Annie Fellows Johnston - The Story of Dago
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THE STORY OF DAGO
BY
ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
[Illustration: "IT WAS HER SWINGING AND JERKING ON THE ROPE THAT RANG
THE BELL."]
THE STORY OF DAGO
BY
ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
AUTHOR OF "THE LITTLE COLONEL," "BIG BROTHER,"
"OLE MAMMY'S TORMENT," "THE GATE OF THE
GIANT SCISSORS," "TWO LITTLE KNIGHTS
OF KENTUCKY," ETC.
Illustrated by
ETHELDRED B. BARRY
BOSTON
L.C. PAGE & COMPANY
1900
Copyright, 1900
BY L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY
(Incorporated)
TO
"Gin the Monk"
WHOSE PRANKS ARE LINKED
WITH THE BOYHOOD MEMORIES OF DR. GAVIN FULTON,
ONE OF THE BEST OF PHYSICIANS AND FRIENDS,
THIS STORY OF DAGO
IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THIS IS THE STORY THAT DAGO TOLD TO THE MIRROR-MONKEY
ON MONDAY 1
II. WHAT DAGO SAID TO THE MIRROR-MONKEY ON TUESDAY 16
III. WHAT THE MIRROR-MONKEY HEARD ON WEDNESDAY 32
IV. THE TALE THE MIRROR-MONKEY HEARD ON THURSDAY 46
V. WHAT DAGO TOLD ON FRIDAY 60
VI. WHAT DAGO SAID TO THE MIRROR-MONKEY ON SATURDAY 72
VII. WHAT DAGO TOLD THE MIRROR-MONKEY ON SUNDAY 92
VIII. DAGO BIDS FAREWELL TO THE MIRROR-MONKEY 102
ILLVSTRATIONS
PAGE
"IT WAS HER SWINGING AND JERKING ON THE ROPE THAT RANG THE
BELL" _Frontispiece_
"THE GARDENER FISHED HER OUT OF THE FOUNTAIN" 9
"HER HANDS WERE FOLDED IN HER LAP" 19
MATCHES'S FUNERAL 25
"SHE FAIRLY STIFFENED WITH HORROR" 43
"AT LAST THE BLUE CUSHION WAS EMPTY, AND I SAT DOWN ON IT" 48
"'OH, YOU LITTLE TORMENT!' SHE CRIED" 63
"THEIR VOICES RANG OUT LUSTILY" 73
"ALL WENT WELL UNTIL WE REACHED AN ALLEY CROSSING" 81
"GOOD-BYE! OLD FELLOW!" 103
THE STORY OF DAGO.
CHAPTER I.
THIS IS THE STORY THAT DAGO TOLD TO THE MIRROR-MONKEY ON MONDAY.
Here I am at last, Ring-tail! The boys have gone to school, thank
fortune, and little Elsie has been taken to kindergarten. Everybody in
the house thinks that I am safe up-stairs in the little prison of a
room that they made for me in the attic. I suppose they never thought
how easy it would be for me to swing out of the open window and climb
down the lightning-rod. Wouldn't Miss Patricia be surprised if she
knew that I am down here now in the parlour, talking to you, and
sitting up here among all these costly, breakable things!
I have been wanting to get back into this room ever since that first
morning that I slipped in and found you sitting here in the
looking-glass, but the door has been shut every time that I have tried
to come in. Do you remember that morning? You were the first ring-tail
monkey that I had seen since I left the Zoo, and you looked so much
like my twin brother, who used to swing with me in the tangled vines
of my native forests, and pelt me with cocoanut-shells, and chatter to
me all day long under those hot, bright skies, that I wanted to put my
arms around you and hug you; but the looking-glass was between us.
Some day I shall break that glass, and crawl back behind there with
you.
It is a pity that you are dumb and do not seem to be able to answer
me, for if you could talk to me about the old jungle days I would not
be so homesick. Still, it is some comfort to know that you are not
deaf, and I intend to come in here every morning after the children go
to school; that is, every morning that I find the door open. I've had
a very exciting life in the past, and I think that you'll find my
experiences interesting.
Of course I'll not begin at the beginning, for, being a ring-tail
monkey yourself, you know what life is like in the great tropical
forests. Perhaps it would be better to skip the circus part, too, for
it was a very unhappy time that followed, after I was stolen from home
by some men who came on a big ship, and carried me away to be sold to
a travelling showman.
It makes my back ache to this day to think of the ring-master's whip.
