Books: Aladdin O\'Brien
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10 ALADDIN O'BRIEN
BY GOUVERNEUR MORRIS
BOOK I
"It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee.
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child"--
ALADDIN O'BRIEN
I
It was on the way home from Sunday-school that Aladdin had
enticed Margaret to the forbidden river. She was not sure
that he knew how to row, for he was prone to exaggerate his
prowess at this and that, and she went because of the fine
defiance of it, and because Aladdin exercised an irresistible
fascination. He it was who could whistle the most engagingly
through his front teeth; and he it was, when sad dogs of boys
of the world were met behind the barn, who could blow the
smoke of the fragrant grapevine through his nose, and swallow
the same without alarm to himself or to his admirers. To be
with him was in itself a soulful wickedness, a delicious and
elevating lesson in corruption. But to be with him when he
had done wrong, and was sorry for it (as always when found
out), that was enough to give one visions of freckled angels,
and the sweetness of Paradise in May.
Aladdin brought the skiff into the float, stern first, with a
bump. Pride sat high upon his freckled brow, and he whistled
piercing notes.
"I can do it," he said. "Now get in."
Margaret embarked very gingerly and smoothed her dress
carefully, before and after sitting down. It was a white and
starchy dress of price, with little blue ribbons at the throat
and wrists--such a dress as the little girl of a very poor
papa will find laid out on the gilt and brocade chair beside
her bed if she goes to sleep and wakes up in heaven.
"Only a little way, 'Laddin, please."
The boy made half a dozen circular, jabbing strokes, and the
skiff zigzagged out from the float. It was a fine blue day,
cool as a cucumber, and across the river from the deserted
shipyards, where, upon lofty beamings, stood all sorts of
ships in all stages of composition, the frequent beeches and
maples showed pink and red and yellow against the evergreen
pines.
"It's easy 'nough," said Aladdin. And Margaret agreed in her
mind, for it is the splash of deeds rather than the skill or
power which impresses a lady. The little lady sat primly in
the stern, her mitted paws folded; her eyes, innocent and
immense, fastened admiringly upon the rowing boy.
"Only 'bout's far's the cat-boat, 'Laddin, please," she said.
"I oughtn't to of come 't all."
Somehow the cat-boat, anchored fifty yards out and straining
back from her moorings, would not allow herself to be
approached. For although Aladdin maintained a proper
direction (at times), the ocean tide, setting rigidly in and
overbearing the current of the river, was beginning to carry
the skiff to some haven where she would not be.
Aladdin saw this and tried to go back, catching many crabs in
the earnestness of his endeavor. Then the little girl,
without being told, perceived that matters were not entirely
in the hands of man, and began to look wistfully from Aladdin
to the shore. After a while he stopped grinning, and then
rowing.
"Can't you get back, 'Laddin?" said the little girl.
"No," said the boy, "I can't." He was all angel now, for he
was being visited for wrong.
The little girl's lips trembled and got white.
"I'm awful sorry, Margaret."
"What'll we do, 'Laddin?"
"Just sit still, 'n' whatever happens I'll take care of you,
Margaret."
They were passing the shipyards with a steady sweep, but the
offices were closed, the men at home, and no one saw the
distressed expedition. The last yard of all was conspicuous by
a three-master, finished, painted, sparred, ready for the
fragrant bottle to be cracked on her nose, and the long
shivering slide into the river. Then came a fine square,
chimneyed house with sherry-glass-shaped elm-trees about it.
The boy shouted to a man contorted under a load of wood. The
man looked up and grinned vacantly, for he was not even
half-witted. And they were swept on. Presently woods drew
between them and the last traces of habitation,--gorgeous woods
with intense splashes of color, standing upon clean rocks that
emphatically divided the water from the land,--and they
scurried into a region as untroubled by man as was Eden on the
first morning. The little boy was not afraid, but so sorry and
ashamed that he could have cried. The little girl, however, was
even deeper down the throat of remorse, for she had sinned
three times on Sunday,--first, she had spoken to the
"inventor's boy"; second, she had not "come straight home";
third, she had been seduced into a forbidden boat,--and there
was no balm in Gilead; nor any forgiveness forever. She
pictured her grand, dark father standing like a biblical
allegory of "Hell and Damnation" within the somber leathern
cube of his books, the fiercely white, whalebone cane upon
which he and old brother gout leaned, and the vast gloomy
centers at the bases of which glowed his savage eyes. She
thought of the rolling bitter voice with which she had once
heard him stiffen the backs of his constituents, and she was
sore afraid. She did not remember how much he loved her, or the
impotence of his principles where she was concerned. And she
did not recollect, for she had not been old enough to know,
that the great bitter voice, with its heavy, telling sarcasm,
had been lifted for humanity--for more humanity upon earth.
