Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke by Rilke Rainer Maria
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page
Ebook has 58 lines and 2340 words, and 2 pages
Illustrator: Arthur Rackham
GOOD-NIGHT
BY ELEANOR GATES
ILLUSTRATED BY ARTHUR RACKHAM
NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. PUBLISHERS
To MABEL
PAGE
He carried a canary at his shoulder 16
Advancing by soft steps came Tomasso the cat 38
Fanning her wings in one lightning stroke 44
Another frown and he passed on 50
GOOD-NIGHT
Scarlet fuchsias on a swaying branch freckled the 'dobe wall behind Loretta's perch. The parrot, her claws wide apart, her brilliant rudder tilting to balance her gray body, industriously snapped at the blossoms. One secured at last, she turned slowly about and, with infinite care, let it drop upon the open pages of Padre Alonzo's book.
The padre brushed the flower away and glanced up.
"Good-day to thyself," retorted the padre. He spoke in Spanish, shaking a stout finger. "And tear not the flowers again. They be the last of the kind till after the New Year. So take warning, I say, lest thou find thyself thrust without the garden."
When a second fuchsia came fluttering down to his hand, Padre Alonzo uncrossed his sandals and rose. "Oh! oh! oh!" he cried, wagging his close-cropped head so vigorously that the very beads of his rosary tinkled together. "Thou art the naughtiest bird in all of California! What if Padre Anzar finds thee despoiling his plant? He will put thee again where thou must fight to keep thy feathers--in the kitchen with the cats!"
At the mention of cats a startling change came over the parrot. Her plumage ruffled, her eyes began to roll, she straightened on the perch, uttering hoarse cries of fear and defiance.
"Then be good," he counselled, "be good. Or off thou'lt likely go. Me-e-ow! me-e-ow!"
Padre Alonzo put the stout finger into the proffered claw. "So, so," he said. "And I shall not tattle. But tell me: What would make thee forget to use thy sharp pruning shears? An apple? or seeds? or one of Gabrielda's sweet bis--"
The padre thrust his thumbs under the white cord of his girdle and broke into a guffaw. "Thou jade!" he teased. "Wilt have Tony, eh? Well, I go to find him." He gathered in his brown cassock, preparatory to stepping over the cacti here bordering the garden path. "But look you, if he comes, scrape not the gilt from the wires of his pretty cage."
Another threatening shake of the finger, and the padre crossed the low, spiked hedge and waddled away through the sun.
When he came into sight a moment later round the dun wall of the mission, he carried a canary at his shoulder. "E-oo, e-oo," he cooed, pattering forward. "Loretta wishes thy company. Sst! sst! She is bad after thee, Tony! But be wary, little one, be wary."
The advice was wholly ignored. For, spying the parrot, Tony was instantly transformed from a silent, dumpy ball of yellow to a slim, dapper songster with a swelling throat.
Padre Alonzo was shocked. "Sst! sst!" he chided; "thou wicked big-ears!"
The noon angelus was ringing. He caught up book and gown. But before going he pulled at Loretta's gaudy tail, not unkindly, and chuckled as she edged toward Tony with many a na?ve and fetching cock of her gray head.
High at the garden's centre, nailed to a massive tree of wood, stood out the Sacrifice. From behind, fir and pine thrust their long green boughs, as if eager to screen that torn and unclad shape. From below, jasmine and geranium, carnation and rose, sent upward an unfailing incense.
That way, in the heat of mid-afternoon, came Padre Anzar. Thin-lipped he was, and hollow-eyed. In one hand he held a trowel, in the other a knife. Down the front of his brown cassock, mingling at knee height with red brick-stains from the chapel floor, were touches of fresh earth. Anzar the priest was for the moment Anzar the gardener.
He walked slowly, here stooping to right a stalk or jerk a weed, there stretching to pick a fading orange leaf from where it marred the glaucous sheen of its fellows. Fronting the figure, he paused long enough to whisper a prayer and make the holy sign. Then he rambled on, busy with trowel and blade.