I was as quick to learn as any of the other monkeys who were in
training, but an animal who has done nothing all his life but climb
and play can't learn the ways of a human being all in one week. I was
taught to ride a pony and drive a team of greyhounds, and to sit at a
table and feed myself with a silver folk. One half-hour I was made to
be a gentleman, and wear a dress suit, and tip my hat to the ladies,
and the next I would be expected to do something entirely different;
be a policeman, maybe, and arrest a rowdy dog in boxing-gloves. Oh, I
couldn't begin to tell you the things I was expected to do, from
drilling like a soldier to wheeling a doll carriage and smoking a
pipe. Sometimes when I grew confused, and misunderstood the signals
and did things all wrong, the ring-master would swing his whip until
it cracked like a pistol, and shout out, in a terrible voice, "Oh, you
stupid little beast! What's the matter with you?" That always
frightened me so that it gave me the shivers, and then he would shout
at me again until I was still more confused and terrified, and
couldn't do anything to please him.
Stupid little beast indeed! I wished sometimes that I could have had
him captive, back in the jungles of the old home forest, just to have
seen which would have been the stupid one there. How long would it
have taken him to have learned an entirely different way of living, I
wonder. How many moons before he could swing by his hands and hunt for
his food in the tree-tops? He might have learned after awhile where
the wild paw-paws hang thickest, and where the sweetest, plumpest
bananas grow; but when would he ever have mastered all the wood-lore
of the forest folk,--or gained the quickness of eye and ear and nose
that belongs to all the wise, wild creatures? Oh, how I longed to see
him at the mercy of our old enemies, the Snake-people! One of those
pythons, for instance, "who could slip along the branches as quietly
as moss grows." That would have given him a worse fit of shivers than
the ones he used to give me.
I'll not talk about such a painful subject any longer, but you may be
sure that I was glad when something happened to the show. The owner
lost all his money, and had to sell his animals and go out of the
business. After that I had a very comfortable winter in a zoological
garden out West, near where we stranded. Then an old white-haired man
from California bought me to add to his private collection of monkeys.
He had half a dozen or so in his high-walled garden.
It was a beautiful place, hot and sunny like my old home, and full of
palm-trees and tangled vines and brilliant flowers. The most beautiful
thing in it was a great rose-tree which he called Gold of Ophir. It
shook its petals into a splashing fountain where goldfish were always
swimming around and around, and it was hard to tell which was the
brightest, the falling rose-leaves, or the tiny goldfish flashing by
in the sun.
There was a lady who used to lie in a hammock under the roses every
day and smile at my antics. She was young, I remember, and very
pretty, but her face was as white as the marble mermaid in the
fountain. The old gentleman and his wife always sat beside her when
she lay in the hammock. Sometimes he read aloud, sometimes they
talked, and sometimes a long silence would fall upon them, when the
splashing of the fountain and the droning of the bees would be the
only sound anywhere in the garden.
When they talked, it was always of the same thing: the children she
had left at home,--Stuart and Phil and little Elsie. I did not listen
as closely as I might have done had I known what a difference those
children were to make in my life. I little thought that a day was
coming when they were to carry me away from the beautiful garden that
I had grown to love almost like my old home. But I heard enough to
know that they were as mischievous as the day is long, and that they
kept their poor old great-aunt Patricia in a woful state of nervous
excitement from morning till night. I gathered, besides, that their
father was a doctor, away from home much of the time. That was why
their great-aunt had them in charge.
Their mother had come out to her father's home in California to grow
strong and well. The sun burned a pink into the blossoms of the
oleander hedges, and the wind blew life into the swaying branches of
the pepper-trees, but neither seemed to make her any better. After
awhile she could not even be carried out to her place in the hammock.
Then they sent for Doctor Tremont and the children.
The first that I knew of their arrival, the two boys came whooping
down the paths after the gardener, shouting, "Show us the monkeys,
David! Show us the monkeys! Which one is Dago, and which one is
Matches?"
I did not want to come down for fear that Stuart might treat me as he
had done Elsie's kitten. I had heard a letter read, which told how he
had tried to cure it of fits. He gave it a shock with his father's
electric battery, and turned the current on so strong that he killed
it. Not knowing but that he might try some trick on me, I held back
until I saw him feeding peanuts to Matches. I never could bear her.
She is the only monkey in the garden that I have never been on
friendly terms with, so I came down at once to get my share of
peanuts, and hers, too, if possible.
