Genealogical research has indicated that Philip Verrill Mighels was
related to A. Hyatt Verrill. Both were prolific authors but there is no
indication that the two ever met. There seems to be very little published about
Philip Verrill Mighels; maybe we can fix that later on.
The Black Cat magazine was published from 1895 to 1922. The format of this issue is
9" tall by 5" wide, just about ideal for scanning so a PDF of the
entire contents, June 1899, is HERE, including all
of the advertisements!
The
Black Cat
- 1 · The Statement of Jared Johnson · Geraldine Bonner · ss
- 16 · The Horn of Marcus Brunder · Howard Reynolds · ss
- 21 · On the Trail of the Dolan Outfit · G. B. Dunham · ss
- 29 · She Said, "Come." · Louise Clark · ss
- 34 · Old Double-talk's Compassion · Philip Verrill Mighels · ss
Old Double-talk's Compassion.
By Philip Verrill
Mighels
From The Black Cat magazine, June 1899, by
The Shortstory Publishing Company. Digitized by Doug Frizzle, January 2014.
Mingled with
the howl of the wind and the murmur of a score of Chinese voices, was a ceaseless
chink and chink of gold. It was in a gambling den of Chinatown .
Fumes of opium-tainted tobacco crept like wraiths through the air and all but
overcame the two saucer-lamps, which cast a dull red glow on the eager Chinese
faces. A dozen of the men were seated at a table, where the game was in progress;
the others were standing behind, their countenances expressive of greed in
various manners and degrees.
The cheerful
rhythm of the precious metal issued from the murkiest corner. There a man was
standing monotonously shaking a bag containing current coins of the realm. The
practice was so common in the Chinese quarter that none of the individuals present
paid the slightest attention. All of them knew that the coins were being reduced
in weight by the constant striking together; all were aware that to burn the
bag and thus secure the knocked-off dust of gold would be easy, and then that
the coins would "pass" in trade as readily as any.
The tall
Chinese to whom the gold belonged was confident of the honesty of the man who
shook the bag, as well he might have been, for the man was white and he had
once been a member of a sacred calling. He was known to the Chinese inhabitants
by a name which signified Old Double-talk, a result of his having acted as court-interpreter
in Chinese cases whenever a legal necessity arose. That he once had possessed
another name there is no substantial reason to doubt, inasmuch as he had become
so honored in his former Connecticut home that
influential people thrust upon him the distinction of Missionary at large in
the Canton province of China
In a manner
entirely innocent he had been tempted by curiosity to try the "taste"
of a bead of opium, burned at the end of a pipe. Had the pipe been an octopus
it could hardly have embraced him in a coil more resistless. Guilty and ashamed
he resigned from his post and returned to his home, but a pipe and lamp and a
five-tael tin of opium were cunningly concealed in his trunk. Then on a fatal
night he was deep in his opium dreams and the lamp was overturned. His sister
lifted and pushed him out at the window, only to fall herself in the fierce hot
arms of the flames.
His social world,
to which he dared not confess, refused him the boon of obscurity. Unable to
bear himself in a false capacity burdened by self-accusation, he ran away from
his friends, his relatives and his calling. Tramping for years he came at
length to a western village at the edge of which a Chinatown
existed. Fascinated, persuading himself that here he could work out his own
repentance, he chose this spot for his living interment.
The
environment was admirable, suited to many kinds of self-denial. He found
himself readily ostracized from all association in the village proper, and
rarely tempted to over-indulgence of food among the Chinese. The one particular
battle which was rendered frequently too hard to fight was that between his
resolution and his desire once more to taste a pipe, for the insidious fumes of
opium were constantly in his nostrils.
Double-talk
had various means of gaining his daily bread. Aside from the far-between
opportunities of acting officially in court, on the returns of which he must
certainly have failed to exist, he was jack-of-all-occupations in Chinatown . Thus he cured the bleeding backs of the
donkeys employed by Kow Sup Fun and Wan Lee Toi to bring down wood from the
mountains; he doctored the chickens, pigs and ducks of Suey Fat when ailment overtook
them; he played the brass pan in the orchestra, whenever a funeral required the
service; and he shook the bag of coins to wear off the metal.
