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Title: O. Henry memorial award prize stories of 1923
Chosen by the Society of Arts and Sciences
Author: Various
Release date: June 2, 2024 [eBook #73756]
Language: English
Original publication: Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1924
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD PRIZE STORIES OF 1923 ***
_O. HENRY MEMORIAL
AWARD
PRIZE STORIES
of 1923_
_O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD_
PRIZE STORIES
_of_ 1923
CHOSEN BY THE SOCIETY OF
ARTS AND SCIENCES
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS
_Author of “A Handbook on Story Writing,”
“Our Short Story Writers,” Etc._
_Associate Professor of English, Hunter College
of the City of New York_
_Instructor in Story Writing, Columbia University_
(_Extension Teaching and
Summer Session_)
[Illustration: colophon]
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1924
COPYRIGHT, 1923, 1924, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Copyright, 1922, 1923, by The McCall Company and The Pictorial
Review Company.
Copyright, 1923, by Harper & Brothers, The Curtis Publishing
Company in the United States and Great Britain, McClure Publishing
Company, New York; The Century Co., Pearson’s Magazine (The New
Pearson’s), The Frank A. Munsey Company, P. F. Collier and Son
Company in the United States and Great Britain, International
Magazine Company, Consolidated Magazines Corporation (The Red Book
Magazine.)
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PRELUDE. By Edgar Valentine Smith 1
A FRIEND OF NAPOLEON. By Richard Connell 19
TOWERS OF FAME. By Elizabeth Irons Folsom 38
PHANTOM ADVENTURE. By Floyd Dell 46
THE DISTANT STREET. By Francis Edwards Faragoh 59
THE WAGER. By Isa Urquhart Glenn 75
CÉLESTINE. By James Hopper 92
WITCH MARY. By Genevieve Larsson 104
THE BAMBOO TRAP. By Robert S. Lemmon 120
THE HAT OF EIGHT REFLECTIONS. By James Mahoney 134
HOME-BREW. By Grace Sartwell Mason 159
DERRICK’S RETURN. By Gouverneur Morris 182
SHADOWED. By Mary Synon 193
THE ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL. By Booth Tarkington 211
NICE NEIGHBOURS. By Mary S. Watts 229
NOT WANTED. By Jesse Lynch Williams 247
INTRODUCTION
This collection is that of no single person, whose prejudices
conceivably might emphasize one type or another; but of editors,
critics, and writers of fiction, whose combined opinion insures
catholicity of taste and freedom from bias.
The fifth annual volume presented by the Committee from the Society of
Arts and Sciences, it contains in the judgment of the Committee
twenty-five or thirty per cent. of the best stories published in
1923.[A]
In previous volumes the Committee have stated the requisites of a good
story. Hag-ridden by no formulæ, the Committee believe that every worthy
narrative--whether Hebraic tale, Greek myth, or American short
story--must yet meet specific tests. For example, characters engage in a
struggle or become involved in difficulties out of which they emerge
successfully or unsuccessfully. Apply this limitation to the
David-Goliath fight, Phaëton’s sun chariot drive, or to Papa Chibou’s
rape of Napoleon; it generously includes all.
The Committee apprehend, _a posteriori_, the writer’s problems of
structure, characterization, colour, rhythm; they recognize the skill
indispensable to concealing technique; they feel the beauty of the
finished work, whose joinings are not discernible but whose exquisite
art and pulsing nature--if they may paraphrase O. Henry--take them by
the throat like the quinsy. Every short story may appear, and should
appear, a mature Pallas, though the sympathetic analyst may deduce, as
the author will recall, the slow processes of birth and growth.
Over the value of this year’s fiction compared with that of recent
years, the Committee disagree. The pessimist says the level is lower;
the optimist declares it higher. “A fair plateau marked by a few
peaks,” says another. They agree on the following list as ranking first:
Babcock, Edwina Stanton, Mr. Cardeezer (_Harper’s_, May).
Beer, Thomas, Dolceda (_Saturday Evening Post_, November 3).
Benet, Stephen Vincent, The Golden Bessie (_Everybody’s_, June).
Buckley, F. R., Habit (_Adventure_, April 30).
Byrne, Donn, A Story Against Women (_Collier’s_, December 8).
Cobb, Irvin S., Red-Handed (_Cosmopolitan_, June); The Unbroken
Chain (_Cosmopolitan_, September).
Connell, Richard, A New York Knight (_Saturday Evening Post_, April
21); A Friend of Napoleon (_Saturday Evening Post_, June 30); The
Unfamiliar (_Century_, September).
Dell, Floyd, Phantom Adventure (_Century_, December).
Edholm, Charles Lawrence, The Rotten Board (_Century_, November).
Edwards, Harry Stilwell, The Blue Hen’s Chicken (_Scribner’s_
October).
Faragoh, Francis Edwards, The Distant Street (_The New Pearson’s_,
March).
Folsom, Elizabeth Irons, Towers of Fame (_McClure’s_, August).
Glenn, Isa Urquhart, The Wager (_Argosy-All Story_, September 18).
Hart, Frances Noyes, Long Distance (_Pictorial Review_, March); His
Majesty’s Adviser (_McCall’s_, June).
Hopper, James, Célestine (_Collier’s_, June 2).
Hurst, Fannie, 7 Candles (_Cosmopolitan_, September).
Jackson, Charles Tenney, Water and Fire (_Short Stories_, April
10).
Johnson, Nunnally, I Owe It All to My Wife (_Smart Set_, July).
Johnston, Calvin, Clay of Ca’lina (_Saturday Evening Post_, April
7).
Kahler, Hugh MacNair, Power (_Ladies’ Home Journal_, January).
Larsson, Genevieve, Witch Mary (_Pictorial Review_, January).
Lemmon, Robert S., The Bamboo Trap (_Short Stories_, April 25).
Lincoln, Joseph, The Realist (_Ladies’ Home Journal_, July).
Mahoney, James, The Hat of Eight Reflections (_Century_, April).
Mason, Grace Sartwell, Home Brew (_Saturday Evening Post_, August
18).
Miller, Alice Duer, The Widow’s Might (_Saturday Evening_ Post,
July 14).
Montague, Margaret Prescott, The To-day, To-morrow (_Atlantic
Monthly_, August).
Morris, Gouverneur, Derrick’s Return (_Cosmopolitan_, August).
Rice, Alice Hegan, Phoebe (_Atlantic Monthly_, April).
Russell, John, The Digger (_Everybody’s_, February); Gun Metal
(_Saturday Evening Post_, June 30).
Saxby, Charles, The Song in the Desert (_McCall’s_, September).
Scoville, Samuel, The Sea King (_Ladies’ Home Journal_, January).
Singmaster, Elsie, The Truth (_Saturday Evening Post_, March 24).
Smith, Edgar Valentine, Prelude (_Harper’s_, May); Substance of
Things Hoped For (_Harper’s_, August).
Steele, Wilbur Daniel, Towers of Sand (_Pictorial Review_, June);
Ginger Beer (_Pictorial Review_, November).
Synon, Mary, Shadowed (_Red Book_, May); An Unfinished Story (_Good
Housekeeping_, November).
Tarkington, Booth, The One Hundred Dollar Bill (_McCall’s_,
January); The Coincidence (_McCall’s_, September).
Train, Arthur, Her Crowded Hour (_Saturday Evening Post_, May 19).
Vorse, Mary Heaton, The Promise (_Harper’s_, July); The Single Man
(_Century_, July).
Watts, Mary S., Nice Neighbours (_Harper’s_, December).
Wharton, Edith, False Dawn (_Ladies’ Home Journal_, November).
Whitehead, Henry S., The Intarsia Box (_Adventure_, November 10).
Williams, Ben Ames, The Piano (_Saturday Evening Post_, March 10);
A Threefold Cord (_Saturday Evening Post_, May 19).
Williams, Jesse Lynch, Not Wanted (_Saturday Evening Post_,
November 17).
Wood, Frances Gilchrist, The Courage of a Quitter (_Delineator_,
August); Four o’Clocks (_Delineator_, February); Shoes (_Harper’s_,
December).
The stories in the following list rank high with a majority of the
Committee.
Aldrich, Bess Streeter, Meadows Entertains a Celebrity (_American_,
August).
Arbuckle, Mary, Half a Loaf (_Argosy-All Story_, May 19).
Bechdolt, Frederick R., The Sureness of MacKenzie (_Sea-Stories_,
January).
Bennett, James W., The Singing Skipper (_Short Stories_, February
25).
Burt, Struthers, Pan of the Pastures (_Saturday Evening Post_,
April 7).
Clausen, Carl, A Year Longer to Live (_Metropolitan_, June).
Cohen, Octavus Roy, Swampshade (_Good Housekeeping_, May).
Condon, Frank, A Wolf is a Wolf (_Saturday Evening Post_, December
1).
Connell, Richard, Fists (_Saturday Evening Post_, March 10).
Cooper, Courtney Ryley, The Son of Beauty (_Elks Magazine_,
December).
Cross, Ruth, Mary ’Lizabeth’s Folks (_Saturday Evening Post_,
December 22).
Dean, William Harper, Under Battened Hatches (_McClure’s_, July).
De Bra, Lemuel L., The Strategy of Chun Moy (_Short Stories_, March
10).
Derfelden, Margharita, The Buddha (_Scribner’s_, August).
Dodge, Louis, The Breaking Point (_Scribner’s_, July).
Dreiser, Theodore, Ida Hauchawout (_Century_, July).
Flanner, Janet, Papa Cæsar’s Wild Oats (_Live Stories_, December
14).
Frost, Meigs O., Lilies of the Lord (_Blue Book_, October).
Gilbert, Kenneth, The Last White-Water Birler (_Short Stories_,
September 25).
Greene, Frederick Stuart, Coming Back (_Saturday Evening Post_,
October 20).
Hall, Wilbur, The Screws (_Red Book_, January).
Hellman, Sam, A Date with Hannibal (_McClure’s_, February).
Hopper, James, A Fiery Revelation (_Collier’s_, January 27).
Irwin, Wallace, A Touch of Eternity (_Red Book_, April).
Jackson, Charles Tenney, Corn (_Our World_, October).
Johnston, Julia Winifred, The Blue in the Labradorite
(_Scribner’s_, October).
Johnston, Mary, Nemesis (_Century_, May).
Josselyn, Talbert, Mocking Bird (_Short Stories_, October 25).
Kahler, Hugh MacNair, The Pinhooker (_Saturday Evening Post_, July
23).
Kerr, Sophie, Chin-Chin (_Saturday Evening Post_, May 12); Cherry
Blossoms (_McCall’s_, October).
Larsson, Genevieve, Black Eric’s Son (_Pictorial Review_,
September).
Lindsey, Myra Mason, Miss Tilly’s Yellow Streak (_Scribner’s_,
December).
Marshall, Edison, The Savage Breast (_Everybody’s_, May).
Morris, Gouverneur, The Knife (_Cosmopolitan_, September).
Mumford, Ethel Watts, Ether (_Munsey’s_, September).
Nathan, Robert, The Marriage of the Puppets (_Atlantic Monthly_,
October).
Norris, Kathleen, Christmas Bread (_Good Housekeeping_, December).
Nygren, Richard, Dead Man’s Hand (_Scribner’s_, October).
Pulver, Mary Brecht, The Black Pigeon (_Saturday Evening Post_,
November 17).
Rhodes, Harrison, Thomas Robinson, Matrimonial Agent (_Saturday
Evening Post_, April 28).
Sanborn, Ruth Burr, A Born Teacher (_Bookman_, April).
Sappington, T. L., Spring Tonic (_Everybody’s_, June).
Shannon, Robert Terry, The Scourge (_Short Stories_, November 25).
Singmaster, Elsie, The Messenger (_Saturday Evening Post_, June 2);
Brother (_Outlook_, March 7).
Smith, Gordon Arthur, Triumph (_Saturday Evening Post_, January
20); Beata (_Harper’s_, October).
Springer, Fleta Campbell, The Scar (_Century_, January).
Steele, Wilbur Daniel, Arab Stuff (_Harper’s_, January).
Stone, Elinore Cowan, The Mama of Manuelito (_Century_, April).
Synon, Mary, Yucca Bloom (_McCall’s_, October).
Welles, Harriet, Old Ships (_Scribner’s_, August).
Wetjen, Albert Richard, The Iron Sea (_Collier’s_, March 31);
Minute Immensities (_Holland’s_, April).
Willoughby, Barrett, The Law of the Trap Line (_American_,
November).
Wood, Frances Gilchrist, The Pick-Up Job (_Pictorial Review_, May);
“And Hear--the Angels--Sing” (_Delineator_, December).
From the first list were selected the stories here offered. Again, out
of this smaller number three were voted the annual prizes. To “Prelude,”
by Edgar Valentine Smith, goes the first award of $500; to “A Friend of
Napoleon,” by Richard Connell, the second, of $250; to “Towers of Fame,”
by Elizabeth Irons Folsom, the special prize of $100 for the best brief
story under 3,000 words. One member wished to record a preference for
“The Distant Street” as first winner, and also urged Richard Connell’s
“A New York Knight” for second winner. With one exception, and with the
result stated, every story on the first list was considered in making
the awards. The exception is the work of Frances Gilchrist Wood. The
Committee having indicated their appreciation of its high merit, Mrs.
Wood, herself a member of the Committee, consented to a place on the
lists; but, as a matter of course, she refused to enter any one of her
stories as a candidate for the awards.
* * * * *
As magazines increase in number, good stories increase but not in equal
ratio. The reason, which will commend itself to all readers, is apparent
to any reader who has served a term in the editorial office. A story is
rejected on one of several counts: it falls below the standard of the
magazine; it is not of the type suited to the purpose and the audience
of the magazine; it comes at a time when the vaults are overstocked. If
superlatively excellent, it may overthrow both the second and third
barriers. But, let us say, it is rejected because it departs from type.
It may develop a psychological struggle, an adventure of the soul,
whereas the periodical to which it is offered prefers stories of
physical adventure. Sent back, the script may be bought subsequently by
a magazine of repute superior to the first. But make no mistake: the
editor paying most to-day has the pick of the market. He has first
chance, though he may not pick the best. He may leave ungathered a peach
of a story, because he believes his readers like apples or plums. Editor
Number Two may observe the fine fibre, the rare bloom, of the rejected
fruit and serve it up to the gustatorially discerning. So the good story
is salvaged. Stories below standard fall to publications implicitly
serving readers of lighter, cheaper fiction. The inferior story, then,
also ultimately finds an audience.[B] To read, to estimate, and to
extract the superior stories from the inferior combine in a threefold
task of increasing difficulty.
Seventy-five years ago the stream of literature flowed from England and
the European continent to America. Examine the first issue of _Harper’s
Magazine_.[C] You will find with few exceptions a collection of
reprints. Dickens’s _Household Words_, the _Dublin University Magazine_,
_Bentley’s Miscellany_, the _Ladies’ Companion_ and the London
_Athenæum_ provide two serials, a long story complete, a brief tale or
two, memoirs, comments on authors of the day--Jeffrey, Bowles,
Wordsworth, George Sand--and translations from the German, besides other
matter of irrelevance to this summary.
Lay aside Volume I of _Harper’s_, after observing that the volume
continues the practice of the first number, and take down Volume I of
_Scribner’s_. Appearing thirty-seven years later[D] and thirty-six years
before 1923, it marks the apex of this three-quarter century period. The
Table of Contents is practically all-American. There are Brander
Matthews, Joel Chandler Harris, Dean N. S. Shaler, Octave Thanet,
Margaret Crosby, Sarah Orne Jewett, Thomas Nelson Page, Harold Frederic,
H. C. Bunner, Duncan Campbell Scott, “J. S.” of Dale, Professor Adams
Sherman Hill, Arlo Bates. There are “Glimpses at the Diary of Gouverneur
Morris,” rather than “Memoirs of the Duchess of Orleans” (in the
_Harper’s_ of 1850). American periodical literature is established.
Consider, further, the situation to-day. In England you will find
leading American periodicals in the English edition; you will find in
_Hutchinson’s_, _The Strand_, _Nash’s_ (published, all, in London) for
instance, reprints of fiction first published in America by American
authors, as well as stories by English authors published simultaneously,
a little earlier, or a trifle later, in America.
“But,” asks one, “why state the obvious?” Because certain critics refuse
to recognize the obvious, insisting on the sciolism, provincialism,
poverty, and inadequacy of fiction in America. It is one thing to insist
out of deference to dreams of greater achievement; it is quite another
thing to insist out of subservience to the fashion which prompts
negation and destruction, out of an inherent inability to acknowledge
good in anything. The tentative data suggested above at least indicate
the cosmopolitan appeal of American fiction.
Turn again to the first volume of _Harper’s Magazine_. You will find one
page bearing the classic, “A Child’s Dream of a Star” (page 73); you
will find “My Novel,” by Bulwer Lytton; and “Maurice Tiernay,” by
Charles Lever. Will any magazine of June-November, 1923, carry similar
survivals to 2000 A.D.? The answer is on the knees of the gods. But
against the instances of novels of 1850, known at least to the
specialist and perhaps to others, there are anecdotes and tales of
matter and manner inferior to stories in the same magazine to-day.
Read the beginning of “Lettice Arnold” (page 13):
“Nay, my child,” said the pale, delicate, nervous woman, thus
addressed by a blooming girl whose face beamed with every promise
for future happiness, which health and cheerfulness, and eyes
filled with warm affection could give, “Nay, my child, don’t talk
so. You must not talk so. It is not to be thought of.”
Or read “Andrew Carson’s Money: A Story of Gold,” and mark the following
passage:
Mother, I have taken poison. I have sold my body to a doctor for
dissection; the money I give you is part of the price. You have
upbraided me for never making money; I have sold all I possess--my
body--and given you my money. You have told me of the stain on my
birth; I can not live and write after that; all the poetical fame
in the world would not wash away such a stain. Your bitter words,
my bitter fate, I can bear no longer; I go to the other world; God
will pardon me. Yes, yes. From the bright moon and stars this
night, there came down a voice, saying, God would take me up to
happiness amid his own bright worlds. Give my body to the men who
are waiting for it, and so let every trace of Andrew Carson vanish
from the earth.
Now read any passage in the stories here included from the same
magazine. The point to be emphasized is the generally higher standard of
present-day fiction, as the high standard of the magazine has been
uniform.
Again, the charge finds entertainment that American fiction lacks depth;
yet it flows full and deep from the head sources of all the races that
make America. Granted that within a thousand years, from some white heat
of common interest, fusion may effect a greater national literature. It
will be different from this of to-day, but it will look back--if it
looks, at all--on the Twentieth Century not as one of childish
beginnings. American writers have their origins among Anglo-Saxon scops,
Celtic bards, French trouvères, Hebrew psalmists and historians. A
patent fact, yes; but too frequently ignored by those who like to regard
American literature as infant literatures of old races are regarded.
Nationally, America may lack depth of common interest; the soil may be
“insufficiently fertilized,” as one critic says; but, racially, America
has all that her several races have ever possessed. The short story is
the exact vessel for catching and holding the various racial
characteristics.
“And because we like to be loved,” says another,[E] “we dare not touch
upon the wounds of life--the hunger, the passions, the buffets, the
defeats that purge its sordidness, gild its drabness, and actuate us to
nobler aspirations.”
By way of reply to this challenge Francis Edwards Faragoh might have
written “The Distant Street” had he not already published it. Emanuel’s
desire for undiscovered mysteries back of the yellow pools, for life
behind the flowers, by him prefigured as unattainable, symbol of the
ideal; his buffets at home, his climactic defeat through human
passion--these are of the essence of life. Emanuel’s worldly success,
built on the supremacy of the practical pull, poignantly concedes to
life the insignificance of a single unit amid an infinity of units. His
desire, which leads him--in his “unaccountable fits”--to the distant
street, maintains his ego triumphant, ultimately inviolate. The lyric
strain in this young doctor has the potency of passages in the Song of
Solomon; his ideal of duty has the greater potency of the Mosaic
tablets.
Growing out of the Swedish settlements in Wisconsin, from another
tributary race flowers “Witch Mary.” The men and women of this story,
blue-eyed and blond, among whom Black Eric represents the darker
strength of Satan, retain the fancy, the poetry, of early Scandinavian
peoples. Those peoples, more than a thousand years ago, saw etins and
elves and nickers on the sea; their terror was of those monsters, the
nipping night, and the northern wind. Of the inland country, in Miss
Larsson’s narrative, the river is still the source of fear, as was the
sea while _Beowulf_ was growing slowly to epic size. Those children who
saw Witch Mary fly, like the wind, from the river, are descended in the
fortieth generation or so from those children who followed the flight of
Grendel’s mother to her lair under the waters of the haunted mere.
“Prelude” pictures without ruth the dominant Anglo-Saxon in decay. But
in Selina Jo, the humble fighter whose perseverance and patience land
her in the reformatory of her desire, it hints at resurrection out of
dust. Stock of the past, impoverished, dry as Phœnix ashes, yet may
renew itself, like the fabled bird, for another thousand years. Heritage
of the South, the poor white has been loosely accepted as drift left by
flood and ebb of a splendid civilization. Only in recent years have
writers come out of the South who treat him in the individual manner he
deserves. Mr. Smith has done so with originality, true democracy, and
thorough understanding. Selina Jo he has made a living girl, typical of
her social stratum, seemingly typical in her departure from it. Hope
lies in just this seeming divergence, which is in reality the survival
of warrior blood second to none the earth has ever produced.
Though perhaps not apparent to the reader, “The Wager” represents in its
authorship one who carries on the traditions of the feudal South. Those
who have been longest in these states are first to scatter to other
corners of the world in foreign service, in far-flung naval exploits,
and in military outposts. If a considerable percentage of American
fiction uses foreign settings, the conclusion must not be falsely drawn,
“We have nothing at home to write about, it would appear,” but rather
“Most at home in America, most at home abroad.” Isa Urquhart Glenn, in
employing the scenes she knew while her husband saw service in the
Philippines, only makes use of what for her was immediately at hand.
Surely there lie in this tale feeling for race and compassion for the
weak--hallmarks of _noblesse oblige_.
“Shadowed,” by Mary Synon, climactically presents the few hours which
mark the climax of a political career. At the moment Stroude is about to
be nominated for the presidency of the United States, he receives a
letter from a dying woman. The significance of this letter lies in the
facts that he loved her, that she had released him to climb a mountain
higher than Pisgah, and that he had promised to return to her if she
ever needed him. His struggle must be brief, since he must either accept
the nomination without seeing the woman or must see her at the cost of
losing the highest honour in the land. His code of honour has never
faltered in the years he has smiled at the devious ways of politicians
and kept his integrity, nor does it falter now. He goes back to Pisgah.
If this eventuality is criticized as the one less likely to occur in
real life, yet it has the merit of seeming true in the life of fiction.
And every reader will admit the essential truth of the ideal. The
author, herself of the Middle West, has paid tribute to the Southern
mountaineer.
“The Bamboo Trap” illustrates the struggle of the American scientist far
afield. John Mather’s adventure in the Andes, wherein his problem is to
escape from a hole in the mountain side is enlivened by spiders. He
escapes through a gallant physical fight. It is impossible to resist
reference to a suggestion made by a reader of this story, a reader who
is avowedly of the camp preferring Russian to American fiction. This
tale would be more life-like, he said, if it ended on the unfinished
struggle. “Why have that flood tear down the remaining barrier?
Accident, wasn’t it?” But if Mather had not very nearly destroyed the
barrier, accident would have availed him nothing. An Oriental in that
trap doubtless would have concluded, “If I am fated to die I shall die.”
Therein is exemplified the difference between the philosophy in
literature of the negative and philosophy in literature of the positive.
Life in America is not torpid, sick, neurasthenic, if one agrees with
Theodore Dreiser, as he expressed himself in a recent interview.[F]
“What I am driving at is the fact that the portrayal of American life
does not lend itself to Russian atmosphere, to a Dostoyefsky plot, to
Gorki treatment.” Mather’s escape is not so much the ingenious end to a
clever plot as it is the logical end of just such a situation in real
life, provided the chief actor be American and not Russian. The fighter
may escape, the weakling dies. If the ideal of a people be annihilation,
death the easy surrender either to indifference or to a divine
nostalgia, just so surely literature will reflect that ideal. Not before
America as a nation embraces pessimism will its literature be affected
seriously by the literature of pessimism. And, incidentally, it will be
worth while watching the literature of New Russia for a change of
ideals.
According to recent statistics, Paris has replaced Chicago as literary
centre of the United States, perhaps the first important result, to
letters, of the World War. Richard Connell humorously records an
instance of the days when “Ichabod” appeared on the lintel of waxworks
palaces. Where is now the Eden Musée? Who goes to Madame Tussaud’s? They
had their day, those creations of horror; melodramatically, they held
their puppet moments on the stage. But those moments are fled, and what
is out of date serves the humourist. Papa Chibou’s affection for the
cauliflower-eared dummy and his ignorance of the real Napoleon combine
incongruously enough, and with the love theme, to a high hilarity. Yet
the story is beyond farce. More than one will feel his eyes moist at the
end, and nobody drops a tear over farce unless from extravagance of
laughter. Mr. Connell’s ability in creating characters over whom and
with whom one laughs happily associates itself with acumen in searching
out ridiculous situations. His humour recommends itself further as of
that highly human order bordering pathos. Read, for example, “The
Unfamiliar,” listed above, and receive proof of this statement.
The author of “Célestine,” born in France, has balanced Mr. Connell’s
study of Papa Chibou by his interpretation of the peasant girl. Like
Bertha, of Fannie Hurst’s “Lummox,” Célestine feels beauty but remains
inexpressive; she is dull and speechless. Like Bertha, she is vaguely
aware of harmonies; the majesty of war shakes her soul. Inarticulate
love merges into dumb renunciation; the mute expression of her adoration
lies in cleaning boots; of her sorrow, in unspoken prayer by the
semblance of a tomb.
Around Paris of the Boul’ Miche’ many stories have centred. In a bubble
of mirth James Mahoney adds another to the list: “The Hat of Eight
Reflections.” The reflections are no less the highlights of the story
than of the hat. Max Beerbohm once concluded, after ample proof by
illustration, that the public finds humour either in delight over
suffering or in contempt of the unfamiliar.[G] Such a public would
hardly find humour in “The Hat,” which the Committee recommend for
laughter prompted by the high-handed proceedings of Ventrillon, his wit,
his ability to paint like the Devil, his catastrophic destruction of Hat
Number Two. If he seems funny in walking hungry from his lunch, yet we
well know he has been stuffing himself on Belletaille’s little cakes.
And if Belletaille is subject for laughter, well, her personality stands
the strain and exonerates the reader from the charge of cruelty in
enjoyment at her expense. That enjoyment is modified by admiration.
Typical of the American scene and of American life are “Nice
Neighbours,” “The One Hundred Dollar Bill,” “Towers of Fame,” “Not
Wanted.” To these should be added Mrs. Wharton’s “False Dawn,” of the
first list. Though in length outside the short story limit,
nevertheless, it should receive mention as a notable piece of brief
fiction. Failure to record appreciation of its exquisite charm would
argue the Committee dull to beauty of theme and workmanship.
“Nice Neighbours,” a vigorous story dramatically presented, conveys a
pleasantly satiric theme which every reader may state for himself. Mary
S. Watts has accomplished her satire the more admirably in that she does
so without the aid of caricature. Her characters, from the imps of Satan
who killed their pets for the gruesome pleasure of it, to the nice old
maid who rented her house--all walk out of life, distorted by not even
so much as the temperament of the author which, justifiably, might have
exaggerated lines and heightened colour.
Mr. Tarkington’s “The One Hundred Dollar Bill” so skilfully conceals its
idea as to betray the unwary into seeing merely a light story, whereas
it epitomizes the American character. Behold the American: Caution and
thrift refuse the purchase of a toy yet retreat before the gambler’s
spirit. Loss at the gaming table retrieves itself through that
adaptability which leads on alike to failure or fortune. In the opinion
of many readers who have enjoyed all this author’s stories, from “In the
Arena” to the present, nothing he has written is stronger and at once
more subtle than “The One Hundred Dollar Bill.” If there is such a thing
as a composite American, he is represented by Collinson.
Eric Hall, of Mrs. Folsom’s “Towers of Fame,” is the counterpart of
Emanuel in “The Distant Street.” Eric meets the one woman, who might
have remained lost. So great is this possibility as to form the basis
for surprise. We finish the story: Eric left the girl. Add a final
hundred words or so and demolish the first dénouement. The new ending is
as just as the old. The adherent of the negative and the incomplete
says, “Eric went away, of course. And he never came back.” Quite right,
if Eric was that sort of man. But the partisan of the positive may
reply, “Why didn’t he go back? It was just that return which reveals his
character.” He is the older American; Emanuel is the newcomer.
“Not Wanted” exemplifies the age-old struggle of the generations to
understand each other. Of all the fathers who have enjoyed it, either in
the _Post_ or in the little volume published by Charles Scribner’s Sons,
not one but has admired Mr. Williams’s skill in erecting barriers
between father and son, then with equal skill removing them. Over this
story perhaps more enthusiasm has been expressed to the Committee than
over any other selected. If critics who see in it only another instance
of the machine-made story will take a hint from general approval they
will conclude that emotion, though intolerant of formula, yet makes
universal appeal through perfection of form. “Not Wanted” will live in
younger companionship with this author’s famous “The Stolen Story.”
At once a criticism and a half dozen stories rolled up in one parcel,
“Home Brew” doubly succeeds and gives double measure. Grandmother’s
selfishness, Father and Walter’s extraordinary friendship, Mother’s
home-making gift, Aunt Jude’s quiet struggle--quiet as volcanic fires
beneath the crust--Eddie’s love for the sea, and Mildred’s fluttering
toward the flame: in all these lies potential drama. Three themes
actually achieve the outline of drama and reach climax on the evening
Alyse spends with her mother. Alyse, blind to all these potentialities,
becomes the target for Miss Mason’s arrow-thrusts which, in piercing
her, pierce the average would-be writer. The dilettante sees neither the
humour nor the tragedy of real life, whose repressions mean to her only
absence of thought and emotion. No other country owns to so many
thousands of those who, mistaking desire for ability, and possessing the
minimum requirements of the fictionist, waste themselves in “trying to
write.” Miss Mason’s Alyse should be set before these thousands, and the
Committee are grateful for the opportunity of passing her along.
If “Home Brew” is a criticism, no less is “Phantom Adventure” a
revelation. Like Kipling’s “The Brushwood Boy” and “They,” it evokes
from the realm of fancy a beautiful dream. Floyd Dell has educed an
ectopolasm which, emerging from the material banker, magically forms an
exquisite spirit picture. Plangently sombre the rhythmic cadences of
this verbal harmony fall on the ear, drowning alien sounds, luring into
unexplored recesses of the mystic and the subconscious. Restraint and
reserve potently influence the reader to guess at tracts of the spirit
still to be explored. The art of suggestion is here at its height; for
though the expressed story is clear and whole, that which is unexpressed
permits individual interpretation and so intensifies the clarity and
unity for different minds in different ways.
“Derrick’s Return,” an adventure of the spirit unhampered by the body,
illustrates in rollicking yet serious vein a philosophy of heaven and
hell. The author’s concept of dimensions in time and place after death
should be compared with that of May Sinclair in the final one of her
“Uncanny Stories.” It was to be expected that Einstein’s theories of
relativity would find ultimate translation into fiction, but hardly that
resultant or similar theories would so instantly express themselves. Mr.
Morris, as is true of Miss Sinclair, has so long since become master of
telling a story in the large as to insure free play for finer thought
processes, processes which distinguish the result as that of a unique
personality. So in “Derrick’s Return” these thought radiations penetrate
the confines of infinity and, charged with messages of the absolute,
return to electrify and to entertain.
* * * * *
In this Introduction, the Chairman has indicated, without attempt at
discussion, the wide range of present-day American short stories and the
consequent labour in reading them all; their cosmopolitan
characteristics, and their superiority in the average over stories of a
generation ago. Further, the current of American fiction bears on its
bosom the heritage of all the racial streams which have united to form
it. Again, the American concept of life demands a completeness of
struggle and sense of form associated with an underlying philosophy, not
negative and pessimistic, but positive and optimistic.
To you who read, aware of the significant contribution American
brief fiction adds to world entertainment and world literature, yet
have not time to acquaint yourselves with the yearly thousands of
short stories: gathering these covers full of the representative
best is one reward of the Committee. Another reward is that of
insuring comparatively permanent form to the group. Still a third
reward lies in the bestowal of the annual prizes. These awards, the
Treasurer of the Society, Mr. Melvin C. Hascall, states in a letter
to the Chairman of this Committee, the Society expects to increase
for the year 1924.
For 1923, the Committee of Award consisted of:
BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS, Chairman
ETHEL WATTS MUMFORD
FRANCES GILCHRIST WOOD, Litt. D.
GROVE WILSON
WILLIAM GRIFFITH
The Committee of Administration:
MELVIN C. HASCALL, Treasurer Society Arts and Sciences
GEORGE C. HOWARD, Attorney
GLENN FRANK, Editor of the _Century_.
As before, the Committee are grateful to editors, readers and authors
without whose coöperation this annual volume would be impossible.
BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS.
_New York City,
January, 1924._
_O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD PRIZE STORIES of 1923_
PRELUDE
BY EDGAR VALENTINE SMITH
From _Harper’s_
When she was fifteen years old Selina Jo was doing a man’s work in
Pruitt’s turpentine orchard; properly, though, her story begins earlier
than this.
It was shortly before his daughter was born that Shug Hudsill brought
his young wife, Marthy, to a sandy land homestead--twenty-five miles
from the nearest railroad--in that section of the country which borders
the Gulf of Mexico. There followed shortly the inevitable log-rolling,
at which the neighbours--mostly Hudsills themselves--contributed their
labour. Shug furnished refreshments in the form of “shinny,” an
unpalatable, but unusually potent, native rum. Otherwise, his part in
the erection of his future home was largely advisory. Despite this,
though, the house, a two-room cabin of the “saddle-bag” type, was soon
erected. Hand-split pine boards covered the roof and gave fair promise
of keeping out the rain. An unglazed window and a door in each room,
which would be closed with rough wooden shutters during inclement
weather, served for ventilation and lighting. A stick-and-clay chimney
at one end of the cabin gave outlet to the single fireplace which was to
answer the dual purpose of cooking and heating.
By devious methods Shug accumulated two or three runty, tick-infested
cows and a few razorback hogs. These were left, in the main, to shift
for themselves. There were tough native grasses available and the
canebrakes in Shoalwater River were close by. During severe weather such
of the cows as chanced to be giving a few pints of thin, watery milk
daily were fed a little home-grown fodder and corn on the ear. With
proboscides inordinately sharpened for the purpose, the hogs probed for
succulent roots in the rank undergrowth of the nearby swamp. When
hog-killing season arrived Shug would shoulder his gun and slouch away
for his winter’s supply of meat. Neighbours charged it against him that
he was not always careful to see to it that they were his own shotes
which he killed. Since it was a simple matter, though, to snip off the
telltale ear markings of a dead pig, his pilferings, if a fact, were
never proved.
Corn sprouted slowly in the thin soil; it grew up dispiritedly and came
to maturity stunted as to blade, stalk, and ear. Sweet potatoes yielded
generously in new ground; each year a fresh plot was cleared, broken,
and planted to these. A patch of sugar cane was always grown for
molasses; a portion of this, it was generally conceded, was finally made
into “shinny,” since Shug was known to be an adept at its manufacture.
Certain it is that he made frequent extended trips away from home with
his wagon and yoke of oxen, never troubling to explain the reason for
his absence.
It was amid these surroundings, sufficient in themselves, one would have
said, to hinder physical, mental, and moral growth, that the girl Selina
Jo was born. The occasion was in no sense of the word an event with Shug
and Marthy. Since all married people of their acquaintance had children,
the baby simply represented, to them, the inevitable. With the birth of
the child, though, Marthy became barren.
For the first eighteen months of her existence the baby crawled about
the cabin unnamed. Then it occurred to Marthy that their offspring ought
to be christened.
“Shug,” she suggested casually, “seems to me we ort to be namin’ that
air young ’un.”
Shug, lolling in the shade of a water oak, shifted his quid and spat
disinterestedly. “I ain’t objectin’ none,” he replied.
“How ’bout callin’ her ‘S’liny Jo’?” Marthy asked.
“Fittin’ enough name fer her, I reckin,” Shug yawned.
As the child grew up she came to accept her parents as they had long
since accepted her--merely as a bald fact. There was never the slightest
evidence of parental affection upon the one side or of filial attachment
upon the other.
Once Marthy came upon Shug whipping the girl with a switch.
“What you whippin’ her fer?” she asked. Her tone was one of simple
curiosity, nothing else.
“All young ’uns needs it,” Shug replied virtuously, as he tossed the
switch aside. “Hadn’t been my daddy usetah whale me powerful, I wouldn’t
a been nigh the man I am now; not nigh.”
It was a matter for remark between the parents that, even at a tender
age, Selina Jo rarely emitted any outcry under punishment. There burned
in her sloe-black eyes, though, the flame of an emotion which she
checked upon the surface.
One would have expected the girl to respond to the influence of
heredity. Her parents, the cattle, the hogs, even the crops about her
were stunted, half-starved in appearance. By contrast, Selina Jo, upon a
daily ration made up almost exclusively of corn pone, molasses, and
home-cured pork as salt as ocean brine, defied all known dietary laws,
and flourished amazingly. She was precocious, too. When she was only
seven years old she could swear just as well--rather, just as
wickedly--as could Shug himself. She learned early, though, that, as a
source of information, her parents were practically _nil_. Thenceforth,
the questions that had rushed to her lips were succeeded by a look of
eternal interrogation in her sombre eyes.
It was shortly after her twelfth birthday that a young
school-teacher--the only one the community ever knew--came into the
Hudsill settlement. Selina Jo was grudgingly allowed to attend the
school. For six months the young man’s enthusiasm held out. Then it
waned and died. Few of the older people could either read or write, and
the opinion among them seemed to be universal that what was good enough
for them was good enough for their offspring. But before the school
closed Selina Jo had learned the alphabet and a portion of the
old-fashioned first reader.
She missed the school, and she always kept, close at hand, her thumbed
and dog-eared book, the only one that she possessed. The school-teacher
had lighted the fires of ambition within her. She came to be troubled by
the realization that her mental development was lagging behind her
physical growth.
“S’liny Jo,” she informed herself one day in a fit of musing, “you air
as p’izen strong as a gallon o’ green shinny, but you don’t know
skercely nothin’.” A moment later she added dejectedly: “Ner ain’t got
no chanchet o’ learnin’, neether; not nary par-tick-le of a chancet!”
Shoalwater River afforded her chief means of diversion. She never
remembered when or how she learned to swim. Every day that the weather
permitted she enjoyed a plunge in the river. Soon she noticed that no
less pleasant than the contact of the water with her naked body was the
comfortable after-feeling of cleanliness. Following this, came a feeling
of repugnance toward her shiftless and slovenly parents.
She had long since begun to assist with the crops. With the manure
scraped from the cow lot she made the beds for the potatoes. At planting
time she pulled the slips and set them out. She hoed the sugar cane and
thinned the corn. During harvest she did almost as much work as Shug and
Marthy combined.
Before she was fourteen she had broken a pair of young steers to the
yoke. She split the rails and laid the fence for a new potato patch.
Using for the purpose the young oxen which she had broken, she prepared
the ground for planting. She was as tall as her father now, a slender,
wiry creature, her symmetrical young body as free from blemish as the
trunk of a healthy pine tree.
A vague unrest troubled her at times, though. Something occurred one day
which intensified this. In a corner of the cabin she found a
dust-covered photograph. Brushing it off, she gazed upon a face that was
unfamiliar. She took the picture to Marthy.
“Maw,” she asked, “who is this?”
Her mother glanced at it indifferently. “Me,” she answered listlessly.
“_You?_” Selina Jo gasped.
“Yeah. Ruther, it usetah be. Tuck when I married yore paw.”
Selina Jo scanned the comely pictured face for some likeness to the
slatternly creature who had given her birth. Wild resentment against
something--she scarcely knew what--flamed in her heart. Suddenly she
dashed the photograph to the floor and hurried from the cabin. As one
reads the chronicle of her words, it must be remembered that her
vocabulary was patterned after that of her father.
“Oh, Goddlemighty!” she burst out tempestuously, “I don’t want to be
like her! I ain’t goin’ to, neither!”
Her acquaintances were limited to the score of families, most of them
relatives, and all of them mental and moral replicas of her own, who
lived near by. There was an almost abandoned church in the neighbourhood
where, at rare intervals, some itinerant preacher held services. Upon
one occasion, though, Shug took the family to preaching in what was
known as the Briggs settlement which was ten miles nearer the railroad.
It was here that Selina Jo had it impressed upon her young mind just how
people of her stripe were looked upon by those cast in another mould.
Shortly after they had seated themselves in the church, Shug, uncouth
and unshaven on the men’s side, and she and her mother on that reserved
for her sex, Selina Jo heard one of the women whisper to her neighbour:
“Some o’ that Hudsill tribe!”
As the girl caught the slur in the words her face flushed darkly. She
began to notice the unfavourable looks with which the men of the
congregation were regarding her father. Even the children stared
superciliously toward her mother and herself. Puzzled, vaguely hurt, at
first she wondered why.
Lingering just outside the church at the close of services, she waited,
shyly hopeful that some one would speak to her. No one paid her the
slightest heed. In a land where a lack of hospitality was the one
unpardonable sin, this alone was enough to convince her that something
was terribly wrong somewhere. But she held her peace until they had
completed the tedious homeward journey.
“Maw,” she demanded abruptly, as soon as they were alone, “how come we
ain’t like other folks?”
“What air you talkin’ about?” Marthy intoned querulously.
“Them folks in that air Briggs settlement.”
“Wa’l?”
“They looked slanchwise at Paw when we went in an’ set down.” Selina Jo
waited a moment, her face clouding at the thought. “An’ them li’l’ old
gals looked slanchwise at me, too. Durn ’em!”
“How kin I he’p the way they looked at us?” Marthy whined. “Treatin’ us
thatta way just ’cause we air pore.”
“’Tweren’t that, neither,” the girl insisted stubbornly. “Them men--most
of ’em--was wearin’ overhalls. The school-teacher said rich folks don’t
wear them kind o’ clo’es to meetin’.”
“Tryin’ to git better ’n yore raisin’, air you?” Marthy suddenly showed
unwonted spirit. “Wa’l, gal, you kin just make up yore mind to be like
yore pore maw an’----”
“I ain’t goin’ to be like you!” The words shot out with sudden passion.
“I ain’t!”
“God ha’ mercy!” Marthy’s usually expressionless face showed a trace of
surprise at this outburst. “But I’ve allus said seein’ lots o’ things
gits notions inta young ’uns’ heads what ain’t good fer ’em.”
“Ner that ain’t all I seed, neither,” Selina Jo retorted. “They didn’t
none o’ them folks--not nary one o’ ’em--ast us home to eat a Sunday
dinner with ’em.”
At the conclusion of the church service she had seen invitations to the
noonday meal being extended and accepted right and left by the Briggs
settlement householders. Since it was the custom to include the veriest
stranger in these, the fact that none had been offered her people left
room for only one conclusion: the Hudsills were looked upon by their
neighbours as being unworthy to receive one. Slowly the impression
fastened itself upon her brain that her family was hopelessly low in the
social scale--“poison low-down,” she would have phrased it. This
conviction gripped her. It stung--and it stayed with her.
Fortunately, something occurred about this time to divert her thoughts
temporarily. Three miles from Shug’s home, Pruitt Brothers, turpentine
operators, established a woods commissary. Selina Jo’s first visit to
the store left her gasping with pleasure. Filled with the usual gaudy
assortment carried in stock by the general country store, to the
half-starved eyes and soul of the woods-bred girl, the place was a
wonderland. Dress goods in loud patterns dazzled her sight; vari-colored
ribbons flaunted themselves tantalizingly before her gaze. But the one
thing that charmed her, that held her spellbound, was a cheap,
ready-made gingham dress. She made frequent unnecessary trips to the
store merely to feast her eyes upon it. She would look from it to the
faded homespun that she wore and sigh enviously. Once she even mustered
the courage to ask the price. It was an insignificant sum, but the
thought struck her with sickening force that it might just as well have
been a thousand dollars. She had never owned a piece of money.
Slowly, as her yearning for the dress became almost unbearable, a plan
formed in her mind. Coming in from her tasks one day, she found Shug,
just returned from one of his mysterious periodical trips.
“Paw,” she began timidly, “I--I got a hankerin’.”
“S’pose you have?” Shug’s manner was more surly than usual. “A hankerin’
never hurt nobody, yet.”
“But, but I shore ’nough want sump’m.”
“Wantin’ an’ gitten’ is diffe’ent things. What is it?”
“They’s the purtiest dress over to Pruitt’s store,” Selina Jo began
eagerly, “an’ it’s made outen real gingham.”
“Gingham?” Shug whirled about with a snarl. “What air you talkin’ about,
gal?”
Selina Jo’s heart sank. “I ain’t never had nary one,” she offered
placatingly. “An’----”
“Ner ain’t never li’ble to, neether. Homespun’s good enough fer yore
pore maw an’ it’ll hatter be good enough fer you. I ain’t goin’ to be
workin’ myse’f to skin an’ bone to be fittin’ out no young ’un in fancy
riggin’s.”
“But, Paw, it don’t cost much.”
“It costes just that much more ’n you’re goin’ to git. Shet up!”
It was then that Selina Jo unfolded her plan. “I’m goin’ to git me that
air dress,” she announced dispassionately. “I’m aimin’ to pay fer it
myse’f, too.”
“How?”
“Yearnin’ the money at public work.”
“You?” Shug snorted derisively. “Whare’ll you git any public work?”
“In Pruitt’s turkentime orchard. They’s a heap o’ the work I kin do. I
could do scrapin’ er dippin’; reckin I could even do hackin’.”
Shug had slumped into the one comfortable chair in the room. Turning his
head, he glared at his daughter.
“You air not goin’ to work in no turkentime orchard,” he rasped. “You
air goin’ to stay right here an’ he’p yore pore maw an’ me. I told you
oncet to shet up!”
It struck Selina Jo suddenly that life was, somehow, terribly one-sided
and unfair. Other girls in the community, who didn’t work as hard as she
did, were beginning to wear gingham dresses for Sunday. She thought
bitterly that in return for her slaving she had received bed and
board--nothing more. By everything that was right, she reasoned, she had
earned at least one store-bought dress. Yet it was roughly denied her.
Some of the thoughts which had been haunting her for months struggled
for expression. Her soul cried out against what was a patent injustice.
But she managed to speak calmly.
“Fer as I kin figger it out, Paw,” she said, “I been doin’ my sheer o’
keepin’ this here fambly up. I broke them last yoke o’ steers, an’ one
of ’em you was afeared to tech. I’ve split rails an’ laid fences; I’ve
broke new ground. An’ the fu’st time I ast fer anything you say I cain’t
have it.”
She ceased speaking for a moment, but her steady gaze never left Shug’s
face.
“Now, I’m goin’ to work fer Pruitt,” she continued slowly, “till I git
me the money I need.”
Something must have occurred during Shug’s recent trip--probably a
hurried flight from officers--to increase his normal perverseness. He
had risen from his chair. Taking a heavy leather strap from the wall, he
started toward Selina Jo.
“You air, huh?” Advancing, he fondled the strap suggestively. “You’ll
git a larrupin’, that’s what!”
With the first evidence of her father’s intention, Selina Jo’s face had
flushed a brick-red. Now it paled suddenly. She had not even been
threatened with corporal punishment for years. Wild rebellion surged
within her. A carving knife lay upon the rude deal table beside which
she was standing. One slim, brown hand dropped down beside the knife.
Her emotion visible only in the tumultuous heaving of her breast and the
white, set expression of her face, she waited, motionless, her dark,
sombre eyes gazing unwaveringly into Shug’s face.
“Paw,” she said evenly, “just you tech me oncet with that strop an’, as
shore as God gives me stren’th, I’ll cut yore heart out.”
An innate coward, Shug recognized a danger sign when he saw it. The hand
which held the strap dropped to his side. He backed slowly away.
“You ... you ...” he sputtered and stopped.
“You an’ Maw been sayin’,” Selina Jo continued, “that I’m tryin’ to be
better ’n my raisin.’ But I ain’t forgot how them Briggs settlement
folks looked at us slanchwise. ’Tweren’t ’cause we was p’izen pore,
neither. They knowed, somehow, we was plumb low-down an’ ornery. That’s
why they didn’t none of ’em ast us to a Sunday dinner. They seed we was
trash. Course I’m honin’ to be better ’n that kind o’ raisin’--an’ I’m
goin’ to, too!”
Shug had retreated to the doorway, where he stood watching this new
daughter of his with furtive, fearful eyes. The meanest of petty
tyrants, when he held the whip hand, doubtless he expected that Selina
Jo would exhibit the same trait. There was nothing of the bully in the
girl, though. Threatened with what she considered to be undeserved
punishment, she had simply acted upon the dictates of her immature mind
and had seized upon the only means at hand to escape it.
It was several moments before Shug mustered courage to speak. “Sence you
air goin’ to do public work,” he whined presently, “’tain’t nothin’ but
right you ort to pay fer yore bed an’ board.”
Selina Jo was glad to agree to this arrangement. When informed of it
later, Marthy sullenly acquiesced. She would have to do the housework
now, which was no more to her liking than the realization that Shug
would permanently pocket the money for their daughter’s board.
It was the next day that Selina Jo sought out Lige Tuttle, woods foreman
for Pruitt Brothers.
“I’m lookin’ fer a job,” she announced bluntly.
“Sorry,” Tuttle answered brusquely, “but all our cooks are niggers.”
“Cook?” was the scornful answer. “I ain’t astin’ to be no cook. I want
shore ’nough work.”
Tuttle smiled patronizingly. “What can you do?’
“Scrapin’, dippin’, er hackin’,” was the confident answer.
“You?” Tuttle laughed softly. “Why, that’s a man’s work. It’s hard.”
“Any harder ’n breakin’ bull yearlin’s to the yoke? Er splittin’ rails
an’ breakin’ new ground?”
“Mean to say you’ve done all that?”
“I most bardaceously have!”
Labour was scarce at the time. Tuttle considered the girl’s request
carefully, asked a few more questions, and decided to take a chance.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“S’liny Jo.”
“What else?”
It was the first time Selina Jo had ever been asked her surname; she
felt the blood rush to her face.
“What’s your last name?” Tuttle repeated.
The answer came almost inaudibly: “Hudsill.”
“Shug Hudsill’s young ’un?”
“How kin I he’p it?” the girl burst out passionately. “If you’d a been
borned a Hudsill, you’d hatter be one, too!”
“Don’t get mad, child.” There was something in the spirit of this
strange creature that Tuttle could not understand; but he respected it.
“I wasn’t aimin’ to low-rate you none just because of your daddy. Come
here to-morrow mornin’, an’ I’ll try you out.”
Selina Jo found that the work _was_ hard. The dry, slippery pine needles
underfoot made walking itself a task. She carried a heavy bucket into
which she dipped the raw gum, emptying the bucket, when filled, into
barrels scattered about the orchard. From sun-up till sunset, and later,
she toiled; not once, though, did she grumble. She was too foolishly
happy. What she was undergoing was the prelude to real existence, as she
saw it. What better, she asked herself, could any strong, healthy girl
desire than a steady job dipping turpentine for which she was paid real
money?
Occasional passersby, strangers to the vicinity, amazed at seeing a girl
engaged in such unusual work, would pause to ask friendly questions. The
first flush of pleasure that this gave Selina Jo was quickly erased by
the bitter after-tang of reflection: these people were kind because they
did not know she was a Hudsill.
While with practice she developed skill, it was three months before she
had saved the money she needed. The gingham dress had been laid aside
for her. But her ambition had soared. A beautiful dress above a pair of
bare legs and feet would never do. Then, too, since her only item of
headgear was the sunbonnet which she wore every day, she would need,
besides shoes and stockings, a hat.
The day came at last, though, when she could make her purchases. With
her arms filled with bundles, she started out joyously on her three-mile
walk home.
A half mile from the commissary she paused indecisively at a crossroads.
The right-hand road, leading to Shoalwater River, meant the lengthening
of her journey a full mile; but the river, with its promise of a cooling
plunge, enticed her. As she stood hesitant, trying to decide, she
observed a stranger approaching on horseback. She drew aside to let him
pass, but he reined in his horse and hailed her.
“Evenin’, little sister! Live hereabouts?”
“Down the left-hand fork a piece.” Selina Jo bent her steady glance upon
the stranger. “Who air you?”
“I’m Holmes--sheriff of the county.”
Instinctively the girl drew back. “What air you wantin’ o’ me? I ain’t
done nothin’.”
“Lord bless you, little sister,” the sheriff laughed, “I’m not after
you. Thought maybe as you live round here you might tell me something I
want to know.”
It seemed that a murder had recently been committed in the bay-shore
country ten miles distant. Circumstances pointed to the guilt of two men
who had been arrested. Assuming that the murderers had passed through
the Hudsill section en route to or from the scene of the crime, the
sheriff was seeking evidence to prove this.
Strangers were enough of a rarity in the neighbourhood to be remembered
easily. Selina Jo recalled two men who had passed that way whose
description fitted those charged with the murder.
Sheriff Holmes was elated. “Would you like a trip to Eastview?” he
asked.
“Eastview?” Selina Jo’s heart skipped a beat. “That’s town, ain’t
it--whare the railroad trains is at?”
“Yes. We’ll want you there a week from to-day.” The sheriff filled in a
blank subpœna and extended it to the girl. “Look me up in the
courthouse soon as you get to town.”
Selina Jo’s breathless announcement that she was going to court created
a flurry at home until Shug learned why she had been summoned. Then he
breathed easily.
It was decided that she could use the oxen and wagon for the trip, as
Eastview was twenty-five miles distant. This method of travel, being
slow, would necessitate an early start on the day before the trial. When
that day dawned, though, one of the oxen was found to be indisposed.
Selina Jo assembled a lunch of corn pone and side meat, filled a small
bottle with molasses, and, dressed in her new finery, set out on foot.
Within an hour the new shoes began to pinch. She took them off, tied
them together by their strings and slung them over her shoulder. The
stockings were rolled into balls and stuffed into her pockets.
Late in the afternoon she bathed her feet and legs in a brook just
outside Eastview and donned shoes and stockings again.
It was dusk when she arrived at the sheriff’s office. An overflow crowd
at the single hotel necessitated her staying with Sheriff Holmes’s
family that night.
With the inborn timidity of the woods-bred girl, she remained there
until summoned to court in the late forenoon of the following day. By
the time her evidence was concluded, though, she had partially overcome
her shyness, and was ready for sightseeing.
Wandering about the interior of the courthouse, she marvelled at the
white plaster walls. Then she watched several people using the sanitary
drinking fountain. Presently she found courage to try it herself. The
technic she found to be rather difficult, but after she had mastered it
she became a frequent patron.
Later, she ventured outside the courthouse.
Sheriff Holmes found her during the noon recess. She had commandeered a
small goods box which she was using as a seat. Her enraptured gaze was
fastened upon a scene across the street. Three large, two-story frame
buildings, painted a dazzling white, stood upon a lot which occupied an
entire block. Beneath the branches of huge water oaks, were scores of
girls, dressed in white blouses and dark-blue skirts.
Sheriff Holmes smiled understandingly. “Like it?”
Selina Jo did not even turn her head. “Whose is them air li’l gals?” she
asked breathlessly.
“The state’s--for the present,” was the answer.
“Who?”
“The state. That’s the reformatory for girls.”
It was plain that the remark conveyed no information to Selina Jo. “Do
which?” she asked.
“When girls--young ones, like you--break the law,” the sheriff
explained, “they bring them here to be reformed.”
“What’s re-formed?”
“Well ... it’s like this: before they let a girl go again, she has to
prove that she’s been changed for the better.”
“Changed?” Selina Jo looked up with a quick indrawn breath. “They make
’em diffe’ent f’um what they was?”
“Ye-e-es ... that’s about it, I guess.”
“Do they learn ’em outen books in there?”
“Oh, yes; they have regular hours for study.”
“An’ could--could a gal git in there what didn’t know nothin’ but a part
o’ the fu’st reader?”
“You don’t understand, yet, child. It’s only for girls who do wrong.
Now, a girl like you never would go there.”
Selina Jo sighed dejectedly. Her eyes caressed the buildings with their
spotless white walls and wide-flung shutters, and the groups of girls
scattered about the lawn.
Presently she pointed to a high iron picket fence which enclosed the
lot. “What’s the fence fer?” she asked.
“Why, if that fence wasn’t there, little sister, half the girls there
would light out before midnight,” the sheriff answered.
“They’d run away?” Selina Jo shook her head incredulously. “F’um them
purty houses?”
Since it would be impossible for her to reach home that day, she spent
another night with the sheriff’s family. In her dreams she saw
white-painted buildings fashioned of real lumber. There was real glass
in the windows, too; they weren’t just yawning black holes in the walls.
And the chimneys were of brick; so different from the flimsy
stick-and-clay affair that leaned drunkenly against one end of the cabin
at home. Home! She seemed to sicken at the thought.
Her dreams were peopled with girls in white blouses and blue skirts,
thousands of them, it seemed to her. They were all within an iron-fenced
inclosure, beckoning to her to enter; and she was always just on the
outside.
With morning came thoughts of her work in the turpentine orchard.
Inexplicably, a vague dissatisfaction awoke within her. The idea began
to burn itself into her consciousness that, though she might spend a
lifetime in honest toil there, she would always be referred to as “one
of that Hudsill tribe.” Apparently there was no escape from that.
During breakfast she was unusually quiet and thoughtful. With a shy
acknowledgment of thanks, she accepted the liberal lunch provided by the
sheriff’s wife and made her adieus. Two miles outside the town she left
the highway. A hundred yards from the road she seated herself upon a log
and grimly prepared to wait.
Darkness had fallen when she again entered Eastview and cautiously
approached the reformatory from the rear. She scaled the iron fence with
comparative ease. Crouching low, she crept toward a lighted window on
the ground floor. Two girls of about her own age sat at a study table.
Standing before the window, Selina Jo spoke.
“Kin I come in?” she asked softly.
One of the girls screamed slightly; the other, after her first
involuntary start of amazement, seemed wonderfully selfpossessed.
“Sure, Rube!” she invited cordially. “Step right in!”
Selina Jo climbed over the low window sill into the room.
“What you doin’ here?” one of the girls asked.
“I’m j’inin’ o’ this here re-formin’ place,” was the unruffled answer.
“You’re _wha-a-at_?”
Very simply Selina Jo made known her intentions.
“But you’ll be caught, sure as shootin’,” one of the girls objected. “In
the first place you’ve got no uniform.”
Naturally, Selina Jo expected to be discovered sooner or later; but she
had prepared for this eventuality--as she thought.
“Maybe we can fix that,” the other girl broke in eagerly. “There’s that
old blouse of mine and your extra skirt. Gee! I wish we could put it
over! Wouldn’t old Iron Jaw be wild?”
Between them they rigged a uniform for Selina Jo. At the nightly
inspection she crept under the bed. Later, she slept on a pallet.
The fortunate indisposition of a girl across the hall solved the
breakfast problem. Selina Jo, taking the vacant place in the formation,
passed undiscovered for the moment.
Among the many contingencies which she could not have provided against,
though, were the sharp eyes and keen memory for faces possessed by Mary
Shane, the matron in charge. As the girls were forming for certain
duties shortly after breakfast, Selina Jo felt a heavy hand upon her
shoulder. She looked up into the stern face of the matron.
“What are you doing here?” was the curt inquiry.
“Me?” Selina Jo’s attempt at surprise was ludicrous. “I--I b’long here,
ma’am.”
“You do? You ought to know me then. What is my name?”
Instinct told the girl that this must be the matron. “Old Iron Jaw,” she
answered unabashed.
Mary Shane smiled grimly. “Come with me,” she ordered.
She led the way, Selina Jo following meekly, to her little cubby-hole of
an office.
“Now, then,” the matron commanded sternly, “tell me the truth. How did
you get in here?”
“I--I clumb that fence.”
“Why?”
“Just ’cause, ma’am, I nacherly got to git re-formed,” was the perfectly
serious answer. “I ralely b’long here. I’m so p’izen mean they ain’t no
other place fitten fer me.”
“What’s your name?”
Now it came, not hesitantly, but proudly--even defiantly: “S’liny Jo
Hudsill!”
Mary Shane knitted her brows thoughtfully: “Hudsill?”
“Yes’m. Them low-down, sneakin’, ornery Shoalwater River Hudsills,
ma’am. Ever’body in the country knows ’bout ’em. They air the
shif’lesses’ fambly that ever was borned. An’ what’s furdermore, I’m the
hellraisin’es’ one o’ the intire gin’ration!”
“What are you trying to tell me, child?”
“Just how tarnation mean I am, ma’am.”
In her plans for forcibly entering the reformatory, Selina Jo had hit
upon the idea of charging herself, when her presence should be
discovered, with an assortment of crimes sufficient to insure her
incarceration for an indefinite period. It seemed to her now that the
moment for her confession had arrived.
“Last mont’, ma’am,” she continued earnestly. “I burned down three cow
stalls. Right atter that I went inta my own blood uncle’s cornfiel’ an’
pulled up ever’ smidgin’s bit o’ his young corn--pulled it smack up by
the roots, ma’am. Ner that ain’t all, not nigh all. I almost hate to
tell you this’n, ma’am. But last week I stobbed a li’l nigger baby to
death. Killed him dead. Dead as----”
“Hush, child, hush!” the matron ordered. “You did none of those things.
Now then: Tell me--the truth!”
It came then--the truth--a story haltingly told of a child’s scarcely
understood heartache for self-betterment. Selina Jo didn’t want to stay
in the reformatory long, she said; only long enough to learn all there
was in the books. Then she would be willing to leave. She would change
her name and go away off somewhere. Maybe the folks there, not knowing
that she was a Hudsill, would invite her to a Sunday dinner when she
went to meeting.
People, some of them, rather, said of Mary Shane that her long
association with the so-called criminally inclined young had rendered
her immune to every human emotion. But as the recital progressed, the
matron turned her back suddenly and strode over to a window.
Presently the story was finished.
“An’ please, ma’am,” a voice was asking hopefully, “I kin stay now,
cain’t I?”
Mary Shane did not reply, for a moment. “I’m afraid not, child,” she
said presently. Few who thought they knew her would have recognized the
matron’s voice. “You--you’ve done nothing to be kept here for. You’ll
have to go home.”
Then it was that Selina Jo’s heart broke. She flung herself upon the
matron.
“Oh, God, ma’am,” she sobbed, “please don’t make me go back! I _ain’t_
goin’ back! I don’t want to be one o’ them low-down Hudsills all o’ my
endurin’ days. I want to be somebody, like other folks is. I don’t want
to have a passel o’ dang li’l’ old gals lookin’ at me slanchwise when I
go to meetin’. You don’t know what it is, ma’am, to have a hankerin’. I
want to be changed! I want to be made diffe’ent! Ma’am, I just _got_ to
git re-formed!”
Mary Shane had opened her mouth to speak, to check this outburst;
suddenly her iron jaws closed with a snap.
“Come with me, child,” she said. “We’ll see the superintendent.” A
moment later she added: “Jim Wellborn generally runs this reformatory to
suit himself, anyway!”
The matron was the one person connected with the institution who took
whatever liberties she chose. When she wished to be particularly
impressive, she addressed people by their full names.
“Jim Wellborn,” she said brusquely, as she and Selina Jo entered the
superintendent’s office, “this girl wants to tell you something. You
listen closely.”
Wellborn, big and broad-shouldered, had glanced up as they entered. His
quizzical glance had rested first upon the girl; now he looked at Mary
Shane.
“When you’ve heard her story,” the matron continued, “if you can’t find
some way to keep her here so she can learn to live the life that
Almighty God has shown her that she’s fitted for, why I’ll undertake the
job of looking after her myself and the reformatory can get another
matron.”
“Hm-m-m!” Superintendent Wellborn’s gray eyes twinkled; but he did not
smile outright. “Well ... the reformatory is fairly well satisfied with
its present matron. Good-day, Mary Shane! Sit down, little girl.”
The matron closed the door and returned to her office. For nearly an
hour she sat, idle, at her desk. It was the first of the month; there
were statements to be prepared, reports to be rendered, bills to be
checked. But it was patent that her mind was upon none of these things.
From time to time she glanced up impatiently at some noise in the
hallway. Presently there came the sound of hurrying footsteps. She
whirled her chair about.
Selina Jo stood in the doorway. Questions, answers, were unnecessary.