"Oh, 'Laddin," she said suddenly, "I daren't go home now."
"Maybe we can get her in farther up," said Aladdin, "and go
home through the woods. That'll be something, anyhow."
Margaret shuddered. She thought of the thin aunt who gave her
lessons upon the pianoforte--one of the elect, that aunt, who
had never done wrong, and whom any halo would fit; who gave
her to understand that the Almighty would raise Cain with any
little girl who did not practise an hour every day, and pray
Him, night and morning, to help her keep off the black notes
when the white notes were intended. First there would be a
reckoning with papa, then one with Aunt Marion, last with
Almighty God, and afterward, horribile dictu, pitchforks for
little Margaret, and a vivid incandescent state to be
maintained through eternity at vast cost of pit-coal to a
gentleman who carried over his arm, so as not to step on it, a
long snaky tail with a point like a harpoon's.
Meanwhile, Aladdin made sundry attempts to get the boat
ashore, and failed signally. The current was as saucy as
strong. Now it swept them into the very shade of the trees,
and as hope rose hot in the boy's heart and he began to stab
the water with the oars, sent them skipping for the midriver.
Occasionally a fish jumped to show how easy it was, and high
overhead an eagle passed statelily in the wake of a cloud.
After the eagle came a V of geese flying south, moving through
the treacherous currents and whirlpools of the upper air as
steadily and directly as a train upon its track. It seemed as
if nature had conspired with her children to demonstrate to
Margaret and Aladdin the facility of precise locomotion. The
narrow deeps of the river ended where the shore rolled into a
high knob of trees; above this it spread over the lower land
into a great, shallow, swiftly currented lake, having in its
midst a long turtlebacked island of dense woods and abrupt
shores. Two currents met off the knob and formed in the
direction of the island a long curve of spitting white.
Aladdin rowed with great fervor.
"Do it if you can, 'Laddin," said the little girl.
It seemed for one moment as if success were about to crown the
boy's effort, for he brought the boat to an exciting nearness
to the shore; but that was all. The current said: "No,
Aladdin, that is not just the place to land; come with me, and
bring the boat and the young lady." And Aladdin at once went
with the current.
"Margaret," he said, "I done my best." He crossed his heart.
"I know you done your best, 'Laddin." Margaret's cheeks were
on the brink of tears. "I know you done it."
They were dancing sportively farther and farther from the
shore. The water broke, now and again, and slapped the boat
playfully.
"We 've come 'most three miles," said Aladdin.
"I daren't go back if I could now," said Margaret.
Meanwhile Aladdin scanned the horizon far and wide to see if
he could see anything of Antheus, tossed by the winds, or the
Phrygian triremes, or Capys, or the ships having upon their
lofty poops the arms of Caicus. There was no help in sight.
Far and wide was the bubbling ruffled river, behind the
mainland, and ahead the leafy island.
"What'll your father do, 'Laddin?"
Aladdin merely grinned, less by way of explaining what his
father would do than of expressing to Margaret this: "Have
courage; I am still with you."
"'Laddin, we're not going so fast."
They had run into nominally still water, and the skiff was
losing momentum.
"Maybe we'd better land on the island," said Aladdin, "if we
can, and wait till the tide turns; won't be long now."
Again he plied the oars, and this time with success. For
after a little they came into the shadow of the island, the
keel grunted upon sand, and they got out. There was a little
crescent of white beach, with an occasional exclamatory green
reed sticking from it, and above was a fine arch of birch and
pine. They hauled up the boat as far as they could, and sat
down to wait for the tide to turn. Firm earth, in spite of
her awful spiritual forebodings, put Margaret in a more
cheerful mood. Furthermore, the woods and the general mystery
of islands were as inviting as Punch.
"It's not much fun watching the tide come in," she said after
a time.
Aladdin got up.
"Let's go away," he said, "and come back. It never comes in
if you watch for it to."
Margaret arose, and they went into the woods.
A devil's darning-needle came and buzzed for an instant on the
bow of the skiff. A belated sandpiper flew into the cove,
peeped, and flew out.
The tide rose a little and said:
"What is this heavy thing upon my back?"
Then it rose a little more.
"Why, it's poor little sister boat stuck in the mud," said the
tide.
From far off came joyful crackling of twigs and the sounds of
children at play.
The tide rose a little more and freed an end of the boat.
"That's better," said the boat, "ever so much better. I can
almost float."
Again the tide raised its broad shoulders a hair's-breadth.
"Great!" said the boat. "Once more, Old Party!"