I must say that I took a great fancy to both the boys; they were so
friendly and good-natured. They each had round chubby faces, and hard
little fists. There was a wide-awake look in their big, honest, gray
eyes, and their light hair curled over their heads in little tight
rings. Elsie was only five,--a restless, dimpled little bunch of
mischief, always getting into trouble, because she would try to do
everything that her brothers did.
The gardener fished her out of the fountain twice in the week she was
there. She was reaching for the goldfish with her fat little hands,
and toppled in, head first. Phil began the week by getting a bee-sting
on his lip, and a bite on the cheek from a parrot that he was teasing.
As for Stuart, I think he had climbed every tree on the place before
the first day was over, and torn his best clothes nearly off his back.
The gardener had a sorry time of it while they stayed. He complained
that "a herd of wild buffalo turned loose to rend and destroy" would
not have done as much damage to his fruit and flowers as they. "Not as
they means to do it, I don't think," he said. "But they're so
chock-full of _go_ that they fair runs away with their selves." The
gardener's excitement did not long last, however.
[Illustration]
There came a day when there was no noise in the garden. The boys
wandered around all morning without playing, now and then wiping their
eyes on their jacket sleeves, and talking in low tones. Once they
threw themselves down on the grass and hid their faces, and cried and
sobbed, until their grandfather came out and led them away. The blinds
were all drawn next morning, and the gardener came and cut down nearly
all his lilies, and great armfuls of the Gold of Ophir roses to carry
into the house.
Another quiet day went by, and then there was such a rumbling of
carriage wheels outside the garden, that I climbed up a tree and
looked over the high walls. There was a long, slow procession winding
up the white mountain road toward a far-away grove of pines. I knew
then what had happened. They were taking the children's mother to the
cemetery, and they would have to go home without her. "Poor children,"
I thought, "and poor old great-aunt Patricia."
The next evening I heard the old gentleman tell David to bring Matches
and me into the house. The next thing I knew I was dropped into a big
bandbox with holes in the lid, and somebody was buckling a
shawl-strap around it. Then I heard the old gentleman say to Doctor
Tremont, "Tom, I don't want to add to the inconveniences of your
journey, but I should like to send these monkeys along to help amuse
the boys. Maybe they'll be some comfort to them. Dago is for Stuart,
and Matches is for Phil. It would be a good idea to keep them in their
boxes to-night on the sleeping-car. They are unusually well behaved
little animals, but it would be safer to keep them shut up until the
boys are awake to look after them."
You can imagine my feelings when I realised that I was to be sent
away. I shrieked and chattered with rage, but no one paid any
attention to me. I was obliged to settle down in my box in sulky
silence. In a little while I could feel myself being carried down the
porch steps. Then the carriage door slammed and we jolted along in the
dark for a long time. I knew when we reached the depot by the bright
light streaming through the holes in my box-lid. I was carried up the
steps into the sleeping-car, and for the next quarter of an hour it
seemed to me that my box changed position every two minutes. The
porter was getting us settled for the night He was about to poke the
box that held me under the berth where little Elsie and her nurse were
to sleep, when Stuart called him from the berth above, into which he
had just climbed. So I was tossed up as if I had been an ordinary
piece of baggage, the porter little knowing what was strapped so
carefully inside the bandbox.
Doctor Tremont and Phil had the section just across the aisle from
ours, and Phil carried his box up the step-ladder himself, and stowed
Matches carefully away in one corner before he began to take off his
shoes. When the curtains were all drawn and the car-lights turned down
low so that every one could sleep, Stuart sat up and began unbuckling
the strap around my box. I knew enough to keep still when he took the
lid off and gently stroked me. I had no intention of being sent back
to the baggage-car, if keeping quiet would help me to escape the
conductor's eyes.
Stuart stroked me for a moment, and then, cautiously drawing aside his
curtains, thrust his head out and looked up and down the aisle.
Everything was quiet. Then he gave the softest kind of a whistle, so
faint that it seemed little more than the echo of one; but Phil
heard, and instantly his head was poked out between his curtains.
Stuart held me up and grinned. Immediately Phil held up Matches and
grinned. After a funny pantomime by which, with many laughable
gestures, each boy made the other understand that he intended to allow
his pet freedom all night, they drew in their heads and lay down.
Stuart wanted me to sleep on the pillow beside him, but I was still
sulky, and retired to my box at his feet. In spite of the jar and
rumble of the train I slept soundly for a long time. It must have been
somewhere about the middle of the night when I was awakened all of a
sudden by a fearful crash and the feeling that I was pitching headlong
down a frightful precipice.