The flush in her cheeks, the flame in her sloe-black eyes, blazoned her
happiness to the world. As she realized what the superintendent’s
decision had been, an answering light gleamed, momentarily, in Mary
Shane’s face. Characteristically, though, it was quenched upon the
instant, as she slipped once more, automatically, into her habitual mask
of granite.
But even a granite mask--since it is only a mask--cannot stifle a heart
song; at best, it can only muffle it. For as she went about the prosaic
business of acquainting Selina Jo with her duties, Mary Shane was well
aware that, somewhere, deep within herself, a small voice was chanting,
chanting over and over:
“For this one--just this one, Lord--who comes of her own accord to be
changed, for this single one who wants to be made different, I thank
Thee!”
A FRIEND OF NAPOLEON
BY RICHARD CONNELL
From _Saturday Evening Post_
All Paris held no happier man than Papa Chibou. He loved his work--that
was why. Other men might say--did say, in fact--that for no amount of
money would they take his job; no, not for ten thousand francs for a
single night. It would turn their hair white and give them permanent
goose flesh, they averred. On such men Papa Chibou smiled with pity.
What stomach had such zestless ones for adventure? What did they know of
romance? Every night of his life Papa Chibou walked with adventure and
held the hand of romance.
Every night he conversed intimately with Napoleon; with Marat and his
fellow revolutionists; with Carpentier and Cæsar; with Victor Hugo and
Lloyd George; with Foch and with Bigarre, the Apache murderer whose
unfortunate penchant for making ladies into curry led him to the
guillotine; with Louis XVI and with Madame Lablanche, who poisoned
eleven husbands and was working to make it an even dozen when the police
deterred her; with Marie Antoinette and with sundry early Christian
martyrs who lived in sweet resignation in electric-lighted catacombs
under the sidewalk of the Boulevard des Capucines in the very heart of
Paris. They were all his friends and he had a word and a joke for each
of them, as on his nightly rounds he washed their faces and dusted out
their ears, for Papa Chibou was night watchman at the Musée
Pratoucy--“The World in Wax. Admission, one franc. Children and
soldiers, half price. Nervous ladies enter the Chamber of Horrors at
their own risk. One is prayed not to touch the wax figures or to permit
dogs to circulate in the establishment.”
He had been at the Musée Pratoucy so long that he looked like a wax
figure himself. Visitors not infrequently mistook him for one and poked
him with inquisitive fingers or canes. He did not undeceive them; he did
not budge; Spartanlike he stood stiff under the pokes; he was rather
proud of being taken for a citizen of the world of wax, which was,
indeed, a much more real world to him than the world of flesh and blood.
He had cheeks like the small red wax pippins used in table decorations,
round eyes, slightly poppy, and smooth white hair, like a wig. He was a
diminutive man and, with his horseshoe moustache of surprising
luxuriance, looked like a gnome going to a fancy-dress ball as a small
walrus. Children who saw him flitting about the dim passages that led to
the catacombs were sure he was a brownie.
His title “Papa” was a purely honorary one, given him because he had
worked some twenty-five years at the museum. He was unwed, and slept at
the museum in a niche of a room just off the Roman arena where
papier-mâché lions and tigers breakfasted on assorted martyrs. At night,
as he dusted off the lions and tigers, he rebuked them sternly for their
lack of delicacy.
“Ah,” he would say, cuffing the ear of the largest lion, which was
earnestly trying to devour a grandfather and an infant simultaneously,
“sort of a pig that you are! I am ashamed of you, eater of babies. You
will go to hell for this, Monsieur Lion, you may depend upon it.
Monsieur Satan will poach you like an egg, I promise you. Ah, you bad
one, you species of a camel, you Apache, you profiteer----”
Then Papa Chibou would bend over and very tenderly address the elderly
martyr who was lying beneath the lion’s paws and exhibiting signs of
distress and, say, “Patience, my brave one. It does not take long to be
eaten, and then, consider: The good Lord will take you up to heaven, and
there, if you wish, you yourself can eat a lion every day. You are a man
of holiness, Phillibert. You will be Saint Phillibert, beyond doubt, and
then won’t you laugh at lions!”
Phillibert was the name Papa Chibou had given to the venerable martyr;
he had bestowed names on all of them. Having consoled Phillibert, he
would softly dust the fat wax infant whom the lion was in the act of
bolting.
“Courage, my poor little Jacob,” Papa Chibou would say. “It is not every
baby that can be eaten by a lion; and in such a good cause too. Don’t
cry, little Jacob. And remember: When you get inside Monsieur Lion, kick
and kick and kick! That will give him a great sickness of the stomach.
Won’t that be fun, little Jacob?”
So he went about his work, chatting with them all, for he was fond of
them all, even of Bigarre the Apache and the other grisly inmates of the
Chamber of Horrors. He did chide the criminals for their regrettable
proclivities in the past and warn them that he would tolerate no such
conduct in his museum. It was not his museum of course. Its owner was
Monsieur Pratoucy, a long-necked, melancholy marabou of a man who sat at
the ticket window and took in the francs. But, though the legal title to
the place might be vested in Monsieur Pratoucy, at night Papa Chibou was
the undisputed monarch of his little wax kingdom. When the last patron
had left and the doors were closed Papa Chibou began to pay calls on his
subjects; across the silent halls he called greetings to them:
“Ah, Bigarre, you old rascal, how goes the world? And you, Madame Marie
Antoinette; did you enjoy a good day? Good evening, Monsieur Cæsar;
aren’t you chilly in that costume of yours? Ah, Monsieur Charlemagne, I
trust your health continues to be of the best.”
His closest friend of them all was Napoleon. The others he liked; to
Napoleon he was devoted. It was a friendship cemented by the years, for
Napoleon had been in the museum as long as Papa Chibou. Other figures
might come and go at the behest of a fickle public, but Napoleon held
his place, albeit he had been relegated to a dim corner.
He was not much of a Napoleon. He was smaller even than the original
Napoleon, and one of his ears had come in contact with a steam radiator
and as a result it was gnarled into a lump the size of a hickory nut; it
was a perfect example of that phenomenon of the prize ring, the
cauliflower ear. He was supposed to be at St. Helena and he stood on a
papier-mâché rock, gazing out wistfully over a nonexistent sea. One hand
was thrust into the bosom of his long-tailed coat, the other hung at his
side. Skintight breeches, once white but white no longer, fitted snugly
over his plump bump of waxen abdomen. A Napoleonic hat, frayed by years
of conscientious brushing by Papa Chibou, was perched above a pensive
waxen brow.
Papa Chibou had been attracted to Napoleon from the first. There was
something so forlorn about him. Papa Chibou had been forlorn, too, in
his first days at the museum. He had come from Bouloire, in the south of
France, to seek his fortune as a grower of asparagus in Paris. He was a
simple man of scant schooling and he had fancied that there were
asparagus beds along the Paris boulevards. There were none. So necessity
and chance brought him to the Museum Pratoucy to earn his bread and
wine, and romance and his friendship for Napoleon kept him there.
The first day Papa Chibou worked at the museum Monsieur Pratoucy took
him round to tell him about the figures.
“This,” said the proprietor, “is Toulon, the strangler. This is
Mademoiselle Merle, who shot the Russian duke. This is Charlotte Corday,
who stabbed Marat in the bathtub; that gory gentleman is Marat.” Then
they had come to Napoleon. Monsieur Pratoucy was passing him by.
“And who is this sad-looking gentleman?” asked Papa Chibou.
“Name of a name! Do you not know?”
“But no, monsieur.”
“But that is Napoleon himself.”
That night, his first in the museum, Papa Chibou went round and said to
Napoleon, “Monsieur, I do not know with what crimes you are charged, but
I, for one, refuse to think you are guilty of them.”
So began their friendship. Thereafter he dusted Napoleon with especial
care and made him his confidant. One night in his twenty-fifth year at
the museum Papa Chibou said to Napoleon, “You observed those two lovers
who were in here to-night, did you not, my good Napoleon? They thought
it was too dark in this corner for us to see, didn’t they? But we saw
him take her hand and whisper to her. Did she blush? You were near
enough to see. She is pretty, isn’t she, with her bright dark eyes? She
is not a French girl; she is an American; one can tell that by the way
she doesn’t roll her _r_’s. The young man, he is French; and a fine
young fellow he is, or I’m no judge. He is so slender and erect, and he
has courage, for he wears the war cross; you noticed that, didn’t you?
He is very much in love, that is sure. This is not the first time I have
seen them. They have met here before, and they are wise, for is this not
a spot most romantic for the meetings of lovers?”
Papa Chibou flicked a speck of dust from Napoleon’s good ear.
“Ah,” he exclaimed, “it must be a thing most delicious to be young and
in love! Were you ever in love, Napoleon? No? Ah, what a pity! I know,
for I, too, have had no luck in love. Ladies prefer the big, strong men,
don’t they? Well, we must help these two young people, Napoleon. We must
see that they have the joy we missed. So do not let them know you are
watching them if they come here to-morrow night. I will pretend I do not
see.”
Each night after the museum had closed, Papa Chibou gossiped with
Napoleon about the progress of the love affair between the American girl
with the bright dark eyes and the slender, erect young Frenchman.
“All is not going well,” Papa Chibou reported one night, shaking his
head. “There are obstacles to their happiness. He has little money, for
he is just beginning his career. I heard him tell her so to-night. And
she has an aunt who has other plans for her. What a pity if fate should
part them! But you know how unfair fate can be, don’t you, Napoleon? If
only we had some money we might be able to help him, but I, myself, have
no money, and I suppose you, too, were poor, since you look so sad. But
attend; to-morrow is a day most important for them. He has asked her if
she will marry him, and she has said that she will tell him to-morrow
night at nine in this very place. I heard them arrange it all. If she
does not come it will mean no. I think we shall see two very happy ones
here to-morrow night, eh, Napoleon?”
The next night, when the last patron had gone and Papa Chibou had locked
the outer door, he came to Napoleon, and tears were in his eyes.
“You saw, my friend?” broke out Papa Chibou. “You observed? You saw his
face and how pale it grew? You saw his eyes and how they held a thousand
agonies? He waited until I had to tell him three times that the museum
was closing. I felt like an executioner, I assure you; and he looked up
at me as only a man condemned can look. He went out with heavy feet; he
was no longer erect. For she did not come, Napoleon; that girl with the
bright dark eyes did not come. Our little comedy of love has become a
tragedy, monsieur. She has refused him, that poor, that unhappy young
man.”
On the following night at closing time Papa Chibou came hurrying to
Napoleon; he was a-quiver with excitement.
“She was here!” he cried. “Did you see her? She was here and she kept
watching and watching; but, of course, he did not come. I could tell
from his stricken face last night that he had no hope. At last I dared
to speak to her. I said to her, ‘Mademoiselle, a thousand pardons for
the very great liberty I am taking, but it is my duty to tell you--he
was here last night and he waited till closing time. He was all of a
paleness, mademoiselle, and he chewed his fingers in his despair. He
loves you, mademoiselle; a cow could see that. He is devoted to you; and
he is a fine young fellow, you can take an old man’s word for it. Do not
break his heart, mademoiselle.’ She grasped my sleeve. ‘You know him,
then?’ she asked. ‘You know where I can find him?’ ‘Alas, no,’ I said.
‘I have only seen him here with you.’ ‘Poor boy!’ she kept saying. ‘Poor
boy! Oh, what shall I do? I am in dire trouble. I love him, monsieur.’
‘But you did not come,’ I said. ‘I could not,’ she replied, and she was
weeping. ‘I live with an aunt; a rich tiger she is, monsieur, and she
wants me to marry a count, a fat leering fellow who smells of attar of
roses and garlic. My aunt locked me in my room. And now I have lost the
one I love, for he will think I have refused him, and he is so proud he
will never ask me again.’ ‘But surely you could let him know?’ I
suggested. ‘But I do not know where he lives,’ she said. ‘And in a few
days my aunt is taking me off to Rome, where the count is, and oh, dear,
oh, dear, oh, dear----’ And she wept on my shoulder, Napoleon, that
poor little American girl with the bright dark eyes.”
Papa Chibou began to brush the Napoleonic hat.
“I tried to comfort her,” he said. “I told her that the young man would
surely find her, that he would come back and haunt the spot where they
had been happy, but I was telling her what I did not believe. ‘He may
come to-night,’ I said, ‘or to-morrow.’ She waited until it was time to
close the museum. You saw her face as she left; did it not touch you in
the heart?”
Papa Chibou was downcast when he approached Napoleon the next night.
“She waited again till closing time,” he said, “but he did not come. It
made me suffer to see her as the hours went by and her hope ebbed away.
At last she had to leave, and at the door she said to me, ‘If you see
him here again, please give him this.’ She handed me this card,
Napoleon. See, it says, ‘I am at the Villa Rosina, Rome. I love you.
Nina.’ Ah, the poor, poor young man. We must keep a sharp watch for him,
you and I.”
Papa Chibou and Napoleon did watch at the Musée Pratoucy night after
night. One, two, three, four, five nights they watched for him. A week,
a month, more months passed, and he did not come. There came instead one
day news of so terrible a nature that it left Papa Chibou ill and
trembling. The Musée Pratoucy was going to have to close its doors.
“It is no use,” said Monsieur Pratoucy, when he dealt this blow to Papa
Chibou. “I cannot go on. Already I owe much, and my creditors are
clamouring. People will no longer pay a franc to see a few old dummies
when they can see an army of red Indians, Arabs, brigands and dukes in
the moving pictures. Monday the Musée Pratoucy closes its doors for
ever.”
“But, Monsieur Pratoucy,” exclaimed Papa Chibou, aghast, “what about the
people here? What will become of Marie Antoinette, and the martyrs, and
Napoleon?”
“Oh,” said the proprietor, “I’ll be able to realize a little on them,
perhaps. On Tuesday they will be sold at auction. Someone may buy them
to melt up.”
“To melt up, monsieur?” Papa Chibou faltered.
“But certainly. What else are they good for?”
“But surely monsieur will want to keep them; a few of them anyhow?”
“Keep them? Aunt of the devil, but that is a droll idea! Why should any
one want to keep shabby old wax dummies?”
“I thought,” murmured Papa Chibou, “that you might keep just
one--Napoleon, for example--as a remembrance----”
“Uncle of Satan, but you have odd notions! To keep a souvenir of one’s
bankruptcy!”
Papa Chibou went away to his little hole in the wall. He sat on his cot
and fingered his moustache for an hour; the news had left him dizzy, had
made a cold vacuum under his belt buckle. From under his cot, at last,
he took a wooden box, unlocked three separate locks, and extracted a
sock. From the sock he took his fortune, his hoard of big copper
ten-centime pieces, tips he had saved for years. He counted them over
five times most carefully; but no matter how he counted them he could
not make the total come to more than two hundred and twenty-one francs.
That night he did not tell Napoleon the news. He did not tell any of
them. Indeed he acted even more cheerful than usual as he went from one
figure to another. He complimented Madame Lablanche, the lady of the
poisoned spouses, on how well she was looking. He even had a kindly word
to say to the lion that was eating the two martyrs.
“After all, Monsieur Lion,” he said, “I suppose it is as proper for you
to eat martyrs as it is for me to eat bananas. Probably bananas do not
enjoy being eaten any more than martyrs do. In the past I have said
harsh things to you, Monsieur Lion; I am sorry I said them, now. After
all, it is hardly your fault that you eat people. You were born with an
appetite for martyrs, just as I was born poor.” And he gently tweaked
the lion’s papier-mâché ear.
When he came to Napoleon, Papa Chibou brushed him with unusual care and
thoroughness. With a moistened cloth he polished the imperial nose, and
he took pains to be gentle with the cauliflower ear. He told Napoleon
the latest joke he had heard at the cabmen’s café where he ate his
breakfast of onion soup, and, as the joke was mildly improper, nudged
Napoleon in the ribs, and winked at him.
“We are men of the world, eh, old friend?” said Papa Chibou. “We are
philosophers, is that not so?” Then he added, “We take what life sends
us, and sometimes it sends hardnesses.”
He wanted to talk more with Napoleon, but somehow he couldn’t; abruptly,
in the midst of a joke, Papa Chibou broke off and hurried down into the
depths of the Chamber of Horrors and stood there for a very long time
staring at an unfortunate native of Siam being trodden on by an
elephant.
It was not until the morning of the auction sale that Papa Chibou told
Napoleon. Then, while the crowd was gathering, he slipped up to Napoleon
in his corner and laid his hand on Napoleon’s arm.
“One of the hardnesses of life has come to us, old friend,” he said.
“They are going to try to take you away. But, courage! Papa Chibou does
not desert his friends. Listen!” And Papa Chibou patted his pocket,
which gave forth a jingling sound.
The bidding began. Close to the auctioneer’s desk stood a man, a
wizened, rodent-eyed man with a diamond ring and dirty fingers. Papa
Chibou’s heart went down like an express elevator when he saw him, for
he knew that the rodent-eyed man was Mogen, the junk king of Paris. The
auctioneer in a voice slightly encumbered by adenoids, began to sell the
various items in a hurried, perfunctory manner.
“Item 3 is Julius Cæsar, toga and sandals thrown in. How much am I
offered? One hundred and fifty francs? Dirt cheap for a Roman emperor,
that is. Who’ll make it two hundred? Thank you, Monsieur Mogen. The
noblest Roman of them all is going at two hundred francs. Are you all
through at two hundred? Going, going, gone! Julius Cæsar is sold to
Monsieur Mogen.”
Papa Chibou patted Cæsar’s back sympathetically.
“You are worth more, my good Julius,” he said in a whisper. “Good-bye.”
He was encouraged. If a comparatively new Cæsar brought only two
hundred, surely an old Napoleon would bring no more.
The sale progressed rapidly. Monsieur Mogen bought the entire Chamber of
Horrors. He bought Marie Antoinette, and the martyrs and lions. Papa
Chibou, standing near Napoleon, withstood the strain of waiting by
chewing his moustache.
The sale was very nearly over and Monsieur Mogen had bought every item,
when, with a yawn, the auctioneer droned: “Now, ladies and gentlemen,
we come to Item 573, a collection of odds and ends, mostly damaged
goods, to be sold in one lot. The lot includes one stuffed owl that
seems to have moulted a bit; one Spanish shawl, torn; the head of an
Apache who has been guillotined, body missing; a small wax camel, no
humps; and an old wax figure of Napoleon, with one ear damaged. What am
I offered for the lot?”
Papa Chibou’s heart stood still. He laid a reassuring hand on Napoleon’s
shoulder.
“The fool,” he whispered in Napoleon’s good ear, “to put you in the same
class as a camel, no humps, and an owl. But never mind. It is lucky for
us, perhaps.”
“How much for this assortment?” asked the auctioneer.
“One hundred francs,” said Mogen, the junk king.
“One hundred and fifty,” said Papa Chibou, trying to be calm. He had
never spent so vast a sum all at once in his life.
Mogen fingered the material in Napoleon’s coat.
“Two hundred,” said the junk king.
“Are you all through at two hundred?” queried the auctioneer.
“Two hundred and twenty-one,” called Papa Chibou. His voice was a husky
squeak.
Mogen from his rodent eyes glared at Papa Chibou with annoyance and
contempt. He raised his dirtiest finger--the one with the diamond ring
on it--toward the auctioneer.
“Monsieur Mogen bids two hundred and twenty-five,” droned the
auctioneer. “Do I hear two hundred and fifty?”
Papa Chibou hated the world. The auctioneer cast a look in his
direction.
“Two hundred and twenty-five is bid,” he repeated. “Are you all through
at two hundred and twenty-five? Going, going--sold to Monsieur Mogen for
two hundred and twenty-five francs.”
Stunned, Papa Chibou heard Mogen say casually, “I’ll send round my carts
for this stuff in the morning.”
This stuff!
Dully and with an aching breast Papa Chibou went to his room down by the
Roman arena. He packed his few clothes into a box. Last of all he slowly
took from his cap the brass badge he had worn for so many years; it bore
the words “Chief Watchman.” He had been proud of that title, even if it
was slightly inaccurate; he had been not only the chief but the only
watchman. Now he was nothing. It was hours before he summoned up the
energy to take his box round to the room he had rented high up under the
roof of a tenement in a near-by alley. He knew he should start to look
for another job at once, but he could not force himself to do so that
day. Instead, he stole back to the deserted museum and sat down on a
bench by the side of Napoleon. Silently he sat there all night; but he
did not sleep; he was thinking, and the thought that kept pecking at his
brain was to him a shocking one. At last, as day began to edge its pale
way through the dusty windows of the museum, Papa Chibou stood up with
the air of a man who has been through a mental struggle and has made up
his mind.
“Napoleon,” he said, “we have been friends for a quarter of a century
and now we are to be separated because a stranger had four francs more
than I had. That may be lawful, my old friend, but it is not justice.
You and I, we are not going to be parted.”
Paris was not yet awake when Papa Chibou stole with infinite caution
into the narrow street beside the museum. Along this street toward the
tenement where he had taken a room crept Papa Chibou. Sometimes he had
to pause for breath, for in his arms he was carrying Napoleon.
Two policemen came to arrest Papa Chibou that very afternoon. Mogen had
missed Napoleon, and he was a shrewd man. There was not the slightest
doubt of Papa Chibou’s guilt. There stood Napoleon in the corner of his
room, gazing pensively out over the housetops. The police bundled the
overwhelmed and confused Papa Chibou into the police patrol, and with
him, as damning evidence, Napoleon.
In his cell in the city prison Papa Chibou sat with his spirit caved in.
To him jails and judges and justice were terrible and mysterious
affairs. He wondered if he would be guillotined; perhaps not, since his
long life had been one of blameless conduct; but the least he could
expect, he reasoned, was a long sentence to hard labour on Devil’s
Island, and guillotining had certain advantages over that. Perhaps it
would be better to be guillotined, he told himself, now that Napoleon
was sure to be melted up.
The keeper who brought him his meal of stew was a pessimist of jocular
tendencies.
“A pretty pickle,” said the keeper; “and at your age too. You must be a
very wicked old man to go about stealing dummies. What will be safe now?
One may expect to find the Eiffel Tower missing any morning. Dummy
stealing! What a career! We have had a man in here who stole a trolley
car, and one who made off with the anchor of a steamship, and even one
who pilfered a hippopotamus from a zoo, but never one who stole a
dummy--and an old one-eared dummy, at that! It is an affair
extraordinary!”
“And what did they do to the gentleman who stole the hippopotamus?”
inquired Papa Chibou tremulously.
The keeper scratched his head to indicate thought.
“I think,” he said, “that they boiled him alive. Either that or they
transported him for life to Morocco; I don’t recall exactly.”
Papa Chibou’s brow grew damp.
“It was a trial most comical, I can assure you,” went on the keeper.
“The judges were Messieurs Bertouf, Goblin, and Perouse--very amusing
fellows, all three of them. They had fun with the prisoner; how I
laughed. Judge Bertouf said, in sentencing him, ‘We must be severe with
you, pilferer of hippopotamuses. We must make of you an example. This
business of hippopotamus pilfering is getting all too common in Paris.’
They are witty fellows, those judges.”
Papa Chibou grew a shade paler.
“The Terrible Trio?” he asked.
“The Terrible Trio,” replied the keeper cheerfully.
“Will they be my judges?” asked Papa Chibou.
“Most assuredly,” promised the keeper, and strolled away humming happily
and rattling his big keys.
Papa Chibou knew then that there was no hope for him. Even into the
Musée Pratoucy the reputation of those three judges had penetrated, and
it was a sinister reputation indeed. They were three ancient, grim men
who had fairly earned their title, The Terrible Trio, by the severity of
their sentences; evildoers blanched at their names, and this was a
matter of pride to them.
Shortly the keeper came back; he was grinning.
“You have the devil’s own luck, old-timer,” he said to Papa Chibou.
“First you have to be tried by The Terrible Trio, and then you get
assigned to you as lawyer none other than Monsieur Georges Dufayel.”
“And this Monsieur Dufayel, is he then not a good lawyer?” questioned
Papa Chibou miserably.
The keeper snickered.
“He has not won a case for months,” he answered, as if it were the most
amusing thing imaginable. “It is really better than a circus to hear him
muddling up his clients’ affairs in court. His mind is not on the case
at all. Heaven knows where it is. When he rises to plead before the
judges he has no fire, no passion. He mumbles and stutters. It is a
saying about the courts that one is as good as convicted who has the ill
luck to draw Monsieur Georges Dufayel as his advocate. Still, if one is
too poor to pay for a lawyer, one must take what he can get. That’s
philosophy, eh, old-timer?”
Papa Chibou groaned.
“Oh, wait till to-morrow,” said the keeper gayly. “Then you’ll have a
real reason to groan.”
“But surely I can see this Monsieur Dufayel.”
“Oh, what’s the use? You stole the dummy, didn’t you? It will be there
in court to appear against you. How entertaining! Witness for the
prosecution: Monsieur Napoleon. You are plainly as guilty as Cain,
old-timer, and the judges will boil your cabbage for you very quickly
and neatly, I can promise you that. Well, see you to-morrow. Sleep
well.”
Papa Chibou did not sleep well. He did not sleep at all, in fact, and
when they marched him into the inclosure where sat the other nondescript
offenders against the law he was shaken and utterly wretched. He was
overawed by the great court room and the thick atmosphere of seriousness
that hung over it.
He did pluck up enough courage to ask a guard, “Where is my lawyer,
Monsieur Dufayel?”
“Oh, he’s late, as usual,” replied the guard. And then, for he was a
waggish fellow, he added, “If you’re lucky he won’t come at all.”
Papa Chibou sank down on the prisoners’ bench and raised his eyes to the
tribunal opposite. His very marrow was chilled by the sight of The
Terrible Trio. The chief judge, Bertouf, was a vast puff of a man, who
swelled out of his judicial chair like a poisonous fungus. His black
robe was familiar with spilled brandy, and his dirty judicial bib was
askew. His face was bibulous and brutal, and he had the wattles of a
turkey gobbler. Judge Goblin, on his right, looked to have mummified; he
was at least a hundred years old and had wrinkled parchment skin and
red-rimmed eyes that glittered like the eyes of a cobra. Judge Perouse
was one vast jungle of tangled grizzled whisker, from the midst of which
projected a cockatoo’s beak of a nose; he looked at Papa Chibou and
licked his lips with a long pink tongue. Papa Chibou all but fainted; he
felt no bigger than a pea, and less important; as for his judges, they
seemed enormous monsters.
The first case was called, a young swaggering fellow who had stolen an
orange from a pushcart.
“Ah, Monsieur Thief,” rumbled Judge Bertouf with a scowl, “you are
jaunty now. Will you be so jaunty a year from to-day when you are
released from prison? I rather think not. Next case.”
Papa Chibou’s heart pumped with difficulty. A year for an orange--and he
had stolen a man! His eyes roved round the room and he saw two guards
carrying in something which they stood before the judges. It was
Napoleon.
A guard tapped Papa Chibou on the shoulder. “You’re next,” he said.
“But my lawyer, Monsieur Dufayel----” began Papa Chibou.
“You’re in hard luck,” said the guard, “for here he comes.”
Papa Chibou in a daze found himself in the prisoner’s dock. He saw
coming toward him a pale young man. Papa Chibou recognized him at once.
It was the slender, erect young man of the museum. He was not very erect
now; he was listless. He did not recognize Papa Chibou; he barely
glanced at him.
“You stole something,” said the young lawyer, and his voice was
toneless. “The stolen goods were found in your room. I think we might
better plead guilty and get it over with.”
“Yes, monsieur,” said Papa Chibou, for he had let go all his hold on
hope. “But attend a moment. I have something--a message for you.”
Papa Chibou fumbled through his pockets and at last found the card of
the American girl with the bright dark eyes. He handed it to Georges
Dufayel.
“She left it with me to give to you,” said Papa Chibou. “I was chief
watchman at the Musée Pratoucy, you know. She came there night after
night, to wait for you.”
The young man gripped the sides of the card with both hands; his face,
his eyes, everything about him seemed suddenly charged with new life.
“Ten thousand million devils!” he cried. “And I doubted her! I owe you
much, monsieur. I owe you everything.” He wrung Papa Chibou’s hand.
Judge Bertouf gave an impatient judicial grunt.
“We are ready to hear your case, Advocate Dufayel,” said the judge, “if
you have one.”
The court attendants sniggered.
“A little moment, monsieur the judge,” said the lawyer. He turned to
Papa Chibou. “Quick,” he shot out, “tell me about the crime you are
charged with. What did you steal?”
“Him,” replied Papa Chibou, pointing.
“That dummy of Napoleon?”
Papa Chibou nodded.
“But why?”
Papa Chibou shrugged his shoulders.
“Monsieur could not understand.”
“But you must tell me!” said the lawyer urgently. “I must make a plea
for you. These savages will be severe enough, in any event; but I may be
able to do something. Quick; why did you steal this Napoleon?”
“I was his friend,” said Papa Chibou. “The museum failed. They were
going to sell Napoleon for junk, Monsieur Dufayel. He was my friend. I
could not desert him.”
The eyes of the young advocate had caught fire; they were lit with a
flash. He brought his fist down on the table.
“Enough!” he cried.
Then he rose in his place and addressed the court. His voice was low,
vibrant and passionate; the judges, in spite of themselves, leaned
forward to listen to him.
“May it please the honourable judges of this court of France,” he began,
“my client is guilty. Yes, I repeat in a voice of thunder, for all
France to hear, for the enemies of France to hear, for the whole wide
world to hear, he is guilty. He did steal this figure of Napoleon, the
lawful property of another. I do not deny it. This old man, Jerome
Chibou, is guilty, and I for one am proud of his guilt.”
Judge Bertouf grunted.
“If your client is guilty, Advocate Dufayel,” he said, “that settles it.
Despite your pride in his guilt, which is a peculiar notion, I confess,
I am going to sentence him to----”
“But wait, your honour!” Dufayel’s voice was compelling. “You must, you
shall hear me! Before you pass sentence on this old man, let me ask you
a question.”
“Well?”
“Are you a Frenchman, Judge Bertouf?”
“But certainly.”
“And you love France?”
“Monsieur has not the effrontery to suggest otherwise?”
“No. I was sure of it. That is why you will listen to me.”
“I listen.”
“I repeat then: Jerome Chibou is guilty. In the law’s eyes he is a
criminal. But in the eyes of France and those who love her his guilt is
a glorious guilt; his guilt is more honourable than innocence itself.”
The three judges looked at one another blankly; Papa Chibou regarded his
lawyer with wide eyes; Georges Dufayel spoke on.
“These are times of turmoil and change in our country, messieurs the
judges. Proud traditions which were once the birthright of every
Frenchman have been allowed to decay. Enemies beset us within and
without. Youth grows careless of that honour which is the soul of a
nation. Youth forgets the priceless heritages of the ages, the great
names that once brought glory to France in the past, when Frenchmen were
Frenchmen. There are some in France who may have forgotten the respect
due a nation’s great”--here Advocate Dufayel looked very hard at the
judges--“but there are a few patriots left who have not forgotten. And
there sits one of them.
“This poor old man has deep within him a glowing devotion to France. You
may say that he is a simple, unlettered peasant. You may say that he is
a thief. But I say, and true Frenchmen will say with me, that he is a
patriot, messieurs the judges. He loves Napoleon. He loves him for what
he did for France. He loves him because in Napoleon burned that spirit
which has made France great. There was a time, messieurs the judges,
when your fathers and mine dared share that love for a great leader.
Need I remind you of the career of Napoleon? I know I need not. Need I
tell you of his victories? I know I need not.”
Nevertheless, Advocate Dufayel did tell them of the career of Napoleon.
With a wealth of detail and many gestures he traced the rise of
Napoleon; he lingered over his battles; for an hour and ten minutes he
spoke eloquently of Napoleon and his part in the history of France.
“You may have forgotten,” he concluded, “and others may have forgotten,
but this old man sitting here a prisoner--he did not forget. When
mercenary scoundrels wanted to throw on the junk heap this effigy of one
of France’s greatest sons, who was it that saved him? Was it you,
messieurs the judges? Was it I? Alas, no. It was a poor old man who
loved Napoleon more than he loved himself. Consider, messieurs the
judges; they were going to throw on the junk heap Napoleon--France’s
Napoleon--our Napoleon. Who would save him? Then up rose this man, this
Jerome Chibou, whom you would brand as a thief, and he cried aloud for
France and for the whole world to hear, ‘Stop! Desecraters of Napoleon,
stop! There still lives one Frenchman who loves the memories of his
native land; there is still one patriot left. I, I, Jerome Chibou, will
save Napoleon!’ And he did save him, messieurs the judges.”
Advocate Dufayel mopped his brow, and levelling an accusing finger at
The Terrible Trio he said, “You may send Jerome Chibou to jail. But when
you do, remember this: You are sending to jail the spirit of France. You
may find Jerome Chibou guilty. But when you do, remember this: You are
condemning a man for love of country, for love of France. Wherever true
hearts beat in French bosoms, messieurs the judges, there will the crime
of Jerome Chibou be understood, and there will the name of Jerome Chibou
be honoured. Put him in prison, messieurs the judges. Load his poor
feeble old body with chains. And a nation will tear down the prison
walls, break his chains, and pay homage to the man who loved Napoleon
and France so much that he was willing to sacrifice himself on the altar
of patriotism.”
Advocate Dufayel sat down; Papa Chibou raised his eyes to the judges’
bench. Judge Perouse was ostentatiously blowing his beak of a nose.
Judge Goblin, who wore a Sedan ribbon in his buttonhole, was sniffling
into his inkwell. And Chief Judge Bertouf was openly blubbering.
“Jerome Chibou, stand up.” It was Chief Judge Bertouf who spoke, and his
voice was thick with emotion.
Papa Chibou, quaking, stood up. A hand like a hand of pink bananas was
thrust down at him.
“Jerome Chibou,” said Chief Judge Bertouf, “I find you guilty. Your
crime is patriotism in the first degree. I sentence you to freedom. Let
me have the honour of shaking the hand of a true Frenchman.”
“And I,” said Judge Goblin, thrusting out a hand as dry as autumn
leaves.
“And I also,” said Judge Perouse, reaching out a hairy hand.
“And, furthermore,” said Chief Judge Bertouf, “you shall continue to
protect the Napoleon you saved. I subscribe a hundred francs to buy him
for you.”
“And I,” said Judge Goblin.
“And I also,” said Judge Perouse.
As they left the court room, Advocate Dufayel, Papa Chibou and Napoleon,
Papa Chibou turned to his lawyer.
“I can never repay monsieur,” he began.
“Nonsense!” said the lawyer.
“And would Monsieur Dufayel mind telling me again the last name of
Napoleon?”
“Why, Bonaparte, of course. Surely you knew----”
“Alas, no, Monsieur Dufayel. I am a man the most ignorant. I did not
know that my friend had done such great things.”
“You didn’t? Then what in the name of heaven did you think Napoleon
was?”
“A sort of murderer,” said Papa Chibou humbly.
* * * * *
Out beyond the walls of Paris in a garden stands the villa of Georges
Dufayel, who has become, everyone says, the most eloquent and
successful young lawyer in the Paris courts. He lives there with his
wife, who has bright dark eyes. To get to his house one must pass a tiny
gatehouse, where lives a small old man with a prodigious walrus
moustache. Visitors who peer into the gatehouse as they pass sometimes
get a shock, for standing in one corner of its only room they see
another small man, in uniform and a big hat. He never moves, but stands
there by the window all day, one hand in the bosom of his coat, there
other at his side, while his eyes look out over the garden. He is
waiting for Papa Chibou to come home after his work among the asparagus
beds to tell him the jokes and the news of the day.
TOWERS OF FAME
BY ELIZABETH IRONS FOLSOM
From _McClure’s_
He raised his voice to bar interruption.
“You cannot tell anything about any one. Romance survives where you
least expect it. Would you look for it in Eric Hall, for instance? Would
you suspect him of Romance?”
“Well, hardly,” said one of the listeners. “Not that calculating, cold
man--all indifference. Just to make your point, don’t try to prove that
_he_ has known sentiment.”
“More than most men,” replied Kent. “I have a notion to tell you about
him. I _will_ tell you. Come closer, Janet--all of you--to hear the
unbelievable.”
“About Judge Eric Hall who knows only power--fame!” They laughed.
“Yes, about him.”
“How do _you_ happen to know?”
“He told me.”
“Did he expect you to tell?”
“Heaven knows what a man expects when he babbles.”
Dinner was over; coffee was being served in the big, candlelit drawing
room. The guests had made little intimate groups; some one at the piano
at the far end of the room touched half strains between talk and
laughter. The group in the deep window drew closer to Kent, and made
themselves comfortable.
“‘Babbles’ is what I said,” went on the speaker, rolling a cigarette
with deliberation, “but that is the wrong word. We were old friends: in
fact, I was responsible for the whole thing, for I had talked about the
queer town in one of the Middle Western states. Eric is the kind who
always wants to know, so when he happened to be in that part of the
state, he hired a car and drove out to see for himself.”
“I’ve heard of that town,” declared Janet eagerly. “There is no other
like it, is there?”
Kent passed over the question.
“I’ll tell it exactly as he told me. I’m sure I can. I could not forget
it. He had driven ten miles through dust and wind with a thunderstorm
rolling up ahead of him--purple storm with green fringe on it--the kind
they have out there. He was whacking along when he caught sight of a
sign by the roadside. He stopped and backed his car to read it. It
said--I remember it exactly--it said:
SMOKING, DRINKING, PROFANITY, FORBIDDEN AS YOU PASS THROUGH THIS
TOWN.
YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO POLLUTE THE AIR.
MOST PEOPLE ARE BAD. MOST PEOPLE LIE, STEAL, AND DRINK.”
“Oh! Truly!” gasped Janet.
“It was what Eric was looking for--the entrance to the town of fanatics.
There was a blank-looking group of houses marked at intervals by tall,
white board signs--black letters on a white ground. He drove slowly. It
was Sunday and the stillness was absolute. There was a building that
might be a hotel--on the veranda were vacant chairs tilted against the
rail; a few shops, gray with closed doors; houses gray, too, all with
doors shut tight, curtains made to screen. The main street, three or
four blocks long, was deserted. At a far corner a man appeared, took a
look at the coming car, and stepped out of sight. A woman who came out
on her porch, slipped back, and shut the door sharply. She was gray,
too--clothes and hair; the distant man had seemed gray--a brown-gray,
like the dust that whirled.
“He stopped the car again to read another sign, this one as large as a
house front, full of preachments, repeating the words that he had first
read:
MOST PEOPLE ARE BAD. THEY LIE, STEAL, AND DRINK.
NO OUTSIDE PEOPLE OR INSTITUTIONS WANTED HERE.
THE DANCE IS OF THE DEVIL, THE THEATRES ARE DEVIL-BEGOTTEN.
“And again:
MOST PEOPLE ARE BAD. THEY LIE, STEAL, AND DRINK.
“As he stood reading, he was conscious that men had appeared in the
streets ahead and behind him. They fitted the houses--brown-gray,
closed, shut tight. They walked slowly, eyes on the ground, but, as they
passed him, he had a look from each. The looks were alike: ominous--hate
snapped out at him from under briefly raised lids. Each face had a set
mouth, with slashes down from its corners. Each head that turned
slightly had--menace--hostile promises.
“The storm was breaking: a flash of lightning swept down the street;
thunder crashed; for a moment the wind ceased--it hung aloof and the
calm was thick with the brown-gray of the town--with deep silence. A
desert plain, a skiff alone on the ocean, would have been more friendly,
he said.”
“Where is the Romance?” some one asked, as Kent stopped.
“It’s at hand. It crossed the street in front of his car just as the
wind came tearing like a railroad train. He saw her face for an instant
before it caught her. Well, folks--I can’t tell you how Eric spoke of
her face. He forgot that he had ever seen a court room or a law office,
or had known indifference or ambition. He said to me--I can see him as
he rapped the table and forgot he was speaking--‘The face of that girl,
Kent!’ And--can you believe it of Eric?--he went on: ‘Do you remember
Raphael’s peasant girl? The one with parted lips and queer, asking eyes?
She was exactly like her. The wind took her sunbonnet away. She had two
long braids of hair. She stopped and stared at me, her long, brown-gray
skirt twisting about her little flat shoes. Then she ran on, clutching
her braids, and a near door slammed after her.’
“The wind was on then; the few trees bent before it.
“The rain was close. There was no protection and, acting on impulse, he
drove the car back of the huge sign. It was a shield from the wind and a
slight protection against the slanting rain.
“Eric said it had been years since he had seen a Western storm, where it
lets loose and whoops ’er up. He was half blinded with the lightning; he
could hear the smash of small buildings; the rattling scurry of débris
blown by the wind. His own shelter shivered, creaked. It was braced
strongly from the back, but he thought it more than likely that it would
go. Across the street he heard one go down with a splitting thud.
“But as he waited, he was conscious, he said, only of the girl who was
somewhere in that strange town. I’d like to have had you--you people who
think you know Eric--watch him as he told me this. There was not a drop
of blood in his body, to judge from the colour of his face; his fingers
twitched. He talked because he had to talk to some one, I guess. He was
not self-sufficient just then.”
“Hm-m,” said some one. “I don’t get him in that rôle, and still I do,
too, in a way: the force in him could be applied as well to
an--er--infatuation as to anything else. I suppose it _was_ an
infatuation, eh, Kent? They are strange things, but they wear off.”
“Go on,” said Janet.
“He said that he sat there in the car while the wind bent his board
protection and the rain came in sheets. He was wet through from the
spray where it struck the outer edge of the car. He sat and watched
pictures of that girl’s face: they came through the rain; came into the
lightning; came everywhere. He was half conscious, he said, absorbed in
the new thing.
“Out of that state of mind--he told a lot about that; it seemed to
puzzle him as it does us now--he was startled by a new gale of wind, a
close splitting of boards, the shriek of wood parting from wood at his
elbow; and then the whole great shield tottered, swayed, resisted,
swayed again, and came down over him. He ducked his head. A moment later
he discovered that, in falling, the sign had gone into some trees
standing close and was held there, in half-tent fashion, so that it
protected him from the rain. Then he saw, too, some one clinging to the
slanting edge of the shield. He leaped from the car and caught her as
she fell.
“Her clothes were dripping with water; there was a trickle of blood down
one cheek. But she was not unconscious and she struggled in his arms. He
made her sit down on the running board of the car. Then he asked if she
was hurt and she shook her head. He asked her how she happened to be
there back of the sign and she shook her head again. He sat down beside
her and watched her. He spoke to me about ‘filling his eyes with her for
the rest of his life’--and other things that Eric would not have said
normally--or if he had not been--er--infatuated. That was the word,
wasn’t it?
“They sat there a long time without speaking, and she kept her eyes
closed. The wind died away, but the rain persisted--a steady downpour;
the green-gray of the storm daylight changed into the black-gray of
steady rain. He waited.
“When she opened her eyes, he asked again how she happened to be there.
After much urging she answered him.
“‘They turned me out of the house,’ she said.
“‘Turned you out!’ he repeated, incredulously. ‘In this storm! From your
home! Why? What had you done?’
“‘I had stopped and looked at you,’ she answered simply.
“‘What?’ Eric put force into the word when he spoke it.
“‘I had looked at you. Stopped and looked. It was a sin. After that, I
could not be allowed to live with those who were not sinners,’ she
explained.
“‘I never heard of such a thing!’ he told her. ‘Are they crazy?’
“‘The signs tell you. It is their belief. It was a sin to have looked at
you--and remembered.’
“Eric’s blood was racing; she had remembered! Looked at him, and
remembered.
“‘Don’t worry. Just tell me,’ he urged.
“She told him. He did not tell me just what she said, but I could guess
as I watched the light back in his eyes. Her father had opened the door
and put her out in the rain as a wanton. He was very strict--father. As
soon as the rain was over she would go to the other end of town where
she had a friend who would take her in. No, she did not believe as her
father and the people of the town believed; her mother had taken her
away and she had been brought up differently, but when the mother had
died, he had brought her back.
“‘My mother could not bear it here,’ she said. ‘I am not so brave as
she, or I would go.’”
“Go on,” said Janet again.
“It’s a good story, isn’t it? Especially since we have our own opinions
concerning him. No king of lovers, no Romeo, no schoolboy, could have
told such a tale of first love as Eric told me. Spilled it out. Words
tumbling over each other.
“In one look, in one half hour, it seemed, he had turned over all the
principles upon which we live here in New York. The primal had taken
him--and her, too. She was not afraid; not frightened at what she must
have seen in him.
“‘And why, when he turned you out, did you come in here?’ he asked
finally.
“He had never before listened for an answer as he listened for that one.
“‘I came because you were here,’ she said.
“Well, people--I began to see then what he was up against in the way of
intoxication. He had not touched her; it had been all very aloof, but
when she told him why she had come, he said he would have been wooden if
he had not gathered her close and held her tight.
“Then, through the slackening rainfall, he heard footsteps outside their
shelter, heard them on the soft ground close by, saw a stooped figure
straighten under their tipped roof. It was one of the all-alike,
brown-gray men with jammed-shut mouth and slashes down from it; with
hate-filled eyes.
“This man levelled his finger at Eric. ‘Now ye kin have her,’ he said
harshly. ‘Ye kin take her along o’ ye. There’s no door open in this town
for such as her. They’re shut against her for ever. This is no place
for her ever again. We’re done. All o’ us.’
“She sprang forward. ‘Father!’ she cried.
“He struck her with his open hand straight across the mouth.
“‘Harlot! Plaything o’ strange men!’ he accused, scornfully.
“Eric said that he reached for the man, but that she spread her arms
between them.
“‘No!’ she exclaimed. ‘He believes it! He cannot help it. No, no!’
“The man did not speak again. He stooped under the slanting boards and
went away.
“And now comes what Eric says was the strangest part of it--the way he
took it. Back of the glamour of the girl’s lovely face; back of the pull
of her, standing there in the slackening rain holding her wet skirts
about her, her neck bare; back of the wonder of her, there rose a bank
of his sane self--that self indifferent to all else. There towered a
steeple of his future as he had planned it; of his ambitions; of his
wealth and fame which were just beginning and for which he had worked
hard. They grew--these steeples--and pushed closer. The girl watched
him.
“She had not spoken to him since her father had gone away; she had stood
aside while Eric got the car out upon the road; she had followed him to
it and stood there clasping her bare elbows--lips parted like the
Raphael girl-child, he said. She was oblivious to watchers behind drawn
curtains.
“‘Now what shall you do?’ he asked her. ‘Does he mean it?”
“‘Yes, he means it. I shall walk to the next town. There will be
something for me to do there.’
“‘I’m sorry----’ he began, all the steeples crowding around him.
“‘Don’t be. I’m glad. It gives me a chance to be brave as she was.’
“She put up one hand to her mouth and pressed her lips tight with it.
“‘It’s odd, isn’t it?’ she asked.
“He says he did not need to ask what was odd. He knew. It was the sudden
new thing which was his--and hers. But the steeples were nearer. And a
free life was what he had planned; it alone could bring him what he
wanted. But he asked:
“‘Will you come with me, as he said?’
“She shook her head.
“‘Oh, no. I am not your kind.’
“‘But I love you,’ he told her then. You should have heard him speak
those three words, the day he told me the story. Another man surely--not
the Eric we know. He said it twice: ‘I love you.’
“‘And I you,’ the girl replied.
“‘Then come with me,’ he pleaded.
“‘No. It will pass. It cannot be the real thing. It was too quick for
that.’
“She smiled, and he tried to laugh and say, without too much
earnestness:
“‘Shall I come back some day?’
“She shook her head again.
“‘Please don’t.’
“He climbed slowly into the car, legs weighted, he said. He looked back
as he gathered speed on the hard road. She was walking too slowly it
seemed to him--her head too low----
“But everywhere were the steeples of fame and fortune to come if he were
unhampered; if he could be always indifferent. The west had red
streaks---- He drove away.”
“Oh, I hate the man!” cried Janet, indignantly. “It’s just like him!
What became of her?”
“There she is now, at the end of the room,” said Kent, smiling at the
evident astonishment of the group around him.
Eric Hall’s wife was lifting her coffee cup and laughing. Her filmy
sleeves fell away from perfect arms; a jewel flashed from a tiny silver
band in her hair. She was clearly the loveliest, the most distinguished
woman there.
They stared at her.
“But you just said that he drove away!” some one exclaimed in amazement.
“That was the drama of your story!”
“He drove back and got her,” finished Kent sententiously.
PHANTOM ADVENTURE
BY FLOYD DELL
From _Century_
_I. A Secret._ He was not a banker by temperament. But nobody in New
York, nobody east of the Rockies, knew that. It was his secret.
When he graduated from college, instead of preparing himself seriously
for life by cleaning the inkwells in some Wall Street institution, as an
ambitious young man should, he got a job on a Western ranch. He did this
for no better reason than that he had been fond of reading about
cowboys. He learned many things about horses and cattle, and made
friends with every cowboy within a hundred miles. Nevertheless, he was
not satisfied; for cowboy life, while interesting enough in fact, is
less romantically adventurous than in fiction. Yet he stayed there for
five years, dreaming now of the sea and reading stories of sailor
adventures.
Then an uncle died, leaving him a legacy of a little more than five
thousand dollars. With five thousand dollars a young man could get
started in business, and it was high time for him to do so. He went to
San Francisco and looked about for an opening.
In a café he met a man who had just come back from incredible adventures
in the South Seas. To this man’s tales he listened all evening, and then
went back to his lodging, where he could not sleep, but walked back and
forth for hours in a little garden, dreaming, awake, of strange birds
and strange trees and slim, brown, laughing girls with flowers in their
hair.
Next morning he went down to the waterfront, and looked out thoughtfully
in the direction of the South Seas. With his five thousand dollars he
could buy or build a little boat and, with some congenial companion,
set sail for those islands of incredible adventure. But he knew that
this was mere romantic folly, more worthy of a boy than of a man. He
must begin to take life seriously. He shook his head and frowned, and
went on to the café.
Every morning--sometimes it was noon--for a whole year he went down to
the waterfront and looked out over the bay. And every afternoon and
evening he sat in some café. At the end of the year he had made many
friends and heard many curious tales, and his money was all gone.
He began to look for a job. He had an extensive convivial acquaintance
among the business men of the town; but they did not seem to have any
job for him, though they were willing to lend him a few dollars.
So he borrowed a little money and came to New York, where no one knew,
as he expressed it, what a damn fool he was.
He took care that no one should know. He got a job in a Fifth Avenue
bank, and when he was barely forty he was one of its vice-presidents. He
had an apartment in town and a house in the country and a car and a wife
and four lovely children, and he was proud of them all.
He was proud of being a sober and responsible citizen--proud of having
conquered his romantic propensities. Perhaps his children knew, from the
wild, half-true and half-imagined tales he told them at their bedtime
hours, that he was still at heart a romantic adventurer. But nobody
else, and least of all his sweet and sensible wife, suspected his
secret.
_II. A Conversation._ In the summer of his fortieth year the town
apartment had been closed, and his wife and children were in the
country. He himself was going to the country in a day or two, as soon as
he had cleared up those matters, whatever they are, that keep bankers in
town in August. He stayed at his club until one evening on an impulse he
went down to an out-of-the-way little street near Washington Square, in
the hope of hearing some talk from a man who lived there, and whom he
had been thinking of at intervals all day.
He was thinking of this man because he had read the night before, at the
club, a story of his in a magazine. This man was a writer of stories
and lived in what was called Greenwich Village; and this particular
story was one of romantic adventure in the South Seas. The
story-writer’s wife and the banker’s wife had been friends from
girlhood, and the story-writer and the banker were acquaintances of a
sort. The banker was always a little aware in the other’s presence of
his own secret and foolish past. He was embarrassed when he talked of
financial conditions by a fear and perhaps also a hope that the other
would somehow see through him. Also he kept wondering if a writer
imagined all his romantic adventures or if some of them had really
happened. He particularly wondered this about the story he had read the
night before at the club, for it gave such a vivid description of a
South Sea island that it seemed as though it could only have been
written by one who had lived there.
The story-writer was at home. His wife, he explained, was at the
seashore with the children, and he was staying in town to do a story or
two to pay their summer bills. He sat down again in his study, cocking
up his feet on the typewriter desk and lighting a fresh cigarette.
“No, you’re not interrupting me,” he said. “Don’t worry about that. I
never get started to work till after midnight, and I want somebody to
talk to while this new South Sea yarn ferments in my head. Have a
cigarette.” He started to talk. Again the banker had the feeling of
guarding a secret.
It was nearly midnight when the conversation took a turn that promised
to satisfy the banker’s curiosities.
“It’s odd,” said the story-writer, and paused. “It’s very odd. I’m
supposed to be a respectable citizen. But consider these stories of
mine. The hero, who is me, meets a beautiful girl and falls in love with
her. Sometimes she is a princess, sometimes a chorus girl; just now she
is usually a dusky maiden with flowers in her hair. I suppose I’ve met
and made love to more than a hundred girls in the course of my literary
career. To be sure, I always ask them to marry me; but I never tell them
of all the other beautiful heroines I have loved and left behind me. And
yet nobody thinks I’m a scoundrel. Not even my wife!”
“Of course not,” said the banker. “That would be absurd.”
“Yes, it would be unthinkable,” said the story-writer. “For when I have
finished one of my adventures, I mail it to an editor and get a check
for it. And that’s exactly why my wife doesn’t object. It pays the rent;
and so it’s perfectly all right for me to spend my life in
extra-matrimonial love scenes. But why do I get paid for these
adventures?” he went on meditatively. “Because people want adventures.
When a man reads one of my romantic yarns, _he_ becomes the hero, _he_
makes love to beautiful, strange girls. And yet no one has thought of
proposing laws to forbid married men to read love stories.”
“After all,” said the banker, ironically, “there is a slight difference
between reading a love adventure and going out and having one.”
“No,” said the story-writer; “the difference is not slight; it is
considerable. But just what is that difference? A love adventure in
story form is guaranteed to be complete in itself, to be over when it is
finished, and to leave behind it nothing but a pleasant memory in the
reader’s mind. In all these ways it differs from a love adventure in
reality concerning which no such safe guarantees can be offered. We try
to live orderly lives, and while the love adventures of reality may
upset the well considered plans of a lifetime, the other kind leave
everything exactly as it was. The heroine may swoon with ecstasy in your
arms to-night; but she will not call you up on the telephone in the
morning or write you passionate and compromising letters.”
“Poor girl--she can’t!” said the banker.
“She doesn’t want to. It is only women of the real world who want love
to be a part of life. She belongs to the world of romance, which has
laws of its own.”
“The world of fancy,” said the banker.
“Don’t pretend to despise the world of fancy,” said the story-writer.
“Fond as we are of the real world, it is far from satisfying all our
demands. It is too inexorable. The phantom world of fancy is in many
respects a more agreeable place. And everybody goes to it for solace.
The sober triumphs of reality are never able for long to satisfy us;
always we turn from those four-square actualities to live for a
delightful hour in that extravagant land where our most impossible
wishes can come true. It is a need of our human nature.”
“Oh, no doubt,” said the banker. “But nevertheless----”
The story-teller interrupted him.
“Have you thought of this? That the self which goes out adventuring in
the land of fancy is not a part of this real life of ours, at all? It is
a kind of phantom, existing joyously and irresponsibly in a phantom
world.”
“I hadn’t thought of it just like that,” said the banker, reflectively.
“But here is the real question. These adventurers in the phantom realm
of fancy, _why do they never meet_?”
The banker stared.
“I’m not sure that I understand you.”
“Suppose a man and a girl, unknown to each other, reading the same story
at the same time; their phantom selves are sharing the same adventure,
one that some writer has created for them. But suppose they dispense
with the writer’s assistance. Suppose these phantom selves should meet
and create their own adventure. Why not?”
The banker stirred uneasily in his chair.
The story-writer laughed.
“It might happen.”
“It might,” said the banker.
“I wonder,” said the story-writer, “what my wife would say if I told her
of such an adventure. It would be like all my other adventures, more
beautiful, perhaps, than any of the others. And yet----”
“I hope,” said the banker, frowning, “that you----”
“Go to bed,” said the story-writer, suddenly. “You’ll find the guest
room on the top floor. I’m going to get to work on my South Sea story.
I’ll call you up for coffee in the morning.”
He took his feet down from the typewriter desk and threw away his
cigarette. His hands hovered over the keyboard and already he had
forgotten the outer world, including his guest, who rose and wandered
uncertainly from the room.
_III. The Ivory Gate._ He found the guest room upstairs. But whether it
was the faint clicking of the typewriter below that disturbed him, or
his own thoughts, he was disinclined to sleep.
There was a pile of magazines on the table, and he began to read a
story. It was the kind of story he had been fond of all his life, an
adventure and a strange meeting with a beautiful girl.
But he let the magazine slip to the floor. He was thinking of old times
in San Francisco. He remembered that he had wanted to build a boat and
sail to the South Seas.
“But I didn’t!” he said to himself triumphantly.
No--a mocking thought came to remind him--he had stayed on shore and
listened to café yarns.
But since then he had been sensible. He had been sensible for twelve
years. Twelve years! In a sudden panic he wondered if his youth had
slipped by and vanished with those years. He went over and gazed at
himself in the mirror. He saw a man in the prime of life, strong and
clear-eyed.
He did not want to go to bed; but perhaps a walk to the club would make
him sleepy. He debated whether to disturb the man at work below to tell
him, and decided he would not. He went downstairs quietly.
On the second floor he looked out to reassure himself as to the weather.
The sky was a little cloudy, that was all. And then, as he stood there
looking out of the hall window, he saw below him a little garden in the
moonlight. He looked away quickly, but not in time, for he remembered a
moonlit garden perched on one of the hills of San Francisco, where as a
young man he had walked night after night dreaming impossible things.
That memory was painful, and he hurried downstairs and took his hat to
leave the house. But the pain of that memory was strangely sweet and
afflicted him with a kind of nostalgia. He wanted to go out into this
garden and be again the young fool he had been. He walked up and down
the hall with his hat in his hand, wanting to go away and wanting to
stay and dream in this garden. It was a queer thing. He had stopped
drinking, and he had stopped dreaming, years ago; the desire for drink
had never come back, but the desire for dreaming was upon him again. He
felt that his whole life of triumphant common sense was at stake. But
no, it couldn’t be. An hour in a moonlit garden could not undo the solid
achievement of twelve years. He put his hat back on the stand. With a
guilty feeling of having yielded to a weakness, he went quietly out,
past the door from behind which came the inspired click of typewriter
keys fashioning some strange adventure.
In the garden he stood and looked about. There was a full moon above,
dimmed with clouds and casting that half-light which transforms the
accustomed world into the realm of fancy. _On such a night as this_--Odd
bits of poetry, remembered from his youth, came into his mind.
Across from where he stood was a high board fence, and in it a gate,
painted ivory-white. He had an impulse to go over and open it. But
instead he stood still, mockingly analysing that impulse. “In a story,”
he said to himself, “there would be an adventure waiting in the next
garden. But in real life, as I well know, there is only another garden,
like this, with no one there. People do not moon about in gardens.”
But then he reflected, “I am mooning about in a garden.” Realizing that
bankers do not do such things, it seemed to him that he was not a
banker, but, as his friend had said, a phantom in a phantom world where
impossible things come true.
He surrendered himself for a moment to this feeling, and began to think
foolish thoughts, such as he had not thought for twelve years.
“What if there should be an adventure waiting for me on the other side
of that gate? What if there were a girl in that garden, waiting?” These
thoughts were frightening, and nevertheless they made him happy.
Then his common sense reasserted itself. There was nothing in that other
garden, and he was being a damn fool. He reflected gratefully that no
one would ever know what a damn fool he was. The depositors at the bank
could never guess, nor could his wife. And since there was nothing on
the other side of the gate, he might as well go and open it and look
into the garden, and then go back to bed.
He walked over to the gate, and there he paused. Why trouble himself to
prove what he already knew? Why not keep intact the memory of this
absurd fancy and have the pleasure of thinking that perhaps, after all,
there had been an adventure waiting beyond that gate?
He realized that if he opened the gate and nothing happened, it would
hurt. He put his hand on the latch in a mood curiously like the mood of
prayer. If he had had a God to whom such a prayer could be addressed, he
might have prayed, that just this once---- But his was no pagan deity,
and so he did not pray. Lacking the courage that prayer sometimes gives,
he took his hand from the latch.
Then he remembered how he had gone down to the waterfront every morning
and looked out over the bay and never set sail for the islands of
romance; and he felt that this was a test. It didn’t make any difference
what happened: he couldn’t turn back.
He pushed open the gate softly.
Seated on a little wooden bench was a girl; her face was turned away
from him, but he could see the languid sweep of a slender arm, bare and
beautiful.
One last reminder of his ordinary self intruded into his mind, the
façade of the bank on Fifth Avenue, symbol of twelve years of sturdy
effort in the realm of common sense. But it seemed to have no relation
whatever to this moment, and it faded and was gone.
He stood looking at the girl for the space of a breath; then he walked
over to her through a tangle of moonlight that broke through the
branches of an elm.
_IV. Afterward._ The milk wagons were rattling over the streets when he
went back through the ivory gate, and he could hear the typewriter still
clattering within the house. He went silently to the guest room. The
adventure was over, and now he had to think about its relation to
actuality. But he did not think; he fell asleep.
At the bank there were other matters to occupy his mind. On the train to
the country that afternoon there was a neighbour who talked about
financial conditions. At the end of the ride there was his wife’s
welcome and the children climbing into his arms. It wasn’t until after
dinner that he had any time to think.
He was rather surprised at his thoughts. They were, first of all,
thoughts of relief at being back at home. It was as if he had strayed
for a few hours out of time and space, and was happy to find himself
again safely within the cosy contours of the familiar. He was glad to be
back in a world that had a meaning beyond the moment, a world that
reached back in memory and forward in hope, the world of reality.
As a happy citizen of this comfortable world, he was naturally
concerned with the inquiry whether his position in it had been
endangered by last night’s adventure. And it seemed to him that he need
have no fear. That adventure was a thing utterly apart from all the rest
of his life--a thing complete and perfect in itself, with no sequel to
be feared or hoped for; they did not even know each other’s names. She
herself had preferred that it should be so.
“And,” she had said, “you needn’t fear that it will ever be made
commonplace by our meeting at a tea somewhere; you will never see me
again.” And he had said, laughing:
“You speak as though you were going to die or going on a very long
journey!”
“Yes,” she said; “something like that. You mustn’t ask me about it, only
take my word for it.”
And he believed her. Why, he did not know. But to-day he was glad to be
so sure that their adventure was ended and that no one but themselves
could ever know about it.... He had asked his friend the story-writer
over their morning coffee:
“Who lives in that little white house next door, a writer?” and was
told, “A school-teacher, I believe.” Evidently his friend did not know
of the school-teacher’s guest. No; so far as all the world was
concerned, there had been no midnight adventure. It was as detached from
reality, as immaterial from any common-sense point of view, as if it had
been merely a story he had read in a magazine that night. He might, if
he wished, think of it as that.
He was a little startled, as by an odd coincidence, when his wife asked:
“Shall I read you a story? The new magazines have come.” But really it
was no coincidence at all, for she knew that he liked magazine stories
and enjoyed being read to in the evenings. The thing had happened many
times before; nevertheless, it was a little strange to be listening to
such a story, while in and out of his mind there flashed bright memories
of another story.
“Why always the South Seas, I wonder?” his wife paused to remark,
looking up from the big chair where she sat with the magazine in her
lap. “I suppose it _is_ a more romantic place.”
“Yes, perhaps,” he said.
He had talked to that girl last night about the South Seas; he had said
he would like to take her there to see the strange birds and flowers.
And she had told him about Venice. And while they talked of sailboats
and gondolas, they were sitting on a garden bench.
“He gets the romantic atmosphere rather well, doesn’t he?” said his
wife. “I think I can guess which one of the girls he is going to fall in
love with, the one with the red hibiscus flower in her hair. What do you
think?”
“Very likely,” he agreed.
Who was she, the girl of last night’s story? He couldn’t guess. She
wasn’t young, as girls in stories are; there were even tragic lines
marring the beauty of what had been a lovely face. But her eyes were
incredibly young--the eyes of a child, full of wild dreams. Perhaps, in
her ordinary life, she was some one quite different from what she had
been that night--as different as he had been from his ordinary self.
None of his friends would have recognized _him_ as the romantic wanderer
whom she had held for a moment in her arms. He had even quoted poetry to
her. _On such a night as this_--Well, he didn’t care; it had not been
sham. It was another part of himself. And she? It did not matter what
she was to her friends. Last night she had been his strange and lovely
playmate.
His wife looked up from the magazine.
“A little improbable, don’t you think?”
Many things were improbable, he reflected. That room last night, with
its flowers and tall candles.
