Page:Weird Tales volume 24 number 03.djvu/30

Rh you'd never had a kind word or gracious act from that person in all your memory, then suddenly that person offered you a favor—made it possible for you to gratify your dearest wish, and threatened to penalize you if you failed to do so, wouldn't you be suspicious? Wouldn't you suspect some sort of dreadful practical joke?"

"I don't think that I quite understand," I answered.

"Very well, then, listen:

"In all my life I can't remember ever having seen my father smile. Not really smile with friendliness, humor or affection, I mean. My life—Arabella's, too—was one long persecution at his hands. I was eighteen months old when we came to Harrisonville, I believe, but I still have vague recollections of our Western home, of a house set high on a hill, overlooking the ocean, and a wall with climbing vines and purple flowers on it, and a pretty lady who would take me in her arms and cuddle me against her breast, and feed me ice-cream from a spoon, sometimes. I have a sort of recollection of a little baby sister in that house, too, but these things are so far back in babyhood that possibly they never really were more than some childish fancy which I built up for myself and which I loved so dearly and so secretly that they finally came to have a kind of reality for me.

"My real memories, the things I can recall with certainty, began with a hurried train trip through hot, dry, uncomfortable country with my father and a strangely silent Chinese servant and a little girl they told me was my cousin Arabella. Little things make big impressions on child-minds, you know, and of all that trip the thing which I remember most is seeing some Indians standing on the platform of a station with pottery and blankets to sell. My father had descended from the car and walked beside the train, and I climbed down after him and tried to run and take his hand. I stumbled over something on the platform and fell and cut my forehead. I called to him for help, but he didn't even turn around, and one of the Indian women lifted me to my feet and wiped the blood from my face with her handkerchief. Then, when the bleeding didn't stop, she tore the handkerchief in half and used it for a bandage. It was the only act of kindness that had been shown me for many a year, and I still have that memento of a savage woman's tenderness somewhere among my childhood's treasures, Doctor.

"Father treated Arabella and me with impartial harshness. We were beaten for the slightest fault; and we had faults a-plenty. If we sat quietly we were accused of sulking and asked why we didn't go and play. If we played and shouted, we were whipped for being noisy little nuisances.

"As we weren't allowed to associate with any of the children in the neighborhood, we made up our own games. I'd be Geraint and Arabella would be Enid of the dove-white feet, or perhaps we'd play that I was Arthur in the Castle Perilous, while she was the kindly Lady of the Lake who gave him back his magic sword. And though we never mentioned it, both of us knew that whatever the adventure was, the false knight I contended with was really my father. But when actual trouble came I wasn't an heroic figure.

MUST have been thirteen years old when I had my last thrashing. A little brook ran through the lower part of our land, and the former owners had widened it into a lily-pond. The flowers had died out years before, but the