Bram Stoker - Bram Stoker - The Complete Novels

“Wall, an’ it’s you, Little Missy. Durn! if I hadn’t kem away by myself I’d have busted — jest busted with laughter. The old lady takes the Indians like she was a queen, an’ all the while it ain’t her they’re after at all. There ain’t one of them that wouldn’t take and put a tomahawk through her skull or skelp her so far as the queenin’ racket is concerned.”

“Then what is it they are after, Dick?”

“It’s the parrot! Nothin’ else than that durned parrot!” and again Dick went off into fits of laughter.

When he recovered his breath, he went on:

“Did ye notice Kim lately — the parrot, I mean — they’ve all been tryin’ to get near him, and jest now one of them went up nigh him, an’ as soon as he got near up, the durned bird says ‘How!’ jest as well as if he was a Christian or an Indian. The man was so took back that he was like to drop. They all thought he was a god before, but nothin’ in this world would make them disbelieve it now!”

“But how does this affect Miss Gimp?”

“Why, don’t ye see, Little Missy, that she has the charge of him; she’s the sachem, the medicine-man, the witch, and they want to make themselves solid with her because they think she can square him. There isn’t one of them that likes her; but, all the same, they’d go a good length to please old Yam-pi, as they call her.”

“What is Yam-pi? What does it mean?” said Esse, inquisitively.

“It means, in Shoshonie, ‘Leather Legs,’ or ‘the old woman with boots,’” said Dick, and he laughed again.

Esse came away from the wood not altogether pleased with Dick. There seemed to be an overpowering levity in his character which did not altogether suit her idea of him, based originally on his fine physique. A woman who likes a man wants to respect him, and as Dick was the only male in the place, for of course Indians and servants did not count, she felt that she had to think of him now and then.

One morning Miss Gimp was in a state of suppressed excitement which at once arrested Esse’s attention. At breakfast she could not remain still, but buzzed and fluttered about everyone and everything in an unusual way. Mrs. Elstree with her usual placidity did not notice anything out of the common, or, if she did, kept it to herself. Esse had therefore the sweet interest of a secret, and she carefully noticed every detail of the companion, and very shortly came to the conclusion that she had a secret which she was simply bursting to tell someone — anyone. With true feminine perversity she therefore, at once and sternly, made up her mind that she would not assist in the unfolding at all. If Gimp wanted to tell anything she would have to do so altogether on her own initiative. It would of course have been quite a different thing if Gimp had a secret which she didn’t want to tell; in such case Esse would have had to make the overtures and do the entire corkscrew business herself. Therefore it was that the games of hide-and-seek, run-away-and-follow, were so prolonged that morning until they would have afforded the most exquisite enjoyment to any third party who had been in the secret. Esse stayed all the early forepart of the morning with her mother, nothing could take her away, lured Miss Gimp never so wisely; and when she did go out it was at a time when Miss Gimp was absorbed in some household duty and could not follow her. She went into the wood, and when Miss Gimp followed and called after her softly, she did not answer; so hour after hour Miss Gimp had to bear in her breast the burden of her untold secret. After lunch Esse’s heart relented, and she strolled out to the seat on the rocks so that Miss Gimp could follow her. She sat down, and within a few minutes the amanuensis sat alongside her and had entered on her theme. Esse noticed that she had put on a veil, an adornment — or concealment — so rare with her that it became at once noticeable. Esse sat down and waited. She had allowed the first step to be taken and had to be wooed into accepting the next. Miss Gimp looked up at her under her eyelids with a very tolerable imitation of bashfulness, simpered, sighed, looked up and down several times, turned warily round to see that there was no one else within earshot, gave a premonitory cough, and opened proceedings:

“It is a very strange thing!” said she.

“Indeed?”

“Yes, my dear; and the worst of it is that it is so embarrassing. One doesn’t wish to make anyone unhappy, much less to ruin their lives!”

After a pause, which Esse filled up with another “Indeed,” Miss Gimp went on:

“I have been told that young men take such matters so to heart that they grow wild, and go out and drink, and do all manner of dreadful things!”

Esse’s curiosity was now becoming interested; she had a vague idea that Miss Gimp had some kind of hallucination as to a love affair, but she could not quite make out yet what was its special direction. She felt herself thinking a phrase which she had several times heard Dick use, “How many kinds of a durn’d fool was it that she was makin’ of herself?” Her monotonous “Indeed” was hardly adequate to the situation, so she added with as little tendency towards laughter as she could manage.

“Poor young man! You must not let him suffer too much!”

Miss Gimp sighed and wiped a phantom tear from her cheek as she said in a far-away manner.

“Oh, poor Dick! Poor dear Dick! I fear he has much suffering before him! — Did you speak?” she added in a different tone, for Esse had on the instant been taken with a sudden and very violent cough which made her in a short space of time grow almost purple in the face.

The shock was too much when Miss Gimp apostrophised the man who was the victim of unhappy attachment, and in her mind’s eye rose the burly figure of Grizzly Dick, driven crazed for love, painting red spots all over the town of Sacramento. The figure changed instantly to the same man sitting amongst the forest trees, slapping his thighs and roaring with laughter as he thought of Miss Gimp and the parrot, and the relative places which they held in Indian esteem. Miss Gimp bridled somewhat, and seemed more than ever to justify her Indian name; but Esse, who really liked her, found her risibility checked by her genuine concern for her, apologised for the interruption, and asked her to go on. So, with as many “flirts and flutters” as Poe’s famous bird of ill omen, Miss Gimp began her story.

“It has surprised — surprised me very much, to find little offerings placed outside my window. Most odd things, my dear — wild turkeys and young fawns, hare, bear-meat, and sometimes fruit of an edible kind, potatoes, honey, and such like. I wondered who could have put them there!”

Here she simpered in a way that would have looked artificial in a girls’ school on the day when male relatives are received. Then she went on with marked inconsequentiality:

“It would be a sin — a perfect sin to drive to desperation such a fine figure of a man!”

Esse had expected to find her laughter uncontrollable as the story went on, but instead she felt something beginning to overpower her which was much nigher akin to tears. How could she but feel sorrow for the poor, dear old thing who with all her oddities was as loyal and as true as the sunlight. She knew that whatever was the cause of her error, there was no possibility of her manifest wishes being carried out. Then came a doubt. “How did she herself know this?” with the consequent answer, “Because Dick was already” — the thought was completed in her mind with an overpowering rush of blood to her face, which Miss Gimp must have noticed only that she was coyly turning away and simpering all to herself.

It is commonly thought that men and women become transformed and glorified in and by great moments. This may be so, but the common idea of great moments is not so true to Nature. There are great moments for all the Children of Adam; but they are not always great through the force of external facts. The dramatic moment in real life does not always come amongst picturesque and suitable surroundings. It is the conjuncture of spiritual and mundane suitabilities which makes the opportunity of the dramatist; but to others, who are the puppets of the great dramatic poet Nature, the moments of transfiguration come as they came to St Paul. The Great Light which turns the thoughts of men inwards, and reveals to themselves the secret springs of their own actions, has many moral and psychical and intellectual manifestations. The pagans whose imagination wrought into existence the whole theology of Olympus, had a subtle insight into the human heart when they showed the familiar figure of Cupid shooting his sweetly poisoned arrows at them that slept.