CHAPTER VI

UNCLE JASPER'S DIARY

After lunch the Winnebagos and the boys gathered around Nyoda in Uncle

Jasper's study to hear her read aloud from "The Diery of Jasper M.

Carver, Esqwire." She held the book up that all might see the portraits

of the fearsome pirates, and then turned over to the next page, where the

sprawly, uneven writing began, and started to read.

"October 7, 1870. Confined to the house through bad behavior while

father and mother have gone to the fair. I wasn't lonesome though

because I had company. A boy ran into the yard chasing a cat and saw me

sticking my head out of the upstairs window and blew a bean shooter at

me and hit me on the chin and I hit him with an apple core and then he

dared me to come out and lick him but I couldn't go out of the house so

I dared him to climb up the porch post and come in the window. He came

and I licked him. He is a new boy in town and his name is Sydney

Phillips, but he wants to be called Tad. He lives up on Harrison Hill.

We are going to be pirates when we grow up. I am going to be Jasper the

Feend and he is going to be Tad the Terror. We swore eternul frendship

and wrote our names in blood on the attic window sill."

"Oh, how delicious!" cried Sahwah at the end of the first entry. "Your

uncle must have been lots of fun when he was young. What crazy things

boys are, anyway! To start out by fighting each other and end up by

swearing eternal friendship! Go on, Nyoda, what did they do next?"

Nyoda proceeded.

"November 10, 1870. Tad and I made a great discovery this afternoon.

There is a secret passage in this house. It is----"

The concerted shriek of triumph that went up from the Winnebagos forced

Nyoda to pause.

"I told you there was!" shouted Sahwah above the rest. "Please hurry and

read where it is, I can't wait another minute!"

Nyoda turned the page and then paused. "The next page is torn out," she

said, holding the book up so they could all see the ragged strip of paper

left hanging in the binding, where the page had been torn out.

"Oh, what a shame!" The wail rose on every side.

"Maybe it tells later," said Sahwah hopefully. "Go on, Nyoda." The dairy

continued on a page numbered six.

"January 4, 1871. Tad and I played pirat to-day. We made a pirat's den

in the secret passage. We are going to hide our chests of money there,

all pieces of eight. We haven't any pieces of eight yet just some red,

white and blue dollars we found in the desk drawer in the library. Tad

thinks maybe they are patriotick curency they used in the Revolushun"

Nyoda had to wait a minute until Sherry had got done laughing, and then

she proceeded:

"February 19, 1871. I am in durrance vile, being locked in my room for

a week with nothing to eat but bread and water because I shut Patricia

up in the secret passage and went away and forgot all about her because

there was a fire. I remembered and let her out as soon as I got home

but she had fainted, being a silly girl and afraid of the dark, and she

couldn't scream because we tied a handkerchief over her mouth when we

kidnapped her, being pirats. So now I am in durrance vile and cannot

see any of my family, not even Tad. But he stands behind the hedge and

shoots pieces of candy through my window with the bean shooter and

lightens my durrance vile which is what a sworn frend has to do when

their names are written in blood on the attic window sill."

Thus the entries in the scrawling, boyish hand covered page after page,

recounting the adventurous and ofttimes seamy career of the two youthful

pirates, through all of which the two stood up for each other stanchly,

and never, never gave each other away, because they were "sworn frends

till deth us do part," and their names were "written in blood on the

attic window sill."

The entries became farther apart after a while, and the spelling improved

until finally there came this announcement:

"Tad and I can't be pirates any longer. We are going to college next

week."

There the India ink ceased and also the illustrations. After that came

page after page of neat entries in faded but still legible blue ink,

telling of the progress through college of the two boys; chronicles of

the joys, the troubles, the triumphs and the escapades of the two

friends, still so inseparable that their names have become a byword among

the students and they go by the nickname of David and Jonathan. When one

of them gets into trouble the other one still does "what a sworn friend

has to do when their names are written in blood on the attic window

sill." The Winnebagos listened with shining eyes while Nyoda read the

tale of this remarkable friendship.

The dates of the entries moved forward by months; records of scrapes

became fewer and fewer; David and Jonathan had outgrown their colthood

and were beginning to win honors with brain and brawn. Then came the

record of their graduation and return to Oakwood; of "Tad the Terror"

becoming a doctor, of the marriage of Jasper's sister Patricia to a sea

captain; the death of his father and the passing of Carver House into his

possession.