“This isn’t my place, you know,” she had said. “Shall I tell you the
story? It belongs to a school-teacher, a queer little old-maidish person
one would have thought if one had seen her in her schoolroom, no doubt.
She invested all her savings in oil stock; and contrary to what you
might expect, she made a fortune,--oh, just a little fortune, but enough
to last _her_ for the rest of her life. And she bought this house in
Greenwich Village, and fitted up this room as a place for romantic
things to happen in. But nothing romantic happened. So yesterday, when
we met--she was going away on a visit, and I was in town for a day and a
night, on my way somewhere else--well, we became very quickly
acquainted, and she wanted me to stay here. I was thinking of her when
you walked into her garden to-night. Shall I tell you? I think that she
believed _I_ was the sort of person to whom romantic things do happen,
and that if I were here this room of hers would fulfil its destiny. Is
it shameless of me to tell you that?”
“It’s beautiful of you to tell me that,” and he took her in his arms, no
longer wondering how this adventure would end.
“I don’t like her.” It was his wife, speaking of the heroine of the
story she was reading.
“Why not?”
“She isn’t real.”
He looked at his wife. She was real. And that was better than being the
phantom creature of a lovely moment. Why should she begrudge the other
kind of girl her moment?
It was odd; he wasn’t in the least ashamed. Men, he remembered,
sometimes had bad consciences over things like this, they were driven to
confession by remorse. But he had nothing to be sorry for. Why should he
confess?
His wife laid the magazine aside a little petulantly.
“Oh, well,” she said, “it’s just a story.”
“Yes,” he said absently, “just a story.”
_V. The Face._ It was a fortnight before he went back to town. That
evening he invited his friend the story-writer to dinner, and they
talked. And, as it seemed, by accident, their talk touched upon the
subject of neighbours.
“Is Greenwich Village any different in that way from uptown? Do you know
your school-teacher neighbour in the little white house next door, for
instance?” Surely, he thought, it could not be rash to ask that.
Certainly his friend would not suspect him of a personal interest in an
old-maid school-teacher. So he was thinking when he heard, “She died
there to-day.”
Afterward he could hardly believe what had happened except that a wild
conviction came into his mind, whirling him out of his chair, out of the
restaurant. He wandered somewhere, with one thought in his mind:
_He must see that dead face._
Then he found himself in a house, in that house, among a fluttered group
of school-teachers, who talked to him about the woman who had died. They
took him for one of her family. He did not talk to them. He went up a
stairway and into a room with faded flowers and tall candles ranged
about a high bed like an altar. A dead woman lay there, with a sheet
drawn over her face. He lifted the cloth and looked at her face and went
away silently.
_VI. The Confession._ It was queer, he knew, this impulse to confess
that haunted him day and night. When she had been alive he had never
wished to speak the words that might set him free to seek again the
strange solace of her lips and arms. But now that she was for ever out
of reach, he felt this mad compulsion to make known their shadowy love.
To speak now would be to risk losing all the happiness he had built up
for himself in the real world, out of an inexplicable loyalty to the
memory of his dead playmate. But he could not think of such things now.
He could think only of the dreamer who had decked a room for a beautiful
adventure that did not come, and who sat in a garden waiting, wondering
whether death would come before the adventure; and of a gate that swung
open one moonlit night to make her dream come true, and of two
adventurers happy for an uncalendared hour in the phantom world of
fancy. The time would come, his reason urged, when this memory would be
a thing remote and forgotten, when it would no longer hold for him even
the ache of regret, when its pathos even would be faded, as its bright
joys were already fading in his thoughts. He would be sorry to have
spoken. He would know that he had been a fool to speak. But now, though
he lost everything that would one day be dear to him again, he did not
care.
He fought against that mad impulse while he could. Then, lest he blurt
the thing out suddenly, he began to plan the manner of his confession.
He remembered a fantastic idea uttered that night by the story-writer
and he thought, “It will be easier to tell it to her first as a story.”
And one evening he told her the story.
He began haltingly enough, constrained as he was to present to her
imagination these two nameless figures of a man and a woman who had
wished rashly for a happiness not to be had within the solid confines of
reality; but as he talked, he forgot all else, and his confession became
a passionate vindication of the rights of that phantom self for which
the workaday world has so little use, and which can achieve only a
pitiful and momentary freedom in what the world calls folly. Then, for
he had come to the end of his tale, in that picture of a room with its
faded flowers and spent candles and a face whose eyes were no longer
bright with wild dreams, abruptly he ceased speaking. And it seemed to
him that even without as yet naming himself, he had confessed his crime
of secret rebellion against the wisdom of the world.
He looked up and saw that there were tears in his wife’s eyes.
“It’s true,” she said. “Women do feel like that.”
He was bewildered.
“All women,” she went on. “But I didn’t think men knew. How _did_ you
know?”
He was about to tell her how he knew, when she spoke again, softly.
“I’m glad she found so beautiful a lover.”
Then he was ashamed, of what, he hardly knew, unless it was of what he
seemed to his wife. He realized that he was to her merely what he had
laboured for twelve years to seem to all the world. Not the foolish
adventurer of his tale; no, she could never believe that. He imagined
how it would sound to her if he pretended to be that man in the story.
It would be the strangest argument in the annals of marriage. He could
prove nothing; his secret was fatally secure. She would say, “You have
dreamed it, dear.”
And seeing himself with her eyes, he was shaken by a doubt. Perhaps it
_had_ been just a dream.
_VII. Catharsis._ But presently a thought of bitter comfort came; he
would tell his friend the story-writer, who would do what was after all
the only sensible thing to do with a dream in this world, sell it to
other dreamers.
And after a time that was what happened.
THE DISTANT STREET
BY FRANCIS EDWARDS FARAGOH
From _The New Pearson’s_
(Pearson’s Magazine, 157 E. Ohio St., Chicago, Ill.)
On the sidewalk pools of yellow light. Stretches of evening-tinted
pavement between them, around them. Gray pavement, with touches of
black. To Emmanuel, as he stood in the uncertainly lighted doorway of
the college building, the street called out. The yellow pools leaped out
of their own flatness; they sang and touched his hands.
Still, he dared not leave the doorway. Every evening it was the same.
The street was not for him. The yellow bits of sidewalk, stealing their
gold from the lights of the soft-curtained doors, low windows along the
street, were not his. He was an outsider. For three years, ever since he
had started going to the college, he had known that. And now, again, he
felt that he would always remain an outsider.
Sometimes, during the day, Emmanuel would look out of the window of one
of the classrooms and try to understand the street. But while daylight
was on the pavements, the street was very much like other streets. It
was only in the evening that it became alluring, that it became
forbidding, throwing light-kisses that were not for him.
No, it would not be wise to go into the street, thought Emmanuel. But he
knew that, although impotent rage was causing his legs to tremble, he
loved all the hasty-gabled houses and arched doorways, the lawns with
their now dusky smiles. This street had a song about it. His own
street--that other one, downtown, under the humpbacked shadow of the
Williamsburg bridge--had no song. It had only butcher shops and fruit
stands and grimy children and smells. Garbage cans and stoops that were
unswept and slouching houses which pushed their bellies out into the
evening and grinned.
Emmanuel waited in the doorway. Someone would come out. Someone always
did. Then, together, it would be easier to face the street, talking in
fast, loud sentences to shut out the song. He peered into the building.
Yes, someone was approaching. Luck! He knew the man, one of his
classmates. He knew, also, that he would not be considered welcome by
the other. But that didn’t matter. Anything rather than walk alone....
“Are you going to the Subway?” He tried to conceal his anxiety,
desperately forcing the question to be casual.
“Why ... yes!” Not cordial, just as Emmanuel had expected. They thought
him queer.... Well.... The main thing was that he’d not have to walk to
the subway alone. Blocks and blocks.
“Anything happen in the psychiatry class? I cut it, you know.” Had to
make conversation! Oh, anything.... The street....
“No. Nothing much. Old man Hedley gassed some more about
maniac-depressives. Usual stuff.”
Hedley ... that was the professor ... maniac-depressives ... oh, yes,
maniac-depressives.... (Was that somebody laughing up in that window,
behind those flowers? A girl) ... maniac....
“He ... he didn’t.... (A girl! Her body can’t be seen, but she must have
white shoulders, smiling through the transparent crimson shawl!) ... let
me see ... oh, yes ... he didn’t say when those paranoia reports are
due?”
“No.”
“He didn’t! That’s funny!” Emmanuel began to laugh softly. He could
feel, without actually seeing it, that the other threw him a questioning
troubled glance from the corner of his eye. That made him laugh more.
The fool! He didn’t know that the laughter belonged to the girl behind
the flowers, to the girl who must have silken eyes and a soft throat.
“Well, I guess I’ll cut to-morrow again.”
“Yes?” Without interest.
“Yes!” A warmth came over Emmanuel. He felt himself getting angry, at
what he didn’t know. “Yes! I’ll cut it as many times as I damn feel like
it. See?” He realized that this required an explanation. “I’m no good
at the stuff. I don’t want to be good at it. I’ll never be a doctor. I
hate the thought of ever being a doctor.”
“Then why did you come to the school?” In spite of himself the man was
compelled to ask. He was amazed at the fury in Emmanuel’s words. “Why
did you take up medicine?”
“Why? What the hell do you ask me that for? Don’t you know?” Emmanuel
wasn’t listening to himself. The questions had come out of his mouth
almost automatically. This was not his only conversation of the kind.
Just now he was paying attention to the piano that was being played in a
house up the street. “No, I guess you can’t know,” his mouth continued.
“You’re not a Jew.”
“What has that to do with it?”
A wailing chord ... was there some regret in that music? Who played it?
Another girl? One with seeking eyes?
“Everything! When you’re a Jew your family works for you ... your
father, your mother, sisters even ... and you study. And all the time
they look at you so hungry, so impatient, demanding that you hurry,
hurry, through college, through all your years. That you make money.
That’s what they want. And then they’ve got their damned pride, too. You
must become a professional man. A lawyer, a doctor.... God, their rotten
selfishness! Always driving you, hungry, exacting....”
The other was frightened. Emmanuel knew that and he grinned with
pleasure. He was flattered. Frightened--of him. That was good! He heard
the uncertain tone:
“Well, what would you like to do instead?”
Ah.... It had come! Emmanuel stopped. Under his feet a yellow patch of
light, on his hair, uncovered now as he snatched off his hat, the notes
of the piano rested for a moment before rushing along the street.
Emmanuel could see the chords in the air, he told himself. They glowed.
There were flames in them. He threw out his arms, indicating the street:
“This! This is what I’d like to do!”
His companion also had to stop. Out of bewildered gray eyes he looked at
Emmanuel. He didn’t understand, of course.
“This?”
“This! You hear that music ...?” He stepped closer to the man, grabbed
his lapels. “You hear it? I could do that!”
“Do it?” Absolutely terrified! Emmanuel grinned with satisfaction. He
released him. “Why, do you play an instrument?”
“No ... no....” What a fool! But why should he understand?
“Oh, you compose....”
Idiot!
“I don’t have to compose! I don’t have to play!” Snarling: “I said I
could _do_ it. You don’t have to know a note to do it.... It’s just got
to be in you....” His hands dropped. A silly smile came into his face.
What’s the use? “I guess I can’t explain. I don’t know myself exactly
what I mean. Take the sky, for instance. It’s like a banner. That’s it,
a torn banner. Well, I could do that, too! Not paint it, or write about
it, though. Something else....”
The other had left him. Emmanuel looked after the hurrying man and he
knew that an empty papier-mâché figure was going there, a papier-mâché
figure made of flesh, curiously, and that terror was dogging the steps
of that figure. Let him run! Let him think that he, Emmanuel Wolkowitz,
is a lunatic! Let him run. Now, now he was not afraid of the street. He
turned and shouted into it:
“I won’t be a doctor!”
He shook his fist into the face of the houses:
“I won’t be a doctor!”
Blood rushed to his face. He coughed. Perspiration stood on his
forehead. He felt tired, spent. How would he ever get home? The
Subway.... He turned into the station. But the music, although that had
been blocks beyond, kept on following him. He muttered.
“That’s Rachmaninoff.... No, it isn’t.... I don’t know what it is.... I
don’t know one piece from another.... Why don’t I?”
II
“You late again, Manny!”
That was his mother. He didn’t answer her. He looked at the room, at
the table with its red tablecloth, now set for the evening meal, at the
crayon enlargements of his grandfather and grandmother on the wall. At
the ice box in the corner of the dining room. At the long-handled pot in
which the soup had been cooked and brought to the table. His father ...
long beard ... almost asleep.... Reba--was she dirty or was that just
the way she put the rouge on her face? So much rouge! That was his
sister.
“Where were you?”
He brushed past his mother. He went into the bedroom. Over his shoulder
he told her:
“In school.”
“So late? You get out at five, no?”
“Well....”
He didn’t care to wash up. To hell with hygiene. That was for doctors.
He wouldn’t be a doctor.
“Ain’t coming to eat?” His mother again, in the doorway.
“I don’t want to eat. I’m tired.” But he went. He sat down at the table.
“I’m tired....”
“Ha! You make me giggle.” Reba. “What should I say then? You tired? My
Gawd, you don’t have to stand at the machine all day long, punching them
buttons till you think your arm was gonna break off.”
“Now you let ’im alone.” The mother had come to his defence. Always she
came to his defence. “Studying ain’t so easy.”
“It ain’t? Wisht to Gawd you would ’ave let me study. How I was begging
you to let me go to business school. All the girls I know is stenogs,
only I got to work in a factory, because....”
She didn’t say it. But she looked at Emmanuel. The accusation was there.
He jumped up. He pushed away his plate and jumped up.
“What do you want of me? Did I stop you from school? Am I making you go
to work?” Still, he couldn’t shake off her eyes. They were telling the
truth. His mouth twitched, he lowered his voice: “I guess you’re right.
If it wasn’t for me you’d.... I’m sorry, Reba!”
She softened, too. She rose and put a hand on his sleeve. She smiled;
underneath the thick paint on her face there was something kindly.
“Oh, what’s the matter with you, Manny? I was only kiddin’. Can’t you
take a joke?”
Yes, they were all working for him! His father, getting rheumatism in
that basement shop of his, haggling, cheating customers out of an extra
potato, cheating for the sake of an added cent.... That mother of his,
over there. She worked, too. Embroidered with her always diseased eyes.
Reba....
“No, I guess you’re right, Reba. I ... I’m just sucking the blood out of
you, all of you....”
“Don’t be a fool. My work is all right. You’ll be a doctor soon.”
Ah, he’ll be a doctor soon! That’s why they were willing to work. He was
a bank of flesh, into which they put their greasy pennies.... To be
returned with interest! What if he told them that he didn’t intend to
become a doctor? What if he told them to go to hell? How? How to say it
to them? After all this?
He ate his fish. There was no talk in the room. His father drank the
soup with gurgling noises. It was _borscht_ soup. It trickled down over
his beard, red soup, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. His
mother sighed every time she had to rise to bring something to the
table. His family!
Suddenly Emmanuel rose. The room was choking him. The walls were coming
nearer. The clatter of the dishes was low thunder now.
“I’m through.”
He knew where he was going. Upstairs, to the third floor, to Etta. Etta!
Etta! She was real. She had black hair, and when you touched it you
could shut your eyes and think you were touching nice warm water. It
seemed to lick your fingers with a warm tongue, her hair. Her eyes, too,
like the feel of a child-wind in summer....
“Manny!”
She had come to meet him at the door. Their hands touched. He was the
first to draw his away. Again he felt warm all over, as he had in the
street. When she brushed past him in the dim-lit hall to lead the way to
the living room and her body was close to his, Emmanuel was conscious of
a feeling of shame, his throat became dry. For no reason at all, as far
as he could tell.
Their living room was like any other East Side living room. No--better.
Here there was a cheap golden-oak piano, too, and an incongruous gilded
music stand with stencilled flowers and angels and birds. Otherwise the
usual crayon pictures of bearded ancestors of _scheiteled_ ancestors,
the seven-branched candlestick on the mantel, the rocking chair, a vase
with artificial roses....
“Listen, Manny, you never heard me sing, did you? I’m gonna sing a new
piece I just got. Wanna hear it?”
She seated herself at the piano. She spread the sheets of music. The
song was a ballad, a jumble of molasses-coated words, smirking though
they meant to whimper. And her hands struck the wrong notes, they
slipped off, she had to shake her head and begin all over again. Her
voice uncertain, trembling. Still.... Emmanuel, listening to the girl,
knew that this was the street returned. His mouth opened in amazement.
His arm shook. Then:
“Etta!” he cried, cutting into the cracked notes of the piano. “You can
sing!”
She didn’t seem to pay any attention to that. Again she started, false,
tremulous. Emmanuel grasped her arm.
“Ouch, you’re hurting me!”
But he would not let her go on.
“Listen, Etta! You can sing. Don’t you understand me? You’ve got it in
you. You ... well, you can sing, Etta! Not yet. You know what I mean.
Not yet. But it’s in you. You can sing.”
“Yeah?” She was pleased. She brought her face closer to his as he stood
there, bending over her.
“You’re going to study....”
“How can I? I got to go to work. I ain’t got time. You feel awful tired
after taking dictation all day.”
He waved that aside. Again his hand was cutting into her arm.
“You’ll have to study. You don’t know how good it is. If only I could
have studied!”
“Well, you’re studying, ain’t you? You’re gonna be a doctor.”
“That’s not what I mean....” How to explain it? “Listen, Etta, I wanted
to study things like history. Not the stuff they gave me at high school.
Real history. There is colour in it. The books never speak of that,
though. They give you only dates and names. But when you shut your eyes
you can see helmets and campfires. Flames and singing people in forests,
monks in black hoods, golden coins. That’s funny how those golden coins
come to you when you shut your eyes. That.... That’s history.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I never cared much for it in school.”
“Because you never shut your eyes to see. Then, take drawing. The way I
imagine it.... Well, I wasn’t good at it, of course. My lines took crazy
turns. They moved about the paper and I couldn’t stop them. The teacher
was angry. But what could I do? He put there a vase and a strawberry box
and I could see only patches of colour and sometimes fountains and
sometimes dancing flowers. You know.... The lines went their own way.
Sometimes one side was larger than the other, sometimes you could see
through it.... And my teacher was angry.”
“I don’t understand you. What you mean flowers was dancing?” She reached
out for his hand and patted it. “You say such funny things, Manny. What
you shouting for so?”
He felt her face very close to his. Her hair touched his eyes. He
brushed that aside. He spoke in whispers now.
“Listen, Etta, I’ll teach you how to sing. I’ll teach you. I can do it.
I can’t sing myself, but I can teach you. It’s here in me! Shall I?”
She didn’t seem to care about that. She was flushed, her eyes had grown
wide, warm. Her red bit of a tongue moistened her quivering lips:
“Yeah!” Hers was also a whisper. Then her arms were about his neck.
Feeling the touch of her bare elbows, Emmanuel stopped talking. The arms
were hot. Through her thin blouse he could see the girl’s shoulders.
Suddenly he bent his face to hers, almost bit into her lips. He was
happy. No, not the melody of the street ... that was gone just now....
This was something else. His legs trembled.
“Etta, I love you!”
She lay back in his arms. She knew. She kissed him with even more
passion than before. He was going to be a doctor....
“We’re sweethearts, ain’t we, Manny?”
“Yes, yes!” Ah, it was good to kiss her.
“We’re gonna go steady, yeah?” He would be a doctor. They would go
“steady.” Then there would be a “catered supper” in the pink reception
room of an East Side hall after the wedding, with many candles in the
hands of the guests, a band for dancing, a paper-flower decorated throne
for the bridal pair. “Steady, yes, Manny?”
There was only another year of college....
III
Another year of college.
That was the hardest year. Emmanuel told himself every day that it would
have to be the last--another seven hours in the classrooms would kill
him. No, not kill him, make him do something, murder, suicide, what did
he know? What if he kicked over an apparatus in the laboratory, what if
he spat into the dean’s august, bearded face? They’d throw him out
then.... Histology, materia medica, physiological chemistry, the rotten,
dead stuff ... all the rotten, dead stuff.... And then there would have
to be an added year, in a hospital. He, Emmanuel Wolkowitz, an interne.
He, Emmanuel Wolkowitz, taking thermometers out of the mouths of
patients, making clinical charts, listening to the smutty confidences of
leering nurses....
He tried to go through that year, somehow. The street was still there,
but since that evening many months ago when he had turned to defy it, he
was no longer afraid of it. He was doing something which, he knew, the
street must approve of.
He was doing something! He was writing. Writing was easy. Except when
the words would not come. Or the wrong ones came. The dictionary was
stupid. Dots and dashes and exclamation marks were stupid. They ruined
the melody. Who said writing was easy, anyhow? What about the song? It
would go on in your head, in your ears, it would paint pictures:
dreamfields of the dawn, grottoes where purple and blue flowers sang.
When you tried to put all that to paper there were only words and the
song was gone. Words were harsh--you couldn’t write down the melody....
But he wrote.
He said to Etta:
“I’ll be a writer!”
“Gowan! Not a doctor?” She didn’t believe what he said, of course. She
thought it a good joke. “That ain’t a good trade.”
A trade!
“Oh, yes, it’s very good when it’s a trade,” he replied. “Mine will be
art.” He wanted to take back the words immediately. Art! He! When the
melody could not be captured. Uncertainly: “Well, of course, it’s not
very profitable.”
“Then you can’t be a writer,” decided Etta, “because you’ll have to earn
money. Sure!”
“Oh, money!” Emmanuel looked at his shiny trousers. “Money!”
“Now, Manny, get all that foolishness out of your head. You’re gonna be
through school in no time now and then we’ll get married. My father will
furnish an office for you and....”
Yes, he knew that. Her father would furnish an office for him. All East
Side fathers did. He had seen it happen again and again. To some of his
classmates, too. An office--then he’d have to practise. Marry Etta,
practise, make money for her, for his family, for Reba’s dowry, who
would in turn be sold to somebody else, a lawyer or dentist perhaps. Was
there no way out of it?
There must be! He would be a writer. An author. After all, there must be
money in it. So many magazines. And then, perhaps, he would write a
book. Would Etta, would his family care how the money came, as long as
he gave them enough? He saw his name on a dull-red volume. In golden
letters: Emmanuel Wolkowitz.
But why did they want money so much?
“Why do you want money so much, Etta?”
“Well, my Gawd, who don’t? This ain’t living, the way we go on now.
Maybe once a week you take me to the movies. Oh, I ain’t complaining,
Manny. Only it’s pretty hard. All the other girls at the office have
good times. They go to Coney Island, Broadway, they go to cabarets,
dances. I’m as good-looking as they are. I got nice clothes. You’re all
right, Manny, but gee, it’s long, waiting like this.”
“Oh....”
“You ain’t sore at me, are you, because I told you? It’ll be all right,
Manny! You’ll make good. I’ll speak to my father. He’ll come across.”
“Oh....”
He didn’t go near her for the next three or four days.
* * * * *
There were two letters on the dining-room table. One had come in a
large, oblong manila envelope, the other in a cheap pink one.
Emmanuel had just come home from college. He picked up the letters. He
saw that his mother had opened them. Now, as he came into the room, her
diseased eyes narrowed:
“That’s why we go hungry an education to give you? That’s why?”
He coloured. Angrily.
“You shouldn’t have opened them. You had no business to.”
“What? My own children’s letters I shouldn’t open, maybe?”
Anyway, she couldn’t have read them. She couldn’t read English. One of
the things was a returned manuscript, the other a letter from Etta....
Still, his mother must have guessed, because now she turned on him:
“Goils! To spend money on. And this craziness, this story business.”
Pale, he threw at her:
“I’ve got to write if I want to be a writer!”
Her face hardened. She shook her bony, needle-scarred finger in his
face:
“A writer he wants to be, with the family starving.” She wiped her nose,
her eyes. “A doctor he don’t want to be, what’s a profession. A writer,
even if maybe we die and your sister Reba got to break her arms pushing
that machine.”
Out in the kitchen he read Etta’s letter. She had spoken to her parents,
she wrote--Emmanuel had left that to her because he didn’t have the
courage, he didn’t care enough--and her father had expressed willingness
to furnish an office for him after the marriage. “Gee, I’m just tickled
silly, are you glad, honey?” was her question in the even,
characterless business-college handwriting. “I just couldn’t wait until
I see you, so I had to write.”
“So that’s it,” he thought. His mouth moved: “Glad....”
His mother was standing next to him again.
“Goils! I’m going blind with embroidery and your father any minute is
gonna kill himself with that rheumatism yet. All our lifes, all our
lifes for you we worked.”
Oh, yes, all their lives. Putting pennies into him, putting food into
him, waiting, waiting....
“It’s all right, Ma, I....”
“My eyes feel like they was on fire....”
“It’s all right, Ma. Listen!” He read her the letter. “You see, Etta’s
father is going to furnish an office for me. You see....”
“Manny! Oh, my good God, honest? Honest, Manny? My Manny, my good son,
what’s going to be a doctor, what’s going to be so good to his family!”
She kissed him. She pawed over his face, his hair. He suffered that.
Writing? Well.... Where was the street? Well.... He’d be a doctor....
Etta, his father, his mother, Reba....
“Sure, Ma.”
IV
Emmanuel watched the patient go out of his office. He hadn’t been able
to do anything for the girl. He hadn’t dared to do anything for her. In
fact, he had shaken his head even before hearing her request. Her eyes
had told him. Sorry for the girl? Yes. Of course he was sorry for her.
But it wasn’t ethical.... He had to laugh at the word. Ethics--smug
euphemism. Simply afraid, that was the truth. Couldn’t risk it. He, the
well-known physician, member of medical associations, “a respected
member of the community.”
Seven years ago, perhaps, when money had been needed. When impatient
eyes were watching him. Four pairs of eyes--no, six, because there had
been Etta’s family, too. Now there was enough money. Now there was his
office. The mahogany desk with its impressive medical volumes, the white
enamel instrument cabinet. An X-ray apparatus. The elaborate washstand
with its gleaming appointments. The blue-lettered sign on the window: E.
Manfred Woll, M.D.
“That’s not I, of course,” he told himself.
E. Manfred Woll.... Etta’s doing.
“You can’t have a kike name in a swell neighbourhood like this,” she had
told him.
All right, the physician, _medicinæ doctor_, that was E. Manfred Woll.
But then where was Emmanuel Wolkowitz? He didn’t know.
There used to be a street. That wasn’t any more. Upstairs there was only
his apartment, with every piece of correct furniture just so, with every
proper picture just so, every cushion rigid, every piece of china, every
vase as the interior decorator had planned it. He was living in an
interior decorator’s apartment! Etta’s doing.
Etta herself, his wife, composed of a pretty face, a carefully,
painfully, pretty face, of just so much obedient, matter-of-fact sex, so
much wifely devotion, solicitude:
“Dearie, you’re so tired!” Every day.... “Here, let me get the girl to
make you a nice hot cup of tea.”
There used to be a melody.... In the beginning he had attempted to get
Etta to sing. She had replied:
“Oh, I don’t know! Too much trouble. Lessons and everything. Of course,
if I was a single girl it would be nice to learn and get a job in a show
or in vaudeville. But ain’t I got the best husband in the world to take
care of me now?”
Well, she didn’t understand! Emmanuel watched the things in the office,
he watched himself seated at the desk of E. Manfred Woll, M.D. Funny,
that was!
Etta came in. As usual:
“Am I disturbing you, dear?”
He didn’t reply. She would come in, anyway. She seated herself on the
edge of his desk, her pretty legs two silken flashes as they rocked. She
toyed with his paper knife, the self-consciously ornamental onyx knife,
her gift.
“That car salesman is going to come around to-morrow. What shall I tell
him?”
“The salesman. I don’t know! What do you want to tell him?”
Etta pouted. In spite of the usual smile she had so carefully
cultivated during the last seven years, her eyes were cold.
“It isn’t what _I_ want to tell him. You know that. I’m not the one for
whose sake we’re getting that limousine. But you can’t be driving around
in that dingy sedan. You ought to have a real car. People expect it of
you.”
Always that argument. The apartment people expected of him, her dresses
people expected of him, his name people expected of him. Nothing for
her. Everything for him. Oh, a good wife!
“You expect it of me, too, don’t you, Etta?”
“Well....”
“You all expect it of me? Your father expected an interest on his money:
a nice home for you, nice clothes for you. He got it. My family....
Well, they’re well off now, they’ve no troubles. A nice home in the
Bronx. Reba got her dowry, she got her lawyer.... Aren’t you, all of
you, satisfied yet? What else do you want?”
“Manny, I don’t understand you.”
“No!”
“What is the matter with you to-day?”
To-day.... Seven years, nine, twelve....
“Etta, what would you say if I told you I’m through?”
“What do you mean, ‘through’?”
“That I’m going away?”
“Where are you going?”
He couldn’t answer that. Where would he be going? To the street? The
street....
Etta had left him, shrugging her shoulders. She didn’t bother to try to
understand him. One of his unaccountable fits! Alone, Emmanuel continued
sitting at his desk. Would he really go away?
The telephone rang. He recognized the voice. His uncle. For years the
“support of the family,” who had helped him through college, helped his
father with the basement penny business. A self-satisfied, ruthless,
self-made man, narrow, full of many hatreds. A charitable, religious
Jew, a good father. Cloaks and suits.
“Manny, my son Dewey is gonna have for him a graduation party from high
school. I want you positively to come.”
Emmanuel promised. He liked Dewey, a boy who was forced to be bright,
who was forced to be the best student in his class, Dewey, who had once
received a beating in his presence for daring to read a novel on a
Saturday instead of going to the synagogue. Was Dewey perhaps like
himself?
Emmanuel walked out of the house. At the door his chauffeur asked:
“Shall I get the car, sir?”
“No, I’ll walk.”
The man touched his cap, looked after Emmanuel stupidly. It was raining.
Emmanuel didn’t care. The rain would do him good to-day, he thought. It
would be good to walk into the street while it was raining. Already the
afternoon, dusk-cloaked, was slipping away and in the coming darkness
the pavement of the street would reflect the light from the windows.
Yellow pools of light.... It would be a long walk. The street was far
away.
Too far away. After some five blocks Emmanuel stopped. Could that
distance to the street be covered to-day? Could it be covered in a year,
in a lifetime? Perhaps it wasn’t there at all. There was no melody
now--perhaps there never had been a melody....
And did it matter now? He was a doctor. Could he tell that to the
street? Could he tell about his family, about Etta?
Was there nothing else than to go back home? That he couldn’t answer.
After all the years, that distant street was still calling Emmanuel.
Maybe.... Even if there should be no melody, one could go on toward the
street. But--home? He walked on.
Then he remembered. Wasn’t there something he had intended to do on the
way? What? Oh, Dewey.... The graduation party would be a grand affair.
He wouldn’t go, of course, but a gift would be expected. A set of books?
A set of books for Dewey? Who was so much like himself? Books? Dewey was
like himself! But then....
“They were my tools,” the thought came to him. “I couldn’t use them.
They weren’t the right tools.... Yes, they were.... Those others weren’t
right.... The ones at college. Now they’re at home. Etta’s? She can have
them. Let her have them. Wrong tools, all of them wrong tools.... The
others, too.... All the books I’ve ever had!” And then the zig-zag
pattern: “Tools, books, tools, tools....”
He entered a shop. No books.... He pointed to a table. To the clerk he
muttered:
“These....”
He gave Dewey’s name, the address. He stood there, watching the large
package being wrapped up. He nodded:
“That’s right....”
A set of carpenter’s tools. A hammer, a saw, a plane.
Out of the shop. He went on. How far the street was! No--there it was,
approaching him, coming toward him. There, that was the street. He
stopped for a breath. These were the stones ... his feet were touching
the pavement.... And the street was dark. But this end had always been
dark, he remembered. Emmanuel lifted his head, his eyes searched the
darkness. Nothing yet. But he knew. The yellow pools would be farther
on, much farther on....
THE WAGER
BY ISA URQUHART GLENN
From _Argosy-All Story_
“Kirwin, you’ll find rain in hell as soon as you will a straight girl in
a dance hall in Manila! Don’t wax sentimental over a pretty blonde, out
here, until you know the circumstances which landed the lady among the
half-breeds. I’ll wager that girl is as tough as they make ’em in even
this off country.”
This from young Angier.
“I’ll take you! There’s something in her face that one can tie to. Call
her over, at the end of this dance, and let’s settle it. Long wait ahead
of us, anyway, until Mayhew shows up. He won’t be in a hurry, with this
deluge. Been roughing it sufficiently; he’ll be taking it easy while he
is in town.” Kirwin’s older and somewhat graver face was turned toward
the dancing couples. He stared at them from underneath beetling brows,
dispassionately appraising the girl whom they were discussing.
“Ever find out why Mayhew is in the islands?” asked Angier idly.
“Secretive cuss! Acts like a Secret Service bird--prowling around
unlikely places, such as this joint in which he arranged to meet us
to-night.”
“Job brought him. That’s straight enough. But I see what you mean. He
does seem to be looking for something outside the job. Now, as to that
bet----”
Seriously they arranged the terms of the wager. In the byways of the
world, trifles are serious when big things are not happening.
“Two to one----”
It was young Angier who plunged the deepest. He was at the age when a
man is sure that he knows the woman game.
“It will be the same old tale,” he said. “Men! One man; then two men;
then a few more--and the streets.”
It rained--as if a gigantic bucket of water were being emptied from the
clouds that lowered over the city.
Manila, like all ladies, has moods; and when she weeps it means trouble.
Her rainy mood is sinister--reminiscent of untold horrors. The Moat,
evil in even its modernized form, seems, when bespattered by the
raindrops that turn oily as they strike, to be hiding dark secrets of a
past age. Over the wet and slippery Bridge of Spain many men have gone
to their ruin; through the Puerta Isabella Dos many women have reached
the bottom. Manila blinks through the downpour, knowing full well that
men are strong, and men are weak, but no man can be both. And well does
Manila know that few women in her clutches have achieved the first.
The tin roof reverberated under the bombardment of the rain. The wind
hit the building, which vibrated. A breath of damp, cool air blew in to
the crowded dance hall. The dancers paused, for an instant taken aback
by the fury of the storm. They felt the insecurity of the human being in
the face of the elements. The clamour of the trap drum was unaccompanied
by the sliding sound of feet; even the feet faltered. The wind died down
as suddenly as it had arisen. The music of the Filipino jazz band broke
forth with renewed vigour. The dancers again set out upon the vast
floor, moving along in the fox trot as interpreted by the two
hemispheres.
At a table near the dancing floor sat the two officers who had made the
bet. They waited for their white uniforms to dry out from the storm that
had caught them unprepared. Amusement showed in their sunburnt faces as
they watched the many odd variations of the great American dance. The
dancers circled past their table, the mestizos throwing out their feet
with waving motions inherited from the Spanish habanera, the full-blood
natives flopping carelessly along in heelless chinelas which
necessitated exaggerated glides, the Chinamen shuffling. Dancing with
these assorted breeds were girls as unmistakably Caucasian as their
partners were Oriental. These girls clung precariously to the loose
sleeves of the Chinaman, the unconfined shirt tails of the Filipino, the
starched coat of the mestizo. The painted faces looked up at the
yellow, brown, and bistre skins of their partners. White teeth gleamed
from the men’s open mouths; gold fillings flashed between the
dangerously smiling lips of the girls.
Angier grinned.
“Watch your pure and very blonde lady leering up at that greasy old
chino! Young for it, too. Now you, Kirwin--you never believe wrong of a
pretty woman, though you agree about the shortcomings of the ugly ones.
But you are wrong, old top! Sin overtakes the fair, not the unlovely.
Look at that girl’s dress. Disreputable! What decent woman would show
all of her naked shoulders and most of her back to this crowd? Do you
suppose that the chino dancing with her thinks she is decent? Not on
your life he doesn’t! His decent women swathe themselves in stiff
brocades and padded coats.”
“So do his indecent ones. Stick to facts.”
They ordered another round of the sickeningly sweet and depressingly
lukewarm soft drinks of a reformed Manila. The straws wilted as soon as
touched, and fell over the sides of the tall glasses in the manner of
Victorian heroines who swoon.
The music stopped. The dancers separated, going to the different tables.
Pink and shabby, tawdry skirts; very lovely hair in long and thick curls
down her back and hanging in her eyes--that variety of soft blue eye
which, when angry, suggests steel heated to the white pitch, but which
crinkles engagingly when merry; face hard and sophisticated--the dancer
of the wager!
Easy to induce her to sit down at their table; impossible to persuade
her to take a drink from the flasks with which they were armed against
contingencies. She insisted on soda water--and then more soda water.
“I want something sweet and cold,” she told them. “God--how I’ve missed
it! I hate places where there’s not enough ice for ice cream.”
Before the soda water arrived the music started again. Kirwin half rose
from his chair and bowed ceremoniously to the girl. “Will you give me
the pleasure of this dance?”
“Gee!” exclaimed the young person. “And the soda water on the way!”
“I thought you’d like it,” muttered the man.
“Like it? Like to dance?” She broke into laughter. “Say--don’t you know
yet that a person’s job is never fun? It’s bread and butter for me to
move my feet, not pleasure.”
She seized the glass of purplish mixture that was being placed before
her and plunged the spoon, and after that her nose, into its enticing
depths.
“Now, this is real joy!” she announced.
“Where you living?” Angier was already at the business of winning his
bet.
The girl turned on him a cold and wary look that, as she studied his
frank boyish face, softened into good fellowship.
“Over in the Tondo--a Ford-sized life in a Ford-sized room. I take my
shower under an oil can, and that after I’ve gone out and fetched in the
water that’s in the can. And if the water runs out before the soap’s
off, I’ve got to hustle into my kimono and get some more to fill up the
darned can--and then jump under it like the house was on fire, so’s the
water won’t give out again. That’s comfort for you! And me used to
Broadway! I tell you--give me Broadway, with the human toads staring at
you! Out here, there’s nothing to stare at you except half-breed frogs.
I’m not strong for half-breeds. That’s the reason I came over here when
you called me--because you fellows are white.” She gave them another of
her wary looks; prepared for their unbelief.
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Miss Casey--to you!” replied the girl promptly, and with emphasis on
the title.
“What’s your name to the chinos?” asked the amused Angier.
The girl’s face turned a dark and painful red. She glanced helplessly at
the man whose manner toward her was marked by a difference.
Kirwin smiled kindly in response to this glance.
“That’s enough, Angier,” he said with some sternness in his voice. “Miss
Casey, my friend is distinctly young and rather flippant; take him with
a grain of salt.”
“Sure!” responded Miss Casey. “I’ve often met ’em like that. They’re
harmless.”
Angier lifted his glass to his merry young mouth. From the glass issued
a gurgle or two. Miss Casey eyed him for a moment; then turned to Kirwin
with a degree of confidence.
“Say--what did you two fellows call me over here for? I know it wasn’t
just to have a good time. You can’t fool Mary. I know the difference in
men. He’s guying me, but he isn’t tough.”
Kirwin bowed, growing respect in his deep-set eyes.
“Miss Casey, we owe you an apology. We did an unpardonable thing; we
made a bet on you. It isn’t what men should do about a woman----”
“ ...But you did it about me, because I’m not a woman--I’m just a
dance-hall girl in the Orient? Oh, don’t apologize; I understand. I’m
used to it.”
There was no longer a trace of the ironic in Kirwin’s deference.
Something of old-fashioned ceremony crept into his manner and softened
the girl. She smiled at him without rancour.
“Don’t say a word,” she said kindly, with the obvious intent of putting
him at his ease. “You haven’t hurt my feelings a bit. I know when to get
mad; and I know when not to. I don’t think either of you meant a thing.
And it’s a comfort to be sitting here with two men from home. Forget
it!”
Angier withdrew his face from the tall glass. He put his hand on the
roughened hand of the girl as it rested on the table beside her soda
water.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “And I want to ask you something quite aside from
the bet. We’re all Americans, as you said. Is there anything that we
could do for you?”
Mary Casey put her other hand on top of his and pressed it. For a moment
there was a mist over her blue eyes.
“You’re a nice boy. Much obliged. But there isn’t anything. I’m taking
care of myself; and I can pay my rent, and pick up my meals one way or
another. And not from men!” The guarded look was again in evidence as
she said this. Then she laughed. “You see how mean I am, about
suspecting men! But I have to be that way. There aren’t too many you can
trust.”
To the jerky strains of Manila’s latest jazz--a tune already, in
America, a year old and buried--she leaned across the rickety table and
looked from one to the other of the men.
It was a direct, level look.
“What was the bet?”
“Oh, I say! Miss Casey!” began Angier uncomfortably. “See here: I’ve
already said I was sorry I’d made it.” He took out his cigarette case.
He struck a match. There was a tinge of nervousness in his manner.
Mary extended her hand for a cigarette.
“Might as well have one,” she said; “though it does register guilt, in
the movies, for a woman to smoke!” She leaned back in her cane chair and
absently watched the thin blue vapour that curled up from her nose. Her
rouged lips were parted in a rather hard smile. “Never occurred to you,
did it, that women could stay straight easier if you men weren’t so keen
on saying we were crooked? Of course I can guess what the bet was! And I
can very nearly guess which of you it was who bet for me. And--on
account of one of you having taken a chance on me--I may tell you a
thing or two before the evening is over. I’d somehow like a man who had
the nerve to take a chance like that--on my side--to win his bet!”
The muchacho approached the table for orders. He bowed obsequiously to
the two officers and brushed his arm contemptuously across the shoulder
of Mary Casey. He drew back suddenly, rubbing his cheek. Miss Casey’s
hand had administered a smart slap on that yellow expanse. She glanced
apologetically at the two Americans.
“It’s the only way to treat ’em,” she informed them. “Treat ’em rough,
and in a hurry! That’s my way, and it works. If you don’t know the game,
this is no place for you.”
She looked out over the floor. A stout and perspiring mestizo, with the
unmistakable Chinese look, was approaching.
“I must dance with this bum. He’s one of the ‘influential patrons,’ and
the management would have a fit and bounce me if I turned him down. I’ll
be back after he’s walked a mile on my feet.”
The two men watched her as she steered the lumbering mestizo through the
crowd. Neither of them spoke.
At the end of the dance she returned to the table and sat down as a
matter of course. This was the Orient, and a long way from home and its
standards of caste. And these Americans had been decent to her--kind to
her.
“Ain’t it fierce, to have to dance with a man that’s a hop toad and an
elephant all in one?” she inquired with a passing annoyance.
“Know the game? Sure I know the game--and a darned good thing I do!” she
continued, taking up the conversation where they had left it. “I’ve
known it since I was a kid. I’m twenty-three now; and I’ve been thanking
my stars all that time that I knew it. You put yourself through the
China Coast, and you need to know the ropes of life. You think I’d want
to be one of those sweet, innocent dunces that you men always like to
believe we blondes are--and that we aren’t, so many times? I’d have
fallen into the paws of a Chink--I would! Innocent sweetness can’t come
through the China Coast whole, and don’t you forget it! I’ve walked
straight, but it wasn’t by being sweet and innocent that I did it. It
was by knowing every devilment that men can be up to. They are all
alike--the men I meet. Their skins are different colours, but their
ideas are the same. All yellow inside, and black and brown and white
outside.”
Musingly, she sipped her soda water. In this repose her mouth showed
hard lines in crescents at the corners. There were wrinkles raying out
from her eyes--baby eyes, at times. These eyes now turned contritely to
the two officers.
“That was hitting below the belt, wasn’t it? My turn to apologize now!
But it isn’t often I meet fellows like you--fellows who’ll talk to me
instead of wanting to paw me--guys who are drunk, and----” Her voice
trailed off. She stared unseeingly at the crowd as it pranced past the
table. “God! I don’t blame men for the way things are with us girls! If
I was a man I’d play the game that way, too, I guess. They haven’t got a
thing staked on the turn of the wheel. But we’ve got everything to lose.
And if we aren’t careful we lose it; that’s all.”
The wind came up again and tore at the house, and around the house, with
concentrated enmity. It played with the loose shell windows as the cat
with the mouse. Inspired by this lack of control in the elements, Kirwin
became elemental in his questioning of the girl.
“Born and brought up in New York, on Eighth Avenue, you say? Then why
out here?”
“What’s a girl who’s poor to do to feed herself? Not but what the men’ll
feed her--if she’s a fool! A man goes and marries, and gets a girl baby.
And does he have that girl baby taught a trade when she leaves grammar
school, like he does his sons? He does, like hell! He throws her out--in
front of men--to catch a husband! ’Tisn’t fair to the girls. Look at me:
I didn’t know how to do a thing except dance. I’d learned how to do that
on the sidewalks, to hurdy-gurdies.”
The noise of the rain on the roof deadened her voice, so that the men
had to lean across the table in order to hear her next words.
“I said I’d tell you a few things. All right! I will! It may help you in
your bets on other women.”
Her voice became shriller, more filled with excitement. The rain no
longer deadened it; it was charged with an electricity that carried it
above the storm.
“When I knew that if I didn’t want to marry one of the poor simps I
met--with his hair slicked down with grease till it looked like shiny
black shoes--I’d have to scratch for my living, I got busy and hunted a
job in a cheap dance hall in that part of town. My job was to dance with
any dirty, smelly man who came in and hadn’t got a girl along. Not much
of a trade, but it was a long sight better than the one my sister took
up--on the streets! That was another trade you didn’t have to be trained
for!
“‘Mary, be careful!’ my mother kept telling me. ‘A girl has got to be
careful--because the men won’t be careful for her.’
“By the time I’d learned the game of taking care of myself, I’d worked
up to a sweller dance hall on Broadway. The fellows who came in there
were clean, except in their minds. But I kept saying to myself: ‘Mary,
be careful!’
“And then, one evening, in came a seedy-looking man who made you think
he’d seen better times and a fatter living. Always shaved clean, and
smelled of talcum powder. But his clothes were brushed until there
wasn’t a bit of nap left on them, I used to think when I was dancing
with him and looking at his shoulder. He was an actor, out of a job, he
told me. They tell you the story of their lives when they’re dancing
with you.
“Once he came in downright hungry. I shared with him that night the
dinner the management gave me.
“I got in the habit of looking for him, and sharing my dinner with him.
I respected myself a lot because I was giving him dinner instead of him
feeding me. Silly, wasn’t it?” She looked at Kirwin.
Kirwin nodded gravely. “I understand that perfectly,” he said. “You
would feel that way. So should I, in your place.”
“Thanks!” said Mary Casey. “Well--you know--after you’ve fed a man when
he’s hungry, you get to sort of think you own him. You feel like you’re
his mother, you might say. I got to feeling that way about Teddy. I felt
like he was mine. I don’t suppose I thought about marrying; I knew he
couldn’t support me. But I never thought about anything that I’d be
doing, way off in life, when we were older, without thinking about him
being right there with me. You know what I mean? I just didn’t think
we’d ever be anywhere without the other one being there, too. Not that
he said anything much, only--‘I’m awful fond of you, kid!’ But I didn’t
mind. I was fool happy, dancing afternoons with all sorts of men, and
all the time thinking that pretty soon Teddy’d be coming in by the
doorkeeper, and looking around for me--and then sit in the darkish
restaurant eating part of my dinner--though it did used to leave me
pretty hungry, for the dinner the management gave us wasn’t much on
size. Some of the girls used to kick about those dinners; you’re awful
hungry after you’ve been dragged around the floor for hours and hours by
heavy-footed hicks. But the management laughed at the complaints; said
the girls would keep their figures if they didn’t eat too much. I’ll say
I kept mine! I was ’most starved every night when I got to bed. My
stomach used to feel as if it was sticking to my backbone. I was on the
floor every dance. I was popular with the men who came there. It isn’t
that I’m pretty; I’m not. And so they look again to see what the deuce I
am. And that gets a man’s goat--when he can’t make out what he likes
about a girl.
“Anyhow, if I’d ever been pretty I’d have lost it by now. I’ve been so
darned careful; and when a girl’s careful, and suspects everybody, she
gets hard and mean looking. The other girls--those that aren’t
careful--get hard and tough. It all comes to the same thing; they look
the same way in the face. Women can’t look soft in the face unless
they’re taken care of by their people.”
“When you are talking this way, you don’t look hard,” interrupted
Kirwin.
“That’s because it’s a comfort to sit here and say everything that comes
into my head. Most times, when I’m across a table from a man, I have to
think before I open my mouth: ‘Will this give him a handle?’ And so I
just say: ‘Oh! Isn’t this a lovely floor?’ And: ‘My! But you are a dandy
dancer!’ When like as not he’s stepped all over me.”
“Men are brutes! They even step on the ladies’ toes!” the laughing
Angier remarked.
“They step on more than their toes,” the girl countered. “They step on
anything the girl gives them a chance to step on! At least, most of them
do. I never saw but one who wouldn’t. And I lost him--lost sight of him,
I mean--on account of losing his card.” She lifted her long and thick
lashes of a golden brown that caught the light from the swinging oil
lamps and formed a delicate nimbus around her serious eyes. “But I’m
going to tell you about him. I’d like you to know I’ve met one man I
could respect. Men who hang around dance halls not even a boob could
think much of!
“It was this way:
“Times got worse. I got so I couldn’t make out. They raised my rent on
me. I couldn’t go to live with my people. They bunked and washed and
cooked in one room, with a window and the fire escape for their
excitement; and I’d got used to better. I couldn’t go back there--not
with Teddy in my head. He’d have looked down on me, see?
“So Teddy says to me: ‘Why don’t you try South America? I’ve been told
they pay high, down there, for American dancers. And board and lodging
thrown in,’ he says. And he says that he’ll see if he can get me a
chance, through a friend of his that’s in town looking for girls to go
down to Colon. This friend came in to talk to me about it. It’s a swell
chance to make big money, he says. The Panamanians are ready spenders,
he says, and crazy over dancing. And Teddy kept trying to make me go.
“I went. The boat got in about seven o’clock in the evening. The man
they sent to meet me said that I was to hop into my dance clothes and
hurry along with him to the hall. My trunk would go up afterward.
“Say, I’m telling you--I never did see a dance hall like that one! It
was a scream! The guy hadn’t told me that the Panamanians were all
colours! Everything was sitting at the tables, from putty-coloured dudes
with diamonds in their embroidered shirts to jet-black niggers in fine
clothes. Each man had poured a bottle of scent over himself. The smell
of that perfume, and the smell of the different breeds of people, all
hot and perspiring, was something fierce. It made me feel queer, all of
a sudden.
“I sat down at one of the tables, and the fat, cream-coloured woman who
ran the place came over and gave me something to drink, to cool me off,
she said. It made me cool, but odd feeling. I leaned my head on my hand,
so’s the floor would stop going around. And something--the heat,
maybe--made me so sleepy I thought to myself I’d swap my job for a bed,
if I could of found a bed. And then I realized that somebody was
stroking my arm; long, pressing strokes like you give a cat’s back.
There wasn’t much feeling in my arm, it was sorter dead; but I knew
darned well that somebody was fooling with it. I opened my eyes wide. It
was a coon who was fooling with my arm! A real coon, like we have at
home--only this one spoke a lingo that I guess was Spanish. Any rate, I
didn’t understand a word he said. And I jumped away from him; I never
had had a coon stroke my arm, and I didn’t like it a bit. So I says to
him: ‘You get away from me!’ But he laughed so all his teeth showed; and
he reached over and grabbed me. That waked me up sure enough; and I
kicked and screamed. And the next thing I knew a white man had come
across the room and lifted that coon by the scruff of his neck and
thrown him in a corner. I’ve seen fights in my day--but say! I never saw
a prettier one than that! The white man cleaned out the crowd!
“The cream-coloured woman rushed over and began jabbering at him; and
the dudes with the diamond buttons stood close by and laughed and
whispered to each other in their crazy talk, and pushed their shoulders
up in the air until you couldn’t see their big ears; but that American
paid no attention to them. He treated them so like scum that I was
proud to be standing by him.
“The American took me by the arm--not spoony; just sort of as if he was
boss around those diggings--and walked me over to a table in a far
corner, away from the jabbering dudes. We sat down. I was sorter nervous
by that time. There was something I didn’t get, if you know what I mean?
So that man tells me:
“‘This is no place for an American girl! How’d you come here?’
“I told him all about the contract I’d signed to dance there. And I told
him about Teddy, and everything else I could think of. He was a comfort
in the midst of all those funny people. He didn’t smell of perfume, and
he had on plain white clothes, and they were clean around the collar and
cuffs. Different, that’s all. While I was talking, he sat there looking
at me with his eyes half shut, like he was sizing me up. And every now
and then he’d nod his head. Once I heard him muttering something about:
‘My first assay would be--pure gold!’ And I got scared; I thought that
he was crazy, too. But when he saw how I was getting as far away in my
chair as I could, he laughed--first time he’d laughed. And I noticed
that his nose stayed quiet while he was laughing, instead of working up
and down like the dagos’ noses did. And his eyes laughed; and the dagos’
eyes don’t laugh. That made me trust him.
“He told me that he was a mining engineer, down there on a job for a
Denver crowd.
“‘Miss Casey,’ the engineer fellow said then, ‘I’m not going to leave
you here! Do you know what sort of place you’re in?’
“I told him all over again about the contract to dance. He frowned, and
beat on the table with his forefinger. And when I stopped talking he
told me what kind of place it was. I don’t suppose I need to tell you?
“I never would have got out of there whole except for that American. I
tell you what, I burn candles in the church for that man!
“He explained it all to me; just what business Teddy’s friend was up to,
shipping girls down to the dance halls in South and Central America. But
I didn’t like to believe Teddy knew what that friend of his was wishing
on me. The American thought he knew; and he called him an awful word. I
felt mad--and sick--and I told him that he was lying about Teddy. But I
didn’t believe he was lying. And he was awful nice about it; said he
didn’t blame me for talking up for my friends! But say! What men are
friends to girls like me? Never but one man was straight with me--that
fellow in Panama!”
The blue eyes were not hard now; neither did they crinkle merrily. Mary
Casey’s soul looked out of them.
“That engineer fellow was the man I told you I could respect,” she
stated gravely. “You know what he did for me? He helped me get away from
that place! He worked our way through the jabbering crowd until we were
near the door; and then, when the music was blaring loud, he threw his
coat over my dance dress and grabbed me with his left arm while he
pushed off the men who ran in front of us with his right fist. He had a
heavy fist--that fellow! I saw one man’s nose start bleeding. And a few
more were knocked over like ninepins. It only takes one white man to
ball out a crowd of niggers and spinnachers.
“‘Sorry for the rough-house, Miss Casey,’ said the engineer fellow, ‘but
we have to make our get-away before these nigger police show up.’
“We made it! We ran along the crooked streets that I’d thought were so
funny when I drove up from the boat; but they weren’t quite as funny
when we were running along them in the dark and I was catching my heels
in the holes between the big paving blocks that didn’t fit even against
each other. One of the heels came off, and we didn’t have time to go
back and pick it up. I hobbled along as well as I could, holding on to
the engineer fellow’s nice hard arm. I didn’t want to fuss when he was
being such a good sport.
“All the way down to the docks the engineer fellow was telling me, as
well as he could for running and dodging from shadow to shadow of the
squatty houses, and looking up and down each street that we had to
cross, what I was to do when I got to New Orleans. But I didn’t hear a
word he said: I was so busy thinking how nice it was to have a man like
that taking care of me--and how strong his arm was. If I’d stopped
thinking about his arm and thought more about what he was saying to me,
I’d have been better off. But you never are foxy at the time that you
ought to be.
“He swung me aboard a ship just as the gangplank was drawn up. All he
had time to do was to push a card into my hand.
“‘Here’s my address,’ he said. ‘Let me know how you are coming on, and
where you are.’ And then he said: ‘_Hasta la mañana!_’ which I’d picked
up in the dance hall, and knew meant that he was going to see me some
time.
“The captain was looking over the rail of the ship. The engineer fellow
threw him a little package twisted up in a piece of paper that he tore
from a notebook; and he said something to the captain in Spanish.
“So there I was, on a banana ship--in my dance dress and one heel off my
slippers, and the engineer fellow’s coat over my shoulders! I must have
struck that captain dumb! But I didn’t care. I was too busy staring at
the engineer fellow back there on the dock.
“A puff of wind came up and blew the card that he had given me out of my
hand and down into the water. I leaned way over the rail and saw it
sucked under by the churning of the machinery. And then I remembered
that I hadn’t read it. I’d been too busy staring at him to read his
note. I ran after the captain and asked him if he knew the name of the
fellow. ‘No,’ he said, ‘he’d never seen the chap before.’ I took the
fellow’s coat off and looked through the pockets to see if there wasn’t
another card in one of them. But there wasn’t a thing except some papers
scrawled all over with his figuring--his mining work, I guess.
“That’s the way I lost out. But I’ve always kept the coat. It reminds me
that I once met a good man.
“When we got to New Orleans with those bananas, I was still a long way
from home. And I didn’t have a cent of money; my purse was in the trunk
that they’d been going to send up to the dance hall at Colon. I said to
the captain the day we made port:
“‘I don’t know how I am to pay you, unless you wait until I get a job in
this town.’
“The captain told me that the engineer fellow had paid my passage, and
fifty dollars over for me to get a start on--buy some clothes to wear
when I was out looking for a job. That was a real man, that fellow! And
as I didn’t know his name having been such a fool about not reading his
card for looking at him, I couldn’t hunt him up to pay it back. So I
burn candles for him.”
Silence--except for the noise of the jazz band and the shuffling feet.
Kirwin broke this silence. He leaned nearer the girl; his voice was very
kind as he spoke to her.
“You shouldn’t have come out here. No girl should come out here so long
as she can make a cent in the States.”
“Dance halls in the States are supposed to be respectable. They’ll keep
girls on that they suspect a lot about; but they bounce her as soon as
all the people outside the business know about her. See? Everybody who
went to dance halls in New York knew I’d left on that contract; I’d been
such a fool I’d told it all around, trusting Teddy and his friend as I
did. That closed the doors of every place I tried to get an engagement.
I’ve chased half way round the world, now, trying to get to
some place where they couldn’t find out about it. San
Anton--’Frisco--Honolulu--I’ve tried ’em all. And I’ve sloped out of all
of ’em for the same reason. Running away from the flag, I was, instead
of following it like the cocktails did. Somebody’d always show up who
was there that night in Colon, or who had heard about it; and nobody
believed my tale. I don’t blame ’em! I wouldn’t have believed it if any
girl had tried to pass off on me that she’d been such a fool. Girls like
me are supposed to know their way around. But I’d been too smashed on
Teddy to see straight. That was my one big mistake: to get soft on him.
Girls like me can’t afford to care for a man.
“It did me one good turn--that jolt at Colon. It knocked Teddy out of my
head. I couldn’t help seeing the difference between him and the engineer
fellow.”
She absently stirred the sediment at the bottom of her glass.
“Listen: now I’ve told you all this--there’s one more thing I want to
tell you--I’ve walked straight, even out here. You believe me?” Her
voice was tense.
Kirwin and Angier spoke at once. “Yes!”
“I wish I could see that engineer fellow again, and tell him that, too.
He did a lot for me.”
The rattle of the trap drum, the bellow of the brasses rose above the
storm that still raged outside. The rain beat on the roof in rivalry
with the drum.
“Nice night to be getting back to the Tondo in a shaky carromata!” said
Mary Casey. “But it’s near closing time. You can tell by the state of
the chinks’ camisas. When they are soaked through, it’s early morning.
Chinks don’t heat up as soon as other men. Ain’t they a sweet lot? And
heavy on their feet! Oof!” She lifted one slippered foot and rubbed it
tenderly.
A Filipino walked up with mincing gait. He thrust out a dance ticket.
With a shrug of her thin shoulders Mary Casey went on the floor and
abandoned herself to his arms.
Angier turned a sober face to Kirwin.
“You win!” he said.
Kirwin twisted his wrist around until he could see the face of the watch
strapped there.
“No use to wait for Mayhew. It’s two o’clock.”
He clapped his hands together sharply. He settled their score with the
muchacho who came in response to that summons. The two men arose from
the table of empty glasses.
Fresh air came in to them as they opened the door. Seeming a part of
that fresh air was the tall and lean man whom they encountered on the
narrow sidewalk. A man in white linen of unmilitary cut, on his
close-cropped head a slouched panama that had seen better days. As the
three hailed a passing calesa and took refuge within its cramped depths
from the downpour, the man took off the battered panama and carefully
drained the water from its brim. The little horse attached to the calesa
by casual harness ambled down the street.
Above the sloshing sound made by the little horse’s feet as he wandered
through the puddles, the tall man lifted up his voice and spoke:
“Hard time getting away from the dames at the hotel,” he announced
grimly. “Those women would chew over a bit of heaven itself until it was
as pallid and unappetizing as an over-masticated piece of bacon! I fled
for my life, finally. Healthier down in the bowels of the earth,
surrounded by gold that doesn’t belong to me, and that I am merely
passing on for the chaps who are buying up Masbate.”
“Does it never make you want some gold of your own, Mayhew?” inquired
the curious Angier. “I’d not be able to stand the strain of being a
mining expert. Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. That
sort of stuff.”
“Might if I hadn’t been very busy with something else. I’ve been
prospecting for human gold. Struck the vein once, and lost it through a
fluke.” He turned a rather shame-faced gaze on his friends. “What would
you say if I told you that for years I’d been chasing a pipe-dream from
pillar to post--always trying to catch up with it and see if I was right
in my assay? Taking unlikely jobs which would carry me to unlikely
places--never overlooking a dance hall this side of hell--with only one
thing tangible enough to prove to me that it wasn’t actually a dream--a
broken slipper heel that I’d picked up in the street on my way back
from--from the vision, you might say!”
“So it’s a woman you’ve been sleuthing, you old son of a gun!” howled
gleefully the unobservant Angier.
But Kirwin leaned forward and touched the cochero on the shoulder.
“_Mano!_” he commanded. “And hurry that plug along!”
The calesa turned a corner on one of its two inadequate wheels. The
three men were thrown against each other.
“What the devil, Kirwin----” began Angier. “Oh, I see!” He whistled
softly.
“_Sila!_” Kirwin directed the cochero.
The calesa veered around a curve on its other wheel.
“_Poco más!_”
The calesa came to an abrupt halt in front of the dance hall that they
had quitted a short time before. The men of the jazz band were coming
out, their swathed instruments under their arms. The proprietor was
fitting the key into the lock of the door.
Kirwin leaned from the calesa and looked anxiously up and down the
narrow street. A solitary female figure, huddled under a dripping
umbrella, was picking its way, with the delicate step of the dancer,
between the pools of water that overflowed from the gutter on to the
sidewalk.
Kirwin sprang from the calesa. He pulled the astonished Mayhew after
him. With one hand on Mayhew’s shoulder, he turned him in the direction
of the huddled figure under the umbrella.
“Go fit that heel to Cinderella!” he laughed.
CÉLESTINE
BY JAMES HOPPER
From _Collier’s_
In March the war came much nearer to the town, and an aviation camp was
set up just outside, in the wheatfields by the National Road. It took
shape, as it were, overnight, as if by some enchantment; Célestine, from
the round window of her garret room in the inn, saw the planes alighting
like white birds in the rose of the dawn. They came five by five from
the east; for two days they remained as they had landed, shelterless and
inert, as if worn out. Then heavy trucks came rumbling, threw off bales
of canvas and partitions of thin wood, and soon a flying camp stood
complete, with its tents and its sheds, its hundreds of busy mechanics.
Many of the white birds seemed wounded. Holes were in the wings, some of
the wings trailed. The conductors of those weary dragons were
sunken-eyed; their faces tattooed with oil, their hair matted. But a
lull had come; somewhere in the hills to the east the new drive at last
had been stopped; you could hear at night the soft drumming of the guns.
The flying men cleaned up. Primp, in freshly pressed uniforms and
shining boots, they strolled about, very young men, slim and elegant,
twirling swagger sticks and parading gaiety. Gaiety, although each one
of them bore stamped upon his heart, as pure gold is stamped, a small
secret figure which stood for a certain day, a certain hour, the end of
youth, of joy, of adventure and love. Mostly they passed by the inn, on
their way to the brighter cafés at the centre of the town; but some of
them stopped at the inn and sat at the tables under the trees.
Célestine’s heart beat faster when they were there; she watched them as
she worked; from a distance, for she did not wait on the tables.
She was not allowed to wait on the tables because she was not pretty.
The mistress of the inn believed in pretty serving maids, and Célestine
was not pretty. The thick skin of her face was a mask which let pass not
a ray of the iridescences of the soul; before that sad dead face men
stood embarrassed or even angry. So she did not wear the white aprons
and caps, the lacy waists of the tablemaids, but rough blue garments;
and did not flit outside under the trees, but was held to the bedrooms
and the kitchen’s back regions. She was the drudge; she started with the
day. She polished boots, laid fires, carried hot water and trays up
countless stairs, made beds, swept rooms, swabbed halls. She carried
heavy luggage upstairs and obeyed the rageful tyranny of the bells.