When the children came back, they found that poor little
sister boat was gone, and in her stead all of their forgotten
troubles had returned and were waiting for them, and looking
them in the face.
II
It is absurdly difficult to get help in this world. If a lady
puts her head out of a window and yells "Police," she is
considered funny, or if a man from the very bottom of his soul
calls for help, he is commonly supposed to be drunk. Thus if,
cast away upon an island, you should wave your handkerchief to
people passing in a boat, they would imagine that you wanted
to be friendly, and wave back; or, if they were New York
aldermen out for a day's fishing in the Sound, call you names.
And so it was with Margaret and Aladdin. With shrill piping
voices they called tearfully to a party sailing up the river
from church, waved and waved, were answered in kind, and
tasted the bitterest cup possible to the Crusoed.
Then after much wandering in search of the boat it got to be
hunger-time, and two small stomachs calling lustily for food
did not add to the felicity of the situation.
With hunger-time came dusk, and afterward darkness, blacker
than the tall hat of Margaret's father. For at the last
moment nature had thought better of the fine weather which man
had been enjoying for the past month, and drawn a vast curtain
of inkiness over the luminaries from one horizon even unto the
other, and sent a great puff of wet fog up the valley of the
river from the ocean, so that teeth chattered and the ends of
fingers became shriveled and bloodless. And had not vanity
gone out with the entrance of sin, Margaret would have noticed
that her tight little curls were looser and the once stately
ostrich feather upon her Sunday hat, the envy of little girls
whom the green monster possessed, as flabby as a long sermon.
Meanwhile the tide having turned, little sister boat made fine
way of it down the river, and, burrowing in the fog, holding
her breath as it were, and greatly assisted by the tide,
slipped past the town unseen, and put for open sea, where it is
to be supposed she enjoyed herself hugely and, finally,
becoming a little skeleton of herself on unknown shores, was
gathered up by somebody who wanted a pretty fire with green
lights in it. The main point is that she went her selfish way
undetected, so that the wide-lanterned search which presently
arose for little Margaret tumbled and stumbled about clueless,
and halted to take drinks, and came back about morning and lay
down all day, and said it never did, which it certainly hadn't.
All the to-do was over Margaret, for Aladdin had not been
missed, and, even if he had, nobody would have looked for him.
His father was at home bending over the model of the wonderful
lamp which was to make his fortune, and over which he had been
bending for fifteen rolling years. It had come to him, at about
the time that he fell in love with Aladdin's mother, that a
certain worthless biproduct of something would, if combined
with something else and steeped in water, generate a certain
gas, which, though desperately explosive, would burn with a
flame as white as day. Over the perfection of this invention,
with a brief honeymoon for vacation, he had spent fifteen
years, a small fortune,--till he had nothing left, --the most
of his health, and indeed everything but his conviction that it
was a beautiful invention and sure of success. When Aladdin
arrived, he was red and wrinkled, after the everlasting fashion
of the human babe, and had no name, so because of the wonderful
lamp they called him Aladdin. And that rendered his first
school-days wretched and had nothing to do with the rest of his
life, after the everlasting fashion of wonderful names.
Aladdin's mother went out of the world in the very natural act
of ushering his young brother into it, and he remembered her as
a thin person who was not strictly honorable (for, having
betrayed him with a kiss, she punished him for smoking) and had
a headache. So there was nobody to miss Aladdin or to waste the
valuable night in looking for him.
About this time Margaret began to cry and Aladdin to comfort
her, and they stumbled about in the woods trying to find
--anything. After awhile they happened into a grassy glade
between two steep rocks, and there agreeing to rest, scrunched
into a depression of the rock on the right. And Margaret, her
nose very red, her hat at an angle, and her head on Aladdin's
shoulder, sobbed herself to sleep. And then, because being
trusted is next to being God, and the most moving and gentlest
condition possible, Aladdin, for the first time, felt the full
measure of his crime in leading Margaret from the straight way
home, and he pressed her close to him and stroked her draggled
hair with his cold little hands and cried. Whenever she moved
in sleep, his heart went out to her, and before the night was
old he loved her forever.
Sleep did not come to Aladdin, who had suddenly become a
father and a mother and a nurse and a brother and a lover and
a man who must not be afraid. His coat was wrapped about
Margaret, and his arms were wrapped about his coat, and the
body of him shivered against the damp, cold shirt, which would
come open in front because there was a button gone. The fog
came in thicker and colder, and night with her strange noises
moved slower and slower. There was an old loon out on the
river, who would suddenly throw back his head and laugh for no
reason at all. And once a great strange bird went rushing
past, squeaking like a mouse; and once two bright eyes came,
flashing out of the night and swung this way and that like
signal-lanterns and disappeared. Aladdin gave himself up for
lost and would have screamed if he had been alone.