But presently he came to a full and startled halt. He was beside the trellis up which climbed his treasured fuchsia. The cross-like perch of the parrot was beyond the bordering cacti, and unoccupied. Near by, upon its nail, hung the canary cage, with Tony going up stairs and down untiringly, eying his visitor with no uneasiness, greeting him, on the contrary, with saucy chirps. While underneath, spotting the ground in some profusion, and cast as it were at the feet of the garden's singer, were scores of scarlet blossoms!
The padre's look travelled from the scattered flowers to the vacant perch, from the perch to the naked branches swaying against the trellis, from the branches to the wide, warm top of the 'dobe wall. And there was Loretta, patrolling in unconcealed apprehension.
The instant he caught sight of her he knew her guilt. He pursed his thin lips. Then, letting fall trowel and knife, he straddled the hedge.
"I'll wring thy neck for thee!" he vowed.
The padre was down now, and standing on the path again. But he was not fulfilling his threat. Instead, he was viewing his captive angrily, yet in considerable indecision.
But now a new factor upon the scene. Round the mission wall, waddling fast and propelling himself by his swinging arms, appeared Padre Alonzo. "Is't the cats?" he asked as he came on; "oh, la! la! is't the cats?"
Padre Anzar half turned, scowling. For answer, he only pointed to the severed fuchsias.
The other looked, covering any regret with simulated astonishment. "These were dropping of themselves yesterday," he began between breaths. "They--they fell fast in the night--eh?" He came beside the other now, partly to support the suspended Loretta in his hands. "I saw them--truly."
"Bah!" And Padre Anzar gave Loretta such a shake that she tumbled, squawking and sputtering, from the other's hands, and again hung, heels above head, like a chicken caught for the block.
"She did but what the wind hadst done," faltered Padre Alonzo. "Sst! sst!" "Such language from a lady!"
"Yes," he went on solemnly, addressing her, "and thou art of the devil, and hast as many tricks. Twice I forgave thee--once for shouting 'Fire!' on St. John's Day, as the censer passed; again, for pulling the feathers out of Se?or Esteban's choice hen. But thou wilt not escape now. Now thou'lt go to the kitchen and be shut in with Gabrielda's black mouser. There thou shalt shed some quills."
With this dire threat, he departed along the path, Loretta still hanging head down at his knee.
Scarcely a moment later a commotion sounded from the distance, a commotion muffled by 'dobe wall. First came the voice of old Gabrielda, then the clatter of an over-turning pan, next the terror-stricken shrieks of Loretta. Presently, Padre Anzar appeared, his jaw set, his eyes shining with the look of duty done.
"She will be nicely scared this time," he told Padre Alonzo. "She will match her busy peak with Tomasso's claws, and she will remember hereafter to let my blossoms alone."
"Perhaps," began Padre Alonzo, deprecatingly, "perhaps 'twere as well to take her out of temptation's way, to--"
Padre Anzar raised his shoulders, strode over to knife and trowel and caught them up. "Move her as thou wilt," he said grumpily, "and the farther the better. Tony is proper for us, pretty and songful. But that parrot,"--he shook his tools as if they were Loretta--"how altogether useless and ugly and noisy and blasphemous and good-for-naught!"
With this he departed into the shrubbery.
Sounds were still coming from the kitchen--Gabrielda's cracked voice, Loretta's cries, the sullen yowling of a cat. Nodding sadly, Padre Alonzo waddled to the perch, vacant and formed like a cross. This he lifted and bore to a place along the wall opposite the great crucifix, where climbed no flowers. Then, smiling gently, as if with some tender thought, he waddled back to the trellis, took the cage from its nail, and, returning to the perch, hung Tony close beside.
Late that night, on coming out of the chapel, Padre Alonzo discovered a little black something blocking his way along the moonlit path. As he paused, leaning forward to peer, the black something sidled nearer him, and saluted.
The padre bent lower and lifted the parrot to the level of his face. "Aye, good-night truly, as thou sayest," he repeated proudly. "Thou hast some wicked words of a garrison town, but thou knowest the difference between sun and moon."
"Yes, Tomasso has used thee badly." Padre Alonzo patted her head. "I shall put thee on thy perch," he went on; "though I trust good Anzar will not know it. But the moon is up, and my heart is tender. Alas! one does many things when the moon is up. And the next day--one does penance."
He thrust the parrot into a fold of his cassock, made along to where was the perch, and placed her upon it. Then he stood back, folding his arms.
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page