Midnight would strike before she threw herself upon her narrow pallet
under the eaves.
Every afternoon, from four to six, she took the baby of the mistress of
the inn out in its perambulator. This was her recreation and her rest.
After the flying field had been established on the National Road, it was
there she would go. The place had become the town promenade. Out to it,
along the road, especially on Sundays, the inhabitants would go in
family groups--in family groups in which there were no men, unless,
perhaps, some brittle old grandfather.
Once at the field, they stood about respectfully noting everything
avidly and calling one another’s attention to what they saw; and small
boys, terribly interested in what for several years now had been the
male’s sole interest, slipping under the ropes, got to where they had no
business to be.
Célestine, still more shy than the rest, took her station across the
road from the camp and a little to one side. From here she could see
across the plains to the hills in the east, and also that part of the
flying field from which the planes sprang into the air or hoveringly
landed. She sat in the clover; it was peaceful here; the baby slept; her
own soul drowsed. An old farmer across the way ploughed slowly behind
his one old horse; now and then a lark went high up in the air and sang.
It was hard to remember that in the low hills beyond, pretty as opals,
red carnage boiled and men died.
From those far hills the planes came winging back late in the
afternoon. Far-fixed eyes of mechanics on the field, a pointing finger
here or there, were the first signs to Célestine.
She saw dots, small and incredibly high. They became moths,
shining--white--and quick as thunder the fliers were near. They came
from great battles, and jousts, and fabulous adventures; and as they
neared, with hearts seemingly full of a secret joy at terrible pranks
they had played, they gambolled and capered and tumbled along the skies.
Usually they came in by fives, in arrow formation, but there were two
that always went paired. Célestine learned to distinguish these two. One
was a young Frenchman who, on the ground, wore the dark blue of an
Alpine chasseur; but the other, in a drab uniform, was a foreigner.
These two homed it later than the others: so late that sometimes
Célestine could not wait and had to go away without seeing them. When
they alighted, the pilots who had come in ahead, and the mechanics who
stayed on the ground, strolled to the two planes; they asked questions
and looked amused, and sometimes laughed loudly. One day Célestine heard
herself resume to herself in words the effect this daily scene had upon
her. “These two are the favourites,” she said to herself. “They are the
Benjamins of the camp!”
The civilian onlookers, loitering about the camp, called the one in
yellow uniform “l’Américain” and credited him with great deeds.
“_There’s_ a rough boy!” they would say. “_There’s_ one who does tricks
in the air!” For him Célestine felt a secret preference. The way he
landed delighted her. As his plane, swirling down, touched the earth, he
looked, in his leather helmet and armour, like some fabulous knight of
the air; but even as his plane still rolled along the ground, he
snatched off the leather helmet and became a red-headed boy. He always
landed thus. While still rushing along the ground at tremendous speed,
he snatched off his helmet and became a boy with carrot-red hair. Then
something laughed within Célestine, and a bubble of tenderness burst
softly in her heart.
Years ago, when a little girl in her native village in Brittany, she had
loved secretly the neighbour’s son, whose hair was just like that. Now,
whenever the plane landed, she saw her native village; she saw the small
port, the stone mole, the painted boat heaving, the blue sea.
Gradually Célestine’s life, her drab beastlike life, became lit with a
dim radiance as from a shaded lamp; her life centred itself altogether
on the flying field. In the morning she kept running to her garret room
as she worked; and, if she had any luck, saw the planes depart, five by
five, five by five, then two. In the afternoon she was at her post in
the clover field across the road from the camp. The farmer ploughed over
there, a lark singing over his bent head. Farther, the hills were like
opals in the sun. And on the other side of those hills the war was going
on. She imagined the two fliers in the sky over there. Holding her eyes
shut, she saw them in the great heights, wheeling and circling, falling
and rising, in a cloud of enemy planes. She saw them, in manœuvres
abrupt as lightning, pierce again and again the hostile envelopment--and
planes fell, many, falling slowly, like snow drifting.
Late in the afternoon the two came home. The others came first, by
fives, sometimes in quick succession, sometimes with long waits between.
Sometimes, instead of five, there were four, the winged squadron was
broken and on the field there would be much agitation, runnings to and
fro, anxious questionings. But the two for whom Célestine waited usually
came last, and came always in joy, tumbling like clowns down the skies.
The American struck the earth--fabulous and formidable like a god. He
snatched off his helmet--and he was a boy, a laughing red-haired boy.
Through Célestine’s tired body a dull thud of tenderness went resounding
deliciously.
About this time the enemy began to bomb the town at night. When came the
first of these air raids Célestine did not know what was happening. She
was awakened by a rapping of machine guns, by a boom-rrump, boom-rrump
of upward shooting cannon, and, leaning out of her garret window, saw
pretty cracklings of light up in the sky, as of many fireflies flashing
into life suddenly and then dying. Then came an enormous single
explosion, and everything went quiet. Célestine slid out into the black
silent streets which were ghostily filling with whispering, shivering
people; and following them came to a place, near the railroad track,
where a little house had stood which she knew very well. The house was
no longer there; where it had stood was only a great black hole.
But next night was worse. As, awakened again by the machine guns,
Célestine stood uncertain in the narrow hallway outside of her room, a
great explosion pressed both walls against her flanks as if they were
going to meet, and another, following still nearer, shook the inn as if
it were coming down like a pack of cards. Explosion followed explosion
for hours as the malevolent birds buzzed in the dark sky overhead; and
when at last they had gone, in the light of dawn Célestine saw that a
whole block of houses near by lay ripped open, with red-quilt shreds of
pulverized beds waving slowly in the cold morning wind.
The people of the town began to go out into the fields every night. By
five every afternoon the iron shutters of all the shops clattered shut
simultaneously, and along the streets went processions of women,
children, babes, and old men, carrying their blankets out to the fields
for the night; by sundown the city was an empty city. Célestine remained
in her garret room and, lying on her back in her narrow bed, shook to
ecstasies of fear and exulting vision. Lying there, rocked by terrific
concussions, the whole world seemingly going to pieces beneath and about
her body, small kernel in a cosmic chaos, she looked upward out of her
soul into the night’s black inverted bowl and saw her champions flying
there. In thunder-swift chargings, they darted to and fro among the
night-enshrouded invaders. The American led all. For a time she saw him
as pilot of a plane; then suddenly the wings attached themselves to his
body, and he was an archangel with terrible swift sword; then again he
was a boy, a laughing red-headed boy--and her withered heart, compressed
layer and layer upon itself, opened out like a flower in the midst of
her ignoble terror.
Just as abruptly as the night raiding had begun, it ceased for a time,
and one evening the two fliers appeared at the inn and took rooms for
the night. They had a ten-days’ leave, were going to Paris on the early
morning train, and were very gay. Célestine watched them from her work
with beating heart as they sat at their table in the court, lingering
over their wine; and when finally she understood that they had taken
rooms and were to be here for the night, a great excitement possessed
her. She ran up to the rooms, although she had made them up early in the
day, and made them up all over again; and when they had retired she
stationed herself in the dark hallway, to await a possible call for
service, hopeful at once and afraid.
After a while the door opened, light splashed out into the hall, and a
voice called.
She rushed to answer it. The young Frenchman stood in the doorway.
“_Dis-donc_, Madelon,” he said lightly, giving her the name of the song.
“_Dis-donc_, Madelon, you know, we are freezing in this big tomb of
yours!”
She ran swiftly down the three flights to the cellar, and came back with
kindling and paper; she ran down once more and returned with a basket
full of small logs. She squatted before the hearth and built up a fire.
She felt, rather than saw, the two armchairs behind her, spread side by
side before the hearth as for a vigil of friendship. The young Frenchman
was in one; the other was empty. Her heart gave a queer jump as she
heard a step approach. It came from the other room, approached, stopped;
there was the creak of crushed springs. He was there too, now, the other
one, the American, in his big chair. She tried to strike a match, and
failed.
The young Frenchman began to twit her amorously. Seen from behind, she
was attractive enough, with firm white neck upon which strayed ringlets
of her yellow hair. He rose, he stooped, he was near her. “_Allons_,
Madelon, my lass--a little kiss. Just one small one, there where thy
hair makes shadow!”
At another time probably she would not have been displeased: it was so
seldom a man mistook and made love to her. But, somehow, the American’s
being here made a difference. Somehow, this was not the way she wished
to be seen by the American. She turned toward her gay persecutor the
mask of her face--usually this was enough. But this time, perhaps
because of the wine, or because of the frolic in his veins at the
thought of his leave from Death’s incessant haunting, or merely because
the flame of the fire left her in shadow, the boy did not quit, but
rather increased his half-mocking demonstration of a half-assumed order,
and finally, unconsciously, she turned to the other the eyes of one
harassed. He sat there at ease, half smiling, but immediate
communication leaped to him from her. “Come,” he cried, “Pierre! Quit
this--you’re an utter nuisance!”
And smiling at her, he added, enunciating very slowly and carefully:
“One must pardon him, mademoiselle: he is a little _saoul, vous savez_.”
The contrast between his scrupulous manner and his use of that word
“saoul,” supposed to be uttered only by such low-class people as she,
and not by gentlemen like him; the funny mewing drawl of his “voo-oo-ah
saaav-ez”; and something so simple about him--these things suddenly
created in her a tender delight, and she broke out laughing. He joined
in, laughing at himself; the other joined in: all three were laughing.
The young Frenchman, content with himself, and rather glad to have been
stopped, let her be.
But then, after they had laughed, there was no more reason for staying.
The fire was now drawing finely; everything about the room was in order;
the two friends, in their chairs, were lighting their pipes. Célestine
tiptoed out and closed the door.
She was out in the dark cold hall once more, all alone. But something of
them was there. Their boots. They stood at the door, two pairs of them;
one pair standing up stiff, as if at attention, the other pair careened
over, as if tired. She gathered them up to her bosom, and took them up
to her room to clean them.
By the light of the candle, reflected in her cracked mirror, she looked
at them long after she had set them up on her washstand. One pair was
light, of fine leather moulded to slender leg, and just a little fussy
with many hooks; the other two were heavy and honest, and with enormous
feet--ah, enormous!
She held the boots up before her eyes to realize fully the enormity of
those feet, and laughed delightedly--then passed her hands over them in
caress.
She now set to work and scrubbed and polished with adoration till late
into the night.
They left early in the morning, and she did not see them. Once they
called for hot water, but seized the pitcher with disembodied hands that
reached out at the end of bare arms thrust through the door’s narrow
crack. And when they came downstairs, all ready to go, her first
intention, which had been to view them in their lustrous boots,
dissolved into a sudden panic which sent her scurrying into the farthest
depths of the black corridor.
So she did not see them, and when they returned they did not stop at the
inn, but reported directly to the camp. The first she knew of their
return was when, from her daily stationing in the field, she saw them,
winged once more, swooping down like thunder out of the drifting
opalescence of a sunset sky. The old relation reëstablished itself;
every afternoon, in the field across the way from the Fliers’ Camp,
Célestine stood and waited, and watched them as they homed.
As she stood thus in the clover field one late afternoon a plane came
winging all alone from afar toward the camp--fast, with the directness
of a wounded thing seeking its lair to die. As it came near, it did not
approach the ground in the usual gradual circlings, but lit straight,
with a sort of desperate urgency--and Célestine recognized the young
Frenchman. Even as he still rolled along the ground, his helmet-framed
face was turned sidewise toward the sheds, and with open mouth he was
shouting out a question. Everybody about the camp was running to him;
when the plane at last came to a standstill, all the men of the camp,
pilots and mechanics, were grouped about it. Sagging in his seat, again
he was asking the question. Célestine, from where she stood, could not
hear at all, but just as surely as if she had heard, she knew that it
was a question he was thus asking with his open mouth, and what
question.
The men about the plane all shook their heads negatively; then, all
together, they raised their heads and looked afar toward the east, the
seams in their faces showing deep.
* * * * *
The flier climbed stiffly out of his cockpit and stood among the others.
He was relating something. Not able to hear a word, Célestine followed
what he said, terribly, by the way his hands went. There had been a
combat. Two planes high in flight--this the two hands showed--and then
many, many attacking them. The two hands, in fight and flight, darted
here, darted there, rose, fell, turned over, slid sidewise down, for a
while stubbornly together. Then the two hands went apart--and the tale
continued, told by only one hand--the tale of one plane only--of the
teller’s own plane. That plane was alone, cut off, pursued by many, in
dire distress; it twisted and strove like a moth in a flame. Finally it
abandoned itself, it fell; fell long, forsaken and loose like a dead
leaf--it was doomed. But no--abruptly, the descriptive hand, almost
touching the earth, straightened out with a supple movement; the plane,
at full speed, went scuttling along the heads of the wheat, the pursuit
shaken off, free!
The narrator halted. Again he shouted his question, fiercely, as though
the violence of it might have potency in creating the right answer. But
the others, all shaking their heads, stepped free from the plane and
looked upward in the sky, toward the east.
It was time for Célestine to go, but she could not go. In the field she
remained, waiting--but out of the east no more planes were coming. The
crying of the child in its carriage finally recalled her to herself.
During the following days she saw that the young Frenchman was not
flying; he loitered aimlessly among the sheds. He began to come to the
inn. He would sit in a corner, looking fixedly at his table, drinking
one glass of strong stuff after the other, till finally, told that the
place was shutting up for the night, he would stiffly depart without a
glance at the one who had spoken.
Then one day he shook himself and rose after the first drink. And the
following afternoon Célestine saw that he was flying once more, captain
of a squadron of five.
This, somehow, settled her last doubt, and when night had come, in a
corner of the inn garden, she made a little grave.
It was thus they did in her native village, in Brittany. There, when a
fisherman, gone to the far banks of Iceland, did not return at the end
of the season, little untenanted graves were made along the churchyard
wall in memory of those who had thus vanished.
Célestine made such a grave, in a corner of the garden where two thick
stone walls met behind a thick chestnut tree. The recess was well
hidden; few ever came there. She made a rectangular outline with white
pebbles, drawing it thin so that one happening here should not quite be
sure of what he saw; she bought a small Virgin of green porcelain and
set it at the head. The little Virgin stood there always, a rosary
drawn through her rudimentary hand, and with downcast eyes seemed to
meditate upon the grave.
Every night now, no matter how weary she was, Célestine came here, and
in the silence and the darkness said a prayer. This is all she had of
what had passed--the little make-believe grave, and the nightly prayer,
there in the secret silence behind the tree. The war had moved on to the
east; there was talk of great victories; and the flying camp had gone to
other parts as suddenly as it had come a few months before.
The moment of prayer at the end of the day came to have for her a sweet
importance. It coloured the day, the long hard day. It lay there ahead,
through the effort, the sweat, and the grime, like a small still harbour
of pure blue water. And its peace overflowed back into the day; it made
of the whole day a still, white peace. Within the peace she moved and
toiled as if in a haze, deliciously numb of life’s asperities and life’s
screams.
The war ended; she held to her grave, her prayer, and her secret, and a
year went by. Then, one summer day, suddenly he reappeared, solid,
alive, in flesh and blood.
She was washing the red flagging at the entrance of the court, and was
on her knees amid soap and suds, as the omnibus, come from the station
with many valises on its top, halted before the entrance. And he,
leaping out, turned to give his hand to a fair-haired girl who was
stepping down after him.
At first Célestine did not believe her eyes; then, when she did, she
began to tremble. Kneeling there on the wet flagging, she trembled and
trembled, her big opaque blue eyes raised to the newcomers as if they
had been gods arisen from the sea.
His eyes fell upon her. “Hello,” he said shortly, “there’s Madelon!”
“_Bonjour_, Madelon,” he said, in that French which had so delighted her
that day so long ago. “_Bonjour_, Madelon--do you not remember me?”
The fair-haired girl, standing by his side, her hand trustingly resting
on his arm, also was looking down at the kneeling woman. Célestine rose
suddenly, and, altogether shaken out of her usual heavy reticence,
cried: “My faith--I had thought you dead!”
A burst of laughter from both, after a moment’s hesitation followed her
words, and she, too, found herself laughing.
“My faith,” she explained, “you flew away and never came back!”
“It was to Germany I flew, Madelon--not because I wanted to. And you’re
not the only one who thought me gone to another place. But now I live in
America once more, and this is my new little wife. Shake hands with my
little wife, Madelon.”
Célestine wiped her hands laboriously on her apron, and took, in one
thick red one, the little white one offered her.
“And now me,” he said, and pumped her hand up and down, while she felt
her face distended in a stupid grin.
But there were things to see about, many things. She ran to the valises
and began to carry them in. She ran upstairs to the room, and refreshed
the sheets and pillow slips; brought clear water. A sort of mad joy was
in her heart, and her thick legs were light. In a moment, between jobs,
she ran out into the court and, stooping behind the chestnut tree, with
one large gesture of her heavy hand, scattered the little white pebbles
and whisked the little Virgin into her pocket.
They remained three days, the young man and his bride; three days during
which Célestine spent herself in an adoration of service.
Then they were gone--away to some of the other battlefields they went to
visit--gone for ever.
* * * * *
For some time the happiness of those three days remained in Célestine’s
heart like a vague resonance of music, then little by little her life
discoloured into a bleak emptiness. The memory of the return, the fact
that he whom she had mourned was really alive--these things her mind
somehow would not hold; little by little they ceased to be in her; they
were no guard and no refuge, and she missed greatly what had been
before.
The happy haze in which she had then stirred was gone; life once more
was sharp and screamed; out of the profundities of a deep stillness,
like a happy dead disturbed, she had been brought up to a surface of raw
airs and intolerable glitters.
After a time she knew what she missed; now and then the knowledge
brought her, hesitant, to the small inclosed space behind the chestnut
tree.
Then one night her mind was made up. From her small room beneath the
eaves she stole down into the darkened garden.
Down on both knees, in the dark damp space behind the chestnut tree she
outlined with white pebbles a small simulated grave; she placed at its
head the little porcelain Virgin.
There--it was done. With bowed head, she said a prayer. Every night now
she came here and said a prayer.
And little by little the old happiness returned, and finally it was as
though he had never come back. At the end of each day stood the awaiting
moment of prayer like a small still harbour of pure blue water. Its
peace overflowed back into the day; it made of the entire day a still,
white peace. The delicious numbness once more enwrapped her in its soft
haze, deadening life’s sharp angles and sharp screams.
It was as though he had not returned; the memory of this interruption
grew fainter and fainter; flattened out; ceased to be. She was left with
her sweet dim sorrow; her grave, her secret, and her prayer.
WITCH MARY
BY GENEVIEVE LARSSON
From _Pictorial Review_
“Has any one of you seen Witch Mary of late?” Wise Olaf, keeper of the
country store, asked the question of the farmers gathered in a group on
the “grocery side.” A curious, vivid silence followed. They had been
rejoicing over their fields of grain, which stood, as one man had
exultantly proclaimed, high as a man’s arms, and were heavy with
promise. Some made as if to speak, shifted uneasily, sucked back the
half-formed words.
“Well?” questioned Wise Olaf.
Through the summer stillness a wind swept up from the river, came
sighing in through the open door, and rattled the loose papers about.
There was something eery, electric, about it, as though it carried with
it an unseen presence.
“Hush! The women will hear you!” cautioned one, glancing across the
room.
“Not seen a sign of her all summer; but that’s a good sign,” nervously
ventured a gnarled, bent old man, stooping over the counter to pick up a
stray coffee bean. He rubbed it between his horny palms, and then fell
to munching it, his long chin nearly meeting his nose in the process.
Assuming an attitude of cheerfulness, he glanced around carelessly, and
then slumped back into a chair.
The women across the room were busy examining the rolls of blue and
brown denim that Wise Olaf’s Kaisa displayed upon the counter, and had
been chattering together busily. The summer was a good one, and they
could buy extra yards. Underlying their Northern speech, in which were
represented various provincial dialects of Sweden, was an undercurrent
of wistful melancholy, as though they feared to be too joyous, lest
some unforeseen disaster come upon them in the midst of their plenty.
Now, quick to note a change of feeling in the men’s talk, they stopped,
broken sentences suspended in the air, reluctantly left the goods upon
the counter, and crossed to the other side.
“But what is it?” asked Kaisa, looking around at the guilty faces.
“We were just talking about Witch Mary,” answered Wise Olaf.
“We agreed, long ago, not to talk of her.” Kaisa’s voice was
high-pitched, nervous. Her keen, rather hard-featured face lit up with a
curious, avid expression. “As long’s you’ve started, _has_ any one seen
her?”
“Not one time during the whole summer,” answered Olga, a fair, comely
matron. “Though from my place I can see the top of the hill. Sometimes I
run out, when the sun is high, thinking to catch a glimpse of her. The
trees must have grown up about the hut. Every day, I remember, the year
of the drought, I could see her standing there, waving her cane with one
hand, and the other held to her brow, looking out over the valley.”
“The river, you mean,” put in Wise Olaf, carefully tying a package with
his knotted hands.
A tremor passed over the crowd.
“I doubt not it was the river,” said Olga, rebuked. The men, some
standing, others seated on chairs, placed conveniently about, puffed
more heavily at their long corn-cob pipes.
“Sometimes,” Olga continued shamefacedly, “she looked so lonely standing
there. Just as if she were turned to a statue of grief. I wanted to run
up and comfort her. But I never dared. Besides, Sven would not permit
me. And there is no road, only this path, leading down to the river.”
“A good thing for you that you didn’t go,” said the gnarled old man,
trying to speak lightly. “Silent Sven would have been left a widower.”
The men laughed relievedly, and the shy young giant standing beside the
counter flushed to the roots of his yellow hair.
“Oh, I don’t know,” finished Olga, weakly. “I--I am sorry for her, poor
old soul!”
“Some say she was seen the day Black Eric left,” Kaisa’s shrill voice
broke in. “She stepped in front of him on the road, and the horses
stopped dead. She cursed him as usual. ‘So you are going away,’ she
screamed; ‘but I will follow you--I will follow you!’ He struck at her
with his whip, but she avoided him. ‘I hope you die!’ he shouted at her,
and she screamed back, ‘Ay, though I were dead a thousand years, my hate
for you would bring me back!’”
“_Ja, käre Gud!_” sighed a wrinkled old crone. “Let us stop talking of
this and finish our buying.” She turned to cross the store; nobody
heeded her, and, as though reluctant to miss anything, she stayed.
“Perhaps Black Eric took her with him”--the man who spoke laughed
hollowly--“for not once since, as near as I can figure, has she been
seen.”
“That’s likely!” retorted Wise Olaf. “She’s the only thing he was ever
afraid of.”
“I didn’t think he’d stay away this long,” said the old man, “He loved
his power over us too much. And now he’s gone since last November.”
“Oh, he’ll be back soon enough,” answered Wise Olaf. “I saw Young Eric
the other day. He’s expecting him any time.”
“I was having a good time,” grumbled the old crone, puffing away at her
pipe, “and you’ve made me ill with your talk!”
“Always in the winters before,” continued Kaisa, “I have seen her coming
down the path on her skis. At night, thinking no one would see her.
There she’d come, swiftly, her skirts flying behind her, and straight
down she would go, over the bank, and out to the spot where her daughter
was drowned. You should have heard her moaning, and wringing her hands!
And she would cry something terrible. Many times I’ve asked Olaf to
build us a house elsewhere, and not live here in the store like heathen
folk, where we had to see such a sight and listen to such things. ’Tis
not good for the children.”
“I’ve heard,” said Olga, her voice soft and pitying, “that she was just
like other people before she lost the girl. That they were very happy,
even though they were so poor, with their little garden and their hut.
Perhaps she is like others still, only we are afraid of her, and that
makes her queer. Perhaps we should go up and see if anything has
happened to her?” She looked around questioningly, her blue eyes
pleading.
“I’ve often said so to Kaisa,” answered Wise Olaf. “It’s you women, I
said, should go----”
“How can you expect us to go,” asked Kaisa angrily, “when you men are
afraid?”
“And with good reason,” cackled the old man, his toothless gums still
busy with the coffee bean. “I’m old here, and I know. I was with those
that went up, shortly after we’d found the daughter, and Witch Mary had
had her brought up there, and buried beside the hut----”
“Beside the hut--think of that! That was no Christian thing to do. You
must have known then there was something wrong.”
“Why, no. We thought that natural enough, crazed with grief as she was.
Never shall I forget when we found the body and carried it home. One of
us could have carried her easily, so light she was. And beautiful, even
when dead. Like an angel that’s been caught asleep.” His voice took on a
dreamy, far-away tone. “Her hair was loose, and so long it swept the
ground. It looked _alive_, and we dared not touch it, so we carried her
high----”
The room was silent. Outside rang the voices of children playing among
the willows.
“And the water fell from her hair, like great tears, all along the
path----”
In the heavy silence the women stood motionless, eyes downcast. The men
held their bodies rigidly. A burst of wind entered, passed through with
a long, drawn-out sigh. It died with a moan. They started up
apprehensively.
Kaisa rudely broke the silence. “But go on,” she said. “What happened
when you went up afterward? After the girl was buried? We’ve never heard
the real truth about that.”
“A week later, all in a friendly spirit, we went to her, thinking to buy
her trees. The rest of us were cleaning out our timber. And she had the
best trees of all, standing on the level stretch behind the hut, where
they could easily be rolled right down to the river and taken to the
mill. It would have relieved her poverty, and we thought that would
help. We didn’t look for her to take on so, seeing we came for that----”
“Well?” questioned Kaisa, her black eyes snapping with curiosity.
“Black Eric was with us,” the old man went on. “That was a mistake, I
suppose, seeing she blamed it all on him. Though I don’t know that he
was guilty. He said she jumped right out of the boat, and that he
couldn’t save her----”
“There are those,” said Olga, darkly, “that think he _wouldn’t_. That
he’d coaxed her into the boat against her will, and that she had no
choice. It was death--or something worse. _That_ was like him!” Her
breast heaved with excitement.
“What use to dig it up?” asked the old man gently. “No one really knows.
Anyway, Black Eric went along, though he acted queer. One of the men had
told him he daren’t. That’s how he came to go. Too much of a blusterer
to take a dare. Everything was quiet when we got there. We rapped at the
door, and no one answered. Then we went on to where the girl was buried,
near the hut between two large oaks. There lay Mary, with the cloth tied
around her head, and her red shawl around her shoulders, just as we’ve
seen her dressed ever since. Lying flat down on the grave. I thought at
first she was dead. So must the rest have thought, and Black Eric
shrieked out, ‘O God, she’s dead!’ Then we heard a dreadful weeping, and
she got up--no, I did not see her get up, but there she stood.
“In a few days she’d grown into an old woman, though she wasn’t young,
even when the girl was born. But such a face as she turned to us! Like
an old parchment containing saga lore. Wrinkled and mad with grief, but
with a _power_! Almost as if she could have swept us away with one hand.
Her eyes bored through us--they were like burnt-out cinders, dead, but
yet terribly alive. When she saw Black Eric she went wild. She shrieked
and whirled before us until I was dizzy. Some of the men were so afraid
they didn’t even _see_ her; she blinded them. She hurled her curses.
Never, never have I seen such a sight!”
“Oh, poor thing, poor thing!” choked Olga, thinking, no doubt, of her
own mother, lonely and bent with work in far-away Vermland.
“She drove us down the hill. Frightened as we all were, no one of us was
shaken with terror as Black Eric was. Never has any one ventured near
her since, though God knows how she lives. It’s not often we let a
neighbour go without food. That’s not our way. But what could we do?
There was a little clearing where she had her garden, and she and her
girl used to work in the old days, but she’s old now, and even if she
were able----”
“She has never so much as bought a pound of coffee here,” hastened
Kaisa. “Half starved she must be, and frozen in the winter.”
“I hope he never comes back!” cried Olga passionately.
“He? Who?” questioned Kaisa.
“Black Eric. He’s evil--he’s----”
“Oh, as for that,” said the old man, “no one knew if he was guilty or
not. There was no proof. And I’ve heard said he’s coming--soon. But one
should not blame him too much. He was young when this happened, and he
loved the girl----”
“Love? You call that love?” Olga’s tones were hot with wrath. She looked
at her husband, Silent Sven, and her face changed and softened. Her
little girl came running in through the open door, clasping a bunch of
purplish-blue flowers in her hand. She pushed through the crowd and
burrowed her golden head in her mother’s skirts.
“I am, afraid, Mamma; I am afraid,” she panted, trembling violently.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of, _lillä vannen_,” comforted her mother,
trying to steady her own voice. “We are right here where we can see you
through the windows.”
“Where did you get those flowers?” Kaisa’s tones were sharper than
usual. “Not on the river bank, surely.”
“Gerda and I--we went up--up the path a little ways just a little ways,”
said the girl, “to pick them.”
“That’s blue vervain!” screamed Kaisa, raising her arms in horror.
“Throw it away, child; it’s cursed!”
The little girl dropped the flowers.
“Pick it up and throw it out!” she ordered.
“Hush!” said Olga, stooping for the flowers. “Do not frighten the little
one. That’s but an old foolish superstition.”
She crossed to the door and flung the blossoms far. Coming back, she
asked Silent Sven if he had some candy for the children. He pulled a
bulky bag from his pocket.
“Do not go up the path again,” cautioned Olga. “Stay on the river bank.
Now run and play with the others. Mind you give some candy to the
rest!”
The girl reached eagerly for the bag and started for the door, drying
her eyes with one hand. She ran off the board platform, darted between
the wagons hitched in front of the store, and on down to the river bank
where the children were swinging on the young willows.
“I do believe some one else is coming,” cried Olga, going to the window
and peering out. She uttered a dismayed cry, and the rest crowded behind
her.
Black Eric dashed up in a smart new buggy, to which were hitched two
slim, shining horses. A moment later, whip in hand, he entered the
store. He looked around, smiling at the group, and began shaking hands,
greeting each one jovially.
“And here’s Olga, too,” he cried, his black eyes snapping with delight
as he stepped up to her. The young woman’s face flushed hotly. Silent
Sven edged nearer.
“My name is Mrs. Nillson,” she said coldly, refusing to take his hand.
“Ven can I come for coffee and some of your good _äppelkaka_?” he
smirked, laughing at her dismay.
“Talk Swede so I can understand,” croaked the old woman puffing
viciously at her pipe, “and leave Olga alone. You needn’t put on airs,
for all you’ve been to the city.”
“Well, old sourface!” he answered good-naturedly. “Anything to please
such a beauty as you! _Ta’ mej fan_, but I’m glad to be back!” He looked
around from face to face, but saw no gleam of welcome. “What’s the
matter?” he asked abruptly. They shrank away, as if fearing the ring of
command in his voice.
Olga touched her husband’s arm. “Let’s go, dear,” she coaxed. “Let’s go
at once.”
“We’ll stay yet awhile,” answered Sven, flashing her a reassuring smile.
“He’ll get them all in his power,” she whispered. “Just as he had them
before. Every one of us. I can feel it in his voice.” She tugged at his
sleeve.
“I’m not in his power, and I said we’d stay awhile,” he answered
quietly.
“What brought you back, Eric?” asked Wise Olaf. “Love for Young Eric, I
suppose?” The crowd responded with a smothered laugh.
Black Eric chose not to take offence. “Why, as for that,” he said,
“perhaps I did want to see Young Eric. It’s natural enough for a father
to want to see his son, isn’t it? But that wasn’t the real reason. I
came because I couldn’t sleep. Night after night I lay awake, and always
I heard a curious sound, like a tapping, tapping, tapping. I thought if
I came back here I could rest again----”
“A tapping!” cried Olga. “Then you did take Witch Mary with you!”
Black Eric’s face, pale before, lost the last vestige of colour. He
wheeled upon her. “What do you mean?” he demanded.
“The tapping of her cane!” she answered. “She’s not been seen since you
left.”
“I hope to God she’s dead!” There was a note of defiant relief in Black
Eric’s voice. At the shout of protest that greeted his words he became
placating. “Well, she’s done us all harm, hasn’t she? She brought the
drought upon us with her curse. She cursed yet again, and the dam broke
up the river, and the flood came and drowned many of our cattle.
She----”
Swarming in through the door came the children, cutting short his
speech. They ran, terrified, to their mothers.
“I knew it!” sobbed Olga’s girl. “I knew something awful would come!”
“But what is it? What’s the matter?” cried the women, alarmed.
Kaisa’s boy, the oldest of the children, answered. “The Witch! Witch
Mary! She came down the path to the river. Didn’t you hear her clicking
her old cane? Didn’t you hear her curse?”
“Will she--will she--come in here, I wonder?” faltered one woman.
“She said the serpent of the river would get him! She cried it out! She
waved her cane and said that!”
“No,” protested another child, “she said she would kill him!”
“I could not see her--I was so--so scared!” a third added, with
chattering teeth.
Black Eric stood silent, his face pale and twitching. He was evidently
fighting for control.
“Where’d she go?” he asked.
“Down to the river!”
“No, she went back in the woods. She went fast, like the wind!”
They crowded to the windows, the children still clinging to their
mothers. Beyond the river bank stretched a sandbar, gleaming white in
the sun. The river coiled and twisted like sensuous green snakes
writhing together.
“There she is, Mamma! See her through the willows!” cried Kaisa’s boy
excitedly.
“O God, yes, there she is! Her clothes are frayed, they blow about her,
she waves her cane in the air!”
“Where, where?” pleaded a voice.
“Red shawl dragging on her shoulder, cloth around her head!”
“_Ja käre Gud!_” gasped one.
“Can’t you hear her, Mamma?” wailed the little girl. “She’s
muttering----”
A peculiar moaning broke upon them.
“‘Tis but the river, child,” soothed Olga. “Hush, _vännen_, do not cry
so!” Her own voice was wavering, full of a nameless fear.
“Muttering her curses, of course,” finished Black Eric, laughing
hideously.
“She’ll bring some awful thing upon us, even now, with our harvests
full!” sobbed the old crone. Her pipe fell unheeded to the floor.
“_Ta’ mej fan_ if she will!” cried Black Eric, suddenly straightening
his shoulders and throwing back his head. “It’s a good thing I came back
just in time. What are you, a parcel of weaklings, to let her bring you
bad luck with her curses?”
“She has done no harm,” ventured Olga, but her words sounded feeble.
“Done no harm!” shrieked Black Eric, cracking his whip. “There was the
time when the spring was well on the way. The grain was already up from
the ground. The wheat was doing bravely, and the rye was a foot tall.
She hadn’t been seen for some time----”
“You’d been gone, then, too, I remember,” accused Olga. “You’d been
gone, and we hadn’t seen her, and when you returned she----”
“That’s nothing to do with it!” he snapped. “She appeared, and cursed
us----”
“She cursed _you_, you mean.” Olga hid behind her husband, peering out
at Black Eric with hate in her eyes. “She has never troubled us----”
“The bad luck fell upon all alike, didn’t it? With the grain as green as
could be, and no crows to speak of. Everything pointed to a good summer.
And what happened, I ask you?” His tones rang out clearly now, swept
over them with hypnotic spell.
“Come, Sven, before he gets us in his power,” she whispered.
“The rains came down and washed it all away. We had to sow the second
time, and then it was too late, and we lost everything, even the seed.
And the rains washed away much of our land, dragged it into the
ravines----”
“That is true!” sighed the old man, looking even older and more
wrinkled.
The faces of the men lengthened, became sad and thoughtful. Memories of
long, hard years of heart-breaking toil lingered with them. Many were
bent and broken in the struggle, their joints swollen and knotted with
rheumatism from the cruel winters. Ah, it had taken years to win their
small farms from the hold of the forests, here on the hilly slopes of
Wisconsin. They had given their lives to it.
“It might have happened anyway,” pleaded Olga, gazing fearfully around
upon the altered faces of the men. “We can’t expect all the years to be
good as this one. Farmers everywhere have some bad years----”
“And there was the time,” Black Eric, his eyes gleaming evilly, went on,
paying no attention to her interruption, “that the children were coming
home from school. They had made wreaths of poison-ivy and hung them
around their necks. Witch Mary met them, and told them they would die at
sundown. Did they not nearly die?” he demanded, this time addressing the
women.
“What are you saying?” cried Olga, drawing the little girl closer. “I
have never heard of that.”
“We thought best not to speak of it, lest the children get too
frightened,” said Kaisa. “Young Eric nearly died, as it was. And
certain it is they would all have died if they had not come home in time
for us to treat them.”
Olga stooped to lift the little girl, passionately folding her close.
“Each time she has cursed us it has been something more terrible,” Black
Eric’s voice rang out. “God knows what it will be this time! And always
it has happened when our crops were doing nicely and our hopes were
high----”
“That is true; yes, yes, that is true!”
“So now, with your barns so full of hay it sticks out for yards at the
open sides and your grain ready to harvest, now--she comes cursing
again! And you men are weak enough to let her rob you of this! And you
women! What are you, that you will let her curse your children? Such
mothers! Bah! Even a dog will protect its young! Yes, like as not it
will fall upon the children this time----”
“No, no, no!” The women shrank from him. Some staggered as though they
would have fallen, and sat weakly down. A brutal look was dawning in the
faces of the men. Silent Sven alone was not moved; his arms were folded
in front, his head thrown back.
“Even in the old days,” Black Eric went on, “before people were
civilized, they destroyed the witches that brought them harm. They drove
them out! They burned them at the stake!”
“No, no!” Olga found her voice with a choking effort. “You will not be
so cruel--you will not burn her!”
Black Eric’s eyes gleamed savagely. He towered above them, triumphantly.
“I shouldn’t advise that,” he agreed, “but--to drive her out----”
“Who is to do this?” quavered a voice.
“Look, Mamma,” cried the little girl. “She is running back to the
woods!”
“Running back to the hut,” shrilled Kaisa, peering out, “with her plaid
shawl hanging over her bones!”
“Now is the time!” cried Black Eric. “Now, when you can catch her in the
hut! Go quickly, you men!”
“And what about _you_?” Silent Sven addressed Black Eric for the first
time.
“Me?” cringed Black Eric. “It--would not--do for me----”
“Oh, you _daren’t_!” Silent Sven flung the challenge at him.
“_Daren’t!_ You can’t say that word to me! Come on, all of you! I will
lead you! I will show you if I dare!” He started for the door, the men
preparing to follow him.
“I will go, too!” cried Olga. “You shall not burn her; I can at least
see to that!”
“I would burn her,” retorted Kaisa. “I would help light the fagots!
Olaf, you stay in the store.”
“Is that so?” said Olaf, with gleaming eyes. “I shall be needed, like as
not. ’Tis a woman’s place to stay at home.”
“I’m not going to be cheated of this!” Kaisa turned to the old crone.
“You stay,” she coaxed. “You couldn’t climb the hill, anyway. It’s a
long hill.”
“I can climb the hill,” quavered the old woman. “I can climb it as well
as anybody. I shall go with the others. See, everyone is going. I shall
not stay behind.”
“I will give you a pound of coffee, the best in the store. I will give
you two yards of cloth for an apron.”
The old woman’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Five pounds of coffee,” she
wheedled, “and five yards of your best goods, or I go with the rest!”
“Five pounds! No, that I will never----”
“And some tobacco! Yes, I think I must have some tobacco!”
“Oh, give it to her!” cried Wise Olaf. “Give it her, and let us be on!”
Cautioning the children to play on the bank until their return, they
formed in a group at the base of the hill, where the path led up to
Witch Mary’s hut. Black Eric cracked his whip. The men picked up long
sticks, all except Silent Sven. Viking cruelty shone in their faces. The
women would have clung to their arms, but the men shook them off and
started ahead, Black Eric leading.
It was a tangled path, knotted across by roots of trees and shrubs. The
branches of the trees interlaced above, forming a shady arch. All along,
beside the way, slender spires of blue vervain lifted their purple
blossoms to the random sun.
“See,” said Kaisa, awed by the luxuriant growth. “See how thick it is.
And witches have always used it in their caldrons. No wonder it grows
here!”
“But the vervain,” protested Olga, “the vervain grew on Mount Calvary,
and it has the power of healing.”
“You will say next, I suppose,” Kaisa retorted, “that it has been
watered by the old witch’s tears!”
“Come on, you women!” called Wise Olaf. “Do not lag behind!”
The women became silent, not stopping again to take note of the flowers
beside the way. They panted after the men, who were climbing rapidly.
“Can you see the hut?” called Kaisa, pausing to get her breath.
“No, the trees have grown up about it. And don’t _talk_--she’ll hear
us.”
“I’d no idea it was such a hard hill.” Kaisa’s face was red; her eyes
were wildly excited.
“Do you think they will kill her?” whispered Olga. “Even Sven looked
fierce.”
“‘Twould serve her right.”
As they neared the top the women too picked up stout sticks. “Just to
help us climb,” suggested one, as if ashamed.
“I want no stick,” said Olga, but she stopped for a moment with the
others. “Oh, look! You can see the river from here--just the place, I
believe, where the girl was drowned!”
The men called them again, and by the time they had caught up, the top
of the hill was reached. They paused a moment at the edge of the
clearing. Young trees had grown so high that they overshadowed the hut.
The wind rattled through the leaves in hollow whispers. They saw the hut
at last, sagging between the branches. The stovepipe had fallen, but
still clung to the rotted shingles. The one window overlooking the river
was broken and had not been repaired.
“It was a poor hut, at best,” said the old man. “Let us not be too hard
on her.”
“Ho!” blustered Eric, swinging around to face the speaker savagely. “You
are already weakening, are you?”
A debating silence followed, then the old man decided. “No, she must be
driven out.”
They made their difficult way through tangled weeds and shrubs to the
door, which faced the woods behind.
“You rap,” said Black Eric. “One of you, any one.”
“Not I.” Wise Olaf shook his head. The others shrank back.
“What about _you_?” Silent Sven again challenged the leader. “You--you
are afraid to!”
“I am afraid, am I?” he sputtered. He walked unsteadily to the door, his
face haggard with fear.
“Everything is silent--silent as the grave,” whispered Olga, clinging to
her husband’s arm, openly afraid.
“What’s that?” a startled voice cut in. “Sobbing? Was that sobbing?” A
wailing note swept through the trees.
“Hush!”
Black Eric raised his hand. The knob was rusty, the door sunken in. He
rapped, feebly at first, his hands trembling like aspen-leaves. Getting
no response but an empty echo from within, he struck his fist heavily
against the door. It almost gave way.
“Open the door, Witch!” he cried. “You can’t hide from us!”
“Don’t be so harsh,” begged Olga, her voice the wraith of a whisper.
“You will frighten her to death!”
Goaded to desperation, he raised his fist, and gave the door a terrific
blow. It fell with a soft thud, the rotted wood crumbling on the floor.
He stepped in, the rest following.
A thick carpet of dust lay over the floor. No imprint upon it, except
some tracks left by wandering rats. A stove, red with rust and warped
beyond recognition, stood on one side, supporting an old country metal
coffeepot, filmed with black. Cobwebs hung from the rude rafters
overhead. The round home-made rugs, once brave with gay colours, looked
like little mounds of earth. Beside the broken window stood a sagging
spinning wheel, so long unused that it drooped in utter dejection, one
spindle fallen down.
At first bewildered, utterly struck dumb, then filled with horror too
deep for words, the people looked around the room, its silent pathos
striking like icy hands across their consciousness.
“She has not--_lived_ here!” Kaisa found her voice first. She stooped
and picked up a rusty pan lying beside the stove, and hung it on a bent
nail, as though in this small act she found consolation.
“What--what is that--over there?” She pointed to a curtain drawn over an
object on one side.
There was a gasp. “Maybe--maybe she is--dead--behind----”
“Dead! You fools!” shrieked Black Eric. “Didn’t we just see her?” He
staggered to the curtain, grasped it roughly. It fell, a crumpled mass
of dust and decayed cloth, disclosing the two built-in bunks, now empty,
where Mary and her daughter had slept.
“There, you see! She must be living in the outhouse, the barn. She--she
kept the cow there. Let’s look for her there.” And he passed over what
had been the door, the rest following.
“The grave!” cried the old man. “I remember where it was. Let us look
for the grave!”
“Leave the grave alone!” choked Black Eric, his face twitching horribly.
“She is out in the barn, I tell you! See, I think she is there!” He
pointed a shaking finger to another broken-down hut between the trees.
“We will find the grave,” said Silent Sven. “You said it was between the
oaks.”
“I won’t go there!” gasped Black Eric. “Let us look----”
“You’ll come with us!” Silent Sven commanded, grasping Black Eric by the
shoulder and dragging him along. Silent and awed, the crowd proceeded
through the tangle of weeds and young trees to the side of the hut
between the two oaks. Some of the men began to poke around with their
sticks, but Olga stopped them.
The old man motioned silently to a depression in the ground. “It is long
ago,” he whispered. “The grave--is sunken.”
Olga fell on her knees, sobbing convulsively. She reached out her hands
and reverently brushed aside the leaves that lay upon the grave, then
started up, a cry of terror on her lips.
Within the depression, where she had scraped the leaves away, a human
skeleton lay bleaching, stained almost to the colour of brown twigs. As
they bent over they saw a skull, through the sockets of which rose the
slender spires of a plant, covering it mercifully with clusters of
purplish-blue flowers. A rusty iron cross lay beside it.
“That is--that is where she lay--when we came up,” quavered the old man.
“She lay there----”
The women began to sob unrestrainedly, Kaisa’s voice wailing above the
others. The men turned upon Black Eric, their sticks raised high, terror
forgotten in a mighty wave of revenge that swept its fire over them.
“It isn’t true!” he gasped, his teeth clicking together. “It isn’t, I
tell you! Haven’t we seen her--all these years? Didn’t we--see
her--this----”
Before the look in their faces he slunk away. He stumbled past the hut,
the thorny branches reaching out their hands, catching him, tearing his
clothes. On down the path, his terrified flight impeded by the gnarled
roots.
Behind him followed a human avalanche, great cries issuing from their
throats, sticks raised, ready to strike. Silent Sven fought his way to
the front, called them to silence. “Let him go!” His voice rang out.
“Let him go! His fear will punish him, far, far more than we could
punish him! It will follow him, as it has followed him all these years.
But never again will it affect us, and _she_ is at rest!”
Before him, in the gap left by the branches, lay the river, coiling and
twisting in the sun, a waiting, hungry look upon its face.
THE BAMBOO TRAP
BY ROBERT S. LEMMON
From _Short Stories_
“A letter, _patrón_.”
One corner of the mosquito bar that made of the tent fly an airy,
four-walled room was lifted and a brown hand thrust in the envelope with
its array of foreign postmarks and smudgy thumb-prints, all but
concealing the familiar American stamp. Outside, the steady roar of the
Chanchan River, softened by distance as it charged down the last pitches
of the Andes on its way to the Gulf of Guayaquil and the Pacific,
blended into a musical background for the messenger’s guttural voice.
John Mather laid down the birdskin on which he was working and reached
eagerly for the missive. Any word from the outside world was a godsend
here in the jungle--doubly so when it came in the form of a letter whose
bulk proclaimed several pages of home news. He ripped open the flap with
dexterous, capable fingers and flattened the folded sheets on the camp
table before him among the litter of skinning tools, cotton, and
specimen labels.
For a space he read absorbedly, sensing behind the cold impersonality of
the typewritten words the analytical mind of the man who had dictated
them. Not until he came to the last page did his expression change and a
half frown pucker the corners of his eyes.
“Hell!” he growled. “Isn’t that the way of things? Just when I’m
finishing up my collections here, too, and planning to catch the next
steamer north. No Christmas at home this year! Let’s see--how many of
the damn things does he say he wants?” He re-read the final paragraphs
of the letter, mumbling them half aloud in the manner of one in whom
many years of living alone in the back of the world’s beyond have bred
the habit of self-conversation:
“The Department of Entomology is extremely desirous of securing
several specimens of the Cuabandan spider, to complete their
habitat group of insects from the high Andes. It seems that the
ones they intended to use proved to be rather poorly prepared and
could not be mounted satisfactorily.
“Also, I am in receipt of a letter from the International Museum in
Chicago offering to exchange a valuable collection of humming-bird
skins from Guatemala for a complete series of these same spiders.
You know how incomplete our Guatemalan material is, and therefore
how anxious I am to secure these specimens from Dr. Huston. He asks
that we furnish him with at least a dozen Cuabandans of both sexes,
and perhaps twice that number of immature ones.
“You will find the spiders inhabiting the slopes of the mountain
Chuquipata, probably between the 9,000-and 12,000-foot levels,
although reliable data on this point is impossible for me to
secure. The species is decidedly rare, and I can give you little
information to help you in your search. Beyond their appearance and
great size, with which you are perhaps familiar, and the fact that
they are carnivorous and often prey upon small birds, nothing is
really known of them. I shall depend upon you to remain in the
region long enough to gain at least an outline of their life
habits.
“I am sorry to have to give you this new assignment, Mather,
because I judge from your last letter that you have about finished
your field work on the west side of the mountains and are looking
forward to your return to New York. But I know that you will
appreciate my position and postpone sailing for the few additional
weeks which the Chuquipata expedition will entail.
“All good wishes to you from myself and the Staff.
“Sincerely yours,
“ELIOT A. RODGERS,
“_Curator of Ornithology_.”
Mather folded the letter thoughtfully and thrust it into the pocket of
his flannel shirt. With the buttoning down of the flap he seemed to
dismiss his irritation and become again the seasoned museum collector,
taking each task as it comes and subjugating all personal desires to the
duties of his calling. As he turned again to the half-skinned bird
before him he summoned his Indian guide and general assistant in the
terse Spanish fashion, “Pedro--_ven aquí!_”
“_Ahora sí, patrón_,” sing-songed the Quichua from the cooking lean-to
near by. “_Yo no más!_” In a moment he stood before the white man, a
squat, stolid figure with the humble eyes of a whipped dog.
Mather snipped the wing bones of the bird close to the body and stripped
the skin down the neck and over the skull to the eyes, turning it inside
out skilfully. A few crunching clips with his scissors separated head
from neck and exposed the base of the brain. He set the raw body aside
and commenced scooping out the clotted, grayish matter from the interior
of the skull.
As he worked he spoke pointedly. “You know Chuquipata, Pedro?”
A grunt and nod signified the Indian’s assent. In the presence of the
American his words were customarily few, a reticence inspired not so
much by awe of his employer as by inherited fear of the whites handed
down from the days of the first enslaving of his race by the Spanish
_conquistadores_ four centuries ago.
“Rough country, isn’t it? _Muchas quebradas--no?_”
Another affirmative, more vehement this time. Then, “You not go there,
_patrón_?”
Mather finished cleaning the birdskin, dusted its inner surface with
arsenic and alum powder to cure and preserve it, and turned it right
side out again.
“Yes, we go to Chuquipata in three days,” he answered as he shook the
ruffled feathers into place and began filling out the skin with cotton.
“You will go to the village to-morrow and get _cargadores_ to carry the
outfit. Four good men I will need, Pedro. Or, if you can find them, two
mules instead; pack animals are better than men, but there are not many
to be had. See what you can do.”
He dismissed the man with a wave of the hand, and tied an identifying
label to the crossed feet of his specimen. As carefully as if it were of
the most fragile and costly porcelain he wrapped the tiny green and
yellow effigy of the bird in cotton to hold it in shape until feathers
and skin should dry, and added it to the rows of similar mummies in the
tray of his collector’s trunk.
“That makes eight hundred from this region,” he commented as he made the
entry in a record book. “Not bad for three months’ work, considering the
weather I’ve had. It brings the total up to nearly two thousand for the
whole trip, and several of the species are new to science, too. Well, I
suppose I’ll have to let it go at that and begin to get ready for this
Chuquipata hike. It’ll take nearly a day just to pick up my small mammal
traps in the jungle around here.”
* * * * *
Toward the southward end of that semi-arid plateau which stretches for
three hundred rolling miles between the East and West Cordillera of the
Ecuadorian Andes lies a land that God forgot. High in the air it is, as
men measure such things--a matter of two vertical miles above the slow
lift of the Pacific out beyond the sunset. Tumbled and stark too, a
dumping ground of the Titans, a scrap heap from the furnaces in which
the world was made. For in ages far beyond the memory of man, volcanic
peaks whose summits have long been smoothed by the erosion of the
centuries belched forth their hot lava and ash and laid a blight upon
the land. Ravine, hillock, mountain, wind-swept, gaunt, and all but
uninhabited, magnificent in the splendour of their distances--such is
the setting of Chuquipata to-day, and such will it remain until Vulcan
kindles his forge anew.
Up into this sky-top world John Mather rode on a day as glittering and
telescopically clear overhead as it was harsh and dusty underfoot--up
out of the green rankness of the coast jungles into a land of
illimitable space. To the condor swinging a thousand feet in air, his
pack-train seemed like ants crawling in single file across a rugged
boulder.
Where a ravine gashed the side of Chuquipata he pitched camp on a little
grassy flat protected on three sides by the crumbly walls of the cut,
and braced his tent pegs with rocks against the tugging of a wind that
pounced down in unexpected gusts. Scrubby brush and the stunted, gnarly
trees of the high altitudes straggled here and there, promising firewood
in limited and smoky quantities. A score of feet from the tent door a
brooklet tinkled under overhanging wire grass, ice-cold and
diamond-clear. And above it all, stupendous in miles of waving,
yellowish _páramo_, dwarfing men and camp to pigmy size, the mountain
swept up and up into a cap of clouds.
When the equipment was unloaded, Mather dismissed his packers and their
two mules, for he had no way of telling how long his search for the
giant spiders might last, and there was no point in feeding idle mouths
week after week. Only Pedro he retained, to do the camp chores and leave
him entirely free for his collecting work. Besides, the Indian would be
useful when, at the end of the stay, new carriers would have to be
secured from one of the villages a day’s march away.
It was mid-afternoon before the camp was fully arranged and Mather set
out for his first survey of the area he might have to cover as with a
fine tooth comb. Hopeless enough it seemed, as he looked up at it from
the ravine head, an appallingly vast and rugged haystack in which to
search for one small needle. Were his quarry a bird that flew or an
animal that ran, the task would not have looked so hopeless. But a
spider, a crawling creature of the grass and brush, probably never
coming into fair view--that was different.
He set to work methodically, covering every type of ground that lay
between the points which his aneroid told him were eight and twelve
thousand feet above the sea. Bunch grass, scrub, rocks, volcanic ash--he
went over them all with keen and patient thoroughness but no success.
Inquiries of Pedro and the occasional mountain Quichuas whom he met
elicited no information of value; either his attempts to describe the
creatures he sought were not understood, or the spiders were so rare
that even the natives were unfamiliar with them. Evening after evening
he returned wearily to camp, empty-handed save for a brace of mountain
partridges or a few wild pigeons which he had shot for food, or the
half-dozen smaller birds of which his collection stood in need.
“If I had only had some line on the habits of the beasts it would be
easier,” he mused as he ate his cornbread lunch one day beside a stream
that plunged down the mountain far to the north of where his camp lay.
“As a matter of fact, I don’t know even whether they’re day or night
feeders. About the only thing I’m sure of is that they’re not to be
found on the south slope where I’ve been working. Pedro and I will have
to move the outfit around to this side, I guess; the vegetation is quite
different here--thicker and not so dried, as though it got more rain.
I’ll take a look down this spur and then work back around the base.
There may be a good camp site down that way.”
He picked up his gun and started to descend the ridge that dropped
sharply toward a valley so far below that its brush and trees blended to
a uniform sage-green carpet of marvellous softness. Rocks and beds of
loose pumice that broke and slid treacherously as he crossed them
covered the slope. He edged his way down cautiously, grasping the rare
handholds of bush or tough grass, above him the blue spaces of the sky,
the patchwork quilt of the world far-flung below.
A half-hour of this, and then the knife edge fanned out into a broader,
easier descent across which trailing bamboo had spread an unbroken mat.
As far as Mather could see on either side, and forward to the last steep
pitch that dropped to the valley floor, that tangle of interlacing stems
and offshoots extended, three feet or so above the ground and in some
places strong enough to support a man’s full weight. Had a leafy cloth
been woven to cover the mountain’s bareness it could not have more
perfectly concealed what lay beneath.
“I’m not very keen to tackle that,” Mather muttered, halting at the edge
of the tangle. “Too tough to smash through, and not quite tough enough
to walk on--I’ve tried ground cane before.”
He looked back at the pitch he had just descended and shook his head.
“About six of one and half a dozen of the other, I guess. Damned if I’ll
shin up that ridge again. Can’t work around the edge of this bamboo,
either--those cliffs block me off. Well, here goes for a bad two hours’
work.”
He took the shells out of his gun, slung the weapon on his back so as to
leave both hands free, and started down, choosing what appeared to be
the least rugged part of the slope.
It was rough going. On hands and knees he would crawl along for a few
yards over the bamboo, then strike a weak spot and smash through to the
ground in a smother of leaves and hampering tendrils, scramble out and
go on. By the time he was half way to the bottom of the valley he was
soaked with perspiration and nearly fagged out. Only his indomitable
will and the knowledge that to turn back now would be doubly impossible
kept him going.
It was nearly sunset when he reached a comparatively level stretch
beyond which the mountain dropped away suddenly as though to make up for
lost time. Across this place the cane was unusually thick, and he was
getting along quite well, when, a few yards short of the steep slope the
supporting mat broke with a ripping, tearing noise and he slithered down
sickeningly into hot, pitchy darkness. Then a crunching jar, red lights
flickering before his eyes, and unconsciousness.
How long he lay insensible he could not tell. It must have been many
hours, for when he came to he was stiff and sore and the blood from a
long scratch across his wrist had dried. A thousand tiny hammers seemed
beating on his brain, each stroke an ache that quivered through a nerve.
Dazedly he tried to sit up, failed, and lay flat on his back, hands
clutching at the ground as he fought for control of his twitching eyes.
Gradually things steadied, and he saw that he was in a sort of
pear-shaped cave perhaps a dozen yards in diameter and half as high.
Daylight filtered through a ragged hole at its apex, pitifully weak, but
enough to disclose the mingled rocks and earth that formed the walls of
the enclosure and the whitish, diseased-looking vines that twined up
them to the opening.
“That’s where I fell through--that hole,” Mather croaked. “Yes--that
hole--fell through--yes, _fell through_. I’ve got to--get out--up
there.”
He wavered to his knees and waited grimly for the whirling in his head
to abate.
“Now, let’s--see,” he whispered hoarsely, creeping toward the wall.
Twice he made the circuit of the cave, groping his way over boulders and
loose débris that gave out a dank, nauseous odour. His hands pawed
uncertainly at the walls, seeking firm holds, but finding nothing except
the mass of vine stems, clammy and breaking at the first hard pull.
“Fool!” he growled at last. “I couldn’t get up there anyway. It slopes
in. A man can’t climb on a ceiling. God!”
He slumped back and tried to think rationally.
“Let’s see, now. I was coming down the mountain, headed west. The
steepest part was just ahead of me when I fell--forty-five-degree slope,
about. Not more than twenty feet or so away. This hole, now--yes, it’s
close to forty feet wide at the bottom--maybe five feet through to the
face of the slant----”
He started up eagerly, the realization that he could burrow his way out
clearing his brain and putting new life in his racked body. He reached
for the sheath knife at his belt, the only digging tool he had. As he
stood there with it in his hand a thought flashed over him that drove
all the zest from his face.
“I don’t know where to begin,” he muttered. “_Which is the west side?_”
He looked about helplessly at the prison that hemmed him in. Somewhere,
to right or left, ahead or behind, that mass of earth and rock must be
comparatively thin, hardly more than a shell separating him from freedom
and the broad reaches of the sky. If he could find that spot, strike
that downhill side, he might be able to dig through to the outer world
in a few hours. If he missed it, started work on the wrong side, his
burrowing would only lead him deeper into the mountain, wasting his
strength and the precious element of time. And between those two
extremes, the heart-warming right and the hopelessly wrong, was no
faintest clue to guide him to a decision. Yes, there was one--his
compass, of course! Stupid not to have thought of that before; the
surest possible proof. Everything was all right now.
He fumbled in the side pocket of his coat and drew out the instrument, a
watchlike affair in a heavy nickel case. His first glance showed the
needle bent crazily beneath the shattered glass, twisted and utterly
ruined by the crash of his fall.
Mather’s face went hard as he tilted the broken thing in his hand,
testing its uselessness with a sort of grim irony.
“So-o,” he said bitterly. “You’re about as much good to me as a piece of
cheese, aren’t you? Or a chunk of lead--because I could eat the cheese.
Well, I guess I’ll have to depend on Old Lady Luck to help me out. I may
as well pick out a place that looks like easy digging, anyhow.”
He stumbled across the cave and began to pick a way at the wall where
the earth was crumbly and yielded readily to knife and hands. A few
inches in he struck rock. Working along it, he came finally to loose
rubble, but the mass was too large for him to dislodge without starting
a disastrous cave-in from above. He would have to try another place. And
an hour had been wasted.
A second location was even less promising, but the third gave him hope.
He burrowed on stubbornly, his fingers torn and bleeding from the sharp
fragments of rock embedded in the soil like chips of glass, his muscles
aching from their exertions in the cramped space which his progress
created. Two feet, a yard--at this rate he ought to break through in a
few more hours, unless he were working in the wrong direction. At
thought of that contingency he redoubled his efforts, determined to end
the uncertainty as soon as possible. And a few inches farther on he came
squarely up against another boulder that defied every attempt to move
it.
Exhausted and reeking with perspiration, he backed out of the hole and
stretched full length on the floor of the cave. In a little while, when
the cramps had left his back and shoulders, he would start in again.
Yes, just a few minutes rest, and then--then he was roused from uneasy
half-sleep by a slow, insistent rustling like a snake crawling through
grass. He listened tensely, eyes closed in concentration, striving to
locate its direction. The sound came closer, louder, on all sides of
him, filling the cave with eerie whispers. Then suddenly it seemed to
reach a focus close by, and a creeping hairy body brushed against his
neck. With a leap he gained his feet, his eyes wide with horror.
The light in the cave had dimmed, but he could see that the walls were
alive with huge spiders, thick-legged and hideous, their bodies as large
as a sparrow’s and covered with straggly fuzz. Some were blackish in
colour, others were a sort of cherry red. They were crawling sluggishly,
as though gorged with food, down the vines that reached the opening
above his head. A dozen had gained the floor; others were nearly there.
Hundreds more were creeping in at the hole and groping for convenient
stems down which to clamber.
With a shudder Mather knew--knew that here, in this dark prison, was the
night shelter, the universal rendezvous, of the beasts he had come so
far to catch. By day they hunted through the cane tangle that covered
the mountainside, perfectly concealed and safe from all detection, and
as night approached they convened here from all directions to take
refuge from the rains which each night spilled across the land. They
were gathering now, crawling, crawling with that infernal rustling
sound----
“God!” he muttered. “And he said they were rare!” Full darkness came,
bringing to John Mather the torture of eternal nightmare. With hands,
coat, hat, he beat and crushed the furry hordes that swarmed over him.
But for every one killed two more were ready to take its place; there
seemed no end to their numbers. Their curved jaws clipped into him
wherever his skin was exposed. Though he could see nothing in the pitchy
darkness, an odour of decay told him that shreds of flesh from their
victims of days before still clung to them, and the dread of
blood-poisoning obsessed him. In a quiver of loathing and fear he fought
on bitterly hour after hour, dropping into snatches of exhausted sleep
only to struggle up again when the writhing burden on his face
threatened to choke off his breath.
At last the blackness began to gray. Dawn was coming up over the
mountains, and as the light strengthened, the spiders scattered,
climbing the vines again to the open air and the sunshine. Singly and in
battalions they went rank after rank up the stems of their living
ladders. And as the last stragglers disappeared through the opening
above him Mather sat with head sunk between his hands, fighting to
retain a sanity that hung on the very edge of destruction.
It must have been midday before he pulled himself together enough to eat
some of the emergency rations which were as much a part of his
collecting outfit as his gun or butterfly net. The food helped to steady
him, and presently he began moving about under the hole at the cave’s
peak, trying to determine the points of the compass by the appearance of
the scraps of sky he could see through the openings in the bamboo. A few
minutes’ study convinced him of the hopelessness of this, for leaden
clouds had blotted out the sun. So uniform was their mass that he could
not even detect their own direction of movement, which, if he could have
ascertained, would have served as a fairly accurate indication here in
this land where the prevailing wind at the higher levels blows from the
east.
“I’d better get back to my digging,” he told himself finally. “It’s the
only chance, for Pedro would never find me among all those acres of
cane, even if he knew enough to come this way to look. I didn’t tell him
which way I was going, when I left camp.”
He groped his way into the tunnel he had started the day before and
renewed his struggle with the rocks that blocked its end. He felt
stronger now, and the physical work helped to shove into the background
of his mind the horror that he knew the night would bring again. Perhaps
he could break his way through before dark--a mere chance, but enough to
add incentive to his labour.