Presently his throat began to tickle, then the base of his
nose, then the bridge thereof, and then he felt for a
handkerchief and found none. For a little while he maintained
the proprieties by a gentle sniffling, finally by one great
agonized snuff. It seemed after that as if he were to be left
in peace. But no. His lips parted, his chin went up a
little, his eyes closed, the tickling gave place to a sudden
imperative ultimatum, and, when all was over, Margaret had
waked.
They talked for a long time, for she could not go to sleep
again, and Aladdin told her many things and kept her from
crying, but he did not tell her about the awful bird or the
more awful eyes. He told her about his little brother, and
the yellow cat they had, and about the great city where he had
once lived, and why he was called Aladdin. And when the real
began to grow dim, he told her stories out of strange books
that he had read, as he remembered them--first the story of
Aladdin and then others.
"Once," began Aladdin, though his teeth were knocking together
and his arms aching and his nose running--"once there was a
man named Ali Baba, and he had forty thieves--"
III
Even in the good north country, where the white breath of the
melting icebergs takes turn and turn with diamond nights and
days, people did not remember so thick a fog; nor was there a
thicker recorded in any chapter of tradition. Indeed, if the
expression be endurable, so black was the whiteness that it
was difficult to know when morning came. There was a fresher
shiver in the cold, the sensibility that tree-tops were
stirring, a filmy distinction of objects near at hand, and the
possibility that somewhere 'way back in the east the rosy
fingers of dawn were spread upon a clear horizon. Collisions
between ships at sea were reported, and many a good sailorman
went down full fathom five to wait for the whistle of the
Great Boatswain.
The little children on the island roused themselves and groped
about among the chilled, dripping stems of the trees; they
had no end in view, and no place to go, but motion was
necessary for the lame legs and arms. Margaret had caught a
frightful cold and Aladdin a worse, and they were hungrier than
should be allowed. Now a jarred tree rained water down their
necks, and now their faces went with a splash and sting into
low-hanging plumes of leaves; often there would be a slip and a
scrambling fall. And by the time Aladdin had done grimacing
over a banged shin, Margaret would have a bruised anklebone to
cry about. The poor little soul was very tired and penitent
and cold and hurt and hungry, and she cried most of the time
and was not to be comforted. But Aladdin bit his lips and
held his head up and said it all would be well sometime.
Perhaps, though he still had a little courage left, Aladdin
was the more to be pitied of the two: he was not only
desperately responsible for it all, but full of imagination
and the horrible things he had read. Margaret, like most
women, suffered a little from self-centration, and to her the
trunk of a birch was just a nasty old wet tree, but to Aladdin
it was the clammy limb of one drowned, and drawn from the
waters to stand in eternal unrest. At length the stumbling
progress brought them to a shore of the island: a slippery
ledge of rock, past whose feet the water slipped hurriedly,
steaming with fog as if it had been hot, two big leaning
birches, and a ruddy mink that slipped like winking into a
hole. The river, evident for only a few yards, became lost in
the fog, and where they were could only be guessed, and which
way the tide was setting could only be learned by experiment.
Aladdin planted a twig at the precise edge of the water, and
they sat down to watch. Stubbornly and unwillingly the water
receded from the twig, and they knew that the tide was running
out.
"That's the way home," said Aladdin. Margaret looked
wistfully down-stream, her eyes as misty as the fog.
"If we had the boat we could go now," said Aladdin.
Then he sat moody, evolving enterprise, and neither spoke for
a long time.
"Marg'ret," said Aladdin, at length, "help me find a big log
near the water."
"What you going to do, 'Laddin?"
"You 'll see. Help look."
They crept along the edge of the island, now among the
close-growing trees and now on the bare strip between them and
the water, until at length they came upon a big log, lying
like some gnarled amphibian half in the river and half on the
dry land.
"Help push," said Aladdin.
They could move it only a little, not enough.
"Wait till I get a lever," said Aladdin. He went, and came
back with a long, stiff little birch, that, growing recklessly
in the thin soil over a rock, had been willing to yield to the
persuasion of a child and come up by the roots. And then,
Margaret pushing her best, and Aladdin prying and grunting,
the log was moved to within an ace of launching. Until now,
for she was too young to understand about daring and
unselfishness, Margaret had considered the log-launching as a
game invented by Aladdin to while away the dreary time; but
now she realized, from the look in the pale, set, freckly,
almost comical face of the boy, that deeds more serious were
afoot, and when he said, "Somebody'll pick me up, sure,
Marg'ret, and help me come back and get you," she broke out
crying afresh and said, "Don't, 'Laddin! Doo-on't, 'Laddin!"