The next instant I struck the floor with a force that nearly stunned
me. When I gathered my wits together I found myself in the middle of
the aisle, bruised and sore, with the bandbox on top of me.
We had been going with the usual terrific speed of a fast express,
down steep mountain grades, sweeping around dizzy curves, and now we
had come to a sudden stop without reason or warning. It gave the train
such a tremendous jar that windows rattled, baggage lurched from the
racks, the porter sprawled full-length on the floor as I had done, and
more than one head was bumped unmercifully against the hard woodwork
of the berths. Everybody sprang up to ask what was the matter. Babies
cried and women scolded and men swore. All I could do was to whimper
with pain and fright until Stuart came scrambling after me. My
shoulder was bruised and my head aching, and no one can imagine my
terrible fright at such a rude awakening. If I had not been in the
box, I might have saved myself when the crash came, but I was
powerless to catch at anything when it went bump over on to the floor.
The brakeman and conductor came running in to see what was the matter.
Nobody knew why the train had stopped. It was several minutes before
they discovered the cause, but I had found out while Stuart was
climbing back to bed with me. Swinging by her hands from the bell-rope
which ran down the centre of the car, was that miserable little
monkey, Matches, making a fool of herself and everybody else. Who but
that little imp of mischief would have done such a thing as to get up
in the middle of the night and go through a lot of gymnastic
exercises on the bell-rope? It was her swinging and jerking on the
rope that rang the bell and brought the engine to that sudden stop.
I don't know how the doctor settled it with the conductor. I know that
there was a great deal said, and Matches and I were both sent back to
the baggage-car. All the rest of the journey I had an aching head and
a bruised shoulder to keep me in mind of that hateful little Matches,
and I resolved long before we reached home that I would do something
to get even with her, before we had lived together a week.
CHAPTER II.
WHAT DAGO SAID TO THE MIRROR-MONKEY ON TUESDAY.
Ring-tail, what do you think of Miss Patricia? I'm afraid of her. The
night we came home she met us in the hall, looking so tall and severe
in her black gown, with those prim little bunches of gray curls on
each side of her face, that I went under a chair. Then I thought I
must have misjudged her, for there were tears in her eyes when she
kissed the children, and I heard her whisper as she turned away, "poor
little motherless lambs!" Still I have seen so many people in the
course of my travels that I rarely make a mistake in reading
character. As soon as she caught sight of me I knew that my first
thought had been right. Her thin Roman nose went up in the air, and
her sharp eyes glared at me so savagely that I could think of nothing
else but an old war eagle, with arrows in its talons. You may have
seen them on silver dollars.
"Tom Tremont," she exclaimed, "you don't mean to say that you have
brought home a _monkey_!" I wish you could have heard the disgust in
her voice. "Of all the little pests in the world, they are certainly
the worst!"
"Yes, Aunt Patricia," he answered. "They've been a great pleasure to
the boys."
"_They!_" she gasped. "You don't mean to say that there are _two_!"
Then she saw Matches climbing up on Phil's shoulder, and words failed
her.
"Yes; their grandfather gave each of the boys one of his pets. He said
that they would be company for them on the way home, and would help
divert their thoughts from their great loss. They grieved so, poor
little lads."
That softened Miss Patricia again, and she said nothing more about our
being pests. But when she passed me she drew her skirts aside as if
she could not bear to so much as brush against me, and from that hour
it has been war to the knife between us.
Matches and I were given a little room up in the attic under the
eaves, but at first we were rarely there during the day. The boys
took us with them wherever they went. We had been there some time
before we were left alone long enough for me to do any exploring.
It was almost dark when that first chance came. I prowled around the
attic awhile. Then I climbed out of the window and swung down by the
vines that covered that side of the house, to the shutters of the room
below. It happened to be Miss Patricia's room. As I perched on the top
of the shutters, leaning over and craning my neck, I could see Miss
Patricia sitting there in the dusk beside her open window. Her hands
were folded in her lap, and she was rocking gently back and forth in a
high-backed rocking-chair, with her eyes closed.
I thought it would be a good chance for me to take a peep into her
room, so I ventured to swing over and drop down on the window-sill
beside her, on all fours. I did it very quietly, so quietly, in fact,
that I do not see how she could possibly have been disturbed; yet I
give you my word, Ring-tail, that woman shrieked until you could have
heard her half a mile. I never was so terrified in all my life. It
paralysed me for an instant, and then I sprang up by the vines to the
lightning-rod, and streaked up it faster than any lightning ever came
down. Once in my room, I shook all the rest of the evening.