By superhuman effort he worked out the largest rock at last, backed into
the cave with it, and wriggled in again to the attack. Prying and
digging with his knife, he burrowed on through earth that gave way more
readily as he progressed. Sweat streamed from him unheeded; with each
foot that he advanced the air in the tunnel grew warmer. A nauseating,
steamy odour crept into it, so faint at first as to defy analysis, but
increasing momentarily.
Presently Mather drew his hand back with an exclamation of surprise. His
fingers had touched a rock so hot that it almost burned them.
“What the hell?” he growled, then lay still, thinking, his chest heaving
as he gasped for breath.
Crushingly the explanation came to him: The burrow was leading into the
mountain, straight forward toward those infernal caverns of molten lava
and steam which underlie that whole mighty continental backbone from
Cape Horn to Panama. Already he had dug far enough through the
mountain’s outer shell to reach the heat that radiated from them.
Mather’s heart sank with the realization that all his work had gone for
nothing. Then a great wave of hope swept over him as the thought came
that out of this very failure sprang success, for since he had been
digging toward the mountain’s centre, the opposite way must lead to
light and life and freedom.
He wormed his way backward, gulping with relief as he reached the cooler
air near the tunnel’s mouth. A few more wriggles, and his knee struck
something that crushed flabbily under the pressure. Across one hand
dragged a fat, rough body, paused and sent a tingle of pain up his
forearm as he shook it off with a jerk. The spider army had returned.
Through the endless hours of that second night of horror John Mather
clung to two things with the desperation of a wave-buffeted man whose
arm is crooked across a slippery, floating spar: the knowledge that
daylight would bring relief from his tormentors, and the hope that
before another evening drove them scurrying back to shelter he would
have won his way through the cave wall. Every atom of will power, every
drop of that fine essence of determination which some men call upon to
carry them against impossible odds he threw into the mental struggle,
knowing that to lose sight of his goal would mean gibbering madness.
And in the end he won. Taut and quivering as a plucked string, he sensed
rather than saw that the crawling hosts were gone.
“Now!” he rasped, the sound of his own voice grating across his nerves.
“Now you dig.”
He hurled himself savagely into the work, slashing and tugging at the
hard-packed earth and stone opposite the mass of débris he had scooped
out the day before. His knife wedged between two rocks and the blade
snapped short off as he tried to extricate it. He cursed chokingly and
hacked away with the haft, pitifully futile by comparison.
“Got to make it!” he muttered. “Got to make it to-day! I’ll go
crazy--_crazy_, I tell you!”
Inch by inch, a foot, two feet, three, he won ahead through the
darkness, driving his battered hands without mercy. Out there somewhere
beyond that stubborn, unseen barrier against which he pressed were fresh
air and the sane, unhampered sweep of God’s world. Behind, unspeakable
gloom and torture more horrible than death. He must, he must keep going!
It was nearly noon when he stopped from sheer inability to do more and
slithered back into the cave for a few minutes’ rest. For a moment he
thought night was coming on, so dark was it as he emerged from the
tunnel, but as he glanced up at the opening above his head he saw that
the shadows came from masses of blue-black clouds that swirled together
ominously and dropped lower even as he watched. A dull pulsing shook the
air, as of huge drums thudding afar off. Lightning ripped across the
clouds, so close that Mather heard its white-hot crackle an instant
before the smash of the thunder beat against his brain. He threw an arm
across his face to shut out the flash and what it revealed--thousands of
noisome, hairy beasts that came scuttling on fat legs through the
opening to take refuge from the storm.
Then it rained. The heavens opened and crashed down. A torrent of mud
and water poured through the cave roof, ripping the opening to twice its
former size. Like a huge bucket the cave caught and held the flood.
Momentarily the water rose--to Mather’s ankles, his knees, his waist.
The spiders struggled in it, dropping from walls and roof by dozens.
They swarmed over him horribly as they fought with each other for safety
on his body and head. He tried to brush them off, to drown them by
sousing himself under the cascade that spilled down from above, but they
clung to him like leeches.
The water was up to his chest, now. Presently he was swimming, his head
a mass of spiders that thickened by the minute and nearly suffocated
him. For an age he struggled, growing weaker and weaker, knowing that in
the end he must sink under that chaotic mass. The thought of it nerved
him to a few more feeble strokes, a final effort to rid his head of the
clammy bodies. Then, miraculously, a clatter and splash of falling rocks
and earth, a sucking sound as from a giant sluice pipe suddenly cleared,
and his feet touched bottom.
He staggered blindly, trying to gain his balance on the uneven rocks.
With arms arched he crushed and rubbed his head free of its loathsome
blanket and saw that the water was but waist deep and falling rapidly.
Through the lightening darkness he could make out the whirlpool which
told where, at the end of the tunnel he had been digging, the wall had
given way before the pressure from within. Even as he looked the last of
the water swashed out, and stooping down, he caught a glimpse of
daylight. On hands and knees he crept through the opening and emerged to
the free sweep of the hills, soft and dripping and peaceful against the
background of the retreating storm.
For minutes he lay there, a sodden, shaken figure, looking out across
that far-flung view with hollow eyes from which the stare of horror
slowly faded. Then he got to his knees, his feet, and drew a great,
shuddering breath. His eyes dropped to the slope immediately before him,
strewn with scores of drowned spiders.
“Well,” he said shakily, “it looks as though there are enough here for
all the museums in the world. I’ll make a good haul while I’m about it.”
With swollen, bruised hands, he began gathering up the draggled bodies
and piling them beside a rock.
THE HAT OF EIGHT REFLECTIONS
BY JAMES MAHONEY
From _Century_
ONE REFLECTION
With his rusty, black felt hat in his hand and oblivious of passers-by,
Ventrillon stooped before the shop window until the reflection of his
finely chiselled young face came into place, with the forehead of the
image nicely adjusted into the crown of the hat behind the clear plate
glass. It was a magnificent hat, an elegant hat, a formidable hat, a hat
which was all there was of chic, a genuine, glistening stove-pipe hat, a
_véritable chapeau à huit reflets_--an authentic hat of eight
reflections--and the Ventrillon in the glass was wearing it. The effect
was amazing.
“But why should it surprise me,” said Ventrillon, “when such is my
present character? _C’est idiot!_”
For not only was this shabby young man contorting himself before the
shop window the youngest prize winner of the spring Salon, but that
afternoon he was going into society; for the first time, it is true, and
into a very curious stratum of it, but society even so. Nevertheless,
though he had spent the last of the three hundred francs of his prize
money on an elegantly tailored costume of morning coat and striped
trousers, he had expected to wear the rusty, broad-brimmed black felt he
held in his hand. But as he marvelled at the effect of his reflection in
the window, the hat before him became essential. It was the final touch,
and it is the final touch which is vital.
And yet, once he appeared on the boulevards in such a hat, he would
never dare to face his comrades at the Closerie des Lilas again.
They were a gay company of vagabonds: Sabrin, who worshipped Ventrillon
like a mild-eyed dog; Clo-clo, whose golden ringlets outside her head
would have compensated fully for the complete emptiness inside it even
if there had not been her childlike adoration of Sabrin; Pinettre from
Marseilles, whose passionate tenor he had heard so often seizing upon
the stars above the terrace of the café, r-r-rolling the r’s of “Tor-rn
a Sor-r-rento!” cow-eyed scarlet-mouthed Ginette, who always wept at
Italian music; poor little Tric-trac, the poet, who invariably, when
drunk, recited “Le moulin de mon pays,” the only poem he had ever
managed to have published; Olga, the husky Russian girl, who invariably,
when drunk, bussed Tric-trac resoundingly with what she called “little
soul kisses”; Noiraud, the wag; Hélène, the inviolate; LePaulle, whose
capital P was an affectation; Margoton, who had no taste--all of them
penniless and none of them disturbed by that fact. For if one of them
had the price of the beer, all drank. They had made the bomb together,
ah, they had made the bomb! One would not soon forget that night when
they had invaded the Cabaret of the Two Armadillos and had driven the
regular clients into the streets by thundering with full lungs:
“Elle ne fait que des trucs comme ça--
Elle m’aime _pas_! Elle _m’aime_ PAS!”
pounding the tables with their beer mugs to the terrific rhythm of their
music; nor yet those mad evenings when they raced arm-in-arm down the
broad pavements of the Boulevard St.-Michel, startling the bourgeois and
screaming with laughter.
He could conceal that damning morning coat beneath his well worn
_imperméable_, but how could one conceal a hat of eight reflections and
wear it? They would think that he had become a snob, they would say that
his prize had mounted to his head, they would ridicule him, they would
begin to misconstrue his every statement, they would take offence; for
them the hat would amount to betrayal, and he knew that he would not be
able to bear it.
But Ventrillon at that moment visualized himself entering the carved
portals of a great house in the Avenue Victor Hugo, the whole effect of
his newly bought elegance destroyed by the rusty black felt. It was
indeed the final touch which was vital. “I am beginning to see,” said
Ventrillon, “that though they are undeniably amusing, they are all a
little vulgar. It appears that my taste is improving in advance.” But
having spent the last franc of his prize money, in the whole wide world
he possessed not a single perforated sou.
He crossed the Seine to his garret in the Rue Jacob, stripped off the
clothes he wore, and carefully arrayed himself in the full splendour of
his new garments. From the slim patent-leather shoes to the exquisitely
tied cravat he was perfect. Then he went bareheaded into the streets.
When he reached the shop he hesitated not, but entered with an air of
command.
“My hat has just blown off into the Seine,” he explained to the first
clerk in sight. “Show me the best silk hat you have in the shop; and
quickly, or I shall be late for my appointment.”
The clerk, after inquiring the head size of this elegant, bareheaded
youth, produced a counterpart of the hat in the window.
Ventrillon put the hat on his head and adjusted it before a mirror.
“The fit is perfect,” he said, “though I had hoped for a better quality.
But--I have no time to waste. You will place it on my account.” He
turned to walk out of the shop.
The clerk came hurriedly, but politely, from behind the counter, and
modestly touched Ventrillon’s elbow.
“Then monsieur has an account here?” he inquired.
“Of course,” said Ventrillon, impatiently, and with his fingertips
dusted the sleeve the clerk had touched. “And have I not told you that I
have an important appointment?”
The clerk adroitly interposed himself between Ventrillon and the door.
“But I do not know the name of monsieur,” he persisted, always polite.
“You do not know who I am!” cried Ventrillon, as if the statement were
proof positive of an utter imbecility he had already suspected.
“I am afraid not, sir,” faltered the clerk.
Then Ventrillon’s voice, a huge baritone absolutely astounding from a
throat so young, roared out to its full, thundering in the clerk’s ears
and frightening him half out of his wits:
“_I am Odillon Ventrillon_, name of God!” shouted Ventrillon.
The clerk, who for some reason he has never fully understood was under
the impression that this was the family name of the Prince of Monaco or
perhaps the King of Spain, and murmured, “Oh, I demand a thousand
pardons, sir,” has never been able to explain this affair to the
complete satisfaction of the proprietor.
For, before the clerk could recover, Ventrillon had left the shop and,
having dashed impudently past the ticket puncher, was well on his way in
the Métro, wearing the hat of eight reflections. In the dark tunnel he
could see his image facing him in the windows of the lighted car.
“Undoubtedly,” reflected Ventrillon, adjusting his lapels, “it is the
final touch which is vital.”
ANOTHER REFLECTION
When a handsome young man commits a murder, forges a check, or sets his
heart upon a hat of eight reflections, one may well say to oneself, “It
is a woman.” And a woman it was; but it was Mme. Sutrin.
A work of art, upon obtaining a public success, however slight, becomes
forthwith an irresistible magnet to its maker. Though every day had seen
Ventrillon setting out to walk in the opposite direction, every day had
found him at last somewhere in the neighbourhood of his prize-winning
canvas in the Grand Palais.
It was there that he was discovered by Eugène Savillhac, an acquaintance
who since his success had become his friend. In that portion of society
smarter than good Savillhac was one of those hangers-on who boost their
own stock by boosting the stock of others. It appeared, incredibly, that
every one of the hundreds he knew was the most extraordinary person in
Paris.
“Ah, there you are, _mon vieux_!” he cried. “What luck! The youngest
prize winner of the spring Salon and the most extraordinary woman in
Paris are under the same roof. It is the first duty of a celebrity to be
known by Madame Sutrin.”
He indicated a large woman in black silk whose plain skirt, neither full
enough to be picturesque nor scant enough to be fashionable, swayed like
a peasant’s from side to side as she waddled briskly through the crowd.
Before her marriage to Timoléon Sutrin, the rich sugar industrial, she
had been the beautiful Simone d’Estray of the Opéra Comique; but her
beauty had been of that drastic sort which perfectly represents the
triumph of feminine mind over matter, and after her marriage, with her
future secure, she had comfortably allowed herself to become what nature
had always intended her to be--very fat and very ugly. But she had the
faculty of retaining all her old friends and quickly making new ones,
and her flamboyant _hôtel_ in the Avenue Victor Hugo was continually the
scene of brilliant though somewhat dubious gatherings of boulevard
celebrities, leavened with a scattering of those persons of real
distinction who find delight in such society.
“Come, and I shall present you,” said Savillhac, and darted across the
space, Ventrillon unenthusiastically trailing.
Smiling benevolently, Mme. Sutrin turned to face them. Her tight black
bodice was pointed like a basque, and a large plastron of jet beads was
applied down its generous front from the high collar about her neck to
where her skirt was gathered in at her expansive waist. The unmistakable
shadow of a coming event decorated her upper lip.
“Aha,” boomed Mme. Sutrin in the mighty bass which once had been a magic
contralto, “and to what lady of the Opéra Comique do you want me to
introduce you now?”
“Ah, madame,” said Savillhac, “you deceive yourself. I have brought a
young man to introduce to you. The most extraordinary young man in
Paris, in fact. My friend Ventrillon, the youngest prize winner of the
spring Salon.” With a fine gesture he produced Ventrillon from
invisibility.
Mme. Sutrin gasped as if struck in the face.
“_Bon dieu!_” she exploded at last, “Adonis!”
“Enchanted, madame,” murmured Ventrillon. “I am honoured----”
“Don’t waste a look like that on an old woman!” boomed Mme. Sutrin.
“Young man, this world is badly arranged. Either I should have been
born twenty years later, or you twenty years earlier. You should have
known me in my youth. Both of us would have profited.
“I know nothing about painting,” she rumbled on, “and I do not like
yours; but I like you, though your clothes are abominable. Come to my
house Wednesday afternoon. It will be a dancing. Do you fox trot? But it
does not matter. Smile at everybody the way you are smiling at me, and
grow a moustache as soon as you can.” She turned to Savillhac. “If
Gabrielle sees him, his fortune is made. You know how she goes in for
the young ones. But those clothes will never do. I’ll wager he hasn’t a
sou. But make him sell his bed and buy something that wouldn’t shame a
cab driver.” Then abruptly she shook hands with both the young men and,
swinging her skirts, waddled her way.
“A droll of a type,” commented Ventrillon.
“_Sacré nom de dieu!_” breathed Savillhac, staring at him aghast.
“Why--why--what is the matter?” stammered Ventrillon.
“You are invited to Madame Sutrin’s on Wednesday afternoon, and you say,
‘What is the matter?’ It is _you_ who are the droll of a type to ask
it.”
“But of course I shall not go.”
“Then you will be an imbecile. It is the chance of your life. All Paris
will be there. Does that mean nothing to you--_tout Paris_?”
_Tout Paris!_ A definite social unit, it is a social unit without
definition. Many belong, but more do not. If one goes where _tout Paris_
goes, does what _tout Paris_ does, says what _tout Paris_ says, knows
the people _tout Paris_ knows, does not know the people _tout Paris_
does not know, then one is of _tout Paris_. But if one is not of _tout
Paris_, one can do none of these things. One does not know how. _Tout
Paris_ is success, it is failure, it is the heights, it is the depths,
and it is always seeking a new sensation. Without laws, it is of fashion
the law, and is of the greatest importance; for if the newspapers say,
“_tout Paris_ was there,” that settles the matter. But, above all, _tout
Paris_ can applaud, and the applause of _tout Paris_ can more quickly
than anything else fill the empty pockets. The pockets of Ventrillon
were usually abysmally empty, as he again remembered.
“And do you not know who is this Gabrielle of whom she spoke?” Savillhac
continued. “The great Gabrielle Belletaille herself, _nom de dieu_! The
most extraordinary woman in Paris. And you heard what Madame Sutrin
said? If the Belletaille becomes interested in you, she will soon
introduce you to everybody of any importance. Think of the marvellous
portraits you can paint, and the prices you can charge! Perhaps she may
even allow you to paint _her_ portrait! Who knows? Then you will be in a
position to refuse kings and queens.”
Gabrielle Belletaille, the prima donna of the Opéra Comique, was, as
everybody knew, the idol of _tout Paris_. There was nobody like her.
Where she led, _tout Paris_ followed. Where _tout Paris_ leads, all the
world follows. Ventrillon stood for a moment silent. His clear, deep
eyes held a wonder such as one sees in the eyes of those who pause upon
the thresholds of strange palaces.
“But,” he said at last, “I shall not know what to say to her, even if I
see her.”
“Say anything but the name of Fanny Max,” said well-posted Savillhac.
“She is beginning to attract attention, and you can understand what that
means to the Belletaille.”
“But----” said Ventrillon again. Ruefully he looked down at his own
baggy corduroys, his cracking shoes, his threadbare coat, and the rusty,
black felt hat he held in his hand. Then he considered the slimly clad,
gray-striped legs of the impeccable Savillhac, the glistening footgear,
the smart morning coat with a gardenia in its lapel, the shining top
hat. Savillhac was fashion itself, the embodiment in one person of _tout
Paris_. Ventrillon reflected.
“My prize has brought me three hundred francs,” he said. “Take me to
your tailor. But I refuse to wear one of those hats. I should be
assaulted in the Boulevard du Montparnasse.”
For it was not until he had seen his image in the plate glass of the
shop window that his head was completely turned.
THIRD REFLECTION
In the Métro station of the Étoile, Ventrillon dusted his patent-leather
shoes with his pocket handkerchief, shot his cuffs, tilted the hat of
eight reflections to its most killing angle, and then sallied forth
into the Avenue Victor-Hugo. Unfortunately, custom would not permit his
wearing the hat in the salon of Mme. Sutrin. As he reluctantly
surrendered it at the entrance his ears were assailed by an incredible
noise, which increased in discordant violence as he neared the door of
the salon.
The large room was crowded. The shining faces of a group of perspiring
American blacks grinned with yellow teeth and rolled their white
eyeballs above a variety of strange instruments that the Negroes were
tormenting with wild, angular abandon of elbows and knees. To the
barbarous compulsion of the bizarre rhythm a number of couples were
moving about the floor, poising and posturing with the curious exotic
dignity of the Parisian fox trot. In fashionable dishevelment
smiling-eyed ladies sat about on chairs and ottomans, drinking tea; and
miraculously tailored gentlemen of figures ranging from the concave to
the convex stood balancing teacups in saucers.
The grace of his embarrassment fulfilling somehow the perfection of his
garments, Ventrillon made an exquisite figure against the futurist
splendour of Mme. Sutrin’s flamingo and purple portières. She saw him
standing overwhelmed in the doorway, uttered a hoarse little shriek of
delight and, in her tight gown of magenta velvet rushed with a sort of
oscillating precipitation to take his hands. Names of the mighty poured
into his ears as she introduced him at random to everybody within reach.
But he was not long abashed. He was never long abashed. And, besides, to
any man, as a wise American has said, the consciousness that he is well
dressed is a consolation greater even than the consolations of religion.
Mme. Sutrin left him to the mercies of a group watching the dancing from
the end of the room opposite the jazz band.
“This noise,” began Ventrillon, promptly, to a negligible lady beside
him, “is it music?”
“Ah, no, monsieur,” confessed the lady; “but it is the fashion.”
“Then I must like it,” said Ventrillon.
“One has not met you before, I believe, monsieur?” said the lady.
“I have not been a success before,” said Ventrillon.
The lady laughed.
“Then you do not know anybody. I shall have to inform you. The little
woman with the red hair near the door is Madame Ribot, the wife of the
journalist. She has a wicked tongue; it is well to cultivate her. Her
husband controls public opinion, and she controls him. The man behind
her is the Minister of Public Services----”
A passing couple jostled the minister’s arm and, awkwardly, attempting
to save it, he dropped his teacup. Crimson even to the barren scalp of
his head, he stooped to mop with his handkerchief at the spilled tea in
the lap of Mme. Ribot. The little red-haired woman smiled, clenched her
teeth, and bided her time.
“Madame,” said Ventrillon, “I sit at your feet and learn. I had never
before known that a Minister of Public Services could drop a teacup.”
The lady laughed again.
“Monsieur,” she said, “you are delicious. Look! The tall blonde who
enters is the Belletaille----”
With a resounding metallic crash, the jazz band happened at that moment
to stop short. Short of breath, the dancing couples separated. In the
gap of the portières stood a lean, hawk-nosed woman in black, with a
dead-white face of astonishing and fascinating ugliness. One shoulder
was held higher than the other, one chalky hand rested with fingers
wide-spread upon her uncorseted hip, and the other caressed at her waist
the enormous bunch of scarlet amaryllis without which she was never
seen. Everybody turned to look. The Belletaille, as usual, had achieved
an entrance.
“‘Allo evreebodee!” she cried in English, showing all her fine white
teeth. “Ah, there you are, my Marianne! Kiss me! And, oh, my dear Madame
Sutrin, how pleased I am to come! _C’est épatant!_ A jazz band! _Bon
dieu_, but it is ravishing! Aha! Théodule--_ça gaz?_” She had called the
Minister of Public Services Théodule and asked him how he was in slang.
“That,” thought Ventrillon, “is success.”
Taking for granted that everybody was overwhelmed with delight at seeing
her, on she came, with a bow here and a handshake there, until in the
centre of the room she halted abruptly.
“Théodule,” she cried, “I forgot to tell Madame Hortense to send up
that gown this evening. Telephone her for me. And hasten, or the shop
will be closed.” The Minister of Public Services obeyed and left the
room.
Then she turned and on she came again. With the sinuous step of the walk
she had learned at the Conservatoire, on and on, smiling, smiling, her
eyelids painted sky blue, her alizarin lips smiling apart like something
unreal, jingle by jingle, faintly clicking her high heels on the
parquetry, on and on, smiling always, came the great Gabrielle
Belletaille of the Opéra Comique.
Ventrillon had never before in his life made an effort to please, and
now his mind refused to work. In fact, it was scattered into tiny little
bits all over the salon of Mme. Sutrin. “What a marvellous subject to
paint!” was the only idea his devastated brain could hold. He could do
naught but stare at the extraordinary creature and breathe with
difficulty. She was almost upon him.
Now she was speaking to him in that golden voice, a single intonation of
which could break a thousand hearts, and was extending one of those
chalk-white hands, a single gesture of which could from a thousand
bodies draw a thousand souls.
“And this,” she was saying, “must be the Adonis of whom Madame Sutrin
spoke.”
Ventrillon grasped his impudence and yearned for his breath and his
voice; but everything he could conceive was either too long or too
obvious, and with every fraction of a second it was swiftly becoming too
late. One of those terrible tea-silences had fallen when nobody can
think of anything more to say.
“Ah, Madame Venus,” he heard his voice stammer at last, resounding in
his ears above the tinkle of teaspoons, as if he had been shouting,
“n-n-not Adonis; for that f-foolish Adonis ran away!”
He saw her narrow her eyes as she looked at him, and heard the sharp
intake of her breath. “Oh, my God!” thought Ventrillon, “I am ruined! I
have gone too far!”
“Audacious!” she murmured. “I like audacity.” She flashed all her teeth
upon him and for the moment blinded him. “Come and talk to me.”
She sat down, letting her long arms drift from the arms of her chair. “I
hope you don’t fox trot. I refuse to fox trot. It is so vulgar. When
that Fanny Max began to fox trot, the Belletaille ceased. Now tell me
all about yourself. I am a person in whom one can confide. Everybody
tells me everything. I am always so interested in other people. It is my
character. That is why I am never bored. Only the stupid are bored. And
then my life has been so interesting, so full of such strange
coincidences and such fascinating episodes.” Then, before allowing him
one word of the telling all about himself, or herself the time to catch
her breath, she shrieked the length of the room to the Minister of
Public Services, who had at that moment entered again, “What did she
say, Théodule?”
“She will send the gown at once,” said the minister, mopping his
forehead. “But what a devil of a time I had getting her! Telephonists
have lost all respect. I did not remember the number and I did not want
to waste the minutes, so I said to the telephonist, ‘I know, my girl, it
is forbidden to call without a number, but this is the Minister of
Public Services who speaks.’ And figure to yourselves what she says!
‘_Flute alors!_’ she says. ‘Go on with you! That is what they all say!’”
“Oh,” laughed red-haired little Mme. Ribot, “that is exactly what
happened to Fanny Max, the new soprano everybody is talking about, you
know.” Ventrillon saw Mme. Sutrin give the little woman a warning
glance, and knew that Belletaille had stiffened at the mention of the
name. But Mme. Ribot wore a gown which had been ruined by the Minister
of Public Services, and she was about to make him pay through the nose.
Nothing could have stopped her. “Excepting that _she_ said she was the
_wife_ of the Minister of Public Services; and the telephone girl
said----”
Mme. Sutrin, having not the vaguest idea what that telephone girl had
said, but knowing Mme. Ribot’s tongue only too well, made a desperate
gesture to the leader of the jazz band, hoping to drown it in cacophony.
The Negro had gone out for a drink. Mme. Sutrin subsided hopelessly.
“The telephone girl said,” Mme. Ribot continued calmly and
deliberately--“she said, ‘Oh, the pig! _He has deceived me!_’”
The minister went a violent shade of royal purple.
“And that very day,” the shameless red-haired little creature went on,
“Fanny Max went to the telephone bureau with a riding whip, and it
required six men to eject her. Ministers of public services must be
fascinating.” She looked up wickedly at the minister, who looked down at
her in turn as if he would have liked to bite her. She was obtaining
royal indemnities for her gown.
“Oh, spare me!” cried the Belletaille. “I suffocate! All one hears is
Fanny Max! Fanny Max! Fanny Max! The newspapers are full of her. Why
people will discuss such a creature I cannot understand. Such vulgarity!
It makes me ill. And she will do anything for notoriety. I abhor
notoriety myself. I loathe notoriety. And voice? It is like the screech
of a rusty hinge. Really, Madame Sutrin, if we are to have nothing but
Fanny Max----”
“I assure you, madame,” said the minister to Mme. Ribot, striving to
keep his rage from his voice, “that I have not the honour of knowing
Mademoiselle Max----”
“Oh,” she cried quickly, “never fear! Your wife will not hear it from
_me_.”
“Ugh!” said the Belletaille to Ventrillon, “it continues! It is
disgusting! It is unspeakable! It is----”
“Mademoiselle,” interrupted Ventrillon, “why speak of her? She exists
only to be ignored by you.”
The Belletaille gave him her grateful full face. “I knew it the moment I
saw you,” she declared. “You are a mystic, and I think mysticism is so
fascinating. You have the eyes. I am a mystic myself. Everybody notices
it. Sometimes I think we mystics alone know the true soul of things.
What a truth that is, ‘She exists only to be ignored by me!’ You are a
painter, aren’t you? It is these young ones, these young mystics, who do
the great things. Why do you not paint my portrait?”
Ventrillon gulped.
“I dared not ask it,” he said.
“Then that is settled. We shall begin to-morrow afternoon. But come,
take me to my car. It is evident that these surroundings are not for us.
Ah, Madame Sutrin,” she said sweetly as she took her hostess’s hand, “it
has been _so_ interesting! One finds so many people at your house one
would never dream of meeting anywhere else.”
When she passed the minister, Ventrillon heard her hiss something into
his face. It sounded extraordinarily like, “Never speak to me again!”
But Ventrillon was never sure of this, for the jazz band had begun anew.
Nevertheless, he distinctly saw little Mme. Ribot look up from under her
red hair to observe this brief passage, and then down to contemplate a
large wet stain on her satin skirt with a smile of enormous
satisfaction.
“After all,” reflected Ventrillon, “the great are all ridiculous. It is
easier than I had thought.”
FOURTH REFLECTION
At the curb Ventrillon handed the Belletaille into her limousine.
“Till to-morrow,” she said graciously as he stood there bowing, with the
hat of eight reflections in his hand. The car, purring, was about to
move off, but she signalled the driver with a vibratory gesture of both
her long white hands, and then tore with them at the vivid bouquet at
her waist. She leaned from the car and thrust a scarlet amaryllis into
Ventrillon’s buttonhole. “It is my flower,” she said, “the guaranty of
our bargain.”
As the car rolled silently from the curb into the traffic, he raised the
lapel of his coat and gallantly pressed his lips to the flaming lily. He
saw her smile with all her teeth and wave her hand.
“Undoubtedly,” he said to himself as he strolled leisurely on down the
Avenue des Champs-Élysées, “it is because I happened to be designed by
nature to wear a hat of eight reflections.”
His recent success ran in his blood like champagne. The scarlet badge of
it was brave in his buttonhole, and if he had been wearing his old black
felt and strolling down the Boulevard St.-Michel, he would have sung.
But such behaviour was not for the man he had become. Neither was the
company at the Closerie des Lilas.
In the Champs-Élysées he passed his good old friend Sabrin, who was
promenading Clo-clo on his arm. Clo-clo shook her golden ringlets and
giggled.
“Regard me that, if you please!” she cried. “Ventrillon has become a
bourgeois! Ventri in a hat of eight reflections!”
How shabby they looked!
Ventrillon lifted the hat of eight reflections and bowed--with a grace,
and hoped nobody saw him do it. Sabrin’s mild eyes deepened as if he had
been a dog and Ventrillon had struck him, but Clo-clo gave a delighted
little scream of amusement.
“I do not think,” reflected Ventrillon, his ears blazing as he walked
on, “that I shall frequent the Closerie des Lilas any more.”
As that was the only place in Paris where might be found a friend to buy
him a dinner, and the reason for his walking the long distance from the
Étoile to the Rue Jacob was that he had not even the price of a Métro
ticket, Ventrillon went to bed early that night, imploring sleep to
quiet his hunger.
FIFTH REFLECTION
If it had not been for the sandwiches the Belletaille served with her
tea and the suppers to which she had him invited, Ventrillon might have
starved. But in the smart company at those suppers in fashionable
restaurants he had begun to wonder how he had ever been able to endure
the shabbiness of the Closerie des Lilas. And every day he could glimpse
his image in the shop windows as he wore the hat of eight reflections
along the boulevards to the doorway of the greatest singer in Paris.
She had arranged with Volland for a public exhibition of the portrait in
his celebrated galleries on the day after it was finished. Volland well
knew that the portrait of such a woman could not fail to bring _tout
Paris_ in crowds to his doors. After the _cachet_ of a commission from
the Belletaille and an exhibition at Volland’s, other commissions would
begin to pour in to Ventrillon, and complete success would follow
rapidly. He who now wore a hat of eight reflections with bravado could
then wear it with authority. Ventrillon would be a personage of _tout
Paris_. Cannot one well bear one’s hunger for that?
Enthroned in a tall-backed Spanish chair draped with cloth of gold, the
Belletaille sat in emerald green and all her make-up. She insisted upon
the make-up.
“Without it,” she said, “the portrait would not be decent. You might as
well paint me in the nude.”
Ventrillon worked in rapt absorption. He was doing the most brilliant
bit of painting he had ever done, and this youth with the bright face of
an archangel could paint like the devil himself. “It is my chance,” he
said to himself as the composition took form on the canvas with which
the Belletaille had supplied him, “and I am going to startle the
natives.”
She refused to look at the portrait.
“The Belletaille is beautiful,” she said, “and an unfinished painting is
not. I shall wait until it is hung in a good light at Volland’s.”
During the _repos_ she would sing to him, or feed him with sandwiches
and tea. The number of sandwiches he ate astonished and delighted her.
“He is a true original,” she thought. “They always eat like that.
Besides, he has such nice eyes.”
She sang for him, without accompaniment, songs which she said she
reserved from the public for her dearest friends alone. It was a curious
collection of unknown things: strange, wild songs of the Sicilian
peasants, weird, lonesome songs of Siberian slaves; and sad, earthy
songs from the Hebrides, all unwritten, and passed down by tradition.
“These songs are old; God knows how old,” she would say. “They are
ageless, cosmic things. That is why they are so amusing.”
“One must confess,” thought Ventrillon, “that it is better than hearing
Pinettre squeal ‘O Sole mio!’ at the Closerie. And to think that I am
hearing it all free! Evidently I was born for this.”
They worked in the music room, and whenever she sang she opened the
windows, all of which faced the street.
“It is for my children,” she would say, “the people of Paris. Sometimes
they gather in crowds beneath my windows, and it is touching to hear
their applause. You will not envy them the crumbs of your feast.”
On the last day Ventrillon placed a slender high light down the length
of the nose, and heightened the green reflection of her gown under the
curve of the chin. With these two strokes the portrait sprang into
solidity and completion. Ventrillon stood back, astonished.
“_Nom de dieu!_” he swore, completely forgetting how far he had risen
out of the atmosphere of the Closerie des Lilas. “I shall not only
startle the natives, but, _ma foi_, I have startled myself!”
“Is it really like that!” cried the Belletaille, eagerly, and ran to the
easel. But she restrained herself, covering her eyes with her hands.
“No, I shall not look! My children must see me when I look upon it for
the first time at Volland’s. I must give them that privilege. But I know
that you have done me a great portrait. I said at the beginning that you
had the eyes. I shall sing for you. I shall sing for you a song I almost
never sing. It was written for me by Rimsky-Korsakof himself. Even
Rimsky had no copy. ‘It is for you alone,’ he said to me; but, my
friend, I shall sing it for you!” She opened the windows, and went to
stand in the curve of her piano.
“Ah,” she said, “but this song is _bitter_! Bitter, bitter. You will
hear how bitter it is.” She thrust one bony knee forward, and clasped
her long thin hands upon her head, crushing her hair down into her eyes.
Her rouged lips taut, she sang through her teeth, and her eyes became
malignant slits under her hair. Slowly, in the deepest, the most
troubling tones of all her extraordinary range, she began:
“Tr-r-r-r-a...................... la! La!
Tr-r-r-r-a...................... la! La!
I will not allow my heart to br-reak!
Tra-la-la! Tra-la-la!”
She stopped.
“Now, do you hear? Is it not _bitter_? Is there anything else so bitter
in all the world? But wait until you hear the A in altissimo at the end!
That is the bitterest of all. I give it my full voice, and it is
terrible. You will never hear anything like it as long as you live.
Never! Listen!
“Her lamplight shines upon his face, Tra-la-la!
His mouth is hot against her throat, Tra-la-la!
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! I do not care! Tr-r-r-r-a-la-la!
Tra!--_La!_--LA!”
Her full voice, loud, hard, and colourless, cut the last syllable out of
its shrill heights like an ominous, sharp-edged knife. Shiver followed
shiver down Ventrillon’s spine. He sat spellbound. When she sang she was
truly great.
Outside the windows rose a burst of applause from a crowd which had
gathered in the street.
“Listen!” cried the Belletaille, shaking her widespread, long white
fingers above her head with joy. “My children!” She darted to a window.
As she stood in the window, holding the draperies apart with her hands,
the radiance upon her face flickered and died. Her chin thrust steadily
forward from between her thin shoulders, and the cords of her neck stood
out like wires under her skin.
“Ah-h-h-h!” she gasped, hoarse with rage, “the cow! the camel! the pig!
the poiasse! The’--the--agh-h-h-h-h-h!” She could not think of words
terrible or scorching enough to soothe the hot desire of her throat for
exacerbation. Ventrillon felt like stopping his ears against what she
would say next. “The--the _species of indelicate_!” she cried at last,
and subsided, thwarted by the French language.
Ventrillon went to her side and looked out. One side of the street was
packed with a mass of excited people, gesticulating, laughing,
applauding. The other was deserted save for a little Dresden-china
figure in a ridiculous frilly frock, with a tiny absurdity of a hat
cocked down above her impertinent, tip-tilted nose, and the two huge
black leopards she was promenading through the streets of Paris on a
leash. The muscles of the black beasts slid like snakes beneath their
sleek hides, their soft muzzles slobbered, their red tongues lolled, and
their jade-green eyes shifted uneasily as they dragged the foolish
little creature behind them along the pavement on her stilted heels. She
was laughing with delight, and flicking them frivolously with a jewelled
riding whip. It was Fanny Max.
Four _gendarmes_ stood in the street, consulting in whispers. The one
with the longest moustache took his courage in his hands and advanced
with his chest out. The others gallantly followed. The crowd cheered
again. Fanny Max touched her beasts toward the _gendarmes_. One leopard
snarled. The _gendarmes_ ignominiously fell back. Fanny Max laughed a
silvery little “ha! ha!” and continued her triumphant progress. The
crowd cheered wildly and howled with delight. The Belletaille burst into
wild tears.
“T-to think,” she sobbed, “that she would have the impudence to come
_here_! In _my_ street! She does it purposely! I _know_ she does it
purposely. Oh, but she is vulgar! And her notoriety! How it is
disgusting! How I ab-b-bominate n-n-notoriety!”
Suddenly the Belletaille straightened. She turned to clutch both
Ventrillon’s arms with hands like steel fetters.
“Tell me,” she demanded hungrily, “it is true that this portrait is
great, is it not? It is something incredible, it is an amazing portrait,
it is true that it will startle them, is it not?”
“Mademoiselle,” said Ventrillon, “have I not said that it startles even
me?”
“Ah,” murmured the Belletaille, reassured, “then to-morrow! To-morrow! I
will not look. I could not recapture the emotion. I must give them that
emotion to-morrow! To-morrow at Volland’s! Let me kiss you upon your
forehead--like a mother.”
Ventrillon had not fully realized that no more than a single day lay
between him and his triumph. Thus far, to _tout Paris_, he had been only
a protégé of the Belletaille. That in itself was no small distinction.
But within twenty-four hours, to-morrow, to-morrow at Volland’s, he
would be Ventrillon, the most celebrated portrait-painter in Paris. As
the Belletaille pressed her painted lips to his forehead, the
remunerative applause of _tout Paris_ already resounded in his youthful
ears. His heart began to beat faster, and his blood throbbed in his
temples.
“To-morrow!” he said, with eyes like stars. “To-morrow at Volland’s!”
SIXTH REFLECTION
Ventrillon brushed the hat of eight reflections until it shone again. He
had eaten no luncheon, and was compelled to walk all the way, but he had
become accustomed to both these facts. Besides, from under the gay
awnings of the cafés along the boulevards people pointed him out to one
another as he passed, and that was a compensation. As he neared the
doorway of Volland’s his heart was beginning to swell in his chest, and
his head was growing dizzy beneath the refulgent hat.
To the point of discomfort the great exhibition salon was packed with
_tout Paris_. Volland shoved his way about amid richly dressed
shoulders, beaming upon them with his little pig-like eyes, and tugging
at his goatee with joy. Luminous with electric light, and the only
ornament of the barren gray expanse of his walls, the portrait dominated
the hall. It was a tremendous success. Not only was it the portrait of
the most conspicuous figure in Paris, but the brilliancy of colour and
design was sensational. On every hand one heard: “Superb! Magnificent!
One expects her to speak!” The crowd, already too closely pressed,
increased, but nobody left the salon; for _tout Paris_ was waiting for a
still greater sensation. The morning papers had announced that the
Belletaille would arrive that afternoon to look upon her portrait for
the first time. The Belletaille had seen to that.
A new enthusiasm developed near the door and spread rapidly through the
entire assembly. “It is she herself!” they whispered, and made way for
her. It was the Belletaille. She was entering.
She advanced to within a few yards of the portrait and halted for a
magnificent moment, confronting her painted self.
A young girl whispered excitedly:
“It is exactly like her! One knows not which is which!” Then she gave a
little frightened shriek and shrank back into the crowd, for the
Belletaille had turned on her like an angry tigress.
It is a curious fact that every one of us carries in his secret heart an
image of himself totally different from the person that others see. The
hardened portrait painter strives to approximate that image. But the
portrait which Ventrillon, the novice, had painted was more like the
Belletaille than was the Belletaille herself. For that great lady was,
in every moment of her life, hard at work being something else. Perhaps
that is the true cause of what followed, and perhaps it is not.
She collected herself. Opening her vanity case with splendid quick
movements of those famous chalk-white hands, she took out a little
ivory-handled manicure implement to do with it a thing for which it had
not been designed.
She advanced upon the portrait, and with the gesture that she had until
that moment reserved for slaying the baritone, slashed the tiny knife
through and through the canvas until it dangled from the frame in
twisting, slattern shreds. Then she turned to face her awestruck
audience.
“The Belletaille is beautiful!” she cried in a sonorous middle voice.
“None but the hand of time shall dare to deface her!”
Whereupon, with the magnificent walk of her second act of “Tosca,” she
strode toward the door. As she reached it, Ventrillon was entering, his
young cheeks hot, and his eyes shining with elated expectancy.
Those who saw the ensuing event were to boast of it afterward, and those
who had not seen it were to pretend that they had.
“Pig!” she cried full in his face, and swinging high her parasol, broke
it over the hat of eight reflections. Carrying the remains of the
parasol with her, she stalked, always magnificent, into the street.
Vaguely, Ventrillon removed the ruin from his head, and stared at it,
stupefied. The crowd was wild with restrained excitement, but he heard
not their whispers, or even their sudden, suppressed little outbursts of
high-strung laughter. The portrait was destroyed. The Belletaille hated
him. She had made him ridiculous. _Tout Paris_ would reject him. There
were now no future commissions on which to count. He was hungry, he had
not a sou, and even the hat of eight reflections was a wreck in his
hand.
Ventrillon reflected. This was his to-morrow, his to-morrow at
Volland’s.
SEVENTH REFLECTION
But certain fierce and earnest words whispered in his ear with excited
persistency began at last to penetrate the vacuum of his deadened brain.
Puzzled, he turned to face the speaker.
A thin, blond young man with white eyelashes was begging anxiously:
“I’ll give you a hundred francs for that hat! I’ll give you two hundred!
I’ll give you five hundred----”
Ventrillon blinked. Then his brain cleared, as does the atmosphere with
lightning.
“No!” he thundered in a voice which filled the room. “_Nom de dieu!_
No!” And Ventrillon was himself again.
“A chair!” he shouted. “Somebody find me a chair!”
Nobody knew what was going to happen next, but everybody was ready and
delighted to do anything which might promote its happening. From
somewhere a chair was passed over the heads of the crowd. Ventrillon
mounted upon it.
For a moment he paused. The beauty of his young face and the verve of
his pose commanded a spontaneous burst of applause; but as he opened his
mouth to speak, the noise died quickly into breathless silence.
“_Messieurs et ’dames_,” he cried, “Regard me this hat! There is none
other like it. Never has such a thing happened before, and never will it
happen again. Here is the unique hat crushed by the umbrella of the
great Belletaille, and merely to own it is to render yourself famous.
Now attend to this extraordinary fact! I, Odillon Ventrillon, stand here
upon this chair, willing to part with this treasure. It is incredible,
but, _messieurs et ’dames_, how much am I bid?”
This turn of affairs was not banal; it was not at all banal. And it was
perfectly true that the shapeless hat which Ventrillon was offering was
already historic. It was on a par with the shoes of Catherine de’ Medici
in the Musée de Cluny. The highest bidder would be the envied of _tout
Paris_.
“Six hundred francs,” piped the tenor of the blond youth, breaking the
silence.
“A thousand francs,” cried an extravagantly dressed South American,
enjoying himself hugely. There was a burst of applause.
“Ah, no, monsieur,” regretted Ventrillon; “there will be higher bids
than that.”
“Two thousand,” abruptly announced an ambitious lady, wearing pink
pearls, from the midst of a group of her three daughters dressed exactly
alike in yellow cotton.
“Only _two thousand francs_!” shouted Ventrillon. “Madame, you do
yourself the injustice of underestimating its value.”
“Two thousand, five hundred,” recklessly screamed the blond youth. The
ambitious lady turned pale.
“O _Maman_,” cried the eldest of her three daughters, “bid again! We are
so rich, and he is so beautiful!”
“Yes, _Maman_!” urged the other two, breathlessly. A ripple of amusement
spread through the crowd.
“Two thousand, five hundred, and seventy-five,” announced that lady with
excessive poise, and switched a superior smile over the entire assembly.
But the bidding became general, and little by little the price went up.
The hat was now the sensation of Paris; every franc bid increased the
sensation; and _tout Paris_, which lives on sensation, bid on. Then
entered the lists a modest little gentleman with a pince-nez, a _nouveau
riche_ of the war, who felt himself intruding wherever he went. His
timid voice becoming weaker with every increase until at last it was
only a whisper, he began persistently overtopping every bid made.
“Four thousand, forty-five,” bid the blond youth.
“Four thousand, fifty,” bid the gentleman in the pince-nez.
“Four thousand, fifty-five,” bid the lady in pearls.
“Four thousand, sixty,” bid the gentleman in the pince-nez, almost
automatically.
The lady in pearls set her jaw.
“Four thousand, sixty-one,” she pronounced grimly.
The blond youth mopped his overheated brow and shot his bolt.
“Four thousand, _eighty_!” and, immediately over-bid by the little
gentleman in the pince-nez, rushed frantically from the room. Another
bid in a voice without identity.
“Five thousand miserable little francs!” thundered Ventrillon,
scornfully. “And the rate of exchange, what it is? _Bon dieu!_ It is an
insult to Mademoiselle Belletaille!”
But the sum was already beyond even reason of unreason; it was as if a
cold wind had blown into the room. Ventrillon became sensitive to the
situation.
“Five thousand, five hundred,” suddenly whispered the little gentleman
in the pince-nez.
“Five thousand, five hundred,” shouted Ventrillon, quickly. “Going,
going---” For a moment there was dead silence.
“O _Maman_,” excitedly cried the eldest daughter of the lady in pearls,
“is it too late?”
“_Chut!_” hissed the mother, pinching her daughter’s arm until she
squealed.
“Gone,” thundered Ventrillon, with finality--“gone to the dignified
monsieur in the pince-nez.”
That little man advanced conspicuously to take possession. The crowd
cheered wildly. Volland made his way in through the uproar.
“Of course, my friend,” he said genially, rubbing his hands before the
chair of Ventrillon, “you will not forget my commission. A hat is not
art, to be sure, but I am accustomed to 10 per cent. on sales made in my
galleries.”
Ventrillon, with an air, peeled off five hundred-franc notes and one
fifty from the huge packet the dignified little monsieur with the
pince-nez had produced from his pockets, and presented them to Volland.
He who was accustomed to wearing a hat of eight reflections went
bareheaded that evening to his garret.
“But,” reflected Ventrillon, “one _never_ wears a hat to eat. Politeness
forbids.” And that night he would dine extravagantly.
EIGHTH REFLECTION
At noon the next day Ventrillon woke from the long slumber of the well
fed to a nervous knocking at his door.
“Who is there?” he roared angrily.
“_Chut! Chut!_ But it is I,” loudly whispered the awed voice of the
concierge. “There is a lady below----”
“Tell her I cannot see her.”
“_But_, monsieur, she _says_ that she is the great Mademoiselle
Belletaille of the Opéra Comique.”
Ventrillon started in alarm. Perhaps that astonishing woman had come
with a gun.
“Tell her I cannot see her.”
“But, monsieur, she resembles precisely her photographs in
‘Excelsior’----”
“I don’t care whose photographs she resembles----” But he stopped short,
for he heard the footsteps of the Belletaille herself running up the
stairs.
Ventrillon leaped from his bed, and in his bare legs and shirt flung
himself against the door.
“Open your door to me!” cried the ecstatic voice of the Belletaille.
“Have you seen the morning papers? You cannot refuse me the pleasure of
grasping your hand! The name of that Fanny Max does not appear. There
was no room for it. She had not even the distinction of being among
those present.”
“But, mademoiselle,” protested Ventrillon, “I cannot see you.”
“_Tout Paris_ is wild with the news,” the Belletaille rushed on; “even
your head-size appears in the papers. It was a clever idea of me to
destroy that portrait, was it not? Even as I plunged it into my own
likeness, I felt that I plunged my little knife into the heart of that
creature. But you have surpassed me. It was a stroke of genius. And what
an advertisement for my American tour! I must kiss you on both your
cheeks----”
“But, mademoiselle,” cried Ventrillon, in agony. “I am not dressed.
Would you have me receive you in my shirt?”
“Then open your door a little way. All the world will want to know you
now; but can you not come to me this afternoon? We must begin another
portrait. Open it only a little way! Permit me to give you the present I
have brought you.”
Ventrillon allowed her to intrude a large bandbox through the gap of the
partly opened door. When she had gone, he examined it, gingerly; he
wondered if she had handed him an infernal machine. He had heard of such
things, and could not trust her honeyed words.
He placed it on his table, and opened it by cautiously cutting away
pieces of its sides with his pocket-knife. When all the cardboard had
been cut away, there stood upon his table, crown-side down, and filled
with scarlet amaryllis, a hat, a magnificent hat, an elegant hat, a
formidable hat, a hat which was all there was of chic, a genuine
glistening stove-pipe hat, an authentic hat of eight reflections.
Ventrillon stared. It was really true that he was higher in the favour
of the Belletaille than ever. He was probably the most talked-of person
in Paris. He could that afternoon begin another portrait, and a greater
celebrity than he had ever hoped for was within his grasp. There was
even before him on his table a shining hat of eight reflections in which
to walk before the admiring eyes of _tout Paris_.
Now the concierge, who, fascinated, had remained behind to peek in at
the crack of the door, saw a strange thing. When she reported it eagerly
to him that evening, her worthy spouse remarked that now he knew what
had become of that bottle of _eau-de-vie_ his uncle had sent up from the
country, and he was not a man to be taken in by a woman’s lies, even
when she was sober.
Slinging its contents of scarlet amaryllis about the floor, Ventrillon
snatched the hat from the table, placed it accurately in the seat of his
chair, and sat upon it.
“It is curious, old fellow,” he reflected aloud, without rising from the
inchoate mass it had become--“it is curious how strange one always feels
when one discovers that one has been human. But to-night you and
I--_you_ and _I_ are going together to the Closerie des Lilas. May the
francs in my pocket persuade our friends to be merciful!”
So far as the concierge could ascertain, he was addressing a rusty,
broad-brimmed black felt hat which hung shapeless from a nail on the
opposite wall.
Which, of course, was absurd.
HOME-BREW
BY GRACE SARTWELL MASON
From _Saturday Evening Post_
“Of course, they’re all dears, my family,” said Alyse; “but as fiction
material there is nothing to them; no drama, you know; no colour; just
nice, ordinary, unimaginative dears. They’re utterly unstimulating.
That’s why I can’t live at home, and create. They don’t understand it,
poor dears; but what could I possibly find to write about at home?”
She crushed down upon her hair, with its Russian bob, a sad-coloured hat
of hand-woven stuff, and locked the door of a somewhat crumby room over
the Rossetti Hand-Loom Shop, where she worked half time for a half
living. A secondhand typewriter accounted for the other half; or, to be
quite truthful, for a fraction of the other half. For her father, plain
George Todd, helped out when the typewriter failed to provide.
She then betook herself on somewhat reluctant feet to the nearest
Subway. For this was her evening at home with her unstimulating family;
and though she was fond of them all, her predominating feeling for them
was a mixture of amusement, tender tolerance, and boredom. Moreover,
they lived in Harlem, which was a deplorable wilderness, utterly lacking
in atmosphere and a long, long way from the neighbourhood of the
hand-loom shop.
In the Subway, miraculously impelled through the bowels of the earth,
Alyse--or Alice, as she had been christened--refrained from looking at
the faces opposite her. The Subway does something curious to faces. It
seems to drain all life out of them; it strips from them their defensive
masks and exposes the deep and expressive scars of existence. A secret
and hidden soul comes out in each Subway face. But Alyse averted her
eyes.
“Dear me,” she sighed, “how dull they are! Isn’t there any beauty left
in the world?”
Her father and his chum, Wally, were just ahead of her as she came up
from the Subway depths. They were wending their way to their respective
homes, having come up from downtown together, as was their invariable
custom. Alyse gazed at their middle-aged backs without seeing anything
unusual about them. Just two plodding men, getting tubby about the
waist, with evening papers under their arms, walking along, not saying
much. But when they reached George Todd’s door, they would look at each
other, and the passer-by might well have stopped and taken off his hat,
as before something rare and soul-satisfying. For here was perfect peace
in friendship.
But all they said was: “S’long. See you to-night, ol’ hoss.” Or, “See
you t’morrow mornin’, Georgie.”
Alyse had heard the tale of her father’s miraculous re-union with Wally
so many times that it meant nothing to her. It seemed that as boys they
had lived within two doors of each other in a small New England town,
and they had been inseparable. First thing in the morning and last thing
at night they were whistling outside each other’s windows; they owned a
dog in common; and when George had scarlet fever, Wally nearly died from
anxiety. Then, at sixteen, life had borne them in different directions.
Wally drifted finally to Alaska and George got a job in New York. For a
time they corresponded, but after a while letters began to come back to
George marked Not Found, and then in a roundabout way he heard of
Wally’s death.
Although George Todd was happily married, with a growing family, he
admitted that the world would never seem quite the same to him with
Wally out of it. Then came the happening that convinced him there are
mysterious and unexplainable things in the world, say what you like. He
was coming home from work one night, walking from the Subway rather more
slowly than usual and enjoying the spring twilight, when in some strange
way his heart stirred. He remembered how on evenings such as this he and
Wally used to play a game in which one tossed a ball over the house to
the other and gave a peculiar call. The middle-aged George declared
that all of a sudden he could hear this call, and wanting to fix it in
his memory, he endeavoured to imitate it by whistling its rather
melancholy intervals.
And at his whistle a man walking in front of him suddenly whirled and
stared at him. It was Wally--Wally, with a newspaper in his pocket and a
bundle of shirts from the laundry under his arm. He had been living
within half a block of George for two years.
When her father told this story to Alyse he always at this point gave
her an affectionate poke.
“Now there’s a story for you, Allie. You write up about Wally being
washed out to sea and given up for dead and working his way around the
world, and finally settling down in Harlem right next door to his old
chum. And that about the whistle. What was it made me think of that old
call?”
Alyse would explain that it was coincidence, and coincidence was the
lowest form of literary life. She was patient about it, but there was
nothing stimulating to her creative imagination in Wally and that
come-and-find-me voice he had listened to half his life. Still less was
she stimulated by her father, George Todd, owner of a feed and grain
business of the most eccentric instability. He was a dear, and she loved
him; but she hoped as they all sat down to supper that he wouldn’t begin
to joke her about her work or offer her the plot for a story.
It was a spring evening and the dining-room windows were open to the two
lilac bushes which Alyse’s mother had nursed for years in the narrow,
sooty back yard. The room was filled with an unreal light, as if the air
was full of golden pollen dust. And something else, invisible and
palpitant, was in the air of the homely room, something not to be seen
but only sensed. Some intense preoccupation a sympathetic eye could have
noted in three of the faces around the table.
“Well, well, we’re all dressed up to-night,” said George Todd, unfolding
his napkin. “Look at Miggsy, Allie. Won’t she knock somebody’s eye out
to-night?”
Alyse looked at her young sister, Mildred, aged sixteen. Mildred
blushed, fidgeted, pouted entreatingly at her father. She was a thin
little beauty, with a soft cloud of corn-silk hair about her face. In
her red mouth desire and wistfulness mingled. To-night her eyes were
stretched and brilliant. She twitched at the table silver and appeared
to have no appetite.
“Eat your spinach, dearie.” Her mother’s eyes brooded over her tenderly.
“I thought you liked it creamed.”
“I do, but---- Goodness, mother, is that clock right? I must fly!”
“But there’s chocolate pudding for dessert, dear.”
“Now, Miggs, finish your dinner. Why be so fidgety?”
Mildred looked in desperation from her father to her mother.
“But I don’t want any dinner, please! I--I have to be there early.
Please let me go now, Mother.”
She danced from one foot to the other, the secret excitement in her eyes
threatening to change to anger. She had spent most of the time since she
came home from school that afternoon in front of her mirror, and she was
now exquisitely polished, powdered, and perfumed. From under the fluff
of hair over each ear an earring of blue to match her eyes dangled.
Alyse disapproved of the earrings and of the general effect of Milly
to-night. She made a mental note to speak to her mother about letting
the child go out so many evenings. But beyond the earrings and the
general overstrung and overdressed effect she did not penetrate. She
made no attempt to interpret the secret excitement in her young sister’s
eyes. The affairs of a girl of sixteen were too inane and foolish to be
taken seriously.
At the table when Milly had gone flying up the stairs there remained
Alyse, her father and mother, Eddie, twenty-one, and Aunt Jude. Alyse
glanced around the table and suppressed a sigh. The monotony of the
lives of her family sometimes oppressed her. Take her mother, for
instance. She seldom went outside the house except to church or to an
occasional motion picture with Wally and George. All day she did
housework or looked after Grandma Todd when Aunt Jude was at work. She
did not have a cook because of a queer passion for feeding her family
herself. But when she had them all there in front of her, ranged around
the long table, and she had put on to their plates the well-cooked,
savoury dishes they liked, she would sit eating little herself, looking
from one to the other with her slightly anxious, tender glances, while
gradually an expression of peace and satisfaction stole into her face;
and Alyse wondered what her mother was getting out of life.
Take Eddie, also. No one, except perhaps his mother in odd moments, ever
got a peep-in at Eddie’s thoughts. Alyse was of the opinion that he
didn’t have any. There had been a time when she had tried to bring Eddie
out by coaxing him down to her rooms over the hand-loom shop and
introducing him to some of the girls she knew. But those clever and
voluble maidens had abashed Eddie unspeakably, and Alyse had let him
lapse back into his own plodding life. He apparently had no imagination.
Soon after he left high school he had gone to work for a seed house
downtown--George Todd badly needing help that year with the family
expenses--and there he still was. Alyse hadn’t the slightest idea what
were his amusements. Saturday and Sunday afternoons he generally
disappeared, and when asked what he had been doing, he had been to a
ball game or just taking a stroll around. He subscribed to a marine
journal, which seemed strange reading for a packer in a seed house.
And there was Aunt Jude. Really, when you considered everything, what
had Aunt Jude to live for?
Judith Todd was at that moment preparing a tray for Grandma Todd, who
was having one of her faint spells and declined to come down to supper.
With her long, slender fingers moving deftly, Judith made the tray
inviting with the china she had bought especially for it. She had
hurried her own supper so as to have plenty of time for the tray, and
she moved from the table to the sideboard with the air of detached and
ironic competence she sometimes wore when she was, as Alyse said,
spoiling Grandma Todd. She was George Todd’s younger sister,
thirty-eight, a spinster with the reputation of having been in her youth
very high-spirited, adventure-loving, and moreover with a streak of
queerness about her. As, for instance, her ambition to be a sculptor. In
those days and in the Todds’ native village a girl might as becomingly
have wanted to be a circus rider. It was said there had been some stormy
scenes over days wasted in the attic with messy clay. But finally life
itself had put a bit between her teeth--life and her mother’s
well-timed heart attacks. Her father had failed in business and died,
George had married early, and the brunt of taking care of her mother had
fallen to Judith.
After a while she had brought her mother to George’s house, which helped
George out with expenses and enabled Judith to make a living for
herself. It was the nature of her job that convinced Alyse there
couldn’t be anything in that old story about Aunt Jude’s having wanted
to be an artist. It was such an absurd job. She worked for one of those
concerns that produce novelties--favours, table decorations, boudoir
dolls--designing many of these silly fripperies, often making them with
her own hands. She had remarkable hands.
If she had an ounce of talent, Alyse decided, how could Aunt Jude go on,
year after year, squandering herself on these silly and often grotesque
objects? Alyse felt that it would have killed her to have so degraded
her talent.
But Judith actually appeared to get a certain amount of fun out of the
dreadful things. She would bring home samples of her handicraft and
bedeck the supper table with tiny fat dolls in wedding veils, droll
birds and beasts in coloured wax, and so on. And in one of her high
moods she could set the family to laughing with a single tweak at one of
these grotesqueries. On these occasions a gay and malicious sparkle
would come into her dark eyes, and her laugh would be high and reckless,
rather like a person who has taken a stiff drink to ease up an ancient
misery.
Two evenings a week she went out, no one knew where. Alyse had seen her
once at the opera, leaning far out from the highest gallery, a frown
between her brows, seeming to watch rather than to listen, with a wild
brightness in her dark eyes. The general impression of the family was
that these regular evenings away from home had something to do with her
work. On these particular evenings there was always a breathless air
about her. She would hasten in from the street, and as she climbed the
stairs to her mother’s room her face would stiffen as if for conflict.
For Grandma Todd resented these evenings.
“Traipsin’ off,” she called it. “Lord knows where. Something will happen
to you, coming home alone after ten o’clock. I don’t think you’d better
go out to-night, Judith. My heart has been fluttering this afternoon.
If I have to lie here worrying all evening I shall probably have a bad
spell.”
And then into her daughter’s face would come the expression of a person
swimming painfully against the tide. Love and pity had overcome her at
every turn of her life, until at last she had almost nothing of herself
left, except her freedom for these two evenings. As if the call of them
was more imperative, even than her long habit of abnegation, she fought
for them with a sort of desperation.
To-night as she arranged her mother’s tray her fine hands trembled a
little; she looked more than ever as if she were straining at a leash.
There was an unusual colour in her face, a sort of flame, which for an
instant attracted Alyse’s attention. Aunt Jude, she reflected, must have
been almost beautiful when she was younger, before the expression of
half-defiant endurance came into her face. Her dark hair was still
lovely, with its blue-black shadows. Over her brow was a white lock,
which she took no pains to conceal. She wore it rather like a defiant
banner, and it went well with a certain gallant air she sometimes had.
As soon as supper was finished the family began to melt away. Wally
called for George Todd and they went out. They admitted, grinning, that
they were going to an express-company auction of unclaimed packages. It
was one of their pet forms of entertainment, and they frequently brought
home queer bundles, which they opened with shouts of amusement. Alyse
thought they were dears, but rather foolish. She could not guess that
when they started out of an evening arm-in-arm they became boys again
and forgot that life had been a somewhat niggardly affair for them.
A moment later Miggs made a dash for the door, pulling on her long
gloves. Her face was flushed and exquisite under her modish hat.
“I’ll have Eddie come around to Jane’s for you, Milly,” her mother
called to her.
A shadow of fright and annoyance came over Miggs’s face.
“No, please don’t, Mamma. Jane, or somebody, will come home with me.
Besides, we--we may go to a movie. Don’t fuss over me, Mamma. I’m not a
baby.”
Then she darted back into the room, caught her mother’s head in her
slim arms, snuggled her little powdered nose into her neck.
“Oh, mamma, I’m all right. I’m just so full of pep to-night I’m--I’m
snappy. Don’t you worry, darling.”
And licking her scarlet lips, glancing once more into the mirror of the
old-fashioned sideboard, she was off--a humming bird caught in a
mysterious gale.
Then appeared Aunt Jude, her jacket over her arm, the tray in her hands.
Her dark eyes were feverishly bright, but her face looked pale and
strained. Would they mind just cocking an ear now and then toward
Mother’s room? She would probably drop off to sleep soon, though she had
made up her mind she wouldn’t.
“But I must go to-night,” she said, “just to-night. Perhaps after this
I--won’t be going out Tuesday and Thursday evenings.”
She stood still, staring down at the tray she had put on the kitchen
table. Then she threw up her head with the familiar defiant movement,
made a sound as if of scorn at her own weakness, and shrugging herself
into her old blue serge jacket, she, too, darted out into the evening.
Eddie stood by the window. He stooped to look up at the dark blue of the
night sky--a gesture habitual with him--fiddled wistfully for a long
moment with the shade, and then pulled it down as if resolutely shutting
something out. But a moment or two later he took his hat down from the
hall rack, muttered to his mother “Be back early,” and slid out the
front door, as if suddenly afraid of being late for something.
The house fell silent. Alyse’s mother put a dark-red spread on the
dining-room table and placed her darning basket under the light.
“Now this is cozy,” she said happily. “We’ll have time for a nice visit.
Tell me about your work, dear. I’ve been hoping maybe you’d feel like
coming home to stay as soon as you’d got some material to work on. Of
course, I understand,” she added humbly, “you have to have something to
inspire you.”
“That’s exactly it, Mother. I must know interesting persons. It’s very
important to be stimulated. Sometimes I’ve thought that if I could only
go to Russia or Austria or some place where there is a sense of crisis,
a--a vividness, you know; strife of souls. That’s what I want to study.