"Don't cry, Marg'ret," said Aladdin, with a gulp. "I'd do
more'n that for you, and I can swim a little, too--b-better'n
I can row."
"Oh, 'Laddin," said Margaret, "it's so cold in the water."
"Shucks!" said Aladdin, whose teeth had been knocking all
night. "She's the stanch little craft" (he had the phrase of a
book) "Good Luck. I'm the captain and you're the builder's
daughter"--and so she was. "Chrissen 'er, Marg'et. Kiss her on
the bow an' say she's the Good Luck."
Then Margaret, her hat over one ear, and the draggled ostrich
feather greatly in the way, knelt, and putting her arms about
the shoreward end of the log, kissed it, and said in a drawn
little voice
"The Good Luck."
"And now, Margaret," said Aladdin, "you must stay right here'
n' not go 'way from the shore, so's I can find you when I come
back. But don't just sit still all the time,--keep moving,
so's not to get any colder,--'n I'll come back for you sure."
Then, because he felt his courage failing, he said, "Good-by,
Marg'ret," and turning abruptly, waded in to his ankles and
bent over the log to give it that final impetus which was to
set it adrift. In his heart were several things: the desire
to make good, fear of the river, and, poignant and bitter, the
feeling that Margaret did not understand. He was too young to
believe that death might really be near him (almost reckless
enough not to care if he had), but keenly aware that his
undertaking was perilous enough to warrant a more adequate
farewell. So he bent bitterly over the log and stiffened his
back for the heave. It must be owned that Aladdin wanted more
of a scene.
"'Laddin, I forgot something. Come back."
He came, his white lips drawn into a sort of smile. Then they
kissed each other on the mouth with the loud, innocent kiss of
little children, and after that Aladdin felt that the river
was only a river, the cold only cold, the danger only danger
and flowers--more than flowers.
He moved the log easily and waded with it into the icy waters,
until his feet were dragged from the bottom, and after one
awful instant of total submersion the stanch little ship Good
Luck and valiant Captain Kissed-by-Margaret were embarked on
the voyage perilous. His left arm over and about the log, his
legs kicking lustily like the legs of a frog, his right hand
paddling desperately for stability, Aladdin disappeared into
the fog. After a few minutes he became so freezing cold that
he would have let go and drowned gladly if it had not been for
the wonderful lamp which had been lighted in his heart.
Margaret, when she saw him borne from her by the irresistible
current, cried out with all the illogic of her womanly little
soul, "Come back, 'Laddin, come back!" and sank sobbing upon
the empty shore.
IV
However imminent the peril of the man, it is the better part
of chivalry to remain by the distressed lady, and though
impotent to be of assistance, we must linger near Margaret,
and watch her gradually rise from prone sobbing to a sitting
attitude of tears. For a long time she sat crying on the
empty shore, regarding for the most part black life and not at
all the signs of cheerful change which were becoming evident
in the atmosphere about her. The cold breath across her face
and hands and needling through her shivering body, the
increasing sounds of treetops in commotion, the recurring
appearance of branches where before had been only an opaque
vault, did little to inform her that the fog was about to
lift. The rising wind merely made her the more miserable and
alone. Nor was it until a disk of gold smote suddenly on the
rock before her that she looked up and beheld a twinkle of
blue sky. The fog puffed across the blue, the blue looked
down again,--a bigger eye than before,--a wisp of fog filmed
it again, and again it gleamed out, ever larger and always
more blue. The good wind living far to the south had heard
that in a few days a little girl was to be alone and
comfortless upon a foggy island, and, hearing, had filled his
vast chest with warmth and sunshine, and puffed out his merry
cheeks and blown. The great breath sent the blue waves
thundering upon the coral beaches of Florida, tore across the
forests of palm and set them all waving hilariously, shook the
merry orange-trees till they rattled, whistled through the
dismal swamps of Georgia, swept, calling and shouting to
itself, over the Carolinas, where clouds were hatching in
men's minds, banked up the waters of the Chesapeake so that
there was a great high tide and the ducks were sent scudding
to the decoys of the nearest gunner, went roaring into the
oaks and hickories of New York, warmed the veins of New
England fruit-trees, and finally coming to the giant fog, rent
it apart by handfuls as you pluck feathers from a goose, and
hurled it this way and that, until once more the sky and land
could look each other in the face. Then the great wind
laughed and ceased.
For a long time Margaret looked down the cleared face of the
river, but there was no trace of Aladdin, and in life but one
comfort: the sun was hot and she was getting warm.
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