Later came the account of a delightful year spent abroad with Tad

Phillips, of mountain climbing in the Alps; of browsing among rare old

art treasures in France and Italy; of gay larks in Paris. It was always

he and Tad, he and Tad; still as loyal to each other as in the days when

they wrote their names in blood on the attic window sill.

After the entry which chronicled Jasper's return to Oakland and settling

down in Carver House with his mother, and his enthusiastic adoption of

literature as a profession, came an item which made the Winnebagos sit up

and listen. It was:

"June 3, 1885. I have had a new window put into my study on the side

which faces toward's Tad's house on Harrisburg Hill. I had the young

Italian artist, Pusini, who has lately come to New York, come and set

the glass for me. It is a representation of a charming scene I came

across in Italy--an arched gateway covered over with climbing roses.

The window is arranged so that through the arch of the gateway I can

look directly at Tad's house. It gives me inspiration in my work."

"What a beautiful idea!" said Hinpoha, carried away completely by the

great love of Jasper Carver for his friend, so simply expressed in his

diary.

"So that was Tad's house, that we are living in!" said Sylvia excitedly.

"I wonder where he is now."

"Go on reading, Nyoda," said Sahwah, consumed with interest in the tale.

"See if he says anything about the shutter." Nyoda passed on to the next

entry.

"June 27, 1885. Went to the Academy of Music in Philadelphia to hear

Sylvia Warrington sing. She is the new singer from the South that has

created such a furore. The Virginia Nightingale, they call her. What a

God-gifted woman she is! There never was such a voice as hers. She sang

'Hark, hark, the lark,' and the whole house rose to its feet. She was

Spring incarnate. Sylvia Warrington! The name itself is music. I cannot

forget her. She is like a lark singing in the desert at dawning."

A vague remembrance leaped up for an instant in Katherine's mind and died

as it came.

Nyoda read on through pages that recorded Uncle Jasper's meeting with

Sylvia Warrington; his great and growing love for her; his persistent

wooing, her consenting to marry him; his wild happiness, which found vent

in page after page of rapturous plans for the future. Then came the

announcement of Tad's return from a period of study abroad, and Uncle

Jasper's proud presentation of his bride-to-be. After that Tad's name

appeared in connection with every occasion, still the faithful David to

his beloved Jonathan.

Then, almost without warning, the great friendship ran on the rocks and

was shattered. For Tad no sooner saw Sylvia Warrington than he too, fell

madly in love with her. A brief and bitter entry told how she finally

broke her engagement to Uncle Jasper and married Tad, and how Uncle

Jasper, beside himself with grief and disappointment, turned against his

friend and hated him with the undying hate that is born of jealousy. With

heavy strokes of the pen that cut the paper he wrote down his

determination to have no more friends and to live to himself thereafter.

Then, in a shaky hand in marked contrast to the fierce strokes just

above, he wrote: "But Sylvia--I love her still. I can't help it." That

shaky handwriting stood as a mute testimonial to his heart's torment, and

Nyoda, reading it after all these years, felt a sympathetic spasm of pain

pass through her own heart at the sight of that wavering entry.

"It's just like a story in a book!" exclaimed Hinpoha, furtively drying

her eyes, which had overflowed during the reading of the last page. "The

beautiful lady, and the rival lovers, and the disappointed one never

marrying. Oh, it's too romantic for anything! Oh, _please_ hurry and read

what comes next."

Nyoda turned the page and read the brief entry:

"I have taken up the study of ancient history as a serious pursuit. In

it I hope to find forgetfulness."

The eyes of the Winnebagos traveled to the bookcase, and now they knew

why there was nothing there but dull old books in heavy bindings, and why

Uncle Jasper Carver hated love stories.

The next entry had them all sitting up again.

"I have had Hercules fasten an iron shutter over the window in my

study--the one through which I can see Tad's house when I sit at my

desk. I cannot bear to look at anything that reminds me of him."

"There!" shouted all the Winnebagos at once. "_That_ was the reason for

putting up the iron shutter! The mystery is solved!"