You see, Mother? And of course, here at home----”
Her mother sighed.
“I know we’re all pretty ordinary, and nothing much happens, here at
home.”
She looked apologetic, as if she realized the family’s limitations and
wished she could offer something more interesting to her talented
daughter. She dropped the old darning egg into the heel of a sock. The
homely house was very quiet.
And a few miles farther south Milly was running breathlessly up the
Subway stairs, an eager, half-frightened Proserpine coming up from the
bowels of the earth into flowery meadows, into the glare of the electric
flowers of Broadway.
And a few blocks north Judith Todd stood in a dark doorway and
whispered: “I mustn’t hope for anything. If nothing comes of to-night, I
must go on. But, O God, make something come out right for me at last, at
last!”
And Eddie----
At about this moment Eddie’s mother was rolling a pair of his socks into
a neat ball. She sighed unconsciously.
“Sometimes it seems to me,” she said, “as if Eddie has never really
waked up. I--I can’t express it the way you would, Alice; but as if he
was driving himself--dumb, you know.”
“Doesn’t he like his job?”
“I don’t know. He never says. But sometimes he looks---- And then
there’s that Haskins girl. I’m afraid he’s let her push him into being
engaged. I wish I knew--he’s so silent lately.... When he was a little
boy he used to lie on the floor by the hour, so happy, drawing pictures
of ships.”
Ships! Alyse had never noticed them, but they lay like a fringe about
the tall city, slowly rising and falling with the tide, lying there
waiting to be unloosed to the seven seas. But Eddie knew they were
there. All the miles of wharves he knew, from Sunday and evening
rambles, from noon hours when he went without food to stand looking at
some lovely visitor from an unknown port. And now at this moment he was
making his way as fast as he could to say farewell to one that had
become the very core of his heart.
More eagerly, and more swiftly than he ever had made his way to the
Haskins girl he travelled toward the North River. Just before he reached
the corner beyond which he could look down upon the river he felt his
heart grow cold with the fear that sometime during the day she might
have slipped out to sea. It seemed to him that if she had gone he could
not bear it; and yet he told himself that to-morrow night she would not
be there; they had begun to ship her cargo.
But when he had rounded the corner, there were her masts against the
deep blue of the night sky--five masts, the beauty! He had seen them two
weeks before one night when he was leaning over the wall of Riverside
Drive, and his heart had leaped. He had made his way down to the wharf
alongside which the schooner lay, and stood there studying her, feasting
his eyes on her. The tall cliffs of houses towered above her, but she
smelled of many cargoes and of the sea. He could imagine her furled
canvas slowly shaking out to the breeze, the deck tilting. The mate had
come up on deck with his pipe and talked to him over the side.
Next evening Eddie was there again, and the mate invited him on board;
he talked about the schooner as a man might about a wife whose very
faults he loved. And Eddie had asked him questions which had been
storing up in his heart since he was a boy. He could talk to this man
Jennings, for they had a passion in common. Evening after evening they
leaned over the deck rail or sat in the cabin, smoking and talking, and
a deep friendliness developed between them.
To-night when Eddie came to the edge of the Drive he did not hurry down
as usual to the wharf where the schooner was tied up, but stood looking
down at her. In his brain there was a misery and a battle. They were
working overtime down there, loading the last of a general cargo, and
that meant they would take advantage of the first tide. To-morrow she
would be gone, off to the River Plate. He shut his eyes hard and gripped
the wall against which he leaned.
To-morrow he would go downtown as usual in the Subway, and all day long
he would be nailing up boxes in the basement of the store, and in the
evening he would go around to see Lily Haskins. Under his breath he
uttered a sound between a groan and an oath. He felt bewildered when he
thought of Lily. He gazed at the five masts against the sky and they
were like a shining vision beside which Lily Haskins was but a dull
unreality. Was it actually true that he was going to marry, to go on all
his life nailing up boxes as if they were his own coffin?
His feet carried him slowly down toward the wharf. He must say good-bye
to Jennings, no matter how much he shrank from going on board the
schooner again, and as he went down the long stairs he was wondering at
the stupidity of his own life. Why hadn’t he talked things over with
someone? Perhaps someone else could have told him whether he was really
obliged to marry Lily. But he guessed that he had always been dumb. Life
had gone on within him, half asleep, in the dust of the packing room,
until he and Jennings and the schooner became friends.
And after that he had awakened, but he was still dumb. Perhaps if years
ago he had begun to talk about what he wanted to do---- But that year
when he was eighteen, and making his secret plan to join the Navy, was
the year Dad’s business was so poor. He couldn’t desert him when he was
so hard pressed. Perhaps later, when Dad had got on his feet, he might
have broken loose, if only he had believed in his dream; if he hadn’t
been afraid of being laughed at.
His thoughts went still farther back, to the days when he used to cover
immense sheets of paper with pictures of ships, full-rigged, with each
detail as correct as he could make it from pictures he had seen.
He remembered looking up one day from his drawing with a sudden vision
in his heart and crying out, “When I grow up I’m going to be a sailor!”
And someone, he could not remember who, had laughed. For a long time
they called him Yeave-Ho. The door of his heart through which this cry
had gone out had closed.
If he had cared less about his dream, the door would not have closed so
tightly, perhaps; or if there had been any one in his world who did not
regard the sea as merely a blue blur in a geography.
Well, if a man was a sensitive fool, he had only himself to blame. He
closed his lips more tightly and went on down the wharf. Two fellows
passed him with bundles over their shoulders. The crew was going on
board. In the light of torches the last of the cargo was being hustled
on board. The light streamed upward and touched the masts; the vessel
moved slightly with the tramping of feet and the lifting of the tide.
With the lights, the shouting and movement of men, the schooner seemed
to rise on tiptoe, eager and expectant.
In a shaft of light stood Jennings, checking off the crew as they came
aboard. Down the wharf came the captain, a man behind him carrying bags
and bundles. As soon as he climbed on board, Jennings could be seen
showing him a telegram, and the captain frowned. Eddie, his habitual
diffidence overcoming him, shrank back into shadow, but presently when
the captain had gone into the cabin, Eddie moved over to the edge of the
wharf and called, “Good-bye, Mr. Jennings! Just thought I’d come down to
wish you--wish you----” But before he could finish, Jennings leaped and
grasped his shoulder.
“Eddie! By cricky, boy, you look good to me! Look here!” He waved the
telegram under Eddie’s nose and dragged him on board. “Look here, it’s
Providence sent you down here just now. Petersen’s in hospital. We’re
short a hand. My boy, it’s your chance! You’ll never have a better one.
How about it? You’d have time to get your dunnage. Let’s see--tide will
be right in two hours and fifteen minutes; all the time in the world.
What say?”
The night reeled and rocked around Eddie.
“To-night!”
The mate drew him forward, whispering, “Look here, you know as much
about a vessel now as Pete ever did. You were born for the sea, and
that’s the truth. This is your great chance to get your
apprenticeship--good captain and a dandy vessel.”
Eddie stared about him while his heart pounded. He looked down the long
lines of the schooner, he heard the masts faintly creaking and
whispering in the rising wind, he smelled the unforgettable smell of a
ship, and he choked with longing. He thought of his mother, but not at
all of Lily Haskins. Could his father do without him? Would they all
think he had gone crazy? Would they laugh? And at that instant the wind
ruffled the water, the smell of the sea came stealing up the river, and
the deck rose under his feet, an imperceptible movement to any one not
tuned to the sea. But to Eddie it was as if his heart itself turned
over. His heart was like a seed, long buried in the dark and cold of the
earth, which has been pushing blindly upward and now at last sees the
sun. His hand on the smooth curve of the mast tingled and drank in the
feel of the ship, while into his soul there poured a new steadiness, a
clean new certainty. His dumb boyhood was over and his beloved was under
his hand.
* * * * *
Alyse yawned and her thoughts came back from her novel about Russia as
her eyes fastened themselves on the chiffon stocking her mother was
carefully mending.
“Really, Mother, it’s ridiculous the way Mildred dresses. And ought she
to go out every night? When I was sixteen I didn’t want to do anything
but read.”
Her mother smiled and sighed.
“I wish to goodness Milly would sit down at home with a book. But she
says life is so much more exciting than books. She told me the other day
that she had to live her own life.”
“Life!” Alyse laughed scornfully. “That baby!”
* * * * *
It was at about this moment and several miles farther downtown in a
dancing place called Poppy Gardens that Mildred, the baby, was on the
verge of learning something about life. She was also being called an
infant, but in quite a different tone.
“I’d jus’ soon tell the world,” said Dion Delanoy, holding her closer,
“that you’re some little dancer, baby.”
And at the half-lazy, half-insolent caress in his voice, Milly thrilled
with rapture and with discomfort. But it was very queer--there seemed to
be two of her. One was intoxicated with delight and wonder, and the
other held herself cool and aloof and, looking on, curled her lip.
Overhead in the ceiling electric bulbs were stuck like pins in a
cushion. When you tilted your head back so that your cheek touched your
partner’s shoulder, all these lights reeled and swam after you around
the room, and the floor undulated in long flat waves. When you floated
through the green spotlight, Dion Delanoy’s eyes, like large shoe
buttons in an ordinary light, became queer and sinister. When at the
other end of the room the red spotlight washed over you, his pale dusky
skin with the blue tinge from shaving had a bloom like an exotic fruit,
and he became beautiful; he became what she had come out to meet, a
romantic hero.
And she had reached that brief, glamorous season when there must be a
hero to worship or one goes hungry and thirsty. When she had seen him in
a bullfighter’s costume with the footlights performing their nightly
miracle with him, her hunger had fed itself upon him. Jane Tremont had
been almost as bad, but it was her note he had answered, and she alone
whom he had invited to meet him in the Peacock Alley of a Broadway
hotel. It was Fate, his choosing her and not Jane, and it could only
mean that they were meant for each other.
Having only just begun to learn about life, Milly didn’t suspect that
the trysting spot Delanoy had chosen could be neatly overlooked from a
balcony, and standing here, he could scrutinize his latest conquest and
decide whether or not he cared to keep the appointment. He had been a
bit taken aback by Milly’s youth, but it happened to be a dull evening.
And besides, in the dressing room, heavy with the odour of stale powder,
Milly had used a forbidden lipstick. He could not possibly know that in
spite of her desirous lips her heart was pounding with fright.
But now, since they had danced for half an hour, fright had given place
to this queer mixture of emotions; elation, dizzy wonder--she, Mildred
Todd, dancing with a famous dancer, or at any rate a nearly famous
dancer--hadn’t he had a dance practically alone, with the spotlight once
directly on him?--and a curious undercurrent of vague unhappiness, as if
already she had said good-bye to someone she had shrined and now had
lost. And those two individualities into which she had divided, the one
whose lip curled sometimes, who looked on, not happy and yet not
unhappy--homesick, rather--and the other, confused, ecstatic, and silly.
“I feel funny,” thought Milly, “and nothing is quite like I thought it
would be.”
Then the next minute she thrilled when someone behind them said, “That
fella’s Dion Delanoy.”
They had iced drinks at a sloppy table in a room off the dancing floor.
He poured something into her glass from a flask, under the table. She
became dreadfully sleepy and wished she were home and in bed. Then the
lights around the dancing floor grew suddenly brighter and danced, and
every thing was gayer. Dion Delanoy became again a hero, and she knew
that she herself was very wicked and beautiful. The cool half of her
gave her lips one final curl of scorn and retired to an immense
distance. The vague ache of disillusion left her too. She saw herself
engaged to Dion Delanoy, giving a theatre party in a box, and afterward
taking Jane behind to meet him. He was her hero. He was marvellous. She
clung tight to this thought, as if she knew that once she let it go she
could not stand him.
And they wandered down to the street and into a taxicab. The drive was a
flash and blur of lights, with Dion Delanoy holding her uncomfortably
close. The taxicab increased her sense of wickedness, and she thought of
a word she had recently added to her vocabulary--“insouciance.” She was
convinced that she had a great deal of it, and as for Dion Delanoy, he
was magnificent with it. If only the cool and critical half of her would
drop behind, and take with her the dim sense of sadness that was so
oddly like homesickness.
“Wouldn’t it be perfectly terrible if I should cry?” thought Milly.
The cab stopped in front of a studio building.
“Friend of mine let me have his studio,” murmured Delanoy vaguely.
“Let’s go up and start the phonograph.”
Milly hung back.
“I--I ought to go home. It’s getting late.”
He laughed at that, without any particular merriment in his watchful
eyes.
“Aw, baby--that’s what you are, baby.”
There was no taunt that could have hurt Milly more deeply. She looked up
at him pleadingly, when an incident, small but important, as many small
incidents are, occurred. Two markedly elegant young women approached and
passed, perfuming the air. They bowed and smiled at Delanoy. He swept
off his hat with a gesture nicely combining hauteur and suavity. In the
light from the apartment-house doorway he looked for the first time that
evening as she had seen him on the stage.
“Evelyn’s looking all to the good to-night,” he said gazing after the
two young women with a careless appraisal.
“You don’t mean Evelyn Beverly, of the Follies, do you?”
“Sure,” he replied, rather too quickly; “old friend of mine. She and I
was dancing up here in Jack’s studio last night. Come on. Don’t pretend
you’ve never been out after dark before. That kind of bluff makes me
sick.”
She felt a desperate necessity not to displease him, this godlike being,
so handsome as he stood frowning down at her. And she would die rather
than let him think her less endowed with insouciance than Evelyn
Beverly. Meekly, with her lips parted childishly and her flower-blue
eyes very wide, she followed him to the elevator.
* * * * *
In spite of Alyse’s contempt for coincidence, it does happen in life.
For instance, there was the sprig of lilac in the buttonhole of the
Negro elevator boy. As Milly stepped out of the elevator this bit of
flower, stuck so casually in a buttonhole, sent a sort of message to her
brain. On the supper table at home that night there had been a sprig or
two from the bush in the back yard. Her mother had always been foolish
about that bush, coaxing it, feeding it, ever since Milly could
remember. And now the perfume of lilac acted like a reagent in Milly’s
subconscious mind. As she watched Dion Delanoy searching his pockets for
his key, bending over the keyhole, it was as if her vision for the first
time that evening was quite clear.
And nothing can be more merciless than a young girl’s scrutiny. Milly
saw the ignoble back of his head, his hair sleeked back with pomade, a
slight sprinkling of dandruff on his coat collar, his commonplace hand,
not too clean. He smelled slightly of the barber shop and of toilet
water. She disliked his necktie.
She was kept waiting only a few seconds, but in this interval a romantic
hero died. She had a sudden, furious distaste for this cheap stranger,
and her heart ached too. She wanted dreadfully to be at home. But she
felt helpless; she couldn’t think what to do next or how to get away.
Delano had at last got the door open. He opened it, turned to her.
And at that instant behind a door at the end of the short hall a woman
laughed low and happily.
“Why,” exclaimed Milly, “that sounds exactly like Aunt Jude!”
* * * * *
Judith Todd, when she had left the house and her mother behind her,
became as usual a thing with wings on her feet. She flew toward the
Subway entrance, her dark eyes eager, her chin outthrust, her tall
figure leaning forward as if the waiting to get there was intolerable.
Sometimes she took a quick and happy look up at the sky, as a girl may
who is hastening to meet a lover.
At Columbus Circle she came up to the surface and walked quickly across
to a certain somewhat shabby studio building. Usually she could not
reach it quickly enough; but to-night she passed the door twice, and
finally stepped into the shadow of another doorway to have it out with
herself. She told herself that to-night was not different from any other
Tuesday or Thursday night, and she was a fool to be so excited. But all
day it had hung over her, a prescience that this was the most important
hour of her life. She longed for it, and she dreaded it terribly. If it
brought her disappointment it would be no ordinary disappointment; it
would mean the death of something in her without which her life would
become merely an existence--hope. To-night she realized that she had
never really lost it--hope--and an undying belief in her own genius.
But to-night could kill them both, or it could turn them into strength
and glory. She clenched her hands into the pockets of her old serge
jacket and set her lips in their lines of endurance.
The coloured boy in the elevator smiled at her and eyed the sprig of
lilac in her buttonhole. She had taken it from the supper table and
completely forgotten it until this instant.
“Looks like summer’s comin’,” he drawled.
She held the flower out to him.
“For luck,” she smiled.
Then at the top floor she went on down the short hall to the door behind
which every Tuesday and Thursday night she came to life.
With her hand on the knob, she heard voices within. She shrank back. So,
already it was here, the life or death of her hope, waiting there beyond
the door. She had expected to have a half hour to herself, to quiet in
work this sickening tremor of her heart. Well, nothing for it now but to
harden herself for whatever verdict those voices in there would soon
utter. She threw her head back defiantly and opened the door.
Three men were in the high, bare studio, standing about a long table.
They turned toward her at the sound of her entrance, and one of them, a
tall, thin man of forty, with quiet eyes and a sensitive mouth, came
quickly forward to meet her. But she looked past him toward the table on
which stood ten or twelve little figures, some of them still mere lumps
of clay. Not even in this moment could she keep her eyes from them, the
objects into which she had poured herself in delight and in suffering.
The tall man, John Richmond, followed her glance with understanding.
“You see, I got them back safely; and these gentlemen asked to meet
you.”
He presented them, and at the name of one of them she flushed--Ybarra.
She knew him by repute as a Fifth Avenue art dealer whose galleries were
noted for the cleverest and most daring of the exhibitions. The second
man stood a little without the circle of white light that beat down from
overhead. He appeared to her as merely a little grizzled man, and the
name, Mr. Purcell, meant nothing to her, until stepping toward the table
and thus coming under the light, some feature or gesture arrested her
attention sharply. She caught her breath and fixed her eyes on him in a
startled stare. George Jean Purcell. She knew him now. She had seen him
in his box at the opera one night. A girl sitting next to her in one of
the topmost balconies had pointed him out. A fabulously rich man, and a
discriminating collector. She had often longed to see the inside of the
little white marble gem which was his private museum.
Something like terror invaded her. She had an impulse to gather them up
in her arms, those bits of clay which were part of her, to protect them
from the eyes of these two men who could command so much of the beauty
of the world. She gripped the back of a chair, while a defiant glare
came into her bright dark eyes.
The little grizzled man touched one of the clay figures. It was a study,
a fantastic interpretation of a famous tenor in one of his most
picturesque rôles.
“You knew him very well, didn’t you?”
She smiled her fleeting, ironic smile.
“From the top gallery. Once I bribed an usher to let me into the dress
circle.”
George Jean Purcell and Ybarra, the art dealer, looked at her sharply.
“My dear young lady,” cried Ybarra, “do you mean to say none of these
people sat to you?”
“To me! Why should they? And, anyway,” she added, “I didn’t want them to
sit to me. These are not portraits. They’re--bits of what goes on inside
of me, I suppose.”
Ybarra started to speak, but Purcell held up his hand. He looked from
Judith Todd to the bits of clay on the table. The tallest were perhaps
fourteen inches, figures of famous men and women, of little shopgirls,
of an ancient hag of a woman, of a blind man. Fantastic, gay, sinister,
and pathetic, each one had its authentic breath of life. They had been
done with the lightness of touch, the half-bitter whimsicality of a
genius that is afraid of itself. And into them there had been poured the
hunger and the rebellion of long repression.
George Jean Purcell shot a keen glance from under his gray brows at the
woman who stood clutching the back of a chair, trying to keep defiance
in her eyes. He noted the old serge suit, carelessly worn, the
unfashionable hat; and over and beyond these details he observed the
lines of endurance about her mouth, which could not obliterate its
humour. He also saw the rather bitter keenness of her dark bright eyes.
“Spinster,” he thought; “iron-bound sense of duty; starving for proper
soil to grow in. What miracle was it that let her do these amazing
things?” And aloud he said, “How did you happen to wait until now?”
She looked as if she thought the question a little stupid.
“I never had time, or a place to work in where I could do as I liked.”
“You have ties, obligations?”
She smiled without bitterness.
“I have to make a living; and I have a mother with a weak heart, who
can’t realize I’ve grown up.”
“You know you have genius?”
Her face became gay with a touch of impish humour.
“I know. It’s God’s little joke with me.”
Purcell chuckled grimly.
“You’re not giving anything away, young lady.” He offered his hand. “I’m
going to leave you with Ybarra and John. They’ll tell you what I want
you to do. And I hope, for the sake of an old man who treasures beauty
wherever he can find it, you will accept their advice.”
Without another glance or word he walked briskly out.
The instant the door closed on him, Ybarra seized her hands with an
exuberant Latin gesture.
“Congratulations, my dear young woman! I’ve never known old George Jean
to go so far for native talent.”
She looked past him appealingly at John Richmond, her face white.
“What does he mean?”
John Richmond detached Ybarra, and himself took her hands and looked
into her eyes. “Judith Todd, it means the end of the long road; it means
a fair chance at last. You know, don’t you, that when George Jean
Purcell puts in an order for an artist’s work, he’s got a pretty canny
idea that that artist has a future? Isn’t that so, Ybarra?”
“It has meant just that several times in the past.”
“Very well, that’s that,” said John Richmond. “Now you’re to finish up a
certain number of those figures--yes, yes, we know you can’t afford to
have them cast, but Mr. Purcell will attend to that. In return you will
sell him six that he chooses. I believe he gave you a check, Ybarra?
Perhaps if she sees that she’ll believe us.”
But though they put in her hands the slip of pale-green paper with its
figure which exceeded her earnings for a year in the novelty shop, she
did not look at it. Instead, her burning gaze clung desperately to John
Richmond’s face.
“You’re not fooling, are you? You wouldn’t be so cruel as that, would
you?”
Richmond’s eyes blurred. He made a signal to Ybarra, and the dealer
slipped out of the room, murmuring something about an engagement.
“Remember,” he said as he went out, “one of my galleries will be ready
for your exhibition in the autumn.”
With the sound of the closing door, Judith Todd collapsed upon a chair.
She was not the crying sort of woman; tears hurt her as they do a man;
but now the floods rushed over her. All the years when she had borne the
pain and the wonder of her gift alone, all the years when it had been
denied, were in that flood. And John Richmond went down on his knees. He
held her racked body close, murmuring his deep sympathy and
understanding. But presently, when she had grown calmer, she tried to
draw herself away, looking much ashamed.
“I’m a frightful fool, letting go like this; and I haven’t thanked you
yet. If you hadn’t lent me this studio, if you hadn’t encouraged me----”
“Don’t, Judith! You know--I’ve told you--ever since that rainy Sunday
afternoon in the Museum, when I saw you prowling around the Rodin things
like a hungry ghost, and finally got up courage to speak to you because
your face had such longing in it--ever since then I’ve believed in you.”
“Yes, you’ve believed in me,” she whispered, as if the wonder of it were
something she could never fathom. “The first one to believe in me.”
“But more than that,” he went on in a low voice. “I’ve loved you.”
She shrank a little and put up her hand.
“No, no, that can’t be so! Look at me, a shabby old maid. I know! I
haven’t got young nieces for nothing; and I’m considered a bit queer
too. That has always been rubbed into me too. But it doesn’t matter now.
You don’t need to think you love me, for I have so much now. A chance to
work, unashamed--and your friendship. I--I shall be content with that; I
don’t ask more than that.”
“Judith, don’t you know it’s a privilege to love you? Don’t you know
you’re wonderful in your courage and strength? Don’t you know you’re
beautiful?”
All the light and amazement there was in the world seemed to be in her
enormous eyes.
“It is too much,” she whispered, “to be offered love and fame all in one
hour. I’m afraid. I’ve never been afraid before, but now I’m scared. I’m
afraid of waking up.”
He drew her to her feet.
“Come and look at something real and you’ll know this is no dream.”
Together they stood beside the long table and bent over the little
figures so vital and so gay, which were the soul of Judith Todd squeezed
out of her by the drab discipline of the years, turning itself at the
first touch of encouragement into these vivid and mordant fragments.
“How did you do it?” he cried. “How did you get underneath the surface
like that, as if you had stripped off the smooth skin and seen what was
rioting underneath, the ridiculous and sublime fantasy of the soul?”
It was then that she laughed, low and happily.
“Because I am like that--all smooth and gray on the surface, and
underneath amazing--little coloured worlds within worlds, always
something dying and something else being born. No one ever is
commonplace, underneath. Why, take my family--at the supper table we
sit, a dull family in a narrow house in a Harlem street. But if you
watch with patience and insight, you see worlds opening up behind each
pair of eyes, longings, incredible dreams----”
She stopped abruptly, her eyes fixed on the door.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I thought I heard my name. Wait, let me look. Someone out there----”
She threw open the door. A sleek young man dropped his hand from the arm
of a girl who sprang forward with a cry of the frankest relief, “Aunt
Jude! I want to go home with you.”
* * * * *
The socks and stockings were all darned and they lay neatly folded in a
ring around the darning basket. The evening noises in the street outside
were stilled, and the narrow house in the Harlem street was quietly
breathing, waiting. Alyse yawned, looked at the clock and put on her
sad-coloured hand-loomed hat. Another evening practically wasted. Of
course, she had a sense of having done her duty, and it was nice to
spend a peaceful evening with Mother. But from the point of view of
literature she had got nothing out of it. Families were mostly like
that, nice as something to come home to occasionally, but utterly
unstimulating to the imagination.
“Mother, do you suppose Father could afford to send me to Russia----”
And just there the telephone rang. It was her father, and he told Allie
to tell her mother not to be worried if he was a bit late getting home.
The fact was, he chuckled, he and Wally had got arrested.
“Arrested! Father! What for?”
“Well, you see,” he explained, “Wally bid on a package at the
express-company auction, and we were taking it away down a side street,
sort of dark, you know, when the darned thing dropped and broke. A
policeman came snooping along just at that minute and he ran us in.”
“But why, why, Father?”
“I guess he thought we were bootleggers, because Wally, for a joke, kind
of helped it along, and----”
“But what was in the package, father?”
“Well, that was a joke on us,” said George Todd, and she could hear his
appreciative chuckle over the wire. “You see, there was two dozen
bottles of hair tonic in that darned package.”
Alyse hung up the telephone with a disapproving face.
“You might know that if anything happened to Father it would be
something ridiculous,” she sighed.
DERRICK’S RETURN
BY GOUVERNEUR MORRIS
From _Cosmopolitan_
Derrick dreamed that Indians had captured him and had laid him face down
in their camp fire and were slowly burning his head off. As a matter of
fact a surgeon was working out a difficult problem in the back of
Derrick’s throat, and for a little while, toward the end of the
operation, anesthesia had not been complete.
The operation was a success. Something that ought not to have been in
Derrick’s throat was now out of it, and an incorrect arrangement of this
and that had been corrected. The only trouble was a slight, ever so
slight bleeding which could not be stopped. The measures taken to stop
it were worse than the dream about the Indians, and, still worse, they
didn’t stop it. The thin trickle of blood kept on trickling until the
reservoirs from which it came were empty, and then the doctors--there
were a good many of them now--told the woman who sobbed and carried on
that her husband’s sufferings were all over. They told her that Derrick
was dead.
But Derrick wouldn’t have admitted that. Even the bleeding and the pain
of which he seemed to have died were now but vague and negligible
memories. The great thing was to get out of that body which had already
begun to decay, and making use of a new and perfectly delightful power
of locomotion, to get as far away from it as possible. He caught up with
sounds and passed them. And he discovered presently that he could move a
little more quickly than light. In a crumb of time some unerring
intuition told him that he had come to the Place to which some other
unerring intuition had directed him.
Among the beautiful lights and shadows and colours of that Place, he
learned fast. There were voices which answered his questions just as
fast as he could think them. And something wonderful had happened to his
memory, because it was never necessary to think the same question twice.
Knowledge came to stay. To discover how very little he had ever really
known about anything didn’t humiliate him. It was funny. It made him
laugh.
And now that he was able to perceive what insuperable obstacles there
must always be between the man-mob and real knowledge of any kind, he
developed a certain respect for the man-mob. It had taken them, for
instance, so many millions of years to find out that the world on which
they lived was not flat but round. The wonder was that they had made the
discovery at all. And they had succeeded in prying into certain other
secrets that they were not supposed to know--ever. As, for instance, the
immortality of the soul, and how to commit race suicide.
To let the man-mob discover its own immortality had been a dreadful
mistake. Everybody admitted that now. The discovery had made man take
himself seriously and caused him to evolve the erroneous doctrine that
the way to a happy immortality lay only through making his brief
mortality and that of others as miserable as possible.
He thought a question and received this answer, only the answer was in
terms of thought rather than in words:
“No, they were put on earth to be happy and to enjoy themselves. For no
other reason. But for some reason or other nobody told them, and they
got to taking themselves seriously. They were forced to invent all kinds
of sins and bad habits so that they could gain favour by resisting
them.... But with all respect to what you are now, you must perceive and
admit what a perfect ass you were up to the time of your recent, and so
called, death.”
He thought another question. The answer was a negative.
“No. They will not evolve into anything better. They have stood still
too long and got themselves into much too dreadful a mess. As a pack
they will never learn that they were meant only to be happy and to enjoy
themselves. Individuals, of course, have from time to time had this
knowledge and practised it, and will, but the others won’t let them
practise it. But don’t worry. Man will die out, and insects will step in
and succeed where he failed. Souls will continue for millions of years
to come to this place, to learn what you are learning, and be happy to
know that they have waked for ever from the wretched little nightmare
they made for themselves on earth. And since happiness is inseparable
from laughter, it will make them laugh to look back and see how
religiously they side-stepped and ducked out of everything that was
really worth while.”
II
In the first days of some novel, beautiful, or merely exciting
experience a man misses neither his friends nor his family. And it was a
long time, as time is reckoned here on earth, before Derrick realized
that he had parted from all his without so much as bidding any one of
them good-bye.
In time, of course, they would all come to the place where he now found
himself, and share with him all that delicious wealth of knowledge and
clear vision the lack of which now stood between them and happiness.
Here the knowing how to be happy seemed the mere _a b c_ of happiness.
It was the first thing you learned. You not only learned how to be
happy; but you applied your easily acquired knowledge and you actually
_were_ happy.
But how, the earth dweller asks, can the spirit of a man, separated from
his wife and children and from the friends he loves, and conscious of
the separation, be happy? Very easily. It was one of Derrick’s first
questions, and the answer had been perfectly satisfactory.
He could always go back. He had learned that almost at once. There is no
such thing as separation. If he chose to wait where he was, gathering
the sweetest and delightfulest knowledge among the lovely lights and
shadows and colours and perfumes, even as a man gathers flowers in a
beautiful garden, in the course of time all those whom he had loved so
greatly would come to him and be with him for ever. But if waiting would
make him unhappy, here where no one need be unhappy, he could always go
back. When? Now. Soon. Whenever he liked. Oh, it took a little time to
get back; but not much. If, for instance, his wife at a given moment
were about to lift her hands to her hair, and at that same moment he
made up his mind to go back to her and actually started, he would get to
her before her hands had moved more than a thousandth of an inch from
her lap.
How could he communicate with her? As of old, if he liked. He could be
with her. She could hear his voice, on occasions, if the actinic and
electrical conditions were just right. She might actually see him. And
of course he would be able to see her and to hear her. There was never
any trouble about that. If he wanted to be with his family _all_ the
time, until they in turn got ready to come here, there was nothing to
prevent--absolutely nothing. But had he, in his earth life, ever wanted
to be with his dear ones _all_ the time? Probably not. One of these days
he would probably run into Romeo and Juliet. Very likely he would find
them together. They were often together; but not always. Probably, like
other loving spirits, he would not wish to be with _his_ family _all_
the time. He would probably do as other spirits did--go and come, and go
and come.
About communicating? He would probably find that plain straight talk was
too strong for earth dwellers. It had been tried out on them often, and
usually disastrously. It was like forcing champagne and brandy on men
who had always been content with beer. Straight talk from the spirit
world often produced epilepsy among earth dwellers. It was too much for
them to have all at once. And then such a very little was enough to
content them, and he would find it far more satisfactory to furnish them
with a little--a mysterious and nicely stage-managed _little_--than with
a plain-spoken straight from the shoulder _lot_. To the wise, and he was
now beginning to be wise, a hint is sufficient. Suppose, his wife being
at her dressing table, he were to plant himself beneath and rap out a
few words in the Morse code? Let him keep on with these rappings until
she called in someone to interpret them for her.
He could not only comfort her about his death and reassure her as to his
general whereabouts and activities, but he could have a lot of fun with
her. There is no harm in having harmless fun with those you love. It is
the fear of fun, the suspicion with which it is regarded, more than any
one single thing, that has given the man-pack such a miserable run for
its money. By means of the Morse code, he could persuade her to buy a
ouija board. He would love that, and so would she and the children.
But Derrick kept putting off his return to the earth.
If a loving husband and father were turned loose in the finest jewellery
store in the world and told to take his pick of the diamonds and rubies
and pearls, as many as he could carry, he would not at once rush off to
tell his loved ones of the astounding privilege that had been extended
to him. He would stick to the store. He would hang about it possibly for
days taking mental stock of all its precious contents. Blurring the tops
of the glass show cases with his breath and staring till his eyes ached.
Derrick was in somewhat the same case. He had the impulse to rush off at
once to his family to tell them of the extraordinary wisdom and mental
equilibrium which were being lavished upon him; but he was restrained by
the very natural wish to remain where he was until the last vestiges of
earth marks had been rubbed from him.
He had been a very decent man as men go; but the amazing sense of purity
which now pervaded his being was new in his experience. It was not so
much a smug consciousness and conceit in personal purity as a happy
negation of all that is not directly of the spirit in its most calm and
lucid moments.
Here nothing soiled and nothing tired. An immense and delicious mental
activity swept one past all the earthly halting places. There was no
eating or drinking or love-making. There was no sleeping, and the mere
fact of existence among the lights and shadows and colours was more
cleansing than the most refined species of Oriental bathing.
Life here was mental. Burning curiosities and instantaneous
satisfactions thereof seemed at once the aim and the end of existence.
And since there can be no limit to the number and extent of the spirit’s
curiosities, it was obvious that there could be no limit to existence
itself. And Derrick together with those spirits which had passed into
the Place at the same time with his own began to have a clear
understanding of humanity.
Here, for instance, all that one learned about God was fact, but there
was so much to learn that heaping fact on fact, with a speed unknown on
earth--even in the heaping of falsehood upon falsehood--it would take
from now until eternity to learn all about God. And this, of course,
had to be the case. Since God is infinite, He can only be wholly
revealed to those who, by pursuing knowledge to infinity, have acquired
infinite knowledge.
The man-mob conception of God seemed very absurd to him. For man had
formed it in the days when he still believed the earth to be flat, and
had subsequently seen no good reason or obligation to change it. The
man-mob had never gone beyond the idea that God was a definite person to
whom certain things like praise and toadying were infinitely agreeable,
and to whom certain other things like being happy and not very serious
were as a red rag to a bull. This conception was the work of certain men
who, the moment they had conceived a God in their own narrow and
intolerant image, became themselves godlike. To men of that stamp simple
and practical discoveries in geography, mechanics, or ceramics would
have been utterly out of the question. But the greatest discovery of all
with its precise descriptions and limitations lay to their credit. And
from that time to this no very great number of men had ever taken the
trouble to gainsay them, or ever would.
“I never did, for one,” thought Derrick, and he recalled with a smile
the religious phases through which he had passed in his earth life. As
he remembered that he had once, for a short period of his childhood,
believed in the fiery, old-fashioned Hell of the Puritans, the smile
broadened, and he burst into joyous and musical laughter.
III
There was one thing that he must be prepared to face. His wife and their
three children would _look_ just as they had looked when he last saw
them, and as a matter of fact they would _be_ just what they were; but
to him, with all his new and accurate knowledge and his inconceivably
clear vision, they would seem to have changed greatly.
He had always considered his wife an intelligent, well-educated, even an
advanced woman, and he had considered his children, especially the
youngest, who was a girl, altogether brighter and more precocious than
his neighbour’s children. Well, along those lines he must be prepared
for shocks and disillusionment.
It would not be possible, for instance, to sit down with his wife to a
rational discussion of anything. She would seem like a moron to him:
superstitious, backward, ignorant, and stubborn as a mule. He would find
her erroneous beliefs and convictions hard to change. It would be the
same with the children, but in less degree. The oldest was twelve, and
his brain was still capable of a little development. He would have some
inclination to listen to his father and to believe what his father told
him. With Sammy aged ten, and Ethel, aged eight, much might be done.
He would begin by asking these young hopefuls to forget everything that
had been taught them, with the exception of that one startling fact,
that the world is round. He would then proceed to feed their eager young
earth minds on as many simple and helpful truths as would be good for
them, and he would show them, what was now so clear to him, how to find
happiness on earth with a minimum of labour and worry.
A question carelessly thought and instantly answered caused him to
return to earth sooner than he had intended. The answer to his question
had been in the nature of a hard jolt. It had to do with sin.
Sin, he learned, is not doing something which other people regard as
sinful, but something which you yourself know to be sinful. Lying,
theft, arson, murder, bigamy may on occasion be acts of light, charity,
and commiseration, no matter how the man-mob may execrate, judge, and
punish them. But the same things may be also the worst of crimes. And
only the individual who commits them can possibly know. That individual
doesn’t even have to know. It is what he thinks that counts; not what he
pretends to think, not what he swears in open court that he did think,
but what, without self-deception, he actually did and does think.
And Derrick learned that if during his brief absence from them any of
those earth persons whom he loved so dearly had sinned, committed some
act or other which they knew for themselves to be sinful, there would be
an opaque veil which neither his eyes nor theirs could pierce, nor the
words of their mouths.
But he was not _greatly_ worried.
As men count time he had been absent from the earth and from his loved
ones only for a very short time. They would still be in the depths of
mourning for him. And even if they were evilly disposed persons, which
they were not, they would hardly have had time to think of anything but
their grief and their loss.
IV
As he left the Place of the wonderful lights and shades and colours and
perfumes, he realized that he could not have been perfectly happy in it.
He could not have been _perfectly_ happy, because he now perceived that
by the mere act of leaving it behind he had become still happier, and
that perfect happiness could only be his when he reached “home” and
beheld his loved ones.
When he had been taken from his home to the hospital the buds on the
pear trees had been on the point of bursting. The pear trees would be in
full bloom now. When he had been taken away the shutters of the house
had been taken from their hinges, painted a pleasant apple green and
stood in the old carriage house to dry. They would be back on their
hinges now, vying in smartness with the two new coats of white paint
which the painters had been spreading over the low rambling house
itself. How sweet the house would look among the fresh young greens of
spring! Perhaps the peewees who came every year had already begun to
build in the veranda eaves.
The little river which tumbled over the old mill dam and for a mile
flowed tranquilly on with little slipping rushes through his farm, would
be very full of water now. It would be roaring and foaming among the
rocks at the foot of the dam. The elms which shaded the bridge and the
ford beside it would be at their best, before the leaves became
worm-eaten and cobwebby. Perhaps one of the cars would be in the ford to
its hubs getting washed, with one of the children sitting in the front
seat. The dark blue roadster with the special body looked especially gay
and sporty in the ford under the shadow of the elms.
He had no more than time to think these things before he had come to the
end of his journey.
Home had never looked so sweet or inviting. The garden was bounded on
the south by a little brook; and beyond this was a little hill planted
with kalmia and many species of native ferns.
It was on the top of this hill that he lighted, and here he paused for a
while and filled his eyes with the humble beauty of the home which his
earth mind had conceived and achieved.
Beyond the garden carpeted with jonquils and narcissuses between and
above graceful pyramids of pear blossoms, the house, low and rambling,
with many chimneys, gleamed in the sunlight. It was a heavenly day.
From the hill he could see not only the house, but to the left the
garage and beyond that the stable. It was about eleven o’clock in the
morning, and it seemed queer to him that at that hour and at that season
there should be no sign of life anywhere. Surely the gardener and his
assistant ought to be at work. He turned a puzzled and indignant glance
back upon the garden, and he observed a curious phenomenon.
A strip of soil in the upper left hand corner of the garden was being
turned and broken by a spade. Near by a fork was taking manure from a
wheelbarrow and spreading it over the roots of a handsome crab apple.
Both the spade and the fork appeared to be performing these meritorious
acts without the aid of any human agency.
And Derrick knew at once that McIntyre, the gardener, and Chubb, his
assistant, must, since his departure, have sinned in their own eyes, so
that they could now no longer show themselves to him, or he to them.
He started anxiously toward the house, but a familiar sound arrested
him.
The blue roadster, hitting on all its cylinders, came slowly out of the
garage and descended the hill and crossed the bridge and honked its horn
for the mill corner and sped off along the county road toward Stamford
_all by itself_.
There was nobody in the roadster. He could swear to that.
And this meant, of course, that Britton, the chauffeur, had done
something which he knew that he ought not to have done, and was for ever
separated from those who had gone beyond.
When Derrick reached the house he was in an exceedingly anxious state
of mind. He stepped into the entrance hall and listened. And heard no
sound. He passed rapidly through the master’s rooms downstairs and
upstairs. In the sewing room a thread and needle was mending the heel of
a silk stocking, but there did not seem to be anybody in the room.
He looked from the window and saw two fishing poles and a tin pail
moving eagerly toward the river. The boys, perhaps. Oh, what _could_
they have done to separate themselves from him? The window was open and
he called and shouted, but the fishing poles and the tin pail kept on
going.
He went downstairs, through the dining room and into the pantry.
His heart stood still.
On tiptoe on the seat of a chair stood his little girl, Ethel. Her hair
shone like spun gold. She looked like an angel. And his heart swelled
with an exquisite bliss; but before he could speak to her and make
himself known, she had reached down something from the next to the top
shelf and put it in her mouth.
At that instant she vanished.
He lingered for a while about the house and gardens, but it was no use.
He knew that. They had all sinned in some way or other, and therefore he
was indeed dead to them, and they to him.
Back of the stables were woods. From these woods there came a sudden
sound of barking. The sound was familiar to Derrick, and thrilled him.
“If I can hear Scoop,” he thought, “Scoop can hear me.” He whistled long
and shrill.
Not long after a little black dog came running, his stomach to the
ground, his floppy silk ears flying. With a sob, Derrick knelt and took
the little dog in his arms.
* * * * *
“Oh, Mumsey!” called Ethel. “Do come and look at Scoopie. He’s doing all
his tricks by himself, just as if somebody was telling him to do them.”
The two looked from a window, and saw the little dog sit up and play
dead and roll over--all very joyously--and jump as if through circled
arms. Then they saw his tail droop and his head droop and his left hind
leg begin to scratch furiously at his ribs. He always _had_ to do that
when anyone scratched his back in a particular place.
* * * * *
When Derrick returned to the Place of the wonderful lights and shadows
he was very unhappy and he knew that he must always be unhappy.
“Instead of coming to this Place,” he said to himself, “knowing what I
know now, I might just as well have gone to Hell.”
A voice, sardonic and on the verge of laughter, answered him.
“That’s just what you did.”
SHADOWED
BY MARY SYNON
From _Red Book_
All the way down from the Capitol, Stroude knew that he was being
followed. From the moment he had come out of the Senate office building
upon the plaza, fragrant with forsythia in the March moonlight, he had
been conscious of the man who trailed his sauntering footsteps. He had
led him down a winding way past the Marshall statue and into the
deserted wideness of Pennsylvania Avenue. He had thought to lose him
when he stepped into the lobby of a big hotel, pausing for a word there
with men he knew, men who made their greetings casual or portentous,
according to their knowledge of the turning of the inner wheels of
Washington; but he found the other man some twenty paces behind him as
he crossed Lafayette Square, and his amused acceptance of the situation
curdled to annoyance at the possibility of having to deal with an
irresponsible crank determined on an interview.
The day had been more than ordinarily difficult, one of the hardest
Stroude had known since the turmoiled times of war. He had suffered
under the sense of impending crisis knowing that his future hung on
to-morrow’s balance; and his temper, always drawn like a taut bow, had
been ready to snap a hundred times through the afternoon’s battle in the
Senate chamber. Now, at the doorway of his house, that limestone palace
of Georgian severity which loomed in stately classicism among the older
residences of the neighbourhood, he poised the arrow of his wrath as he
turned to confront the man behind him. “What do you want?” he snapped at
him.
The man came nearer. By the dim light of the hall lantern Stroude saw
his shambling listlessness, and his hand went to his pocket with a
thought of relief that the other sought only alms. The man, seeing the
gesture, put up his hand arrestingly. “Remember me?” he inquired, almost
too nonchalantly. His voice for all its soft slurring of the consonants,
was threaded with a fibre of steel which edged the menace of his quiet
poise.
“Why not?” Stroude asked sharply, his shoulders lifting as if for
defence.
“Then I reckon you’re none too glad to see me?”
“You haven’t come here to ask me that. You might as well tell me first
as last what you want from me.”
“Nothing you’ll call the sheriff about,” the man told him. He faced the
Senator squarely, revealing even in the half-darkness a certain racial
resemblance to him which made them equals on the instant. For all
Stroude’s grooming and the stranger’s shabbiness, they were strangely
akin in their antagonism, bound not by family ties but by broader, more
basic associations. Each of them, tall, thin, lithe, gazed on the other
with unflinching blue eyes. Each of them kept watch with wildcat
tenacity. From each of them emanated the recklessness of personal
courage that takes no count of law beyond its own code. In their sudden
springing to guard, the predominant characteristics of the two men, the
Senator and the shambling shadower, flared up stronger than their
setting, and although the lights of the White House gleamed golden
across the Square, they were mountaineers facing each other in the hate
of vendetta. The years and the place fell away from Stroude, leaving him
stripped to the bone of his clan’s creed.
“We’ve settled our own affairs before,” Stroude said. “We can do it
now.”
As if the words gave him advantage, the other man seized them swiftly.
“Let’s do it, then,” he replied. “I’ve come here to get you to do
something you won’t want to do. Will you fight me for it?”
“Not till I know the stake.”
“Didn’t you get her letter?”
“Whose?”
“There’s only one woman I’d be coming to you about, I reckon.”
“I’ve never heard from her since the day she went back to you. That was
twenty-six years ago last May.”
“The fourteenth.”
“Why should she have written me now?”
“She’s dying.” The man’s voice sounded in a softer timbre. “A month ago
the doctor from the moonlight school told her that she had only a little
while to live. She’s been pining ever since, not about dying, for she’s
brave as any man, but for something I couldn’t guess until she told me.
She wants to see _you_. She wrote you a letter, but she was afraid you
might not get it, and so she sent me. ‘Tell him,’ she said, ‘that I
won’t rest easy in my grave over there on the side of Big Stony, if he
don’t come to me before I die. He told me once,’ she said, ‘that he’d
come when I’d call. I’m calling now.’ That’s her message.” His tone
lifted from its softer depth. “Are you coming to her?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve a thousand duties. I’ve---- It’s ridiculous.”
“Then you’re not coming?”
“How can I, Martin? I’m not my own man. I’m here for my state, for my
country. I have work to do. I can’t let any personal obligation
interfere with it. Besides----”
“It couldn’t hurt your wife, not even if she knew it. And Dell’s dying.”
“I’m sorry, Martin. I am, honestly. Will you tell Dell that I----”
“I’ll tell her nothing but that you wouldn’t come. Nothing else matters.
And I think you owe her that, at least.”
“But----”
The other man turned away, crossed the street, and walked back across
the Square. Stroude could see him swinging on between the bushes, and
the remembrance of another trail which Boyce Martin would climb rushed
over him. More plainly than the crocus-bordered path to the White House
shone the moonlit path up to the cabin on Pisgah where Dell Martin used
to wait for his own coming, the cabin where she now waited for death.
The memory of that way, twisting among laurel and rhododendrons, stabbed
him more sharply than had Boyce Martin’s words; but with the old habit
of setting aside disturbing thoughts, he tried to thrust the memory
from his brain as he unlocked the door of his house.
A servant, coming forward at the sound of his key in the lock, gave him
a message with a careful precision which bespoke respect for the
executive management that directed his tasks. “Mrs. Stroude wishes you
to be told, sir, that she is at the theatre and will see you when she
comes in. And she made an appointment, sir, for Senator Manning and two
other gentlemen to see you to-night on their way from the Pan-American
dinner. She said it was very important.”
He thanked the man and went upstairs to the library, switching on light
after light to dispel its shrouding gloom. He tried to read, but the
pages of the periodicals he took up ran into dullness. He chewed his
cigar savagely, finding it flavourless. He strove to concentrate on his
impending interview with Manning and his companions, realizing its
portent, but he could not focus his attitude. Impatiently he thrust away
the work which always waited his attention on his homecoming--findings
of committees, digests of newspaper editorials, confidential reports on
public interests in various measures, letters from men who had
constituted themselves his captains. He frowned at the framed photograph
of his wife, the only decoration she had placed upon his table; and he
grimaced at the portrait of himself which Rhoda had set above the
immaculate mantel. He was weary with work, he told himself, crossing the
room and flinging wide open the windows which looked down on the Square.
The thrill of the night wind, prematurely warm as it crossed the
Potomac, and burdened with elusive odours of a Southern March, caught
him unawares. For a moment he stood drinking deeply of the immortal
beauty of the recurrent springtime. Memories he had thought long dead
and buried went over him. Pictures more vivid than those on the walls
framed themselves in the darkened greenery of the little park: a girl in
a faded gingham dress waving him welcome on a hill road, a girl with
eyes brighter than mountain stars telling him her love, flinging away
all thought or care of herself, giving him everything and glorying in
the gift, even to the last sacrifice of her departure from him. Not as
she was now, Boyce Martin’s wife dying in that far-away little
community of his native hills, but as she had been when she had defied
their little world to come to him, Stroude saw her. In the thought of
what she had been to him, he flung out his arms. “After all these
years,” he muttered, “after all these years!” And as if drawn by a power
stronger than his will, he crossed to the table, and picking up the
telephone, called the information desk of the Union Station. “What time
does the Mountain Mail on the C. & O. go out now?” he asked. “One
o’clock? One-fifteen.” He hung up the receiver and saw again the
photograph of his wife.
He studied it with suddenly arrested attention. What would she think of
his desire to leave Washington at a time when, according to her
fundamental ideas, his presence was imperative for the fulfillment of
his ambition? Or was it her ambition? He gazed at the pictured
countenance, seeing the determination of the uplifted chin, meeting the
challenge in the steady eyes. Rhoda was certainly her father’s daughter.
Old Peter Armond’s indomitable will and shrewdly calculating brain lived
on in her. For the fourteen--or was it fifteen?--years of their marriage
she had managed Stroude’s career as cleverly as ever her father had
directed one of his lieutenants, and he had acknowledged his debt to her
with a certain attitude of amusement. Now, facing the last triumphal
stage of its development, he felt an angry distaste of Rhoda’s
manœuvring. It might bring him, he conceded, to the goal but he wished
he might have travelled a simpler path.
He had been an obscure Congressman of fiery political rectitude when he
had met Rhoda Armond. She, and her group, and the circumstances the
Armond connection had conjured for him, had made him into a statesman.
Or was it only that they had made it possible for him to plant his own
standards on the heights? At any rate, he owed her something, he
thought. She was his wife, even though her attitude toward him was that
of a director of destinies. She had given him, after all, what he had
desired from her. She had made the upward road smooth, and she had
dowered him with loyal faith in his ability. It wasn’t fair to compare
her attitude toward him with Dell’s. He had never given to Rhoda what he
had given Dell. Poor little Dell! But what good could he do her now by
going to her? Twenty-five years would have changed her as they had
changed him. They had had their day, and the sun of it had set long
since. “I won’t go; I can’t,” he said, and turned back to the work on
his desk, not looking up until his wife entered the room.
She came, a tall, consciously beautiful woman, bringing with her an
aroma of power as subtle and as pervasive as the perfume of her toilet.
She gave to Stroude the greeting of a perfunctory kiss on his brow, and
stood off for his admiration. It was, however, not the product of her
personality as much as her satisfaction in the work which struck him as
he watched her. Rhoda’s thought of herself as well as of him was that of
a sculptor of his masterpieces. Stroude accepted it with the
affectionate tolerance of a long marital relationship, feeling somehow
sorrier for Rhoda than she would ever feel for herself, since she would
never know what she had missed from life. “I was playing your game
to-night,” she told him.
“Isn’t it yours too?” he smiled.
“In a way, yes,” she acknowledged, “but this involved real sacrifice and
I want reward. I went to the theatre with the Covingers.”
“Was the play deadly?”
“No, but the Covingers are.”
“He isn’t a bad sort, and----”
“Oh, I know that he’ll have the delegation from his state, and that it’s
one of the big states; but oh, my dear, have you ever had to listen to
his wife?”
“She isn’t so terrible, Rhoda.”
“Oh, of course, if you will look at people as characters rather than as
social factors, you won’t see the awfulness of the Mrs. Covingers of
Washington. But really----”
“Did Manning hint at why he had to see me to-night?”
“At nothing but the importance of seeing you. He is bringing he said,
Mr. Laflin and Senator Wilk.”
“He probably said Senator Wilk and Mr. Laflin, but you know the field
well enough to put them in the order of their importance. Laflin’s the
new factor, a shrewd wolf raised in a wild forest.”
“Does it mean”--she leaned forward, tapping the table with her fan in
eagerness--“that they are going to ask you to take the nomination?”
“They haven’t the entire giving of it, my dear.”
“Don’t be silly, Burton. You know that they are the architects of
presidential nominations.”
“But even architects----”
“Oh, Burt, don’t quibble. You know that you’re the logical man for the
place. You’re squarely based in party policies----”
“Safe, and steady.” His tone was whimsical.
“But picturesque enough to be a good campaigner.”
“Barefoot boy from the mountains. Good American stock with fine
traditions. Reads rhetorically, doesn’t it?”
“And a border state gives you strategic advantage.”
“Some one has coached you well.”
“I was coached before I ever knew you, Burt dear. My father taught us
politics as religiously as my mother taught us sewing. It wasn’t as
practical, perhaps, as yours, but----”
“There haven’t been many men more practical in their politics than Peter
Armond,” Stroude said dryly.
“Even if he did grow wealthy,” his daughter defended, “you know how high
he kept his standards.”
“I can guess,” Stroude said, but his tone gave her no handle to catch
for controversy, and she swung into off-side statement. “Mrs. Covinger
let slip something that may be vital to us,” she told him.
“If it’s vital, she let it slip with due deliberation,” he declared.
“Don’t underestimate her brains, Rhoda, even if she wasn’t raised by the
Armond code. What did she say?”
“I don’t believe I’ll tell you.”
“Yes, you will.”
“We do run in double harness, don’t we? Well, she said that Covinger
wasn’t going back to New York until to-morrow night, as there was a
tremendously important conference at noon to-morrow. Seven men will be
there, and they will decide the fate of the nation. That’s exactly what
she said. She’s bombastic, you know.”
“Seven? Then they’re letting Covinger in?”
“You knew about it?”
“Not that it would be to-morrow.”
“Is that why Senator Manning is coming to-night?”
“Probably.”
“Then that means----” Her voice broke in excitement.
“That our fate hangs in the balance.”
“Does it?”
“It looks like it.” He smiled at her through the smoke of his cigar. Her
eyes shone with myriad points of light. “Not planning what you’ll wear
at the inauguration, are you?” he teased her.
“No,” she said, “but wondering what you’ll say. It’s wonderful, isn’t
it?”
“Don’t count your chickens yet, Rhoda,” he warned her. “We, both of us,
know the thousand slips between the cup of consideration and the lip of
nomination. We’ve gone through it all for other offices.”
“But we’ve won every time,” she said solemnly. “You’ve never been
beaten, Burt. Don’t you see what an advantage that is, now? You’ve been
going up, and up, and up.”
“The Senate’s a rather high plateau, at that.”
“But not the high mountain. Oh, Burt, think of it! It seems almost
unbelievable, and yet I’ve always known you were destined for it. I knew
you’d be great. Why, even in those first days here, you promised it. You
knew it, too. You had the look of a man who was dedicated to something
beyond the immediate, the look of one who is going to travel far and
high. I believe that was one of the reasons why I loved you. And
you----” She leaned over the table, and spread out the brilliant
feathers of her fan, gazing at their splendour and not at her husband as
she went on: “Did you love me when you married me?”
“Why else do men marry women?” he countered, letting the smoke veil his
eyes.
“To put other women out of their lives, sometimes,” she said.
“Well?” He drew hard on the cigar.
“I never knew until to-day who she was,” she said. “I opened a letter by
mistake. You may see from the envelope how easy it was for me to think
it was addressed to me when I found it in my mail. It was directed
merely to Washington, and the post office sent it to the house here.”
“I quite understand,” he said, and held out his hand for Dell Martin’s
letter.
His wife drew it from the gay bag she had borne, and gave it to him. For
a moment he looked at the pitiful missive, contrasting it with the
appointments of the table before him.
“She’s dying,” Rhoda said, “and she asks you to go to her.”
“Yes,” he said, “I know it.”
“But----”
“How did I know? Her husband followed me down from the Hill to-night. He
demanded that I return with him.”
“Then she married, after----”
“She was married,” he said, “when I met her.”
“Oh!” She snapped shut the great fan, twisting its tortoise-shell handle
between her lithe fingers. “When was that?”
“Before I knew you.” He sank down into his chair, staring forward as if
he were a judge considering a decision. “I was twenty-two years old,
teaching school in the mountains and studying law with old Judge
McLaurin, when I met Dell Martin. She had been married to Boyce against
her will, as plenty of the girls in the hills are married. She was
lonely and wretched, and lovelier than a wild rose. I was young and
reckless. I fell in love with her and I made her love me. Boyce found it
out. He drew me into a fight and I won it. He shot me then. Dell came to
nurse me and I wouldn’t let her go. Boyce wouldn’t get a divorce and she
couldn’t, but she stayed with me. We had two years of utter happiness.
I’d have gone through hell to win them.”
A stick of the tortoise-shell handle of the fan broke in Rhoda’s hands.
“But you left her?”
“No,” he said. “She left me. She saw before I did that it couldn’t go
on. She saw in me the ambition that I thought I had buried in my love
for her. She knew that if I stayed with her, I’d never be anything but a
miserable shyster, living from hand to mouth, despising myself and all I
did, coming perhaps in time to hate her because she had been the cause
of my degradation. She went to Judge McLaurin, and asked him to tell her
the truth. He told her, old Covenanter that he was. Then she went up the
mountain to Boyce and asked him if he wanted her to come back to him.
She knew that it was the only action I’d consider final. He told her to
come. She told me that she was leaving me. I pleaded with her all that
night, but she went with the dawn. I couldn’t hold her. I went up Pisgah
with her till we came to the trail to Boyce’s cabin. We could see the
wood smoke curling up above the masses of shining green leaves and pink
clusters of the laurel. ‘You’re going away from me,’ she said, ‘far
away, and you’ll climb a higher mountain than Pisgah.’ I begged her to
come with me, but she shook her head. ‘I’m giving you up for your sake,’
she told me. ‘But you need me,’ I pleaded. ‘Not now,’ she said. ‘But
some day I shall, and then I’ll call you. And no matter where you are,
you’ll come, won’t you, Burt?’ I promised her that I would. The last I
saw of her was as she climbed the trail to Boyce’s cabin. From that day
to this”--he touched the crumpled little white letter--“she has sent me
no word.”
“It’s strange, isn’t it,” Rhoda said, her voice not quite steady, “that
a woman may live with a man through long years and never really know him
at all?”
“Should I have told you?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose I’d have married you, even if you
had. It’s not deception, perhaps, when you’ve never seen her nor written
to her since you married me; and yet---- Are you going to her, Burt?”
“To-morrow’s the conference. I must be there if I am to be the man
chosen.”
“Do you want to go?”
“I wonder,” he mused, “if you’ll understand me when I tell you that,
other things being equal, I should go to-night. It’s with no sense of
failing you, and with no idea of helping her, but I promised her--that
I’d come if she called.”
“Even if there weren’t the conference,” Rhoda said, “you’re a marked man
now. You couldn’t go back to a little village in the mountains without
it being known and the reason for it blazoned. It wouldn’t do, would
it?” She could not quite succeed in making her tone judicial. Her own
eagerness palpitated back of the assumed impartiality. “You’ve wanted
the presidency too long to throw away the chance of it.”
“I’ve never wanted it,” he said.
“You don’t mean,” she demanded, her vexation rising into view, “that
I’ve urged you to seek something you haven’t desired?”
“It’s more complex than that,” he shrugged. “I suppose it’s simply that
I married the Armond hope as well as you. Old Peter set a standard for
your family which has kept you all up on your toes. If the dead see, he
must chuckle sometimes over its way of working.”
“Why?” she flared, letting her annoyance catch at a point of difference
less vital than the main issue. “He gave his whole service to his
country. He was one of the really great men of his generation, wasn’t
he? You’ve never known my father as I knew him. You’ve always let
yourself be influenced by the demagogic attacks on him. You’ve thought
that because he made a great fortune he couldn’t be an idealist. Haven’t
you seen that, if he had been a materialist, he wouldn’t have trained
his family as he did? Why, it’s been his torch that I’ve tried to keep
alight, and if I have done anything for you, Burton, it has been by that
torch’s flame.”
“You’ve done a very great deal, Rhoda,” he said. “I’m not questioning
the number or the brightness of the candles you’ve burned in my game.
I’m only questioning the value of the game itself. Power’s like money.
If you give up all else to possess it, then it possesses you.”
“But----”
“I know. I should have chosen long ago. I’m not turning back now. I owe
you that, I think. If I’m anything at all beyond a struggling lawyer in
a little city----” He broke off suddenly as the young servant came to
the library curtains.
“Senator Manning and two other gentlemen,” he announced.
They came almost on his heels, three men with the aspect of dignitaries:
Manning tall, thin, almost cadaverous, with the eye and the hand of a
Richelieu; Wilk heavy, ponderous, inscrutable as a great Buddha; Laflin,
a blend of college professor and Wall Street lawyer, hiding a predatory
keenness behind horn-rimmed spectacles. Characteristically, Stroude
felt, they fell into place, Wilk into the nearest easy chair, Manning
into an Italian seat which put him in the centre of a softly lighted
stage, and Laflin back in the shadows. After a moment of casual
conversation Rhoda rose to leave them. Stroude halted her. “I have an
idea,” he said, “that these gentlemen have come to me on an errand which
concerns you as well as myself.--Do you mind if she stays?”
“Not at all,” said Manning suavely. Laflin nodded, and old man Wilk
grunted assent. Rhoda went over beyond Laflin as far outside the group
as she could, and just out of her husband’s line of vision; but he
turned his chair a little, that he might encompass her in his sight as
Manning began to speak.
“It makes it a little easier for us,” he said, “that you have guessed
something of our mission.”
“I couldn’t help knowing,” Stroude swung back, “when every other man in
the Senate has known it for days.”
“Not definitely,” boomed Wilk. “There’s always talk, of course, and
often more smoke than fire.”
“Sometimes it’s only a screen for the protection of a real issue,”
Manning went on, “but in this case the fire is burning. You know, I am
sure, that the conference to determine the best candidate for the next
term of the presidency is to be held here in Washington to-morrow.”
“At noon,” smiled Stroude.
“Your information,” Manning said, “is speedy as well as accurate. The
time was not determined until seven o’clock this evening. Seven men know
it.”
“And their wives,” cut in Laflin, peering at Rhoda.
“We have canvassed the field thoroughly before coming to you,” Manning
continued with his air of authoritative spokesmanship. “We have
eliminated, for one reason or another, all the men who have been under
consideration. Bannister is too old. Maxwell is too radical. Vandringham
is too theatrical. Stearns is too variable. Durham is too light.
Landreau lacks the necessary tradition. Penn comes from the wrong
location. Jarvis jumped the party. The process brings us to you.”
“How about Corliss?”
“I don’t mind telling you,” Manning said, “that Carmichael is fighting
desperately for Corliss, and that, without Covinger’s help, he _might_
be able to swing the conference. Mr. Laflin, Senator Wilk, and I have
never swerved from our determination to have you. Carmichael has Bennett
and Franklin with him. Covinger is the determining vote. You have him.”
“Are you sure?”
“Certain. He’s attending on Parker’s proxy. We won that point this
afternoon. He’s solidly with you.”
“Even against Corliss? Corliss is from his state.”
“Even against him.”
“Why?”
“Well, it seems that Corliss has an old scandal against him which
frightens Covinger. He’s afraid that it might make an election issue. By
the way---- You’re not interested in these affairs, Mrs. Stroude?”
“Very vitally,” she said, “and there’s nothing you need fear to discuss
before me.”
Manning cleared his throat, and old man Wilk stirred uneasily in his
chair. Laflin’s mobile mouth twisted.
“Go on,” said Stroude. “What’s the charge?”
“Carmichael says,” Manning stated, “that there’s an old story back in
your own state, Stroude, that might explode. We’ve all known you a good
many years, all of us but Laflin, and we’ve never heard a whisper of it.