He was well aware
of the fact that to reduce in weight or to mutilate the coins of the country
was prohibited by law. Nevertheless, he agitated the gold with vigor, his
conscience rendered dull by hunger and fatigue. On that particular night he was
wet, in addition to his usual unnurtured condition, for the rain had soaked him
throughout the day. Moreover, he felt a certain parental responsibility, as he
gazed from time to time into the depths of two great brown eyes at his knee which
he found unfailingly lifted to his own.
Almost a part
of the shadows, a small Chinese boy was clinging to his leg, with chubby,
dimpled hands, winking wistfully in the smoke—a silent little chap, who
regarded Old Double-talk with a love too great to be expressed. This small
bronze bit of humanity spent nearly all his time with the man, always following
him about, with a singular instinct for keeping on his trail, or holding fast
to his hand when together they walked, or clinging to anything clutchable if both
the hands happened to be engaged.
The child, who
was called Luey Sing, was the first-born, and indeed the only-born, of Luey
Hop, a venerable vendor of lizards which the learned converted into physic. As
might be conjectured, Luey Hop was not a wealthy man. In addition to being poor
he was vigorously ignored, if not disliked, by the Chinese population, having
once committed the error of furnishing certain police with information
detrimental to a large and illicit industry—the cooking of opium without a
license.
Little Luey
Sing shared, in a miniature manner, the ignominy thrust upon his father, yet he
was inconsistently happy, for he enjoyed an undisputed possession of
Double-talk for a friend and companion. This night, amidst the clatter of
Chinese words and phrases, the crisp, clear sound of the buttons being pushed
on the wires of a counter, and the metallic ring of the golden coins, the
little follow looked upward in adoration so long that his neck was nearly ready
to break. His eyes began to drop their curtains; his tiny fat fingers somewhat
loosened their grip. He nodded and started and nodded again. At length with an
effort he opened his big, wistful eves, as he noted the kindly, wrinkled face
above bending thoughtfully down. Then, in a baby voice, he lisped: —
"Now Luey
lay me down to theep."
"All
right, little man," said Double-talk, glancing at a clock to assure
himself his time was fully measured, "we'll trot along home." He
carried the bag to a raw-boned Celestial who was running the fan-tan table and
put it down. The Chinese glanced at the time-piece and paid ten cents from the
money at his hand.
"Good-night,"
said Double-talk, without expecting an answer, and taking little limber Sing in
his arms, he left the place and trudged away through the wet and glittering
avenue of darkness.
Luey was sound
asleep when the door of his father's dwelling was pushed quietly open, and he
was therefore laid for a moment in his bed, to which his protector groped his
way. When a candle sputtered out gushes of light. Old Double-talk stood white
and amazed at what he saw.
The form of
Luey Hop was half way only on a bunk; his face was on the floor. He was dead. How
old and tired he looked!
Double-talk
was harshly jarred by this unexpected sight. He had known the old man to be
feeble and underfed; he had given all the comfort and all the food he could to
this honest and down-trodden companion, but he had never suspected the shadow
of death of being so near.
He took little
Sing in his arms again and hurried to secure the attendance of Doctor Ah Kee.
This fine old gentleman knew at a glance through his prodigious glasses that
acute pneumonia, super-induced by the chill and wet of the day, had done its
work rapidly. Luey Sing was fatherless, but not parentless; that is to say, he
was now an orphan to whom Old Double-talk was foster-mother and foster-father
in one. The Chinese visited sufficient of the sins of the departed on the son
to warrant them in preserving a total indifference to the little fellow's being
and to his adoption by a man of another color.
But the
ceremonious people, however much they may have neglected Luey Hop during his
life, stinted no part of the usual rites, now that he and his craving for
sustenance were stilled. For several days, the weather being cold, they
frightened off devils with suitable and probated noises, and burned the full
allotment of punks at the shrine in the Joss-house, before the interment. At
the end of the proper time the weazened old form was conveyed to the graveyard
with appropriate orchestration.
Old
Double-talk was obliged to refuse to play the brass pan on this occasion. He
therefore attended with little Luey Sing holding to his hand, the only genuine
mourner in all the noisy procession.
With masterful
inconsequence the Chinese people, who had refused to assist in the maintenance
of Luey Hop in life, had prepared a lavish and elaborate banquet for his use when
at last he was dead. They saw his coffin covered in the grave and the mound
roughly spaded into shape on top, when they set it all about with roasted pig,
chickens and ducks, boiled rice, grease pudding and fried weeds. They set up
lighted punks and burned no end of red paper to smoke out or keep off hungry
demons; and then they went back to their lives of work, fan-tan and opium.