[Illustration]
Matches said that Miss Patricia was probably worse scared than I was,
but that's impossible. I never made a sound, and as for her--why, even
the cook came running when Miss Patricia began to shriek, and she was
in the coal-cellar at the time, and is deaf in one ear.
But Matches always disagreed with me in everything, and I was not
sorry when we parted company. I'd better tell you about that next. It
happened in this way. Stuart came into the room one day with Sim
Williams, one of the boys who was always swarming up the stairs to see
us. Sim was older than Stuart, and one of those restless, inquiring
boys, never satisfied with letting well enough alone. He was always
making experiments. This time he wanted to experiment on me with a
handful of tobacco,--coax me to eat it, you know, and see what effect
it would have. But Stuart objected. He was afraid it might make me
sick, and proposed trying it on Phil's monkey first. So they called
Matches, and the silly little beast was so pleased and flattered by
their attention that she stood up and ate all they gave her. She did
not like it, I could see that, but they praised her and coaxed her,
and it turned her head. Usually I received the most attention.
It did not seem to hurt her any, so Sim offered me some. But I would
not take it. I folded my hands, first over my ears and then over my
eyes. Then I held them over my mouth. Stuart thought it wonderfully
smart of me, and so did Sim, when he found that it was a trick that
Stuart's grandfather had taught me. The old man had an ebony
paper-weight on his library table, which he called "the three wise
monkeys of Japan." They were carved sitting back to back. The first
one had its paws folded over its eyes in token that it must never see
more than it ought to see, the second covered its ears that it might
not hear more than it ought to hear, and the third solemnly held its
paws over its mouth, in order that it might never say more than it
ought to say.
Stuart thought that I had forgotten the trick. He told Sim that it was
the only one I knew. I was glad that he had never discovered that I am
a trained monkey. If he had known how many tricks I can perform life
wouldn't have been worth living. It would have been like an endless
circus, with me for the only performer. As it was, I was made to go
through that one trick of the wise monkeys of Japan until I was
heartily disgusted with it, or with anything else, in fact, that
suggested the land of the Mikado.
Stuart was in a hurry to show me off to the other fellows, so he
caught me up under his arm, and started off to the ball-ground, where
most of them were to be found. Matches tried to follow us, but Sim
drove her back, and the last I saw of her she was under the table,
whimpering. It was a soft little complaining cry she had, almost like
the chirp of a sleepy bird, and when she made it her mouth drew up
into a pitiful little pucker.
I slept in the laundry that night, for it was after dark when we got
home, and the boys were not allowed to carry a light up into the
attic. Next day, when Stuart took me back to my room, there lay
Matches, stretched out on the floor as dead as a mummy. The tobacco
had poisoned her. Phil was crying over her as if his heart would
break. He didn't know what had killed her, and the boys did not see
fit to tell. As for me, I remembered my lesson, never to say any more
than I ought to say, and discreetly folded my hands over my mouth
whenever the subject was mentioned.
I have no doubt but that I could have eaten as much tobacco as Matches
did, and escaped with only a short illness, but the sickly little
mossback didn't have the constitution that we ring-tails have. She was
a poor delicate creature that the least thing affected. I couldn't
help feeling sorry for her, and yet I was so glad to be rid of her
that I capered around for sheer joy. When I realised that never again
would I be kept awake by her snoring, never again would I be disturbed
by her disagreeable ways, and that at last I was even with her for
spilling me out of my berth on the sleeping-car, I swung on my
turning-pole until I was dizzy. No one knew what a jubilee I had all
alone that night in my little room under the eaves.
Little did I dream of the humiliation in store for me. The next day I
found that Matches was to have a funeral after school, and that I--I,
who hated her--was to take the part of chief mourner. The boys took
off my spangled jacket and dressed me up in some clothes that belonged
to Elsie's big Paris doll. They left my own little cap on my head, but
covered it and me all over with a long crape veil that dragged on the
ground behind me and tripped me up in front when I tried to walk. It
was pinned tightly over my face, and I nearly smothered, for it was a
hot September afternoon. I sputtered and gasped under the nasty black
thing until I was almost choked. It was so thick I could scarcely
breathe through it, but the more I sputtered the more it pleased the
children. They said I seemed to be really crying and sobbing under my
veil, and that I was acting my part of chief mourner beautifully.