I have told him that I do not believe it. So has Senator Wilk.”
“What’s the story?” Stroude’s fingers, lighting a match, did not
tremble.
“Well, if you insist----”
“I do.”
“Carmichael says that you stole another man’s wife.”
“There was no theft about it. She came with me. Later she went back to
her husband. I left the place, started to practise law, and married. My
wife never heard the story until to-night.” He looked down at Dell
Martin’s letter, not yet read by him, topping the documents on the table
in front of him. “It’s an old story,” he said, “and one not likely to
explode unless----”
“Unless what?” Laflin demanded from the gloom.
“Unless I choose to revive it by an overt act,” Stroude retorted. “It
all happened more than twenty-five years ago in a tiny community in the
mountains. I know the people there. They’re my kind, my stock. They
won’t talk to strangers coming in. There’s only one way the newspapers
could get the story. I’d have to lead them to it.”
“That’s true,” old man Wilk grunted. “I know the mountains.”
“Then it’s settled,” Manning said with evident relief. “I fancy a story
as old as that, cut off altogether by the time between, could not be a
very appalling Banquo’s ghost.” He arose a little wearily. “You’ll be
at the conference to-morrow?” He named the time and place. “It’s
necessary that you should be. Without you, Covinger may switch. You may
have to combat Carmichael directly. You’ll be ready?”
“If I’m--if it’s necessary,” Stroude said.
The other two men stood up. Wilk unwieldily, Laflin with quick ease,
smiling at Stroude as he held out his hand. “This was a real
star-chamber session,” he said, “according to the best rules of old
Peter Armond. Wouldn’t the old pirate have loved to sit in a ten-minute
game of four men who decided the next president?”
“What do you mean?” Rhoda’s voice rang out in challenge, and Manning and
Wilk rushed to speech to head off Laflin, but he went on in almost
boyish unconcern: “Old Peter trained me, you know, and I’ve always had a
soft spot for him in my heart, although I’ve known what a wolf in
sheep’s clothing he was. We have to hand it to him, though, that with
all his grafting and his materialism, he was a great party builder. He
was the first of the Warwicks in American national life. We’re just
rattling around in his shoes, but we’ll do our best to put you over.”
He moved off, almost pushed by Manning’s eagerness to depart, but his
voice seemed to linger in the room after the three of them had gone.
Stroude sat toying with a paper-knife. Rhoda, deep in the shadows, did
not stir. A clock in the hall boomed twelve. Stroude, sighing, put his
hand over Dell Martin’s letter. Then Rhoda spoke. “Is Mr. Laflin telling
the truth about my father,” she asked Stroude, “or what he thinks is the
truth?”
“The truth.”
“That he wasn’t an idealist--a patriot?”
“Well, if he was----”
“I understand. And you’ve known it always?”
“Since before I knew you.”
“Then do you mean”--she came back to the chair beside the table--“that
through all these years my standards have meant nothing to you? That you
have known them to be false?”
“They aren’t false,” he said. “The standards are true enough.”
“But the man who gave them to me wasn’t?”
“Well, he didn’t live up to the code.”
“Your own code?”
“I’ve tried to hold to it.”
“The one Judge McLaurin taught you?”
“The very one. The one Judge Foxwell taught _him_. He got it, I believe,
from John Marshall. Don’t think about it, Rhoda. Those old boys lived in
different days. Sometimes I think that I’m an anachronism.” He sought to
smile at her, but the smile faded before her intensity. “Don’t let a
chance word of Laflin’s bother you,” he counselled. “He didn’t know you,
of course, as your father’s daughter, or he’d have cut out his tongue
before saying what he did.”
“It doesn’t matter who said it,” she declared. “It’s not that alone that
hurts; it’s the knowledge that I’ve meant so little to you that cuts
deep--now. I used to think, Burt, even when I knew that you didn’t love
me, that I was giving you something fine and splendid. I let myself
believe that the Armond tradition was the beacon which was lighting your
way. I thought that if I couldn’t give you anything else, I was at least
giving you that torch. And now I find out that the light I was holding
for you was only marsh fire. You’ve never needed me!” Her voice rose to
accusation.
“Oh, yes,” he countered, but he could not put verity into his tone.
“No,” she said. “You don’t owe me anything for the playing of the game.
I’ve loved that for itself.”
“But you thought you were giving me the other----”
“And I wasn’t. It’s really a joke, isn’t it? A buccaneer teaching his
family the Golden Rule, and the family passing it on!”
“It isn’t a joke, Rhoda. I’ve always taken it in the measure of your
intention.”
“And been sorry for me?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never sought pity.”
“None of us do.”
“It’s funny, isn’t it,” she mused, “that one woman who loved you set you
free, so that another woman whom you didn’t love might take away that
freedom?”
“I’ve had as much freedom as most men,” he said, but his eyes went back
to the crumpled missive. Rhoda’s glance, following his, saw its
significance. “Read it,” she challenged him. He hesitated an instant, as
if doubting his desire to read it before her watchfulness, then drew the
letter from its envelope.
Pale tracing on common paper met his gaze. “_Burt_,” he read, “_you’re a
great man now, and maybe you’ve forgotten me. I’ve never forgotten you.
Every morning and every night I’ve prayed for you. Boyce has been good
to me, better than I deserved; but oh, Burt, all that my life has been
since I left you is just a hope that eternity will bring us together
again. I used to believe it would, but I’m getting afraid, now that it’s
coming near. Won’t you come to me for just one hour before I go? You
told me once that hell wouldn’t keep you if I_----”
Before the pathos of the call something in Stroude’s soul trembled. He
didn’t love Dell now, he told himself as he came to the end of the page.
He hadn’t loved her in twenty years. There was no thrill of remembered
passion rising from the white page to stir his heart, but there was
something deeper, more poignant than romance in the plea which this
woman in the mountains had sent him across time and distance. Through
those long years she had never wavered in her belief in him and in the
promise he had made to her. Out of the depths of his spirit he had told
her that he would come to her if she should ever need him. It was a
promise given not only to the woman who had heard and heeded it, but to
the God of his faith and his fathers. If he failed to keep it, no matter
what the cost, he would be violating more than an old love. He would be
tearing down his own code. Through whatever glory might come to him he
would know himself as a man who had failed in the one virtue on which he
had always prided himself, the keeping of his word. It was an oath he
had taken to Dell Martin, just as he would take an oath to uphold the
Constitution of the United States if--if he climbed the mountain of
Rhoda’s vision!
Realization of the immediacy of his problem came to him with the sight
of his wife’s fan, broken, lying beyond the letter in his hand. He
looked up to find Rhoda’s eyes studying him. But he must not fail her,
he told himself, snatching at the straw of conventionality in the
current of emotion. The very fact that he had not given her love put him
under obligation to her. Because of her, because of the expectations
she had harboured for him, because of the time and thought and labour
she had spent for the advancement she had thought he sought, because of
her very disillusionment now, he could not fail her. He must go to the
conference, even if it meant the breaking of a vow he had made before
the altar of his one great love. It was part of the price, he reasoned,
that all men pay for power; but he felt that something within him was
dying as he turned the page of Dell Martin’s letter.
“--_if I called for you_,” he picked up the thread. “_That was why I
didn’t call when I needed you before, when our boy was born. I couldn’t
let you know about him. You’d never have let me go if you’d known. But
it doesn’t matter now, does it? And oh, Burt, I need you so! If you’ll
only hold my hand again, I won’t fear the crossing. And perhaps when you
come to die, you’ll find the going easier if you have the memory of this
hour you’ll give me. Won’t you come?_” It was signed waveringly,
“_Dell_.”
He folded it back into the envelope, and put it in his pocket. “You
aren’t going?” Rhoda asked him, her voice strangely strained.
“Yes,” he said, “I’m going.”
“But to-morrow----”
“It’s the long years afterward I’m thinking of,” he told her.
“And the nomination----”
“Sometimes the things we put out of our lives,” he said, “are the only
things we really keep.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “I can’t understand you at all to-night,
Burton. Why should a man give up the highest honour a nation can give
him----”
“There are other kinds of honour, Rhoda.”
“To go to a woman he hasn’t seen for twenty-five years?”
“She is the----” he began, then halted quickly in the fear of the hurt
his word might give her.
“I understand,” she said.
She picked up her broken fan, and moved toward the door, but before she
reached it, turned back. Her face was stonily calm. “Shall I telephone
Senator Manning in the morning that you will not be there?” she asked
him.
“If you will,” he said.
As his car bore him past the shadowy white pile on the other side of the
Square, Stroude sighed. A man does not live with a dream--even the dream
of another--through season after season without catching some gleam of
its radiance; but in Boyce Martin’s straight look as he met him at the
train gate, Stroude began to drink of his justification.
“You Stroudes always kept your word,” the other man said.
“We aim to,” said Stroude, unconsciously slipping back into the
vernacular of his youth. “It was her letter,” he explained. “I never
knew about the boy.”
“I know,” said Martin. “I--I’ve loved him as if he’d been the child I’ve
never had. That’s why I came for you.” He held out his hand and Stroude
grasped it. “You’re one of us, after all.”
As the train slid past the Potomac and threaded the low pines of the
Virginia river lands, Stroude pondered the mountaineer’s tribute. In the
light of it he saw the path to Dell Martin’s cabin leading higher than
the way across the Square. For the first time in many years he felt the
surge of freedom rising in his soul. A thousand shackles fell away as
the last lights of Washington slid down on the horizon.
THE ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL
BY BOOTH TARKINGTON
From _McCall’s_
The new one hundred dollar bill, clean and green, freshening the heart
with the colour of springtime, slid over the glass of the teller’s
counter and passed under his grille to a fat hand, dingy on the
knuckles, but brightened by a flawed diamond. This interesting hand was
a part of one of those men who seem to have too much fattened muscle for
their clothes: his shoulders distended his overcoat; his calves strained
the sprightly checked cloth, a little soiled, of his trousers; his short
neck bulged above the glossy collar. His hat, round and black as a pot
and appropriately small, he wore slightly obliqued, while under its
curled brim his small eyes twinkled surreptitiously between those upper
and nether puffs of flesh that mark the too faithful practitioner of
unhallowed gaieties. Such was the first individual owner of the new one
hundred dollar bill, and he at once did what might have been expected of
him.
Moving away from the teller’s grille, he made a cylindrical packet of
bills smaller in value--“ones” and “fives”--then placed round them, as a
wrapper, the beautiful one hundred dollar bill, snapped a rubber band
over it; and the desired inference was plain: a roll all of hundred
dollar bills, inside as well as outside. Something more was plain, too:
obviously the man’s small head had a sportive plan in it, for the
twinkle between his eye puffs hinted of liquor in the offing and lively
women impressed by a show of masterly riches. Here, in brief, was a man
who meant to make a night of it, who would feast, dazzle, compel
deference and be loved. For money gives power, and power is loved; no
doubt he would be loved. He was happy, and went out of the bank
believing that money is made for joy.
So little should we be certain of our happiness in this world. The
splendid one hundred dollar bill was taken from him untimely, before
nightfall that very evening. At the corner of two busy streets he parted
with it to the law, though in a mood of excruciating reluctance and only
after a cold-blooded threatening on the part of the lawyer. This latter
walked away thoughtfully with the one hundred dollar bill, not now quite
so clean, in his pocket.
Collinson was the lawyer’s name, and in years he was only twenty-eight,
but already of the slightly harried appearance that marks the young
husband who begins to suspect that the better part of his life was his
bachelorhood. His dark, ready-made clothes, his twice soled shoes, and
his hair, which was too long for a neat and businesslike aspect, were
symptoms of necessary economy; but he did not wear the eager look of a
man who saves to “get on for himself.” Collinson’s look was that of an
employed man who only deepens his rut with his pacing of it.
An employed man he was, indeed; a lawyer without much hope of ever
seeing his name on the door or on the letters of the firm that employed
him, and his most important work was the collection of small debts. This
one hundred dollar bill now in his pocket was such a collection, small
to the firm and the client, though of a noble size to himself and the
long-pursued debtor from whom he had just collected it.
The banks were closed; so was the office, for it was six o’clock and
Collinson was on his way home when by chance he encountered the debtor:
there was nothing to do but to keep the bill overnight. This was no
hardship, however, as he had a faint pleasure in the unfamiliar
experience of walking home with such a thing in his pocket; and he felt
a little important by proxy when he thought of it.
Upon the city the November evening had come down dark and moist. Lighted
windows and street lamps appeared and disappeared in the altering
thicknesses of fog, but at intervals, as Collinson walked on northward,
he passed a small shop, or a cluster of shops, where the light was close
to him and bright, and at one of these oases of illumination he lingered
a moment, with a thought to buy a toy in the window for his
three-year-old little girl. The toy was a gaily coloured acrobatic
monkey that willingly climbed up and down a string, and he knew that the
“baby,” as he and his wife still called their child, would scream with
delight at the sight of it. He hesitated, staring into the window rather
longingly, and wondering if he ought to make such a purchase. He had
twelve dollars of his own in his pocket, but the toy was marked “35
cents,” and he decided he could not afford it. So he sighed and went on,
turning presently into a darker street.
When he reached home, the baby was crying over some inward perplexity
not to be explained; and his wife, pretty and a little frowzy, was as
usual, and as he had expected. That is to say, he found her irritated by
cooking, bored by the baby, and puzzled by the dull life she led. Other
women, it appeared, had happy and luxurious homes, and during the
malnutritious dinner she had prepared she mentioned many such women by
name, laying particular stress upon the achievements of their husbands.
Why should she (“alone,” as she put it) lead the life she did in one
room and a kitchenette, without even being able to afford to go to the
movies more than once or twice a month? Mrs. Theodore Thompson’s husband
had bought a perfectly beautiful little sedan automobile; he gave his
wife everything she wanted. Mrs. Will Gregory had merely mentioned that
her old Hudson seal coat was wearing a little, and her husband had
instantly said: “What’ll a new one come to, girlie? Four or five
hundred? Run and get it!” Why were other women’s husbands like that--and
why, oh, why--was hers like _this_?”
“My goodness!” he said. “You talk as if I had sedans and sealskin coats
and theatre tickets _on_ me! Well, I haven’t; that’s all!”
“Then go out and get ’em!” she said fiercely. “Go out and get ’em!”
“What with?” he inquired. “I have twelve dollars in my pocket, and a
balance of seventeen dollars at the bank; that’s twenty-nine. I get
twenty-five from the office day after to-morrow--Saturday; that makes
fifty-four; but we have to pay forty-five for rent on Monday; so that’ll
leave us nine dollars. Shall I buy you a sedan and a sealskin coat on
Tuesday, out of the nine?”
Mrs. Collinson began to weep a little. “The old, old story!” she said.
“Six long, long years it’s been going on now! I ask you how much you’ve
got, and you say, ‘nine dollars,’ or ‘seven dollars,’ or ‘four dollars,’
and once it was sixty-five cents! Sixty-five cents; that’s what we had
to live on! Sixty-five _cents_!”
“Oh, hush!” he said wearily.
“Hadn’t you better hush a little yourself?” she retorted. “You come home
with twelve dollars in your pocket and tell your wife to hush! That’s
nice? Why can’t you do what decent men do?”
“What’s that?”
“Why, give their wives something to live for. What do you give me, I’d
like to know! Look at the clothes I wear, please!”
“Well, it’s your own fault,” he muttered.
“What did you say! Did you say it’s my fault I wear clothes any women I
know wouldn’t be _seen_ in?”
“Yes, I did. If you hadn’t made me get you that platinum ring----”
“What!” she cried, and flourished her hand at him across the table.
“Look at it! It’s platinum, yes; but look at the stone in it, about the
size of a pinhead, so’s I’m ashamed to wear it when any of my friends
see me! A hundred and sixteen dollars is what this magnificent ring cost
you, and how long did I have to beg before I got even that little out of
you? And it’s the best thing I own and the only thing I ever did get out
of you!”
“Oh, Lordy!” he moaned.
“I wish you’d seen Charlie Loomis looking at this ring to-day,” she
said, with a desolate laugh. “He happened to notice it, and I saw him
keep glancing at it, and I wish you’d seen Charlie Loomis’s expression!”
Collinson’s own expression became noticeable upon her introduction of
this name; he stared at her gravely until he completed the mastication
of one of the indigestibles she had set before him; then he put down his
fork and said:
“So you saw Charlie Loomis again to-day. Where?”
“Oh, my!” she sighed. “Have we got to go over all that again?”
“Over all what?”
“Over all the fuss you made the last time I mentioned Charlie’s name. I
thought we settled it you were going to be a little more sensible about
him.”
“Yes,” Collinson returned. “_I_ was going to be more sensible about him,
because _you_ were going to be more sensible about him. Wasn’t that the
agreement?”
She gave him a hard glance, tossed her head so that the curls of her
bobbed hair fluttered prettily, and with satiric mimicry repeated his
question. “‘Agreement’! Wasn’t that the agreement! Oh, my, but you do
make me tired, talking about ‘agreements’! As if it was a crime my going
to a vaudeville matinée with a man kind enough to notice that my husband
never takes me anywhere!”
“Did you go to a vaudeville with him to-day?”
“No, I didn’t!” she said. “I was talking about the time when you made
such a fuss. I didn’t go anywhere with him to-day.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Collinson said. “I wouldn’t have stood for it.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t?” she cried, and added a shrill laugh as further
comment. “You ‘wouldn’t have stood for it’!”
“Never mind,” he returned doggedly. “We went over all that the last
time, and you understand me: I’ll have no more foolishness about Charlie
Loomis.”
“How nice of you! He’s a friend of yours; you go with him yourself; but
your wife mustn’t even look at him, just because he happens to be the
one man that amuses her a little. That’s fine!”
“Never mind,” Collinson said again. “You say you saw him to-day. I want
to know where.”
“Suppose I don’t choose to tell you.”
“You’d better tell me, I think.”
“Do you? I’ve got to answer for every minute of my day, have I?”
“I want to know where you saw Charlie Loomis.”
She tossed her curls again, and laughed. “Isn’t it funny!” she said.
“Just because I like a man, he’s the one person I can’t have anything to
do with! Just because he’s kind and jolly and amusing, and I like his
jokes and his thoughtfulness toward a woman when he’s with her, I’m not
to be allowed to see him at all! But my _husband_--oh, that’s entirely
different! _He_ can go out with Charlie whenever he likes and have a
good time, while I stay home and wash the dishes! Oh, it’s a lovely
life!”
“Where did you see him to-day?”
Instead of answering his question, she looked at him plaintively and
allowed tears to shine along her lower eyelids. “Why do you treat me
like this?” she asked in a feeble voice. “Why can’t I have a man friend
if I want to? I do like Charlie Loomis. I do like him----”
“Yes! That’s what I noticed!”
“Well, but what’s the good of always insulting me about him? He has time
on his hands of afternoons, and so have I. Our janitor’s wife is crazy
about the baby and just adores to have me leave her in their flat--the
longer the better. Why shouldn’t I go to a matinée or a picture show
sometimes with Charlie? Why should I just have to sit around instead of
going out and having a nice time, when he wants me to?”
“I want to know where you saw him to-day!”
Mrs. Collinson jumped up. “You make me sick!” she said, and began to
clear away the dishes.
“I want to know where----”
“Oh, hush up!” she cried. “He came here to leave a note for you.”
“Oh,” said her husband. “I beg your pardon. That’s different.”
“How sweet of you!”
“Where’s the note, please?”
She took it from her pocket and tossed it to him. “So long as it’s a
note for _you_ it’s all right, of course,” she said. “I wonder what
you’d do if he’d written one to me!”
“Never mind,” said Collinson, and read the note.
DEAR COLLIE: Dave and Smithie and Old Bill and Sammy Hoag and maybe
Steinie and Sol are coming over to the shack about eight-thirty.
Home brew and the old pastime. _You_ know! Don’t fail.
CHARLIE.
“You’ve read this of course,” Collinson said. “The envelope wasn’t
sealed.”
“I have not,” his wife returned, covering the prevarication with a cold
dignity. “I’m not in the habit of reading other people’s correspondence,
thank you! I suppose you think I do so because you’d never hesitate to
read any note _I_ got; but I don’t do everything you do, you see!”
“Well, you can read it now,” he said, and gave her the note.
Her eyes swept the writing briefly, and she made a sound of wonderment,
as if amazed to find herself so true a prophet. “And the words weren’t
more than out of my mouth! _You_ can go and have a grand party right in
his flat, while your wife stays home and gets the baby to bed and washes
the dishes!”
“I’m not going.”
“Oh, no!” she said mockingly. “I suppose not! I see you missing one of
Charlie’s stag parties!”
“I’ll miss this one.”
But it was not to Mrs. Collinson’s purpose that he should miss the
party; she wished him to be as intimate as possible with the debonair
Charlie Loomis; and so, after carrying some dishes into the kitchenette
in meditative silence, she reappeared with a changed manner. She went to
her husband, gave him a shy little pat on the shoulder and laughed
good-naturedly. “Of course you’ll go,” she said. “I do think you’re
silly about my never going out with him when it would give me a little
innocent pleasure and when you’re not home to take me, yourself; but I
wasn’t really in such terrible earnest, all I said. You work hard the
whole time, honey, and the only pleasure you ever do have, it’s when you
get a chance to go to one of these little penny-ante stag parties. You
haven’t been to one for ever so long, and you never stay after twelve;
it’s really all right with me. I want you to go.”
“Oh, no,” said Collinson. “It’s only penny-ante, but I couldn’t afford
to lose anything at all.”
“If you did lose, it’d only be a few cents,” she said. “What’s the
difference, if it gives you a little fun? You’ll work all the better if
you go out and enjoy yourself once in a while.”
“Well, if you really look at it that way, I’ll go.”
“That’s right, dear,” she said, smiling. “Better put on a fresh collar
and your other suit, hadn’t you?”
“I suppose so,” he assented, and began to make the changes she
suggested.
When he had completed his toilet, it was time for him to go. She came
in from the kitchenette, kissed him, and then looked up into his eyes,
letting him see a fond and brightly amiable expression.
“There, honey,” she said. “Run along and have a nice time. Then maybe
you’ll be a little more sensible about some of _my_ little pleasures.”
He held the one hundred dollar bill folded in his hand, meaning to leave
it with her, but as she spoke a sudden recurrence of suspicion made him
forget his purpose. “Look here,” he said. “I’m not making any bargain
with you. You talk as if you thought I was going to let you run around
to vaudevilles with Charlie because you let me go to this party. Is that
your idea?”
It was, indeed, precisely Mrs. Collinson’s idea, and she was instantly
angered enough to admit it in her retort. “Oh, aren’t you _mean_!” she
cried. “I might know better than to look for any fairness in a man like
you!”
“See here----”
“Oh, hush up!” she said. “Shame on you! Go on to your party!” With that
she put both hands upon his breast, and pushed him toward the door.
“I won’t go. I’ll stay here.”
“You will, too, go!” she cried, shrewishly. “_I_ don’t want to look at
you around here all evening. It’d make me sick to look at a man without
an ounce of fairness in his whole mean little body!”
“All right,” said Collinson, violently, “I _will_ go!”
“Yes! Get out of my sight!”
And he did, taking the one hundred dollar bill with him, to the
penny-ante poker party.
The gay Mr. Charlie Loomis called his apartment “the shack” in jocular
depreciation of its beauty and luxury, but he regarded it as a perfect
thing, and in one way it was: for it was perfectly in the family
likeness of a thousand such “shacks.” It had a ceiling with false beams,
walls of green burlap, spotted with coloured “coaching prints,” brown
shelves supporting pewter plates and mugs, “mission” chairs, a leather
couch with violent cushions, silver-framed photographs of lady friends
and officer friends, a drop light of pink-shot imitation alabaster, a
papier-mâché skull tobacco jar among moving-picture magazines on the
round card table; and, of course, the final Charlie Loomis touch--a
Japanese manservant.
The master of all this was one of those neat, stoutish young men with
fat, round heads, sleek, fair hair, immaculate, pale complexions, and
infirm little pink mouths--in fact, he was of the type that may suggest
to the student of resemblances a fastidious and excessively clean white
pig with transparent ears. Nevertheless, Charlie Loomis was of a
free-handed habit in some matters, being particularly indulgent to
pretty women and their children. He spoke of the latter as “the
kiddies,” of course, and liked to call their mothers “kiddo,” or
“girlie.” One of his greatest pleasures was to tell a woman that she was
“the dearest, bravest little girlie in the world.” Naturally he was a
welcome guest in many households, and would often bring a really
magnificent toy to the child of some friend whose wife he was courting.
Moreover, at thirty-three, he had already done well enough in business
to take things easily, and he liked to give these little card parties,
not for gain, but for pastime. He was cautious and disliked high stakes
in a game of chance.
“I don’t consider it hospitality to have any man go out o’ my shack
sore,” he was wont to say. “Myself, I’m a bachelor and got no
obligations; I’ll shoot any man that can afford it for anything he wants
to. Trouble is, you never can tell when a man _can’t_ afford it or what
harm his losin’ might mean to the little girlie at home and the kiddies.
No, boys, penny-ante and ten-cent limit is the highest we go in this ole
shack. Penny-ante and a few steins of the ole home-brew that hasn’t got
a divorce in a barrel of it!”
Penny-ante and the ole home-brew had been in festal operation for half
an hour when the morose Collinson arrived this evening. Mr. Loomis and
his guests sat about the round table under the alabaster drop light;
their coats were off; cigars were worn at the deliberative poker angle;
colourful chips and cards glistened on the cloth; one of the players
wore a green shade over his eyes; and all in all, here was a little
poker party for a lithograph.
“Ole Collie, b’gosh!” Mr. Loomis shouted, humorously. “Here’s your
vacant cheer; stack all stuck out for you ’n’ ever’thin’! Set daown,
neighbour, an’ Smithie’ll deal you in, next hand. What made you so late?
Helpin’ the little girlie at home get the kiddy to bed? That’s a great
kiddy of yours, Collie.”
Collinson took the chair that had been left for him, counted his chips
and then as the playing of a “hand” still preoccupied three of the
company, he picked up a silver dollar that lay upon the table near him.
“What’s this?” he asked. “A side bet? Or did somebody just leave it here
for me?”
“Yes; for you to look at,” Mr. Loomis explained. “It’s Smithie’s.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothin’. Smithie was just showin’ it to us. Look at it.”
Collinson turned the coin over and saw a tiny inscription that had been
lined into the silver with a point of steel. “Luck,” he read--“Luck
hurry back to me!” Then he spoke to the owner of this marked dollar. “I
suppose you put that on there, Smithie, to help make sure of getting our
money to-night.”
But Smithie shook his head, which was a large, gaunt head, as it
happened--a head fronted with a sallow face shaped much like a coffin,
but inconsistently genial in expression. “No,” he said. “It just came in
over my counter this afternoon, and I noticed it when I was checkin’ up
the day’s cash. Funny, ain’t it: ‘Luck hurry back to me!’”
“Who do you suppose marked that on it?” Collinson said thoughtfully.
“Golly!” his host exclaimed. “It won’t do you much good to wonder about
that!”
Collinson frowned, continuing to stare at the marked dollar. “I guess
not, but really I should like to know.”
“I would, too,” Smithie said. “I been thinkin’ about it. Might ’a’ been
somebody in Seattle or somebody in Ipswich, Mass., or New Orleans or St.
Paul. How you goin’ to tell? It’s funny how some people like to believe
luck depends on some little thing like that.”
“Yes, it is,” Collinson assented, still brooding over the coin.
The philosophic Smithie extended his arm across the table collecting the
cards to deal them, for the “hand” was finished. “Yes, sir, it’s funny,”
he repeated. “Nobody knows exactly what luck is, but the way I guess it
out, it lays in a man’s _believin’_ he’s in luck, and some little object
like this makes him kind of concentrate his mind on thinkin’ he’s goin’
to be lucky, because of course you often _know_ you’re goin’ to win, and
then you do win. You don’t win when you _want_ to win, or when you need
to; you win when you believe you’ll win. I don’t know who it was that
said, ‘Money’s the root of all evil’; but I guess he didn’t have _too_
much sense! I suppose if some man killed some other man for a dollar,
the poor fish that said that would let the man out and send the dollar
to the chair----”
But here this garrulous and discursive guest was interrupted by
immoderate protests from several of his colleagues. “Cut it out!” “My
Lord!” “_Do_ something!” “Smith_ie_! Are you ever goin’ to _deal_?”
“I’m goin’ to shuffle first,” he responded, suiting the action to the
word, though with deliberation, and at the same time continuing his
discourse. “It’s a mighty interesting thing, a piece o’ money. You take
this dollar, now: Who’s it belonged to? Where’s it been? What different
kind o’ funny things has it been spent for sometimes? What funny kind of
secrets do you suppose it could ’a’ heard if it had ears? Good people
have had it and bad people have had it: why, a dollar could tell more
about the human race--why, it could tell _all_ about it!”
“I guess it couldn’t tell all about the way you’re dealin’ those cards,”
said the man with the green shade. “You’re mixin’ things all up.”
“I’ll straighten ’em all out then,” said Smithie cheerfully. “They say,
‘Money talks.’ Golly! If it _could_ talk, what couldn’t it tell?
_No_body’d be safe. _I_ got this dollar now, but who’s it goin’ to
belong to next, and what’ll _he_ do with it? And then after _that_! Why,
for years and years and years, it’ll go on from one pocket to another,
in a millionaire’s house one day, in some burglar’s flat the next,
maybe, and in one person’s hand money’ll do good, likely, and in
another’s it’ll do harm. We all _want_ money; but some say it’s a bad
thing, like that dummy I was talkin’ about. Lordy! Goodness or badness,
I’ll take all anybody----”
He was interrupted again, and with increased vehemence. Collinson, who
sat next to him, complied with the demand to “ante up,” then placed the
dollar near his little cylinder of chips, and looked at his cards. They
proved unencouraging, and he turned to his neighbour. “I’d sort of like
to have that marked dollar, Smithie,” he said. “I’ll give you a paper
dollar, Smithie,” he said. “I’ll give you a paper dollar and a nickel
for it.”
But Smithie laughed, shook his head and slid the coin over toward his
own chips. “No, sir. I’m goin’ to keep it--awhile, anyway.”
“So you do think it’ll bring you luck, after all!”
“No. But I’ll hold on to it for this evening, anyhow.”
“Not if we clean you out, you won’t,” said Charlie Loomis. “You know the
rules o’ the old shack: only cash goes in _this_ game; no I. O. U. stuff
ever went here or ever will. Tell you what I’ll do, though, before you
lose it: I’ll give you a dollar and a quarter for your ole silver
dollar, Smithie.”
“Oh, you want it, too, do you? I guess I can spot what sort of luck
_you_ want it for, Charlie.”
“Well, Mr. Bones, what sort of luck do I want it for?”
“_You_ win, Smithie,” one of the other players said. “We all know what
sort o’ luck ole Charlie wants your dollar for: he wants it for luck
with the dames.”
“Well, I might,” Charlie admitted not displeased. “I haven’t been so
lucky that way lately--not so dog-_gone_ lucky!”
All of his guests, except one, laughed at this; but Collinson frowned,
still staring at the marked dollar. For a reason he could not have put
into words just then, it began to seem almost vitally important to him
to own this coin if he could, and to prevent Charlie Loomis from getting
possession of it. The jibe, “He wants it for luck with the dames,”
rankled in Collinson’s mind: somehow it seemed to refer to his wife.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Smithie,” he said. “I’ll bet two dollars
against that dollar of yours that I hold a higher hand next deal than
you do.”
“Here! Here!” Charlie remonstrated. “Shack rules! Ten-cent limit.”
“That’s only for the game,” Collinson said, turning upon his host with a
sudden sharpness. “This is an outside bet between Smithie and me. Will
you do it, Smithie? Where’s your sporting spirit?”
So liberal a proposal at once roused the spirit to which it appealed.
“Well, I might, if some o’ the others’ll come in, too, and make it
really worth my while.”
“I’m in,” the host responded with prompt inconsistency; and others of
the party, it appeared, were desirous of owning the talisman. They
laughed and said it was “crazy stuff,” yet they all “came in,” and, for
the first time in the history of this “shack,” what Mr. Loomis called
“real money,” was seen upon the table as a stake. It was won, and the
silver dollar with it, by the largest and oldest of the gamesters, a fat
man with a walrus moustache that inevitably made him known in this
circle as “Old Bill.” He smiled condescendingly, and would have put the
dollar in his pocket with the “real money,” but Mr. Loomis protested.
“Here! What you doin’?” he shouted, catching Old Bill by the arm. “Put
that dollar back on the table.”
“What for?”
“What _for_? Why, we’re goin’ to play for it again. Here’s two dollars
against it I beat you on the next hand.”
“No,” said Old Billy calmly. “It’s worth more than two dollars to me.
It’s worth five.”
“Well, five then,” his host returned. “I want that dollar!” “So do I,”
said Collinson. “I’ll put in five dollars if you do.”
“Anybody else in?” Old Bill inquired, dropping the coin on the table;
and all of the others again “came in.” Old Bill won again; but once more
Charlie Loomis prevented him from putting the silver dollar in his
pocket.
“Come on now!” Mr. Loomis exclaimed. “Anybody else but me in on this for
five dollars next time?”
“I am,” said Collinson, swallowing with a dry throat; and he set forth
all that remained to him of his twelve dollars. In return he received a
pair of deuces, and the jubilant Charlie won.
He was vainglorious in his triumph. “Didn’t that little luck piece just
keep on tryin’ to find the right man?” he cried, and read the
inscription loudly. “‘Luck hurry back to me!’ Righto! You’re home where
you belong, girlie! Now we’ll settle down to our reg’lar little game
again.”
“Oh, no,” said Old Bill. “You wouldn’t let me keep it. Put it out there
and play for it again.”
“I won’t. She’s mine now.”
“I want my luck piece back myself,” said Smithie. “Put it out and play
for it. You made Old Bill.”
“I won’t do it.”
“Yes, you will,” Collinson said, and he spoke without geniality. “You
put it out there.”
“Oh, yes, I will,” Mr. Loomis returned mockingly. “I will for ten
dollars.”
“Not I,” said Old Bill. “Five is foolish enough.” And Smithie agreed
with him. “Nor me!”
“All right, then. If you’re afraid of ten, I keep it. I thought the
ten’d scare you.”
“Put that dollar on the table,” Collinson said. “I’ll put ten against
it.”
There was a little commotion among these mild gamesters; and someone
said: “You’re crazy, Collie. What do you want to do that for?”
“I don’t care,” said Collinson. “That dollar’s already cost me enough,
and I’m going after it.”
“Well, you see, I want it, too,” Charlie Loomis retorted cheerfully; and
he appealed to the others. “I’m not askin’ him to put up ten against it,
am I?”
“Maybe not,” Old Bill assented. “But how long is this thing goin’ to
keep on? It’s already balled our game all up, and if we keep on foolin’
with these side bets, why, what’s the use?”
“My goodness!” the host exclaimed. “_I’m_ not pushin’ this thing, am I?
_I_ don’t want to risk my good old luck piece, do I? It’s Collie that’s
crazy to go on, ain’t it?” He laughed. “He hasn’t showed his money yet,
though, I notice, and this old shack is run on strickly cash principles.
I don’t believe he’s got ten dollars more on him!”
“Oh, yes, I have.”
“Let’s see it then.”
Collinson’s nostrils distended a little, but he said nothing, fumbled in
his pocket, and then tossed the one hundred dollar bill, rather
crumpled, upon the table.
“Great heavens!” shouted Old Bill. “Call the doctor: I’m all of a
swoon!”
“Look at what’s spilled over our nice clean table!” another said, in an
awed voice. “Did you claim he didn’t have _ten_ on him, Charlie?”
“Well, it’s nice to look at,” Smithie observed. “But I’m with Old Bill.
How long are you two goin’ to keep this thing goin’? If Collie wins the
luck piece I suppose Charlie’ll bet him fifteen against it, and
then----”
“No, I won’t,” Charlie interrupted. “Ten’s the limit.”
“Goin’ to keep on bettin’ ten against it all night?”
“No,” said Charlie. “I tell you what I’ll do with you, Collinson; we
both of us seem kind o’ set on this luck piece, and you’re already out
some on it. I’ll give you a square chance at it and at catchin’ even.
It’s twenty minutes after nine. I’ll keep on these side bets with you
till ten o’clock, but when my clock hits ten, we’re through, and the one
that’s got it then keeps it, and no more foolin’. You want to do that,
or quit now? I’m game either way.”
“Go ahead and deal,” said Collinson. “Whichever one of us has it at ten
o’clock, it’s his, and we quit!”
But when the little clock on Charlie’s green painted mantel-shelf struck
ten, the luck piece was Charlie’s and with it an overwhelming lien on
the one hundred dollar bill. He put both in his pocket. “Remember this
ain’t my fault; it was you that insisted,” he said, and handed Collinson
four five-dollar bills as change.
Old Bill, platonically interested, discovered that his cigar was
sparkless, applied a match, and casually set forth his opinion. “Well, I
guess that was about as poor a way of spendin’ eighty dollars as I ever
saw, but it all goes to show there’s truth in the old motto that
anything at all can happen in any poker game! That was a mighty nice
hundred dollar bill you had on you, Collie; but it’s like what Smithie
said: a piece o’ money goes hoppin’ around from one person to
another--it don’t care!--and yours has gone and hopped to Charlie. The
question is: Who’s it goin’ to hop to next?” He paused to laugh, glanced
over the cards that had been dealt him, and concluded: “My guess is ’t
some good-lookin’ woman’ll prob’ly get a pretty fair chunk o’ that
hundred dollar bill out o’ Charlie. Well, let’s settle down to the ole
army game.”
They settled down to it, and by twelve o’clock (the invariable closing
hour of these pastimes in the old shack) Collinson had lost four dollars
and thirty cents more. He was commiserated by his fellow gamesters as
they put on their coats and overcoats, preparing to leave the hot little
rooms. They shook their heads, laughed ruefully in sympathy, and told
him he oughtn’t to carry hundred dollar bills upon his person when he
went out among friends. Old Bill made what is sometimes called an
unfortunate remark.
“Don’t worry about Collie,” he said, jocosely. “That hundred dollar bill
prob’ly belonged to some rich client of his.”
“What!” Collinson said, staring.
“Never mind, Collie; I wasn’t in earnest,” the joker explained. “Of
course I didn’t mean it.”
“Well, you oughtn’t to say it,” Collinson protested. “People say a thing
like that about a man in a joking way, but other people hear it
sometimes and don’t know they’re joking, and a story gets started.”
“My goodness, but you’re serious!” Old Bill exclaimed. “You look like
you had a misery in your chest, as the rubes say; and I don’t blame you!
Get on out in the fresh night air and you’ll feel better.”
He was mistaken, however; the night air failed to improve Collinson’s
spirits as he walked home alone through the dark and chilly streets.
There was, indeed, a misery in his chest, where stirred a sensation
vaguely nauseating; his hands were tremulous and his knees infirm as he
walked. In his mind was a confusion of pictures and sounds, echoes from
Charlie Loomis’s shack: he could not clear his mind’s eye of the one
hundred dollar bill; and its likeness, as it lay crumpled on the green
cloth under the drop light, haunted and hurt him as a face in a coffin
haunts and hurts the new mourner.
It seemed to Collinson then that money was the root of all evil and the
root of all good, the root and branch of all life, indeed. With money,
his wife would have been amiable, not needing gay bachelors to take her
to vaudevilles. Her need of money was the true foundation of the
jealousy that had sent him out morose and reckless to-night; of the
jealousy that had made it seem, when he gambled with Charlie Loomis for
the luck dollar, as though they really gambled for luck with her.
It still seemed to him that they had gambled for luck with her, and
Charlie had won it. But as Collinson plodded homeward in the chilly
midnight, his shoulders sagging and his head drooping, he began to
wonder how he could have risked money that belonged to another man. What
on earth had made him do what he had done? Was it the mood his wife had
set him in as he went out that evening? No; he had gone out feeling like
that often enough, and nothing had happened.
Something had brought this trouble on him, he thought; for it appeared
to Collinson that he had been an automaton, having nothing to do with
his own actions. He must bear the responsibility for them; but he had
not willed them. If the one hundred dollar bill had not happened to be
in his pocket---- That was it! And at the thought he mumbled desolately
to himself: “I’d been all right if it hadn’t been for that.” If the one
hundred dollar bill had not happened to be in his pocket, he’d have been
“all right.” The one hundred dollar bill had done this to him. And
Smithie’s romancing again came back to him: “In one person’s hands
money’ll do good, likely; in another’s it’ll do harm.” It was the money
that did harm or good, not the person; and the money in his hands had
done this harm to himself.
He had to deliver a hundred dollars at the office in the morning,
somehow; for he dared not take the risk of the client’s meeting the
debtor.
There was a balance of seventeen dollars in his bank, and he could pawn
his watch for twenty-five, as he knew well enough, by experience. That
would leave fifty-eight dollars to be paid, and there was only one way
to get it. His wife would have to let him pawn her ring. She’d _have_
to!
Without any difficulty he could guess what she would say and do when he
told her of his necessity: and he knew that never in her life would she
forego the advantage over him she would gain from it. He knew, too, what
stipulations she would make, and he had to face the fact that he was in
no position to reject them. The one hundred dollar bill had cost him the
last vestiges of mastery in his own house; and Charlie Loomis had really
won not only the bill and the luck, but the privilege of taking
Collinson’s wife to vaudevilles. And it all came back to the same
conclusion: The one hundred dollar bill had done it to him. “What kind
of a thing _is_ this life?” Collinson mumbled to himself, finding
matters wholly perplexing in a world made into tragedy at the caprice of
a little oblong slip of paper.
Then, as he went on his way to wake his wife and face her with the
soothing proposal to pawn her ring early the next morning, something
happened to Collinson. Of itself the thing that happened was nothing,
but he was aware of his folly as if it stood upon a mountain top against
the sun--and so he gathered knowledge of himself and a little of the
wisdom that is called better than happiness.
His way was now the same as upon the latter stretch of his walk home
from the office that evening. The smoke fog had cleared, and the air was
clean with a night wind that moved briskly from the west; in all the
long street there was only one window lighted, but it was sharply
outlined now, and fell as a bright rhomboid upon the pavement before
Collinson. When he came to it he paused, at the hint of an inward
impulse he did not think to trace; and, frowning, he perceived that this
was the same shop window that had detained him on his homeward way, when
he had thought of buying a toy for the baby.
The toy was still there in the bright window: the gay little acrobatic
monkey that would climb up or down a red string as the string slacked or
straightened; but Collinson’s eye fixed itself upon the card marked with
the price: “35 cents.”
He stared and stared. “Thirty-five cents!” he said to himself.
“Thirty-five cents!”
Then suddenly he burst into loud and prolonged laughter.
The sound was startling in the quiet night, and roused the interest of a
meditative policeman who stood in the darkened doorway of the next shop.
He stepped out, not unfriendly.
“What _you_ havin’ such a good time over, this hour o’ the night?” he
inquired. “What’s all the joke?”
Collinson pointed to the window. “It’s that monkey on the string,” he
said. “Something about it struck me as mighty funny!”
So, with a better spirit, he turned away, still laughing, and went home
to face his wife.
NICE NEIGHBOURS
BY MARY S. WATTS
From _Harper’s_
Guiding the possible tenant about the house, Miss Wilcox pointed out its
desirable features in a dry little monotone that gave no hint, she
hoped, of her inward taut anxiety. She could not have achieved the
persuasive enthusiasm of the young man from the real-estate office even
if she had thought it becoming to a gentlewoman. Apparently he could see
no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil; there was something abnormal about
his incapacities; he was magnificent, but at moments Miss Martha feared
that he was not strictly conscientious. And besides, to what end
shutting his eyes and thereby perhaps influencing others to shut theirs
against unhappy facts? Truth will out. The house _was_ old; the floors
_did_ need refinishing: the front-parlour fireplace _did_ smoke----
“Them ceilings sure are high!” ejaculated the possible tenant, cocking a
measuring eye heavenward.
“Y-yes, they _are_ high,” Miss Martha admitted helplessly. At this
familiar--and perfectly just--criticism the agent always burst into
flaming eulogies of high ceilings. Just the thing for our summer
climate, our super-heated furnaces in winter! Tell you, the old-timers
knew how to build for comfort! Miss Martha shrank from conjecturing what
he said when ceilings were low. This whole experience illuminated
depressingly the practice current in what it was the modern shibboleth
to call “big business,” she thought.
“Well, eight-five per is a whole lotta money,” said the possible tenant.
She gazed round indifferently as they stepped out on the little side
porch; then all at once her expression altered with surprise and
interest. She clutched Miss Wilcox’s arm, holding her back with an
energetic whisper of warning. “Sh-h! See that bird? See him? Washing
himself in that old pedestal washstand somebody’s left out there? If
that ain’t the cutest thing! He’s just sloshin’ right in like a person,
you ’r I ’r anybody. Like it was put there just on purpose for him!”
“Why, it was. It’s a birds’ bath, you know,” said Miss Martha, somewhat
startled, fumbling for her eyeglasses; the pretty spectacle was no
novelty to her, yet it never lost its charm. “Oh, that’s one of the
thrushes. They must have a nest somewhere near----”
“Sh-h!” the other interrupted peremptorily. “There’s another one goin’
in!” She tiptoed to the edge of the porch and stood there entranced,
following the movements of the birds, a vague smile irradiating her
worn, sharpened, insignificant features. The shoving and spattering and
small outcry finally subsided, the last robin hopped out, spinning the
moisture from his feathers with quick wings; and she turned away
reluctantly, drawing a long breath in childishly frank delight. “What
d’you know about that, huh? I wouldn’ta believed they’d do that, take a
bath that way. You couldn’ta _made_ me believe it? I don’t know much
about ’em, but I always _have_ liked ’em. Birds, I mean, and--well, dogs
and all kinds of regular pets, you know. I always did like ’em. Say, you
got your grounds fixed up real nice, ain’t you? I like flowers, too.”
She went down the steps, and Miss Wilcox trailed after, resigned to
seeing the garden butchered to make a possible tenant’s holiday; but the
visitor moved about carefully, without offering to pluck or mishandle,
and paused at last in the middle of the tidy plot, surveying its beds
and borders with full appreciation. Then she wheeled to appraise again
the mid-Victorian house whose stark tastelessness and characterlessness
no garden setting could relieve; and Miss Martha’s heart sank.
“The neighbourhood’s very nice,” she murmured desperately; this ladylike
insinuation went to the limits of propriety in salesmanship according to
Miss Martha’s code. “So--so _permanent_. The church on the corner and
the parsonage next door. It will always be nice. Everybody likes it so
much on that account--that is----” She could get no farther, overcome
by a hideous sense of disloyalty to this same neighbourhood whose select
character she was exploiting. For, looking upon her, the conviction
would not down that Mrs. Shields, if a possible tenant, was abysmally
impossible otherwise. She must be near Miss Martha’s own age, yet was
dressed, tinted, bedizened as if sixteen; there was a kind of withered
pertness about her; she had a trick of glancing sidewise with her large,
shadowed eyes in a style of roguish challenge and invitation combined;
and her disturbingly frequent and facile smile suggested somehow a mere
embellishment, obvious and inexpressive as her rouge. Such a figure in
the rarefied atmosphere of Saint Luke’s was unthinkable; but here she
was, Martha Wilcox, making capital out of that proximity with all its
implications. Contact with “big business” had done its debasing work!
“Of course, the music might be an objection,” she faltered,
conscience-struck. “And sometimes one can hear Doctor Gowdy quite
distinctly on Sundays in warm weather when the windows are open.”
“Music? Oh, you mean hymns?” queried Mrs. Shields. “Doctor Gowdy’s the
preacher, huh? I went to Billy Sunday once. Tell you, the rev’rend’d
have to go some to beat _him_! Well, I don’ know--eighty-five--” She
hesitated, looking around the genteel landscape; then faced Miss Martha
with the air of giving up argument, not without wonder and some
amusement at herself. “Well, I guess them birds has got me going. I
guess you’ve rented a house!”
Miss Wilcox, comprehending her expression rather than the words, stood
dumb for an instant in half-incredulous relief. The thing was almost too
good to be true, coming to pass with this uncanny suddenness.
Eighty-five dollars a month and the hopeless old place off her hands at
last! All the dreams which even in the act of dreaming she had
stigmatized as rank folly, revisited her in flashing procession: having
her hair “permanented,” going to Atlantic City, buying a fur coat--how
often had she spent that rainbow gold! This time it was real. There
would be only the pleasing care of letting it accumulate for a while.
She awoke to new apprehensions. “I--I suppose there will be things to
do? Changes? I mean you will want----?”
Mrs. Shields applied the decorative smile to her face. “Oh, my, no, I
don’t want nothin’. The house is just swell, and anyways I never was one
to keep running to people for new wallpaper, and ever’ little thing that
needs fixing. I like to keep things up my own self. I’m awful easy to
get along with,” she assured her prospective landlady eagerly. Miss
Martha, who had been recalling terrifying tales she had had from more
than one earnest friend about the misdemeanours and the tyrannous
exactions of the average tenant, breathed freely again. It began to seem
a leisurely, congenial, and singularly profitable occupation to rent
houses as the patient waiting and many disappointments of the last six
months retired to the background of her memories. Mrs. Shields,
meanwhile, fluttered up and down the garden, already assuming innocent
airs of proprietorship.
“You gotta tell me where at you get a bird bath like that, ’cause that’s
what I’m gonna have the first thing!” she proclaimed with enthusiasm.
“Never you mind! It’ll all be took good care of, and I won’t change a
thing. It’s so nice the way it is, all clean and quiet and kinda
restful. I got the same old-style notions as you. I’m crazy about having
a real refined home.”
Miss Wilcox, not for the first time, wished that the questionably
adaptable young man from the real-estate office were there; he would
know what to say. “You’re a stranger here?” she ventured at length.
“Oh, I’ve lived lotsa places,” said the other, smiling blankly. “Is that
as far as the yard goes to, that fence, with the vines on? My, they grow
thick, don’t they?”
They did indeed, forming a broad, tangled breastwork of honeysuckle and
rambler roses valued by Miss Martha for being comely to the view in
blooming time and all the year round an impregnable defence against boys
and other animals. Mrs. Shields, craning slightly to peer over it,
inspected the adjoining territory with her naïvely open curiosity; she
gave an exclamation. “For Pete’s sake! Didn’t you tell me that’s where
the preacher lives?”
“Doctor Gowdy. Yes,” said Miss Martha, a little uncomfortable.
“Keeps it lovely, don’t he? Just like this side!”
Miss Martha perceived that this was to be taken in an ironic sense;
making every allowance for the other’s idiosyncrasies of speech and
manner, it was impossible that she could be in earnest. Even the most
stalwart members of his congregation had been overheard to express
themselves unfavourably about Doctor Gowdy’s yard. “Well--a clergyman,
you know--he’s so busy. Besides, one really ought not to expect him----
And Mrs. Gowdy---- They have quite a family. It’s almost impossible for
her to keep a servant. Even coloured----”
“They got a coon in the kitchen now. I can see her,” said Mrs. Shields.
“Er--yes--but often there isn’t anybody. It makes a great deal of work
for poor Mrs. Gowdy. She can’t see to everything outside as well as in,”
said Miss Wilcox, nervously, conscious that her explanations amounted to
an apology; it annoyed her. And now the coon in the kitchen unwittingly
added to the embarrassments of the situation by shoving up the
window-screen and flinging an over-ripe tomato in the general direction
of the ministerial garbage can; it fell short, spattering seeds and
pulp; the coon--she was a strapping, coffee-coloured slattern--regarded
it absently a moment while she wrung out a leprous-looking rag, sent a
sharp glance toward the audience on the other side of the fence, and
slammed down the screen, slouching back to her labours at a sink full of
dishes.
“Mrs. Gowdy simply can’t see to everything,” Miss Martha repeated
feebly. She awaited the other’s further comment in something of a panic;
but Mrs. Shields had none to make. Her gaze, as it roved round the
unkempt enclosure, was one of complete detachment. She was turning away
when melodious, preluding chords on the piano sounded from within the
parsonage, and Mrs. Gowdy’s pleasant soprano uplifted in “Angels ever
bright and fair.” She sang with taste and feeling, but Miss Martha
uneasily wished that she had not begun just at this moment; it was
inopportune, somehow.
“That’s some of that music you was scairt I wouldn’t like, huh? Why, it
ain’t so bad!” said Mrs. Shields tolerantly. “Anyway, I never let
nothing the neighbours does worry me much,” she added, glancing again,
perhaps involuntarily, at the Gowdy premises. “Live and let live, I
always say. Oh, say, look what’s coming!”
It was a little procession of the Gowdy children round the corner of the
house, Thomas junior in the lead, shouldering a spade and issuing bluff
words of command; Florence came next, with a black silk petticoat,
evidently borrowed from some much more mature wardrobe than her own,
solemnly draped upon her; the twins were hauling the catafalque, that
is, their Irish-Mail wagon, a shoe-box disposed upon it and covered with
an unbelievably dirty towel; and Wilbur, straddling his kiddie-car,
theoretically brought up the rear. In reality, he tooled along to suit
himself, with erratic swoops and circles, carrying on an inarticulate,
one-sided conversation the while. They halted, after some shrill
disagreements, at one of the bare, hard-trodden spots occurring
sporadically among the weeds of the parsonage back yard, and Tommie was
about to attack it with the spade when all hands simultaneously became
aware of the uninvited witnesses. There was an interval of silent
staring broken by Wilbur, who, as has been seen, was a sociable soul,
without sufficient field for the exercise of his gift.
“‘O,’ady!” said he, steering up to the fence.
“My, my, ain’t you little folks busy, though!” said Mrs. Shields
genially. “Watch out, buddy, you’ll get a sticker in your eye. What’s he
say?”
“‘O,’ady!” cried Wilbur with vehemence.
Tom authoritatively advised him to shut up. “‘Hello, lady!’ that’s what
he’s trying to say. He can’t talk plain yet, he’s only two and a half.
We’ve got to be after him the whole time. It’s fierce!” he explained
gloomily.
“Well, now, _I_ think that’s real nice, taking care of your little
brother----”
“Icky eye!” interrupted Wilbur urgently. “Icky _eye_!”
Florence undertook the translation. “He’s saying the kitty died.”
“Oh, ain’t that too bad! Poor kitty! What was the matter with her?”
“I don’t know. She just died,” said Florence indifferently. “We’re
having a funeral with her.”
“You _are_? Well, I declare! And I s’pose Mommer’s singing that lovely
hymn for you.”
They eyed her in the wary fashion of children suspicious of the false
interest of grown-ups. “No, she isn’t. She’s just singing.” Tom said
curtly. “I don’t b’lieve she knows about the kitty even.”
Here the auburn-haired twin precipitately entered the conversation with
the information that the bird died, too. “It was a canary. It sang and
sang, and then it stopped singing and died.”
“Oh, my, you musta felt bad!”
“Ho, that ain’t anything!” said the blue-eyed twin in a superior manner.
“We’ve had lots of things die. Just lots!” He launched into large
statements. “Everything we get dies! We had some white mice and _they_
died, and we had a dog and _it_ died, and we had----”
“Aw, shut up, we didn’t any such thing!”
“We did so! Don’t we, Flo, have everything die? Don’t we, Reddy?”
“Aw, you’re lying! Shut up, I tell you!”
Mrs. Shields intervened on the side of peace and propriety. “Now, now,
don’t you kids get to scrapping. You go ahead and have your funeral, and
play nice and pretty. First thing you know you’ll have Mommer out here,
scairt to death for fear some of you has got their neck broke, hollerin’
like that.”
“Aw, she won’t hear, she never does,” growled Thomas junior. And in
fact, the voice and piano, now sweetly rilling arpeggios throughout all
the keys in ardent practice, kept on undisturbed. Mrs. Shields
retreated, joining Miss Martha with confidences uttered in a voice of
polite caution.
“I expect them young ones are right nice-looking when they’re washed up.
They’re all right, only I don’t know as I’m keen for ’em to come over on
my side of the fence. Of course, Mrs. Rev’rend, she’s used to the racket
and muss.”
She asked whether she was to pay in advance, briskly announcing that she
would while Miss Martha was still hanging in timorous indecision. The
maiden lady moved in a haze of doubt and awe in what she considered the
business world; out-of-hand offers to pay rent in advance might be one
of its pitfalls for what Miss Martha knew. But in due time the check
arrived, and though intrinsically an unhandsome document executed in
weak, loosely flowing figures and handwriting with the signature “Tillie
Shields” sidling downhill into the corner, it was negotiable like any
other check. Eighty-five dollars! The dream had come true! Miss Martha
was thriftily resolved not to spend it this first time, but it gave her
a solid foundation on which to erect more dreams. Moreover, she took an
almost equally solid satisfaction in replying coolly and competently to
all inquirers, yes, the house was rented; yes, very advantageously,
thank you! Hitherto she had had to endure their discouraging sympathy;
and now detected, in spite of the felicitations, the great fundamental
truth that nobody is really glad when somebody else gets a house rented!
Eliza Seabury was the one exception; Eliza was too blunt-minded and
blunt-spoken for civil pretenses. She rushed up on the street one day,
and opened the subject, or in a manner of speaking, committed assault
and battery on it with: “Martha Wilcox, where on earth did you pick up
that weird woman you’ve got in your house?”
“I didn’t pick her up at all. She saw the advertisement,” said Miss
Martha, a trifle stiffly.
“Well, she’s positively _weird_. I saw her the other day, and when
somebody said she was in your house I nearly passed away. Her clothes!
And those eyes rolling around like two buckeyes in a pan of milk! It’s
simply _weird_! Who is she, anyhow, and where did she come from?”
“She’s a Mrs. Matilda Shields,” said Miss Martha, sagely correcting that
too informal “Tillie.” “I don’t know where her home was originally. I
understood she’d travelled about a good deal.”
“Mercy, Martha, I hope you didn’t take her without a reference. It would
be awful if she didn’t pay you.”
“The bank said she was all right,” said Miss Martha triumphantly. The
bank’s endorsement was her trump card; it left criticism without a leg
to stand on. She was prompted to testify to Mrs. Shields’s credit on
other grounds. “She’s been very nice about the house, not finding fault
and not asking for anything, you know.”
“What, not a thing?” Mrs. Seabury exclaimed on a high note of
astonishment. “That old rookery! Well, of course, I don’t mean it’s not
a lovely house,” she amended hastily. “Only naturally, you’ve never
spent any more on it than you could help, I suppose. It’s weird her not
wanting _some_ repairs. She can’t be much of a housekeeper. Maybe
that’s just as well, though. She won’t mind living next door to the
Gowdys. Has she ever said anything about them?”
“I haven’t inquired,” said Miss Martha, stiffening again.
“Oh, well, she probably will later on,” Mrs. Seabury prophesied
blithely; she was not a member of Saint Luke’s congregation. “Unless
she’s a saint, she’ll have trouble over the ashes or the garbage or the
children or something.”
Mrs. Shields, however, was apparently bent on justifying her claim to
being “awful easy to get along with,” if that phrase connotes living
quietly and seeking no one’s acquaintance. She went about domestic
duties with an extraordinary zest, cooked, cleaned, ran up and down
stairs endlessly; and spent hours in the garden applying her patently
unskilled energies to weeding and trimming it, or motionless in some
coign of vantage, watching the birds. Except for these robins and jays
and an occasional squirrel, she had no visitors, and defeated
expectations by never publicly falling foul of the Gowdy ash-heap, the
Gowdy garbage, or the Gowdy children, whatever her private
attitude toward them. Mrs. Gowdy, with characteristic sweet
thoughtfulness--everybody acclaimed her as the ideal wife for a
clergyman--introduced herself over the hedge after a few days with a
smiling word or two about the other’s courage in coming to live
alongside such a houseful. “We used to be afraid our youngsters were a
good deal of a trial to Miss Wilcox.”
“I don’t mind ’em, only when it sounds like somebody was getting hurt,”
said Mrs. Shields, whereat the experienced mother began to laugh.
“Oh, children are always getting hurt, you know. Mine seem to be made of
steel and india-rubber. They stand everything. Luella--that’s the maid I
have now--worries over them more than I do! She’s so good with them, and
perfectly devoted to Wilbur, especially.”
Mrs. Shields looked at her uncertainly.
“Well, Luella ain’t always on the job, is she? I don’t see how she can
be.”
“Oh, yes, she’s very efficient. I hardly ever give an order. Sometimes
coloured people are like that, wonderful with children and about the
housework too.” With other agreeable generalities, she moved away; and
Mrs. Shields, after a speculative stare at the retreating back, shook
her own overdressed head soberly, and moved away, too.
It happened that she did not encounter Doctor Gowdy until some time
later, on an occasion which turned out to be more or less momentous.
Pottering about among the flower beds, she heard without heeding a
piping excitement in the other back yard, and only looked across at last
when a heavier voice was added to the children’s. “Now, we must have a
coop, you know, boys. They have to be kept in a coop,” Doctor Gowdy was
expounding. “Let’s see! What shall we do? Oh, I’ll tell you! There’s
that old peach crate over there; you get that, Robbie, and I shouldn’t
wonder if Tom could nail some strips up the sides. Everybody must help,
that’s the only way to get along----” he kept on fluently in his
trained, carrying voice, while the boys circled about, squabbling over
his directions. Then, as he caught Mrs. Shields’s eye, smiled with a
gesture toward the basket in his hands.
“Day-old chicks. Wouldn’t you like to see them?” And in the direct,
hearty way which everybody so liked, without any ado of formalities, he
came over, the children hanging on and hampering him. The basket was
full of soft cheepings and movement; looking down into it, one got an
impression of little round, animated, cuddling patches of brown velvet,
striped with yellow, of little yellow heads and eyes with the bright
fixity of beads. Mrs. Shields exclaimed delightedly.
“Aren’t they cunning?” said the minister in sympathetic pleasure. “The
kiddies and I--we’re great pals, all of us together, you know--we’re
going to make a coop and raise them. First thing you know, we’ll have a
regular chicken farm!”
Mrs. Shields looked at his kind, eager face, at the basket of chickens,
at the surging children, at the littered yard, and spoke diffidently.
“Well, they’re awful cute, but--I guess it’s kinda work to bring up
chickens, ain’t it? I mean I thought people got all fixed for it, and
didn’t do nothing else.”
“Oh, no, you just feed and water them,” said Doctor Gowdy buoyantly.
“They ‘_do the rest_’--hey? Ha, ha!” He dropped to a confidential tone.
“It will be good for the children. Teaches them practical
humanity--Joe, Florence, stop it! You can’t both of you play with the
same chicken!”
Mrs. Shields returned to her gardening with an oddly dubious expression.
Judging by what she could hear, the coop was finally erected to
everybody’s satisfaction, and after an hour or so of vociferous children
and chickens, the latter appeared to lose their charm of novelty
temporarily, at least. There was quiet in both back yards; she was
trowelling industriously around the roots of a rosebush when Wilbur was
brought downstairs from his nap, and released from the house; and
directly his voice arose in gleeful squealings. “Chicky! Chicky!”
Mrs. Shields straightened up, listened a second, looked over the hedge.
What she saw caused her to drop the trowel and fly around to the alley,
bursting through the tumbledown gate into the parsonage grounds without
ceremony. “Wilbur! _Wilbur!_ Don’t do that! Don’t grab the chickies,
dearie! No, no! Mustn’t touch!”
“Make chicky go!” shouted Wilbur happily, squeezing a limp bit of brown
velvet between his sturdy little hands. The coop was upset; he danced
with joyful impatience among splintered slats and chickens. “Chicky
_go_!” He threw it down and kicked it. “_Go!_”
The chicken made a difficult movement, then settled down motionless with
filming eyes. “There now, see what you done! You’ve broke the chicky,
Wilbur. Poor chicky, now it won’t ever go any more!” said Mrs. Shields,
instinctively adapting her words to the child’s comprehension. “No,
_no_, Wilbur mustn’t play with chickies!”
“Chicky go!” screamed Wilbur. He was too quick for her; the chicken that
he aimed a lusty kick at escaped, but losing his balance and recovering,
he came down vigorously with his whole weight on another. “_Make_ chicky
go!”
All at once with dynamic suddenness, Mrs. Shield’s aspect underwent an
appalling transformation. Red spots flamed through the rouge on her
meagre cheeks; her eyes ceased to languish; they glared balefully. In a
twinkle she became years older, a formidable virago, a hag! She darted
out a tentacle of an arm, and whirled Wilbur away from his pastime with
a couple of stinging slaps. “You let them chickens alone, young one,
you hear me? You won’t, won’t you? I’ll learn you!”
Wilbur raised a long howl of protest, exerting fists and feet
impotently; Luella appeared at the kitchen door alarmed and inquiring,
and after one look, charged to the rescue. “Wha’ you doin’ t’ that
chile? Don’t you dare tech that chile!”
