won, and then my husband started a little contest to see who could empty the most from a jug for the count of ten, and all the rest stood around in a ring and they counted up to twenty-five. It was because of his sporting blood that Father O'Connell could not set down the jug, and he won."

"These competitions are dangerous things," said Clement. "I myself would have been the