"Poor Uncle Jasper!" said Nyoda pityingly. "What a Spartan he was! How

thoroughly he set about removing every memory of Tad from his mind! Think

of covering up that beautiful pane of glass because he couldn't bear to

look through it at the house of his friend!" She finished reading the

entry:

"Hercules demurred at covering up the window--he admired it more than

anything else in the house--so to give him a satisfactory reason for

doing so I told him the devil would come in through that gateway some

day and I was putting up the shutter to keep him out. There's one thing

sure; Hercules will never take that shutter down as long as he

lives--he's scared nearly into a Chinaman."

"So that's why Hercules threw such a fit when we took the shutter off!"

said Sherry. "He thought that now the devil would come in and get him.

Poor, superstitious old nigger!"

"I wonder if Tad and Sylvia went to live in the house on Harrisburg

Hill," said Sahwah curiously. "He doesn't say whether they did or not."

"Oh, I wonder if they did!" cried Sylvia, with eager interest. "To think

I've been living in the same house they lived in--if they _did_ live

there," she added. "But how strange it seems to hear them call that place

Harrisburg Hill. It is called Main Street Hill now."

"I wonder what Tad and Sylvia did after they were married," said Hinpoha,

with romantic curiosity. "Did they stay in Oakwood, or did they go away?

Is there any more, Nyoda?"

Nyoda was already glancing down the next page, which was written over

with lines in blacker ink, and broader and heavier strokes of the pen,

which seemed somehow to express grim satisfaction on the part of Uncle

Jasper. Grim satisfaction Uncle Jasper must indeed have felt when he

wrote those lines, for misfortune had overtaken the one who had caused

his own anguish of heart. The entry told how Tad had become staff

physician at one of the large army posts in the west. There was an

epidemic of typhoid and quite a few of the men were ill at once, all

requiring the same kind of medicine. Through carelessness in making up a

certain medicine he put in a deadly poison instead of the harmless

ingredient he intended to put in, and a dozen men died of the dose. There

was a tremendous stir about the matter, and the newspapers all over the

country were full of it. He was court-martialed, and though he was

acquitted, the mistake being entirely accidental, the matter had gained

such publicity that his career as a doctor was ruined. He left the army

and fled out of the country, taking Sylvia with him. Some months later

the papers brought the announcement of both their deaths from yellow

fever in Cuba. Again the handwriting began to waver on the last sentence.

"She is dead." In those three little words the Winnebagos seemed to hear

the echo of the breaking of a strong man's heart. There were no more

entries.

"Isn't it perfectly _thrilling_!" gulped Hinpoha, with eyes overflowing

again. "It's better than any book I ever read! And to think we never

suspected there was anything like that connected with your Uncle Jasper!

There, now, Katherine Adams, what did I tell you? You said he was a born

bachelor, and just look at the romance he had!"

"He certainly did," said Katherine, in a tone of surrender.

"That must be why the house we lived in was shut up so long," said Sylvia

musingly. "The man that said we could live in it said that old Mrs.

Phillips had moved away many years ago and had never come back, and

although people knew she was dead, no one had ever come to live in the

house, and nobody in Oakwood knew who owned it. The man said he had heard

from older people in the town that Mrs. Phillips had had a son who was

away from home all the time after he was grown up and who had gotten into

some kind of trouble--he couldn't remember what it was. This must have

been it! How queer it is, that I should first come to live in Tad's

house, and then stay in the house of his friend! I never dreamed, when I

heard that man telling Aunt Aggie about the almost forgotten people that

used to live in the old house, that I should ever hear of them again.

Things have turned out to be _so_ interesting since I came to stay in the

Winter Palace!" she finished up with sparkling eyes.

Darkness had fallen by the time Nyoda had finished reading Uncle Jasper's

Diary, and she jumped up with a little exclamation as the clock on the

mantel-piece chimed six. The other hours had struck unnoticed. "Mercy!"

she cried, "it's time dinner was on the table, and here we haven't even

begun to get it! I forgot all about dinner, thinking about poor Uncle

Jasper."

All the rest had forgotten about dinner, too, and the Winnebagos could

not get their minds off the tale they had just heard read. "Poor Uncle

Jasper!" they all said, looking up at his picture, and to their pitying

eyes his face was no longer grim and stern, but only pathetic.