Double-talk
looked hungrily on at the rite of decoration with food. He and little Luey had
been less than half fed for the past three days, and by reason of his grief he
had earned not a cent—not even the trifle which he ordinarily got for playing
the pan at a burial.
That night, when
his pangs had increased with the darkness, he was over-distressed by the moans
of hunger which were uttered, now and again, by little Sing, in his sleep. It
became too much to be endured. He blew out the candle, at length, and crushing on
his battered hat, went forth in the frosty night. He turned to the north and
pushed ahead rapidly, facing the fangs of the wind. He was hunched all up by
the cold that crept to his marrow and tortured by waking dreams of the peace
and ecstasy which a pipe of opium could bring. Doggedly he hurried on till he
came to the graveyard gate. This he climbed, without a sound.
Quickly he
stumbled across the unmarked mounds, where the Chinese were but napping before
they should all be transported to sleep in China, and he went directly toward
the grave of Luey Hop.
He was almost
upon it when he suddenly floundered, and collided heavily with a human form.
His hair crept upward; a chill shot down and up his spine; a feeling of horror
alone prevented the cry which rose to his lips.
"Ugh,"
grunted the form, in a voice too thick for a ghost, and bounding to his feet
one of the Pah Ute Indians whose regular predatorial visits to the graves of
departed Celestials gave color to the story that the spirits of the dead
devoured the banquet—a hearty but super-frightened buck—darted swiftly away to
the sagebrush.
Old Double-talk
was startled so thoroughly that his teeth began to chatter. Nevertheless, he
realized that he was the dominant spirit of the evening, and he therefore made
all possible haste to appropriate all of the funeral meats, for himself and
Luey Sing, and then to beat a retreat the way he had come. He had robbed the
dead. He permitted his conscience to freeze, for the sake of keeping alive the bodies
of little Luey Sing and himself.
Day by day the
severity of the winter increased. The snow became so deep that the donkeys
could not be sent to the mountains, and in consequence there were not any
bleeding backs to cure. Pigs and ducks and chickens left their diseases out in
the cold. Litigation, or trials requiring a Chinese interpreter, were not even
so much as on the calendar. And not every day did the gambling table accumulate
sufficient of the golden coins to warrant a shaking.
Such a dearth
of money and credit and chances for work prevailed in the village that violent
means of gaining a bare subsistence had come into being. Robberies were
frequent and nearly always accompanied, if not preceded, by arson. So great was
the terror of the people that a citizens' union had been organized, and
desperate men kept nightly watch in the streets. In secret they had also formed
a vigilance committee, whose warning was out for all offenders to heed on pain
of death.
So engrossed was
Old Double-talk with his task of keeping the body and soul of little Sing
together, and incidentally his own, that the state of affairs was quite without
his ken. Thus he sat looking at the little bronze lad, one brilliant, moon-lit
night. Sing had eaten a crust of bread in the morning and a crust the day
before; the child invariably ate more than the man. All that day the great wistful
eyes of the little chap had searched those of his friend, appealingly. To-night
they were blazing with hunger although forever yearning in expression. There
was no such thing as sleep in their solemn depths. The little fellow came to lay
his head on his protector's knee.
"Sleepy,
little man?" Old Double-talk inquired. "Want now I lay me down to
sleep?"
The child
shook his head.
"Hungry?"
crooned the man.
Luey nodded,
timidly.
"Bless
your poor little heart, you're starving." He took the cold little chap in
his arms and tried to rock him to sleep.
The man's mind
was working oddly. He felt that anything, however desperate, was better than to
let this helpless child succumb to the pangs of hunger; his conscience had ceased
to be, in his anguish. The Chinese people had given all the aid they would. It was
cheaper, to bury Luey Sing than to keep him.
Old
Double-talk thought with composure, yes, eagerly, of robbing another grave,
were there only a grave to rob. Why not kill some old Chinaman and get the food
they would certainly leave on his mound, said his mind, He started at himself,
so abhorrent was this foreign thought. Yet his calculating instinct pursued the
idea to its end. They would keep the body so long that the child and himself
might die before the feast was spread,
Little Luey
Sing was still diffidently nodding to assure him of his hunger. It made the
heart of the man bleed to see him.
A sudden mental
picture occurred to his mind. He saw some laborers carrying potatoes to an
elongated pyramid of them, which they were covering with straw and earth, to
preserve the raw articles of food through the winter. He thought of the rabbits
digging into this pile in the night to save their lives. It was theft to take
those potatoes. He had never wilfully wronged any living being but himself; he had
never lived any but a life of innocent self-destruction; but—this child that he
loved was dying. A man has a right, he told himself, to preserve human life,
even by desperate means. The idea got possession of his soul. He was frantic to
be digging at the pile of potatoes. A wild, haggard look came in his face. The
child saw it come and was frightened.
"What is
it, little man?" said the foster-parent tenderly. "Was he awful tired
and hungry? Never mind, old Ghee Sum will get him something to eat. Luey go to
sleep—like a good little boy, and Ghee Sum won't be long."
In his haste
he laid little Sing in his bed with all his clothing on. "But, wait, little
man," he said, with a sense of shame, "we haven't said our prayers."
He placed the child on its knees by the bunk and knelt there beside him,
simply. When the wee Chinese chap had repeated the sweet, old-fashioned appeal
of children, Old Double-talk remained kneeling a minute, to add his own petition,
in a mumble. And when he arose to place little Luey in the bed and to kiss the
soft wee face, a light of fatherly anguish was burning in his eyes.
"Good night,
you poor little scamp," he said, somewhat hoarsely, "old Ghee Sum will
soon be back with something nice."
An hour later,
when he came furtively along through the shadows of the village, with a sack
half filled with potatoes, he was startled, on turning, to see a sudden glow of
fire athwart the sky, in the direction whence he had come. Cries arose from
terrified women and angry men. A clangor of bells burst on the frosty air; a
din of shouts, screaming whistles and reverberating thuds of horses' hoofs
seemed to fill all the night. He felt all the fear in which his conscience was
suddenly plunged. He started to run with his plunder.
Almost on the
instant a watchman darted upon him. He dropped the sack and got away, only to
dash into the arms of half a dozen men who were racing madly toward the fire.
He was clutched by a dozen fierce and merciless hands. A score of maddened
citizens quickly gathered about him. There was neither law nor order nor reason
in the mob which soon collected in the street; and no one noticed a timid
little form that ran to the shadows for concealment.
The roar of
the firemen thundering by with their engine added confusion to the moment. Then
a leader came pushing his way among the captors. He stilled their babel, and
then they became truly grim and terrible.
There was no
delay; there was simply the calm and awful determination to do their work and do
it quickly. Immediately all were in motion, the vainly protesting prisoner in
their midst, marching voicelessly away, their feet making crisp, hard clatter on
the frozen ground.
When at length
Old Double-talk was standing, bound, beneath the cross-beam of the cemetery
gate, he knew their purpose. He knew that nothing could stop them now.
"God help
you," he murmured, "you don't know what you are doing."
And then when
at last those silent men had scattered to the four winds, and only the creak and
creak of the rope on the beam, as something swung in the wind, made sound, a
timid little form came slowly from the brush and approached the spot.
It was Luey
Sing, who had followed unerringly, guided alone by his childish love and
natural instinct. He could barely reach the ankles of his friend and protector,
but these he clutched, with an odd little coo of joy, and throwing his arms
about the unresponsive legs, laid his chilled little cheek against the cloth.
The creak and
creak might have seemed like the chink and chink of the gold when Old
Double-talk shook the bag; howbeit, the child was patient. He waited and waited
for a word or a sign. He looked up wistfully to catch the twinkling answer from
the eyes he knew and loved so well. Slowly his thin little body chilled through
and through. Yet he made no complaint; he was waiting for the creak to cease.
At last, as a
peaceful warmth and drowsiness began to overtake him, he timidly opened his
lips.
"Now Luey
lay me down to theep," he lisped in a whisper.
The old-time
loving response failed to come. He waited, gazing yet more wistfully upward.
His eyes were so weary and heavy. He tried again:
"Now Luey
lay—me down to—theep
I play—the
Lor'—my thoul—keep.
If I—thould
die—befloe—wake,
I play—the—Lor'—my—thoul—t-a-k-e."
His eyes were
closed. His arms were tight about the lifeless ankles. Breathing a sad little
sigh he fell into the sweetest and longest of slumbers.
In the morning
early the leader of the mob came guiltily out to the graveyard gate. He stood
there awed, when he came in sight of the place and viewed the silent figure and
the frozen little form of Luey Sing still clasping the stiffened knees.
"My
God," said he, "the poor old man—the poor little kid."
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