Mrs. Shields hurled at her an epithet foreign to the vocabularies of
real refined homes; the mulatto woman, in a fury, screeched a retort as
flavoursome; linguistically it was a battle of giants. Wilbur bawled
between them; what chickens survived scattered, peeping wildly, the
conflict assailed the very vault of heaven. At that pitch it actually
brought Mrs. Gowdy from the piano and “Hark, the herald angels sing”;
the rest of the children arrived in a scurry; the postman halted on his
round, petrified; a stray delivery boy, lingering, impartially
contributed his mite, “Yah-de-_dah_! Yee-i! Yee-i!” he yelped
ecstatically, and drifted on, a ship that passed in the night.
Wilbur fled to his mother, bellowing more in fright and anger than pain;
she received him with bewildered tenderness. “What is it? What has
happened? Tell Mother where it hurts, darling!” She gazed round
distractedly, seeking to interpret the blubbering and unintelligible
references to _ady_ and _chicky_. “What _is_ he trying to say?
Luella----?”
Luella plunged into dramatic recital with an effect of being all
eyeballs and incredibly rapid jaws. “--An’ Mis’ Gowdy, nex’ thing Ah
heah’d Wilbuh hollerin’ an’ Ah come runnin’ an’ heah she was lammin’ him
lak he was her own chile! An’ Ah ain’t gwine tek no talk lak she done
give me offa no white lady!”
“Hush, Luella, please----!”
“I’m real sorry I smacked the little fella,” said Mrs. Shields. Her ire
had flickered out as suddenly as it exploded; she spoke in visible
distress and remorse. “I didn’t go to hurt him, just to make him mind. I
only wanted to stop him stompin’ and slammin’ them chickens. I--I just
plumb couldn’t stand it. You look what he done, Mis’ Gowdy, you just
look. You wouldn’ta left him do that yourself if you’d been here.”
Mrs. Gowdy clicked regretfully, viewing the massacre.
“Tst! Tst! Why, Wilbur, did you hurt the chickies? Did mother’s little
boy do that? Don’t you remember mother’s often told you you mustn’t hurt
_anything_?”
“Make chicky go?” Wilbur suggested with reviving spirits. “Make _go_,
mamma?”
“No, Wilbur, can’t. My little boy must be kind to dumb animals,” said
Mrs. Gowdy in gentle reproof.
“He’s too little, he can’t understand, he don’t know any better. It
ain’t any use _telling_ him; there’d oughta be somebody after him,”
argued Mrs. Shields desperately. “I’m awful sorry, but I just _had_ to
make him quit it. I know I hadn’t no right to, but----”
“Yes? Yes!” said Mrs. Gowdy vaguely but forgivingly. The older children
stood around in a silence that conveyed a certain clannish hostility
toward Mrs. Shields, yet no very lively sympathy for Wilbur. Luella
retired sulkily, and Mrs. Gowdy looked after her with something as near
anxiety as her placid countenance could express. “I do hope she won’t
leave!”
“Mis’ Gowdy, I wouldn’ta done it, only there wasn’t none of you round,
and _somebody_ had to!”
“Yes? Well, perhaps it would have been better to telephone in and tell
me first. But never mind!” said Mrs. Gowdy kindly.
This episode resulted in a species of armed peace between the two
households, or on Mrs. Shields’s side at any rate. The others were
either too magnanimous or too irresponsible to hold a grudge; they
forgave and forgot even before the last of the chickens had come to its
end one way or another, that is, within the next twenty-four hours. Mrs.
Shields resolutely ignored their fate; she cleaned, gardened, spread
meals for the birds with her back carefully turned on the church
premises, and it was only by accident that from an upper window she
caught a glimpse one day of another slatted box not far from where the
wreckage of the first still lay, and of the family gathered around,
peering in, reaching down into it, exclaiming. “Bunny! Bunny!” they
chorused. Plainly, another course in humanity was being inaugurated. “My
God!” said Mrs. Shields aloud, and turned away with a despairing
philosophical shrug. At intervals for a week thereafter, escaping
rabbits scudded through her yard, or housed under the shrubbery,
proceedings which she unaccountably never witnessed. “Your bunnies? No,
I ain’t seen none round here,” she would assure the pursuing children
with her meaningless smile; and when the animals were recaptured,
exhibited none of the relief that might have been expected. But in a
little while the incursions ceased; the rabbits were apparently
disciplined to their prison. It stood in the same place, rain or shine,
day after day, and the “Bunny, bunny” was heard with less and less
frequency.
Perhaps sheer curiosity, perhaps some more creditable feeling at last
overcame Mrs. Shield’s self-enforced inhibitions; for one sultry
afternoon when the family were all out on a swimming and picnicking
expedition, conveyed in a parishioner’s automobile, she guiltily slipped
around through the alley into the other yard. There was one rabbit left
of the pair; it lay on its side in one corner of the stifling pen,
breathing hurriedly. Mrs. Shields cleaned out the pan in another corner
and filled it with fresh water; she put a little store of lettuce leaves
alongside. The creature turned a lack-lustre eye on her, without
stirring. She stood awhile contemplating it, or it might be some purpose
slowly forming in her mind. “For two cents I’d let you out,” she
remarked finally. “Only you’re so sick and weak you can’t get away. So
_that_ wouldn’t be any use!” She pondered awhile longer, then with an
air of decision, marched back into her own house and sat down to the
telephone. With her hand on the instrument, she seemed to waver,
reconsidering; then with a defiant gesture, snatched the receiver off
the hook.
A complacent patriot would have looked upon succeeding events as
demonstrating conclusively an efficiency in public office which some
other patriots are prone to question. Bright and early the next morning
there presented himself at the parsonage front door a massive, elderly,
decent, badged official, and incontinently agitated rumours filled the
air. Luella might be heard declaiming violently; Doctor Gowdy, Mrs.
Gowdy uplifted mild, startled argument; everybody united in silencing
the children. A caucus was held in the back yard; and then the officer
departed. It was most melodramatic and intriguing; there were
communicants of Saint Luke’s, not to mention innumerable outsiders, who
would have envied Mrs. Shields her proscenium-box location, but she
herself took no advantage of it, and it was without alacrity that she
answered the doorbell when the officer visited her in turn.
He touched his hat. “Good morning! Is this where the lady telephoned for
the Humane S’ciety----?” He stopped short abruptly, staring, seeming to
labour vainly with some stupendous fact well-nigh beyond his grasp.
“Well, well, _well_! Look who’s here!” he managed to get out, after a
long minute.
Mrs. Shields did not answer; she stood before him, her bearing sullen,
hostile, a little frightened.
“Look who’s here!” the officer ejaculated again, apostrophizing the
ceiling; then he brought his gaze down, and sent it everywhere, alertly
exploring. “You living here?”
“Yeh. What’s matter my living here? I gotta live _some_where. I ain’t
doin’ nothing.”
“Naw, I guess you ain’t, Tillie, or everybody’s heard before this,” the
other agreed amiably. “But say, was it you called the S’ciety, honest?”
“Yeh. What of it?”
“Why, nothin’. Nothin’ ’t all,” said the official soothingly; a grin
slowly worked its way across his features. “Only, it’s kinda funny when
you think about it, ain’t it? Don’t it strike you kinda funny?”
“It strikes me you was needed,” said Mrs. Shields, glowering at him. “It
strikes me you’n your old S’ciety better get busy.”
“Sure, sure! We’re going to. Only the rev’rend next door, and you
sickin’ the authorities onta him----” Some obscurely humorous aspect of
the situation overcame him; he propped himself against the doorpost,
shaken with chuckles.
“When you’re through----?” said Mrs. Shields with chilly venom.
“Oh, all right! All right, Tillie!” He wiped his eyes, saluted her with
burlesque obsequiousness, and went off down the walk; at the street
another convulsion overtook him.
Miss Martha Wilcox, meanwhile, in contented ignorance of all these
happenings, dreamed on, spending the rent, recounting it and spending it
over again, Alnaschar-wise; with apologies to herself, she did actually
spend some of it, here and there. It fairly burned a hole in her pocket,
and there seemed no harm in a few small indulgences; she had gone
without so long! But now Mrs. Seabury descended on her, headlong as
usual, this time with a face of portentous gloom.
“Martha, have you _heard_? Oh, well, I know you _haven’t_ heard! That’s
the reason I’m here. It just got around to me, and I didn’t wait a
minute. I’ve come right over to tell you; it’s the part of kindness. I
mean about that woman you’ve got in your house. You haven’t heard?”
Miss Martha anticipated battle, murder, and sudden death. “No. What is
it? Is she----?”
“Oh, nothing’s happened to her! Goodness, it’s a great deal worse than
_that_!” She lowered her voice with cautious glances right and left,
though they were alone. “Martha, it’s just got out who she is! You know
everybody thought there was _something_ the matter, she was so weird
looking. Well, she’s _notorious_! The notorious Tillie Shields, that’s
what they call her. You said her name was Matilda. Well, that’s who she
is!” Mrs. Seabury concluded, leaning back in triumph.
For an instant Miss Martha was conscious only of acute vexation.
“Notorious _how_, Eliza? What way?” she stammered, groping for
objections, refutations.
“Oh, for mercy’s sake, the way they all are!” Mrs. Seabury rejoined in
sharp impatience. “Well, to be sure, you’ve never been married,” she
added more leniently, and followed up this apparently irrelevant
statement with others very much to the point. “She had a _place_--one of
those _places_--in the red-light district, you know. It was a good while
ago--I don’t suppose she’s really notorious any more, she’s too old. But
that’s who she is, the notorious Tillie Shields.”
Miss Martha, envisaging calamity, averted her mind in desperate
unwillingness, desperate hope. “But how do you know? Who told you?”
“Why, Martha, it’s all over! _Everybody’s_ heard! It seems she had a
fuss with the Gowdy’s cook over their cat or the birds or something----”
Mrs. Seabury entered into graphic and approximately accurate details,
winding up with: “And the officer used to be on the police force, so, of
course, he recognized her right away! I _told_ you you oughtn’t to have
taken her without a reference.”
“But the bank said----”
“Oh, the bank!” said Mrs. Seabury scornfully. “She probably keeps a big
account there, and that’s all they care about. It’s awful to think how
that money was made, but that’s nothing to a bank.--Oh, nobody suspects
_you_ of knowing, Martha,” she interrupted herself quickly, misreading
her friend’s silence. “Nobody would believe _that_ of you for a minute.
We all _know_ you didn’t know.”
Poor Miss Wilcox, in horror, found herself for a moment wishing
vehemently that nobody _knew_. All her castles lay in ruins; and there
were those bills that had seemed so trifling, looming monumentally now!
She must undertake the abhorrent duty of putting Mrs. Shields out; and
where or when would she get another tenant? She went to the house,
flinching in expectation of the encounter with this person whom she now
classified with formless dread as _one of those women_; to be sure,
previous experience had revealed nothing alarming about her, but now
that Mrs. Shields knew herself discovered, it would undoubtedly be
different. She did not answer the bell, and Miss Martha, worriedly
investigating, at length came upon her in the back yard where she had
just finished scrubbing and refilling the bird-bath. Leaning on the
broom, she was awaiting the approach of a robin; she saw Miss Wilcox out
of the corner of her eye, and made a slight arresting gesture. The bird
came on, with a kind of wary confidence, his bright, sidewise glance
fixed on her.
“He’s just playing scairt. He knows me,” Mrs. Shields whispered. “But
_you_ better keep back a second.”
Miss Wilcox received a definite and most disconcerting shock. She had
come prepared as conscious Virtue--and her logical opponent, conscious
Vice, failed her! The notorious Tillie Shields did not look in the least
notorious; she looked like an ignorant, dull, good-hearted woman, old
and alone, cheaply pathetic with her paint and her terrific trade
simper. It was with reluctance and difficulty that Miss Martha began to
state her errand, but before she was halfway through, the other
understood.
“I s’pose Pete Maguire’s been talking,” she said with a flash of
resentful conviction. “Anyhow, I had a hunch I’d get in bad, right when
I was settin’ there at the ’phone. I don’t care! I’m glad I done it. I’d
done it, even ’f I’d known for certain!”
“I’m sorry I have to ask you to--to move,” Miss Martha began again, with
miserable diffidence. “But I--I----”
“Oh, it’s all right,” said Tillie Shields, submissively. “I’ll find some
other place to go. I always find a place, for a while, anyhow.”
Obviously she spoke in no intention of enlisting sympathy; it was a mere
statement of fact. Yet Miss Martha was remotely perturbed; and now, to
her dismay, she saw the other’s chin quiver and two tears tracking down
the paint.
“I--I liked it awful well here. Them birds----” She swallowed hard,
bringing her features under control with an effort. “Ever’thing’s been
took good care of. If it hadn’t been for next door----” She began to
talk impetuously; it was a childishly incoherent, confident outpouring.
“Miss Wilcox, you _know_ how they do! Miss Wilcox, I can’t _see_ how
folks can do that way! That rabbit had a great sore on its side! And
Doctor Gowdy’s a _preacher_!” Her voice rose in rebellious bewilderment.
“He--why, he talks beautiful in church--I’ve _heard_ him----”
So had Miss Martha. Fragments of the doctor’s noble and touching
utterances on the text: “_Inasmuch as ye do it unto the least of these,
my brethren, ye have done it unto me._” inconveniently returned to her.
“I _can’t see_----” Mrs. Shields reiterated helplessly. And neither
could Martha Wilcox. The puzzle was too much for her. Nobody, not even
the notorious Tillie Shields, had intentionally done any wrong, yet the
cumulative result of all their acts seemed to be heartbreakingly wrong,
somehow; she herself, were it not for needing the income, could have let
Mrs. Shields live there for nothing--but she could not let her live
there for eighty-five dollars a month!
“I’m so sorry----!” was all that she could say.
NOT WANTED
BY JESSE LYNCH WILLIAMS
From _Saturday Evening Post_
Phil had read it in a book. But life did not come true to literature.
When they put his first-born in his arms a strange nausea suffused this
father’s frame and he handed the warm little bundle back to his sister
hastily, as if it were hot.
“Take it away,” he whispered to Mary. “I might break it.”
And he bolted out of the room, for the doctor said he could see Nell
now. The only joy he felt was over a less vainglorious but more
important matter than becoming a father. The beautiful brave mother was
all right.
This young man had not wanted to become a father; not in the least. He
and Junior’s mother had been happy together. Now they would have to be
happy apart, if at all, for whole years at a time, until Junior was big
enough to stand trips to the wilds of Alaska or Africa or wherever else
mining engineers had to go. Nell had always gone along until this
usurper spoiled their life together. So Junior was really doing a
scandalous thing, coming between husband and wife. No wonder that Phil
had not wanted him.
Well, Junior’s mother wanted him anyway. She wanted him terrifically,
more than anything in the world except Junior’s father. And as her
husband wanted her to have everything she desired, why, probably it was
all right. There was not much else that she had lacked.
Junior did not seem to understand that he wasn’t wanted by his father
and took to Phil from the first. “All babies do,” said the jealous young
aunt. “It’s a great gift and it’s wasted on a man.” Mary was a maiden,
but she had hopes.
“He’s so big and so kind,” said the contented mother. “Children, dogs,
and old ladies always adore Phil.”
With Junior it was clearly a case of love at first sight, and he did not
act as if he were a victim of unrequited affection. For example, unlike
a woman scorned, he had no fury for his father at all except when Phil
left the room. Then he howled. His father could soothe him when even his
mother failed, and Junior would settle down into Phil’s arms with a sigh
of voluptuous satisfaction, quite as if he belonged there; and of
course, he did. That was the dismaying part about it to his father, who
scowled and looked bored. This made the young mother laugh; and that in
turn made Junior laugh, too, and look down at her from the eminence of
his father’s arms, as if trying to wink and say, “Rather a joke on the
old man.”
“I suppose I’ve got to do this all my life,” said Phil.
“All your life,” said Nell, rubbing it in; “but after a while you’ll
like it.”
She had great faith in her son’s charm.
Junior was five years old when his father came back from the Alaska
project. He could not remember having met this grown-up before, but he
might have said, “I have heard so much about you.” His mother had told
him. For example, his father was the best and bravest man in the world.
Also, according to the same reliable authority, he loved Junior and his
mother enormously and equally. He was far away, getting bread and butter
for them. A wonderful person, a great big man, six feet two inches “and
well proportioned,” and such an honourable gentleman that--well, that
was the only reason he was not coming home with a huge fortune, she
explained. But at any rate he was coming home at last and would be
awfully glad to see what a big boy Junior had become.
He was, but Phil had always been rather shy with strangers, and did not
pay so much attention to his namesake as Junior had been led to expect.
You see, everyone in this tyrant’s kingdom worshipped him, and Junior
assumed that his father would follow conventions. For every night before
he went to sleep his father’s name had invariably been mentioned first
in the list of people and animals and playthings that loved him.
Junior, though quite small, was a great lover and much given to kissing.
On momentous occasions, such as the start for the picnic the day after
his father’s arrival, Junior manifested his excitement by hugging and
kissing everybody in sight, including the dogs. It was his earliest form
of selfexpression. His father, as it happened, was absorbed in packing
the tea basket and had never been accustomed to being kissed while
packing in camp. Besides, Junior had been helping his mother prepare the
luncheon. That is, he had taken a hand in the distribution of guava
jelly, and there was just one hardship in the life of this immaculate
mining engineer he could never endure--sticky fingers. But Junior had
not yet learned that, and so, taking advantage of his father’s kneeling
posture, he tackled him around the neck and indulged in passionate
osculation.
“Call your child off,” said Phil to Nell. She laughed.
“Come, precious, don’t bore your father.”
Junior did not know what that new word “bore” meant, but he released his
father and transferred his demonstration to his mother. She never seemed
to get too much and did not object to sweet fingers.
“Mamma,” said Junior as they started off in the car, “I don’t believe
that man in front likes me.”
“He adores you, darling; he’s your father.”
Well, it sounded reasonable, but he remembered the new word. That
evening when they came home the dogs, not having been allowed to go on
the picnic, thought it was their turn and jumped up on Phil with muddy
paws. Junior took command of the situation and of the new word.
“Down, Rex!” he said to the sentimental setter. “Don’t bore my father.”
And he pulled Rex away by the tail.
At bedtime, when the nurse came to bear him off, he raised his arms to
Phil.
“Can I bore you now?”
Phil laughed and kissed him good night.
“Funny little cuss, isn’t he?” said Phil.
“He’s a very unusual child,” said this very unusual Mother.
“Unusually ugly, you mean.”
But he couldn’t get a rise out of Nell.
“Oh, you’ll learn to appreciate him yet.”
Shortly before Phil left for his next trip the paternal passion had its
way with this reserved father, for once. Some little street boys, as
they were technically classified by the nurse, had been ordered off the
drive by Junior, who was playing out there alone. They did not like his
aristocratic manner and rolled him in the mud. They were pommelling him
in spite of his protests, when Phil heard the outcry and, getting a
glimpse of the unequal contest from the library window, gave forth a
shout that made the intruders take to their heels, the infuriated father
after them.
As he raced down the drive he saw the wide-eyed animal terror on his
child’s face and it aroused within him an animal emotion of another
kind, one he had never felt before, though he had often seen it
exhibited by wild beasts--usually the mothers. It was a lust to destroy
those two little boys, to render them extinct. He might have done so
too; but fortunately they had a good start, and by the time he caught up
with them civilization caught up with him sufficiently to make him
realize what century he was living in. So, with a few vigorous cuffs and
an angry warning, he hastened back to his bleating offspring,
recognizing with astonishment and some alarm how near blind parental
rage can bring a man to murder.
Junior was not so much damaged as his white clothes were, but his
childish terror was pitiful. He rushed into his father’s arms and clung,
quivering. Phil held him close.
“There, there, it’s all right now. I won’t let anybody hurt you.”
Without realizing it, this fastidious father was kissing an extremely
dirty face again and again. Junior, still sobbing convulsively, clung
closer.
“You’ll always be on my side, won’t you, Father?”
“You bet I will!” said Phil. “You’re my own darling little boy.”
He had had no intention of saying things quite like that, and didn’t
know that he could; but it sounded all right to Junior. This moment was
to be one of those vivid recollections that last through a lifetime.
With a final long-drawn sigh of complete and passionate comfort, the
small boy looked up into the big man’s face and smiled.
“You love me now, don’t you, Father?” he said.
“You bet I love you!”
The boy had got him at last. But perhaps Junior presumed upon this new
privilege. The next morning he awoke with a bad dream about those street
boys, and as soon as the nurse permitted he rushed in to be reassured by
his big father. Phil was preoccupied with shaving and did not know about
the bad dream. Junior tried to climb up Phil’s legs.
“That will do,” said his father in imminent peril of cutting his chin;
“get down. Get down, I tell you. Oh, Nell!”--she was in the next
room--“make your child quit picking on me.”
“Come to me, dearest. Mustn’t bother Father when he’s shaving.”
Junior wasn’t piqued but he was puzzled.
“But I thought he loved me; he told me he loved me,” he called out.
“Didn’t you tell me you loved me, Father?”
Phil laughed to cover his embarrassment. He had not reckoned on Junior’s
giving him away to Nell, and knew that she was triumphing over him now
in silence.
“Your father never loves anybody before breakfast,” said Junior’s
mother, smiling as she covered him with kisses.
Apparently fathers could never be like mothers.
* * * * *
Nell knew it was a risk, but she wanted to be with Phil as much as he
wanted to be with her--the old life together they both loved. So they
decided that Junior was big enough now to stand the trip to Mongolia. It
was a great mistake. Before they had crossed Russia all of them
regretted it--except Junior. He was having a grand time. At present he
was working his way back from the door of the railway compartment to the
window again, and for the third time was stepping upon his father’s
feet. Phil had had a bad time with the custom officials, a bad time with
the milk boxes and a bad night’s sleep. His temper broke under the
strain.
“Oh, children are a damn nuisance,” he growled.
“Come, dear, look at these funny houses out of the window,” said
Junior’s mother. “Aren’t they funny houses?”
That night when she was putting him to sleep with the recital of those
who loved him, Junior inquired, “Mamma, what is a damn nuisance?”
“A damn nuisance,” said his mother, “is a perfect darling.”
All the same he had learned that he must avoid stepping on his father’s
freshly polished boots. One more item added to the list. Mustn’t touch
him with sticky hands, mustn’t play with his pipes, mustn’t make a noise
when he takes his nap on the train--so many things to remember, such a
small head to keep them all in.
There was no more milk. There was very little proper food of any kind
for Junior in the camp, although Phil sent a small-sized expedition away
over the divide for the purpose. The boy became ill. Phil ordered a
special train to bring a famous physician. He even neglected this work
on the boy’s account, something unprecedented for Phil. But this was no
place for children. The boy would have to go home. That meant that his
mother would too.... All the beautiful dream of being together spoiled.
“I’m going back to America because I am a damn nuisance to my father,”
Junior announced to Phil’s assistant.
Phil neglected his work again and went with them as far as the border.
“But you do love him,” said Nell; “you know you do. You’d give up your
life for him.”
“Naturally. All I object to is giving up my wife for him.”
But Phil’s last look was at the poor little sickly boy. He wondered if
he would ever see him again. He did. But he never saw his wife again.
It was too late to do anything about it. His assistant, who had seen
these married lovers together, marvelled at the way his silent chief
went about the day’s work until his responsibility to the syndicate was
discharged. Then he marvelled more when just as the opportunity of a
professional lifetime came to Phil he threw up his job and started for
home.
He meant to stay there. He would get into the office end of the work and
devote the rest of his life to Nell’s boy. That was his job now.
Previously he had left it to her--too much so. The brave girl! Never a
whine in all the blessed years of their marriage. The child until now
had seemed merely to belong to him, a luxury he did not particularly
want. Now he belonged to the child, a necessity, and being needed made
Phil want him. But the Great War postponed this plan.
So Junior continued to live with his devoted Aunt Mary. She cherished
his belief in Phil’s perfection, but she could not understand why her
busy brother never wrote to his adoring little son. But for that matter,
Phil never wrote to his adoring little sister. He never wrote letters at
all, except on business. He sent telegrams and cables--long, expensive
ones.
On the memorable day when father and son were reunited at last an
unwelcome shyness came upon them and fastened itself there like a bad
habit. Neither knew how to break it. Each looked at the other wistfully
with eyes that were veiled.
Junior was more proud of his wonderful father now than ever. Phil had a
scar on his chin. The boy was keen to hear all about it. His father did
not seem inclined to talk of that, and Junior had a precocious fear of
boring him. He had made up his mind never to be a damn nuisance to his
father again. He had long since discovered the meaning of those words.
Phil soon became restless and discontented with office work. He had done
the other thing too long and too well to enjoy civilization for more
than a month or so at a time, and the financial crowd infuriated him. He
was interested in mining problems. They were interested in mining
profits.
Owing to changes wrought by the war another great opportunity had arisen
in a part of the world Phil knew better than any other member of his
profession. “It’s a man’s job,” they told him, “and you’re the only one
who could swing it.”
Phil shook his head. “Not fair to the boy.”
“But with the contract we’re prepared to offer you, why, your boy will
be on Easy Street all his life.”
That got him. “Just once more,” thought Phil. “I’ll clean up on this and
then retire to the country--make a real home for him--dogs and horses.
I’ll teach him to shoot and fish. That ought to bring us together.”
So Junior’s father was arranging to go away again. He told the boy about
the plan for the future. “And we’ll spend a lot of time in the woods
together,” said Phil. “I’ll make a good camper of you. Your mother was a
good camper.” This comforted the silent little fellow and he did not
let the tears come until after Phil’s back was turned.
Meanwhile Phil had been going into the school question with the same
thoroughness he devoted to every other job he undertook.
And now the epochal time had come for Junior to go away to boarding
school. He was rather young for it, but Aunt Mary, it seems, was going
to be married at last.
She volunteered to accompany the boy on the journey and see him through
the first day. His father was very busy, of course, with preparations
for his much longer and more important journey. Junior had always been
fond of Aunt Mary, had transferred to her a little of the passionate
devotion that had belonged to his mother. Only a little. The rest was
all for his father, though Phil did not know it, and sometimes watched
these two together with hungry eyes, wondering how they laughed and
loved so comfortably.
On the evening before the great day his father said, “I know several of
the masters up there.” A little later, he added, “One of the
housemasters was a classmate of mine at college.” Then he said, “I’ve
been thinking it over. Maybe I better go up there with you myself.”
“Oh, if you only would!” thought the little fellow. But he considered
himself a big fellow now and had learned to repress such impulses, just
as he and the dogs had learned not to jump up and kiss Phil’s face. So
all Junior said was, “That’s awfully kind of you, but can you spare the
time?” He always became self-conscious in his father’s presence.
“You’d rather have your Aunt Mary? Well, of course, that’s all right.”
“No, but”--Junior dropped his eyes and raised them again--“sure I won’t
be a nuisance to you?”
Phil had forgotten the association of that word. All he saw was that the
boy wanted him more than he did Mary and it pleased him tremendously.
“Then that’s all fixed,” he said.
The housemaster was of the hearty pseudo-slangy sort. He said to
Junior’s father, “Skinny little cuss, isn’t he? Well, we’ll soon build
him up.”
“Aleck, I want you to take good care of this fellow,” said Phil. “He’s
all I’ve got, you know.”
“Oh, I’ll keep a strict eye on him, and if he gets fresh I’ll bat him
over the head.”
Junior knew that he was supposed to smile at this and did so. He did not
feel much like smiling. He discovered that he was to be in the
housemaster’s house. He did not believe that he would ever like this Mr.
Fielding, but he did in time.
As it came nearer and nearer his father’s train time the terrible
sinking feeling became worse, and he was afraid that he might cry after
all; and that would disgrace his father. They walked down to the station
together. They walked slowly. They would not see each other again for a
year--maybe two. Both were thinking about it, neither referring to it.
“I suppose that’s the golf links over there?” said Junior.
“I suppose so,” said Phil. He hadn’t looked.
There were a number of fathers and a greater number of mothers saying
good-bye. Some of the mothers were crying, all of them were kissing
their boys. Even some of the fathers did that. Junior and Phil saw it.
They glanced at each other and away again, both wondering whether it
would be done by them; each hoping so, yet fearing it wouldn’t be. Phil
remembered how when he was a youngster he hated to be kissed before the
other boys. He did not want to mortify the manly little fellow; and the
boy knew better than to begin such things. (“Don’t bore your father.”)
“Well,” said Phil, looking at his watch, “I suppose I might as well get
on the train.” Then he laughed as though that were funny. “Good-bye,” he
said. “Work hard and you’ll have a good time here. Good-bye, Junior.”
The father held out his hand.
The son shook it. “Good-bye, Father, I’ll bet you have a great trip in
the mountains.” And Junior laughed too. The train pulled out, and the
forlorn little boy was alone now. Worse. Surrounded by strangers.
“Well, I didn’t mortify him, anyway,” said the father.
“Well, I didn’t cry before him, anyway,” said the son. But he was doing
it now.
The veil between them was not yet lifted.
Junior had a roommate named Black. So he was called Blackie. Blackie had
a nice mother who used to come to see him frequently. Junior took
considerable interest in mothers, observed them closely when even the
most observant of them were quite unaware of it. He approved of his
roommate’s mother, despite her telling Blackie not to forget his
rubbers, dear. Blackie glanced at Junior to see if he was listening.
Junior pretended that he wasn’t.
“Aren’t mothers queer?” said Blackie after she had gone.
“Sure,” said Junior.
“Always worrying about you. You know how it is.”
“Sure.”
“I bet your mother’s the same way.”
Junior hesitated. “My mother’s dead,” he said. “Bet I can beat you to
the gate.” They raced and Junior beat him.
But he soon perceived that he would never make an athlete, and so he was
a nonentity all through the early part of his school career, one of the
little fellows in the lower form, thin legs and squeaky voice.
The things on the walls of Junior’s room--spears, arrows, shields, and
an antelope head--first drew attention to Junior’s only distinction.
That was why he had put them there.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” he said with some arrogance, after the expected
admiration and curiosity had been elicited. “You just ought to see my
father’s collection.” And this gave Junior his chance to tell about the
collector. “These things--only some junk he didn’t want and sent to me.”
This was not strictly true. His father had not sent them. Junior had
begged them from his aunt, and she was glad to get them out of her new
house. They did not go in any of her rooms. It was soon spread about the
school, as Junior knew it would be, that this skinny little fellow in
the lower form had a father who was worth while, a dare-devil who led
expeditions to distant and dangerous lands and seldom lived at home. He
had killed his man, it seems, had nearly lost his life from an attack by
a hostile tribe in Africa. He became a romantic, somewhat mythical
figure.
“When my old man was in college,” said Smithy, also a lower-form boy and
envious of Junior’s vicarious fame, “he made the football team.”
“My father was the captain of his eleven,” said Junior.
“My father was in the war,” said Smithy.
“Mine was wounded.”
But he soon observed that one could not boast too openly about one’s
father. Smithy made that mistake about the family possessions--yachts
and the like. He was squelched by an upper-form boy. Junior became
subtle. He caused questions to be asked and answered them reluctantly,
it seemed.
Many of the boys had photographs of fathers in khaki. Junior went them
one better. After the Christmas holidays the crowded mantelpiece
included an old faded kodak of Phil in a tropical explorer’s
costume--white helmet, rifle, binoculars, cartridge belt. It had been
taken as a joke by one of his engineer associates in Africa but it was
taken seriously by Junior and his associates in school.
“Where is the scar from the African spear thrust?” asked Smithy.
“It doesn’t show in the picture,” said Junior, “but he often lets me see
it. He and I always go fishing together in the North Woods when he’s in
this country. Long canoe trips. I enjoy camping with him because he’s
had a pretty good deal of experience at that sort of thing.”
Junior established a very interesting personality for Phil.
“Gee! I wish my father was like that,” said one of the boys. “My old man
always gives me hell.”
One day during the second year Blackie said, “June, why doesn’t your
father ever come here to see you?”
“Oh, he’s so seldom in this country, and he’s terribly busy when he gets
here. Barely has time to jump from one large undertaking to another.” He
had heard Aunt Mary’s husband say “large undertaking.”
“Well, some of the fellows think you’re just bluffing about your
father.”
“Huh! They’re jealous. Look at Smithy’s father. Nothing but money and
fat. Huh!”
Then came the great day when a wireless arrived for Junior. Very few
boys get messages from their fathers by wireless. “Land Friday,” it
said. “Coming to see you Saturday.” Ah! That would show them!
Junior jumped into a sort of first-page prominence in the news of the
day. He let some of his friends see the wireless. And now all of them
would see his father on Saturday. That was the day of the game. Junior
would have a chance to exhibit him before the whole school. “Six feet
two and well proportioned.” “Captain of his team in college.” He planned
it all out carefully. They would arrive late at the game and Junior
would lead him down the line. But he would do it with a matter-of-fact
manner as if used to going to games with his father.
On Friday he received a telegram. “Sorry can’t make it stop am wiring
headmaster permission spend week-end with me stop meet at office lunch
time stop go to ball game and theatre in the evening.” It was a straight
telegram at that, not a night letter. That would show the boys what kind
of a father he had.
“Hot dog!” they said. “But look here! You’ll miss the game.”
“The game” meant the great school game, of course, not the mere
world-series event Junior was going to.
“Well, you see, he doesn’t have many chances to be with me. I’ll have to
go.” A dutiful son.
But on Saturday morning he received another telegram. “Sorry must
postpone our spree together letter follows.”
He was beginning to wonder if his father really wanted to see him. It
was a great jolt to his pride. He had counted upon letting the boys know
where they lunched, what play they saw together, and perhaps there might
be a few hairbreadth escapes to relate.
“He can’t come,” said Junior to his roommate, tearing up the telegram.
“Why can’t he?” asked Blackie. Did Blackie suspect anything? His parents
never let anything prevent their seeing Blackie.
“Invited to the White House,” said Junior, tossing the torn telegram
into the fire. “The President wants to consult him about conditions in
Siberia.”
“Gee!” This made a sensation and it would spread. “But aren’t you going
to see him at all?”
“Of course. Going down next week probably, but you know an invitation to
the White House is a command.”
“That’s so.” Junior’s father’s stock was soaring.
That evening Smithy dropped in. He had heard about the White House and
the President.
“Huh! I don’t believe you’ve got a father,” said Smithy.
Junior only smiled and glanced at his roommate. Later Blackie told the
others that Smithy was jealous. “His father has nothing but money and
fat.” Junior was always too much for Smithy. But suppose the promised
letter did not follow. It hardly seemed possible. He had received
occasional cables, several telegrams, and that one notable wireless, but
never in all his life a letter from his father.
It came promptly. It was brief and it was dictated, but it was a letter
all the same, and he was much impressed. He had a letter from his
father, like other fellows. It explained that the writer had been called
away to New Mexico by important business, but that he hoped to join his
son during the summer. “It’s time we got acquainted. With much love,
Your Father.”
“Well, we’re going to meet during the summer anyway,” thought Junior,
folding up the letter. And his father had sent his love. To be sure, he
sent it through his secretary. But he sent it all the same.
That evening Junior arranged to be found casually reading a letter when
the gang dropped in.
“What have you got?” asked Smithy.
“Oh, just a letter from my father,” remarked Junior casually. “Wants to
know if I won’t go out to the Canadian Rockies with him next summer.” He
seemed to keep on reading. It was a bulky letter apparently. Junior had
attached three blank sheets of paper at the same size as that on which
the note was written.
“Gee! Your old man writes you long ones,” said Smithy. “What’s it all
about?”
“Oh, he merely wanted to tell me about his conference with the
President.”
“Hot dog! Read it aloud.”
“Sorry, Smithy, but it’s confidential!” Folded in such a way that its
brevity was concealed, Junior carelessly exposed the first sheet bearing
his father’s engraved letterhead. “Confidential” had been written by pen
across the top. Junior had written it.
All this produced the calculated effect for his father, but it was cold
comfort for the son.
Well, he did see his father at last, but it was during the summer
vacation, and the boys would know nothing about it until the fall term
opened. Junior was staying with Aunt Mary in the country, and came in
for the day. Phil was dictating letters and jumped up with a loud
“Hello, there, hello!” And this time he kissed his son, right in front
of his secretary. She was the only one of the three not startled. Phil
and Junior both blushed.
“Mrs. Allison, this is Junior,” said Phil. He seemed to be really glad
to see the boy, and Junior’s heart was thumping. Mrs. Allison said,
“Pleased, to meet you,” but Junior liked her all the same. She looked
kind. And while her employer finished his dictation she glanced at
Junior and smiled. The letter progressed slowly and had to be changed
twice. Mrs. Allison knew why, and smiled again, at her pencil this time.
She understood them both better than they understood each other.
“Thank you, Mrs. Allison,” Phil said; “that will be all to-day. I’m too
tired.” She knew he never tired. “I’ll sign them after lunch and mail
them myself.” Then he turned to Junior. “Now you and I are going out to
have a grand old time together, eh, what, old top?”
He slapped Junior on the back. Then Mrs. Allison left the room, and
father and son were alone together. It frightened them.
Already the old clamping habit of reserve was trying to have its way
with them, though each was determined to prevent it. Both of them
laughed and said, “Well, well!” hoping to bluff it off.
“First, let’s have a look at you,” said Phil; and he playfully dragged
Junior toward the window. The boy’s laughter suddenly died, and Phil now
had a disquieting sense of making an ass of himself in his son’s eyes.
But that was not it. Junior dreaded the strong light of the window. With
his changing voice had arrived a few not very conspicuous pimples; such
little ones, but they distressed him enormously.
“Well, feel as if you could eat something?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Junior. He feared it sounded cold and formal. He
couldn’t help it.
They went to a club on the top of a high office building. Junior’s name
was written in the guest book, which awed him agreeably. A large,
luxurious luncheon was outlined by Phil, beginning with a cantaloupe and
ending with ice cream--a double portion for Junior. This was first
submitted to Junior for approval. He had forgotten his facial blemishes.
“Golly! You bet I approve,” said Junior laughing. That was more like it.
Phil summoned a waiter and then sent for the head waiter. A great man,
his father, not afraid even of head waiters. And he ordered with the air
of one who knew. No wonder the waiters seemed honoured to serve him.
Only, how was one to “get this over” to the boys without seeming to
boast?
“A little fish, sir, after the melon?”
“Yes, if you’ll bring some not on the menu.” That was puzzling. Phil
explained. Fish which had arrived at the club after the menu had been
printed was sure to be fresh.
“Oh, I see,” said Junior. This would make a hit with the boys.
There was no doubt about it, his handsome father was the most
distinguished personage in the whole large roomful of important-looking
people. Several of them gathered around to welcome Phil. Junior was
presented. Their greetings to the son showed their warm affection, their
high regard for the father. Junior wallowed in filial pride. If only
Smithy could see him now! What a father! A citizen of the world who did
big things and wore perfect-fitting clothes, cut by his Bond Street
tailor in London--the finishing touch of greatness to a boy of Junior’s
age--and he recalled what one of the engineers had said to Aunt Mary,
“Even in camp he shaves every day.”
“Well, tell me how everything is going at school,” said the father, who
did not dream that he was being hero-worshipped.
But Junior could not be easy and natural, as with Aunt Mary. He blushed
as in the presence of a stranger. He heard his own raucous voice and
hated it. He took unnecessary sips of water.
He felt better and bolder after the delicious food arrived. Phil looked
on with amusement, amazement at the amount the youngster consumed.
“Next year I hope you can find time to come down to see us at school,”
Junior ventured with his double portion of ice cream. “All the fellows
want to meet you.”
“I want to meet them,” said his father. “This fall on the way back,
maybe.”
“Oh, you’re going away again?”
“Next week I’m going up into the woods with Billy Norton on a long canoe
trip. Some new country I want to show him. Trout streams never yet
fished by a white man.”
“Gosh! That’ll be great,” said Junior.
“Some day I’ll take you up there. It’s time you learned that game. Fly
casting, like swinging a gold club, should begin before your muscles are
set. Would you care to go on a camping trip with me?”
Care to! Of course it was the very thing he was doing all the time in
his daydreams, but he could not say that to his father. He said, “Yes,
thanks,” and paused for another sip of water. “You wouldn’t--no, of
course, you wouldn’t want me to go along this time.”
“Not this time. You see, I promised Billy. Some day though--you and I
alone. Much better, don’t you think?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t call me sir! Makes me feel like a master. I’m your father.” They
laughed at that and went back to the office. “Only take me a second to
sign these letters,” said Phil. Junior looked at the neat pile of them,
again impressed by his father’s importance.
“That’s awfully nice paper,” he said, coveting the engraved letterhead
with his father’s name on it, which was also his name.
“If you like it, take some,” said Phil as he rapidly signed that name.
“Help yourself, all you want. Wait, I’ll get you a whole box.” He
touched a bell and a boy came in. “Get a box of my stationery and ship
it to this address.” He turned to his letters again. “Then you won’t
have to pack it all the afternoon.” Pack it? Oh, yes, out-of-doors men
said “pack” instead of “carry.” He would say it hereafter.
On the way from the elevator, as they passed through the arcade, Junior
stopped to gaze with admiration at a camera in a shop window.
“Like one of those?” asked Phil. He led the way in. “Take your pick,” he
said. And then, “Ship it to this address.”
It was the only way this shy father knew how to express his affection.
It was not easy to say much to this boy. He seemed keen and critical
under his quiet manner.
Before the baseball game was over--a dull, unimportant game--they were
both talked out, each wondering what was the matter. “I suppose I bore
him,” said Phil to himself, and soon began thinking about his business.
When their grand old time together was finished each felt a horrible
sense of relief, though neither would acknowledge it to himself.
“Poor little cuss!” thought Phil. “I’d like to be a good father to him,
but I don’t know how.”
And the boy: “I’m afraid he’s disappointed in me. I’m so skinny and have
pimples.” If he were only a big, good-looking fellow like Smithy, who
played on the football team, his father would be proud of him. Smithy’s
parents saw him almost every week in term time and took him abroad every
summer. They were having his portrait painted.
“What kind of time did you have with your father in town?” asked his
Aunt Mary. Junior felt rather in the way at times, now that she had a
husband.
“Bully! Great!” and he made an attractive picture of it. “Father and I
are so congenial, now that I’m old. Next summer we’re going to the woods
together.”
“How do you talk to your kids?” Phil asked Bill Norton by the camp fire.
“I don’t talk to them. They aren’t interested in me except as a source
of supply. New generation!”
“I’m crazy about my boy,” said Phil, “but I have an idea that he
considers the old man a well-meaning ass. Funny thing; that little
fellow is the only person in the world I’m afraid of.”
“No father really knows his own son,” said Billy. “Some of them think
they do, but they don’t. It’s a psychological impossibility.”
* * * * *
Back at school again. A quick, scudding year. Summer vacation
approaching already!
“We’d be so pleased if you would spend the month of August with us in
Maine,” wrote Blackie’s mother. She had grown fond of the boy and was
sorry for him. Motherless--fatherless, too, for practical, for parental
purposes.
Junior, with his preternatural quickness, knew she was sorry for him and
appreciated her kindness, but he was not to be pitied and his father was
not to be criticized. “That’s awfully good of you,” he replied, “but
Father is counting upon my going up to the North Woods with him on a
long canoe trip. Some new country where no other white man has ever
been.”
He went to the woods, but not with his father. It was the school
camp--not the wild country his father penetrated; but there was trout
fishing all the same, and he loved it. Like many boys who are not
proficient at athletics, he took to camp life like a savage and
developed more expertness at casting and cooking and canoeing than did
certain stars of the football field or track. He had natural savvy. The
guides said so. Besides, he had an incentive to excel. He was not going
to be a nuisance to his father on the trip they would take together some
day. And though he reverted to a state of savagery in the woods, he kept
his tent and his outfit scrupulously neat and won first prize in this
department by a vote of the counsellors. For excellent reasons he did
not shave every day in camp, but he would some day.
He learned a great deal about the ways of birds while he was in the
woods, and back at school he persuaded Blackie to help organize The
Naturalists Club, despite the jeers of the athlete idolaters. He took
many bird pictures with the camera and he prepared a bird census of the
township. This was published in the school magazine, and so Junior
decided that when he got through college he would be a writer.
He had not seen his father for two years. South America this time--in
the Andes. The canoe trip was no longer mentioned. Junior went to the
school camp regularly now. He was acknowledged the best all-round camper
in school. He won first prize in fly casting and the second in canoeing.
He was getting big and strong, and became a good swimmer.
He spent his Christmas vacation with Aunt Mary, and while there Mrs.
Fielding, the wife of the housemaster, in town for the holidays, dropped
in for tea one day with Aunt Mary. They did not know that Junior was in
the adjoining room, reading Stewart Edward White.
“But it’s criminal the way Phil neglects that darling boy,” said Aunt
Mary.
“And he’s developing in such a fine way too,” said Mrs. Fielding. “He’s
one of the best liked boys in school.”
“I can’t understand my brother. Of course he’s terribly engrossed with
his career, now that he has won success, but he might at least send a
picture post card occasionally.”
“You mean to say he never writes to his own son!” Mrs. Fielding was
shocked and indignant. And then came this tragic revelation to Junior:
“Well, you see,” said Aunt Mary, “Phil never wanted children, and he’s
not really interested in the boy.”
“You don’t tell me so! Why, Aleck always speaks of your brother as if he
were so generous and warm-hearted.”
“Yes, that’s what makes it so pathetic. He is kind and tries to make up
for his lack of affection by giving Junior a larger allowance than is
good for him. But he never takes the trouble to send him a Christmas
present.”
So that explained it all. “He’s not interested in me. I wasn’t wanted.”
And after that he had his first experience with a sleepless night.
A few days later Junior remarked, “By the way, Aunt Mary, did I show you
the binoculars Father sent me for Christmas?” He handed them to her for
inspection. They looked secondhand. They were. He had picked them up
that morning in a pawnshop. “These are the very ones that Father carried
all through the war. He knew I’d like them better than new ones. Just
like Father to think of that. You remember his showing them to us when
he got back?”
Aunt Mary did not remember such things--he knew she wouldn’t--but she
rejoiced to hear it.
“He has sent me a typewriter too; only he ordered it shipped directly to
the school.”
“That was nice of him, wasn’t it?” said Aunt Mary.
“That’s the way he does with most of the presents he sends me. You
remember the camera?”
She did remember the camera.
The typewriter had been ordered on the installment plan. Junior hadn’t
saved enough money from his allowance to buy it outright.
“He’s not going to get me a radio set until he finds out which is the
best make on the market, he says.”
“Oh, has he written to you?” Aunt Mary was still more surprised.
“Every week,” said Junior.
“Oh, Junior! I’m so glad. But why haven’t you ever told me, dear?”
Junior smiled. “I didn’t want to make you jealous. He never writes to
you.”
“But didn’t you know how I would want to hear all his news?”
“You are so terribly engrossed in Uncle Robert’s career, I thought maybe
you weren’t interested in Father.”
At school the binoculars made a hit with the boys because they showed
the scars of war, but no one thought much of typewriters as Christmas
presents except Junior. He knew what he was doing.
A few days later, when Blackie entered the room he found his roommate
engrossed in reading a letter and so said nothing until Junior emitted
an absent-minded chuckle.
“What’s the joke?”
“Oh, nothing; just a letter from my father.”
“From your father? I thought he never wrote to you.”
“What do you know about it?”
“Well, I never see any envelopes with foreign stamps.”
“He always incloses mine in letters to my aunt.”
“But you never mentioned them, all the same,” said Blackie, “except the
one about the White House.”
“They are confidential, mostly.” Junior returned to the absorbing
letter. Presently he laughed outright.
“What does he say that’s so funny?”
“Oh, hell! Read it yourself.” Junior seemed irritated and tossed the
bulky letter across to his roommate.
It had taken the boy some time to compose this letter to himself, for it
required more than the possession of a typewriter and his father’s
engraved stationery to create a convincing illusion of a letter from a
father. Junior had seen so few, except for those Blackie had allowed him
to read, that he had no working model for long, interesting letters
worthy of a great man like his father.
The first draught had begun, “My darling boy,” but he changed that--it
sounded too much like Blackie’s mother. He made it “My dearest son.” He
rather fancied that, but finally played safe and addressed himself
simply as “Dear Junior.”
My work here is going fine. I have three thousand natives at work
under me not to speak of a hundred engineers on my staff doing the
technikal work. I am terribly busy but of course won’t let that
interfere with my regular weekly letter to you.
Junior was watching Blackie’s face.
I often think of the last canoe trip with you in Canada and can
hardly wait until I take another canoe trip with you in Canada.
Remember that time you hooked a four-pounder with your three ounce
rod? You were a little fellow then, that was before you went away
to school. Remember how you yelled to me for help to land same?
Business men always said “same,” but Junior didn’t like it, and besides,
his father was a professional man, so he changed “same,” to “him.”
Of course it wasn’t much of a trick for me to land that four pound
trout on a three ounce rod, because I am probly the best fisherman
in any of the dozen or more fishing clubs I belong to.
Junior revised that to read:
Because I happen to have quite a little experience landing trout
and salmon in some of the most important streams in the world, from
the high Sierras to the Ural Mountains.
It would never do to make his father guilty of blowing--the unforgivable
sin.
He thought that was all right for a beginning, but did not know how to
follow it up. He wanted to put in something about the Andes, with a few
stories of wild adventure and hairbreadth escapes, but although he read
up on the Andes in the encyclopædia, as he did on all his father’s
temporary habitats, he did not feel that the encyclopædia style suited
his father’s vivid personality. In an old copy of the _National
Geographic Magazine_ he found a traveller’s description of adventures in
that part of the world, and simply copied a page or two. It had to do
with an amusing though extremely dangerous adventure with a python,
which had treed one of the writer’s gun bearers--a narrow escape told
as a joke--quite his father’s sort of thing; and no one would ever
accuse Junior of inventing such a well-written narrative with such
circumstantial local colour.
Blackie was properly impressed by the three thousand natives and one
hundred experts, and he too, laughed aloud at the antics of the gun
bearer. He told the other boys about it, as Junior meant him to do, and
some of them wanted to read it too. They dropped in after study hour.
Junior, it seems, required urging, like an amateur vocalist who
nevertheless has brought her music.
“Oh, shoot!” he said. “It doesn’t amount to anything. Just a letter from
my father.”
“Why don’t you read it aloud?” suggested Blackie.
Junior seemed bored, but soon submitted. Like vocalists, he was afraid
that they might stop urging him.
“Oh, very well,” he said. He skimmed lightly over the opening personal
paragraph with the parenthetical voice people use when leading up to the
important part of a letter, though this was a very important part for
Junior, to get it over. Then, with the manner of saying, “Ah, here we
are,” he began reading in a louder and more deliberate tone, but not
without realistic hesitation here and there, as if unfamiliar with the
text. He read not only the amusing adventure with the python, but an
authoritative paragraph on the mineral deposits of the mountains. So his
audience never doubted that he had a real letter from a real mining
expert who signed himself “Your affectionate friend and father.”
Junior carelessly tossed the letter upon the table. “Some day I’ll read
you one of his interesting ones,” he said.
“Do it now,” said one of his admirers. “It’s great stuff.”
“No, I never keep letters,” said Junior and, to prove it, tore up the
carefully prepared document and tossed it in the fire.
“I’ll let you know when I get a good one.”
This was so successful that he did it again. There were plenty of other
quotable pages in the same magazine article, and Junior had a whole box
of his father’s stationery. But at the beginning and end of each letter
Junior always insinuated a few paternal touches, suggesting a rich past
of intimacy and affection, though just to make it a little more
convincing he would occasionally insert something like this, “But I
must tell you frankly, as man to man, that you spent entirely too much
money last term,” and interrupted his reading to say, “Gee! I didn’t
mean to read you fellows that part.” And they all laughed. A touch of
parental nature that made all the boys akin.
The fame of these letters spread from the boys’ end of the dinner table
to the master’s. Mr. Fielding said to Junior one day, “I’m so glad your
father has been writing to you lately.”
“Lately? Why, he always writes to me. But don’t tell my Aunt Mary. Might
make her jealous.”
Junior smiled as if he had a great joke on his Aunt Mary. There, he got
that over too! Neither of these ladies would dare criticize his father
again.
“Is your Aunt Mary so fond of him as all that?”
“Why, of course!”
“Well, I’m glad you’re hearing from him, anyway. I so seldom see letters
addressed to you on the hall table.
“I have a lock box at the post office.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Fielding.
So that explained it all. It was true about the lock box. Junior
exhibited the key while was he speaking, and he was seen at the post
office frequently to make the matter more plausible. He even opened the
box if any one was around to watch him, though he never found any
letters there except those he put in and pulled out again by sleight of
hand, whistling carelessly as he did so.
Mr. Fielding had asked Junior to step into the office a moment. “What do
you hear from your father?” he said.
“Oh, he’s quite well, thank you, sir. He’ll be starting for home soon.
He says he’s not going to let anything interfere with our canoe trip
this year. It’s the funniest thing how something has always happened
every summer to prevent it. Father says we’re going to break the hoodoo
this time.”
“I see,” said Mr. Fielding.
Junior had heard Mr. Fielding say “I see” before and he had been in
school too long now to undervalue its significance. He would have to be
on guard. He knew he had told conflicting stories.
“Do you hear from him regularly?”
“Oh, no; the mails are so irregular from that part of the world.”
“How often?”
“Well,” said Junior, with his engaging smile, “not so often as I’d like,
of course. But then he’s a very busy man.”
“That story about the python--it sounded like a corker as Blackie told
it secondhand. Mind letting me read that letter?”
“Sorry, sir. I destroyed it.” Blackie would vouch for that, if
necessary.
“I see.” The head master looked at Junior in silence, then he said with
a not unkind smile. “Junior, I’m very fond of your father. He’s one of
the finest fellows that ever lived.”
“Sure,” said Junior.
“I’ve known him longer than you have. I don’t think he ever did anything
dishonourable in his life.”
“Of course not.”
What was coming? He must keep his head now.
“You know how your father would feel if I couldn’t honestly say the same
thing about you?”
“Why, what do you mean, Mr. Fielding?”
“Just tell me the truth, Junior, and it needn’t ever go out of this
room. Does your father ever write to you at all?”
“Why, sir, you don’t think my father is the sort who wouldn’t write to
his own son, do you?” Then the boy added desperately, “I don’t see why
you all want to make him out a piker.”
“Did your father write the letter describing the fight with the python?”
“Look here, Mr. Fielding, you people don’t understand. I’m better
friends with my father than most boys. You see, my mother’s dead and all
that. So--well, don’t you see, he sort of takes it out in writing me
long letters. He thought that stuff about the python would amuse me.”
He was a loyal little liar and the head master admired him for it. But
it wouldn’t do. Mr. Fielding opened a drawer of his desk and took out an
old magazine.
“Does your father take the _National Geographic_?”
Junior crumpled up.
“I don’t know, sir.” He was in for it now--caught. Mr. Fielding opened
the magazine and pointed out a marked page to Junior.
“Junior, I know you won’t accuse an honourable gentleman like your
father of stealing another man’s writings, passing them off as his own.
There’s an ugly name for that. It’s called plagiarism.”
He had tried to defend his father, and look at the result!
“I wrote those letters, Mr. Fielding.”
“I knew that,” said Mr. Fielding gently. “You won’t do it again, though,
will you, Junior?”
“Hardly.”
“That’s all. You may go now.”
Junior turned at the door. He knew that this was not all. He was being
let down too easily.
“Mr. Fielding----” he began, and hesitated. “It won’t be necessary for
you to tell my father, will it?”
“I won’t tell him, but you will.”
“No, sir, I could never do that.”
“Well, we’ll see. Good night, Junior.”
So he could write no more letters to exhibit to the boys. He explained
that his father had gone on a long expedition inland. No chance for mail
for months. They made no comment, but the whole house knew that he had
been summoned “to the office.” They suspected something, but they would
never discover the truth from him. He would bluff it out to the end.
But now, more than ever, he wanted letters from father, even if written
by himself. He had formed the habit. They somehow did him good. They
made him feel that his father was interested in him.
So, once in a while, just for his own eyes, when Blackie was not around
he opened the typewriter and said all the things he wanted his father to
say to him. As no one would ever see these letters, he could go as far
as he liked. He went quite far. He even said things that only mothers
said:
_My darling son_: Don’t you care what he thinks about you; I
understand and I forgive you. You meant it all right and I like you
just the same, even if you are not an athlete and have got pimples.
When I get back we’ll go off to the West together and live down
this disgrace. Your devoted father and friend.
Sometimes he laughed a little, or tried to, when he realized how these
letters would bore his distinguished parent. But while writing them his
father seemed not only fond of him but actually proud of him. A writer
can invent anything.
I was so pleased to hear your poem about the meadow lark was
accepted by the magazine. Your article about Birds in Our Woods was
very interesting and very well written. I believe you will make a
great writer some day, and think how proud I will be when you are a
great writer, and people point to your picture in the newspapers!
I’ll say, “That’s my son; I’m his father.” Of course, I was
disappointed that you did not become a great athlete like me, but
intellectual destinction is good if you can’t get athletic
destinction, and it may be more useful for a career.
He got a good deal of comfort out of being a father to himself, and
sometimes the letters ran into considerable length, unless Blackie
butted in. His father, it seemed, even consulted him about his own
affairs:
I am glad you approve of my taking on the San Miguel project. I
think a great deal of your business judgment and it is great to
have a son who has good business judgment even though he cannot
make the team. In that respect it is better than making the team,
because you can help me in my problems away off here just as I help
you with your problems up there at school.
He enjoyed writing that one, but when he became the reader of it, that
last sentence made him cry. And the worst of it was, at that point
Blackie came in.
“What are you writing?”
“Just some stuff for the mag.”
“You’re always writing for the mag. Get your racket and come on.”
“Oh, get out of here and quit interrupting my literary work.” Junior had
not cared to turn his telltale face toward his roommate.
* * * * *
The school year was closing, and Junior was packing to leave the next
day. The last time he had gone to town he learned at the office that his
father was returning soon. They did not know which steamer. They never
did. The secret letters had all been kept carefully locked in his trunk,
and now Junior was taking them out to put neatly folded trousers in the
bottom. Blackie was playing tennis. None of the boys had learned the
truth, though in secret Blackie felt pretty sure of it now, but was so
loyal that he had a fight with Smithy for daring to say in public that
Junior’s letters were a damn fake.
Mr. Fielding came in. He did not notice the letters lying there on the
table, and he seemed very friendly. The housemaster knew how fine and
sensitive this boy was and that the only way to handle him was by
encouragement. “We are all much pleased with your classroom work,
Junior; but as for the mag, you’re a rotten speller, but a good writer,
and I don’t mind telling you a secret: You have been elected to be one
of the editors next year.”
“Oh, Mr. Fielding! Are you sure?” This had been his ambition for a year.
That settled it for life. A great writer like W. H. Hudson, who loved
both nature and art, but nature more.
“Of course your appointment has to be confirmed by the faculty, but
there’ll be no trouble with a boy of your standing. All you have to do
is straighten out that little matter with your father. Naturally, an
editor has got to have a clean literary record.”
This was not meant entirely as punishment for Junior. The master thought
it would be salutary for Phil to know. It might wake him up.
“You mean I can’t make the mag unless I tell him what I did?”
“Do you want me to tell him?”
“If you do I’ll run away and I’ll never come back.”
“Can’t you get up your courage to do it, Junior? I know you didn’t mean
to do wrong. Your father will, too, when he understands.”
Junior was shaking his head.
“It isn’t a matter of courage,” he said, straightening up. “He’d think I
was knocking him out for not writing to me.
“Well, if you won’t talk to him about it I must. He’ll be here in a few
minutes.”
“A few minutes! Here? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“He landed yesterday. The papers ran an interview with him this morning.
I telegraphed him to come at once.” Mr. Fielding looked at his watch.
“Why, his train must be coming in now. Excuse me. I said I’d meet him
at the station.”
A mental earthquake turned Junior’s universe upside down. His father was
coming at last! Why? His offense must have been pretty serious to bring
his father. Why, of course! Mr. Fielding had sent for him. The most
honourable gentleman in the world was going to find out in a few minutes
that his own son and namesake was a liar, a plagiarist, and a forger.
Junior could not face it. He rushed from the room and out by the back
stairs. His father was coming, the thing he planned and longed for ever
since he had been a member of the school, and he was running away from
him.
He went out into the woods by the river, where he had spent so many
happy hours with Blackie and the birds. He could never face Blackie
again, nor the school, no, nor his father. Life was empty and horrible.
“Why not end it all in the river?” He had read that phrase, but the
impulse was genuine.
“The hell of it is,” he heard himself saying, “I’m such a good swimmer.”
But he could load his coat with stones and bind his feet with his
trousers. He began picking out the stones.
* * * * *
“Well, what’s it?” said Phil to the housemaster, trying to hide his
paternal eagerness. The boy was in trouble, the old man would get him
out. Good! Needed at last. “Has my young hopeful been getting tight?”
“Oh, nothing as serious as that. He’s a finely organized, highly evolved
youngster, and so he has a rather vivid imagination.”
“Speak up, Aleck! You haven’t caught him in a lie? That’s a good deal
more serious than getting tight.”
“Well, it’s a likable lie.”
“It’s a lie all the same, and I’ll give him the devil.”
“Oh, no, you won’t. The kid lied for you, old man; perjured himself like
a gentleman. Now you go and get it out of him. It’ll do you both good.”
They had arrived at the house.
“Where is the little cuss?” Phil was trying without success to seem calm
and casual.
“He’s no longer little. You won’t know him. He’s come into his heritage
of good looks at last.”
“For God’s sake, shut up and tell me where to find him.”
Fielding laughed. “Upstairs, second door on the left. I won’t butt in on
this business. It’s up to you now.” But Phil did not wait to hear all
that.
Not finding his namesake and glancing about at the intimate possessions
of his little-known son, Phil was surprised to see a sheath of letters
on the table, bearing his own engraved stamp at the top.
“That’s odd,” he thought. “Who’s been writing to him on my paper?” He
had forgotten the presentation box of stationery. His eye was caught by
these words neatly typed, “My beloved son,” At the bottom of the page he
saw, “Your faithful friend and father.” He picked the letter up and read
it.
As I told you in my last, I am counting the days until we get
together again and go up to Canada on another canoe trip, just you
and I alone this time without any guide. You have become such a
good camper now that we don’t want any greasy Indian guides around.
I am glad that you are a good camper. I don’t care what you say,
I’d rather go to the woods with you than Billy Norton or anybody
because you and I are not like ordinary father and sons; we are
congenial friends. Of course you are pretty young to be a friend of
mine and you may be an ugly and unattractive kid, but you are mine
all the same, and I’m just crazy about you. They say I neglect you,
but you know better. All these letters prove it. Your faithful
friend and father.
Junior’s father picked up the rest of the letters and, with the
strangest sensations a father ever had, read them all.
* * * * *
Perhaps it was telepathy. Junior suddenly remembered that he had left
the letters exposed upon the table. His father would go upstairs after
the talk with Mr. Fielding, to disown him. He would find those
incriminating letters. Then when they found his body his father would
know that his son was not only a liar and a forger but a coward and a
quitter. In all his life his father had never been afraid of anything.
If his father were in his place what would he do?
That saved him. He dumped out the stones and ran back to the room. He
would face it.
Phil was aware that a tall slender youth with a quick elastic stride had
entered the room and had stopped abruptly by the door, staring at him.
There were reasons why he preferred not to raise his face at present,
but this boy’s figure was unrecognizably tall and strong, and Phil was
in no mood to let a young stranger come in upon him now.
“What do you want?” he asked gruffly, still seated still holding the
letters.
There was no answer. Junior had never seen a Father disown a son, but he
guessed that was the way it was done. He saw the letters in his father’s
hands. Certainly, this was being disowned.
The boy took a step forward. “Well, anyway,” he said, maintaining a
defiant dignity in his disgrace, “no one else has seen those letters, so
you won’t be compromised, Father.” The boy was a great reader, and had
often heard of compromising letters.
Phil sprang up from his chair, dropped the letters and gazed into the
fine sensitive face, a beautiful face, it seemed to him now, quivering,
but held bravely up to meet his sentence like a soldier.
Junior could now see that his father’s strong face was also quivering,
but misunderstood the reason for his emotion. There was a silence while
Phil gained control of his voice. Then he said, still gazing at the boy,
“But how did you know I felt that way about you?”
“What way?”
“Those letters. I’ve read them. I wish to God I’d written them.”
Junior, usually so quick, still could not get it right. “You mean,
you’re going to forgive me for lying about you?”
“Lying about me! Why, boy, you’ve told the truth about me. I didn’t know
how. Can you forgive me for that?”
Now Junior was getting it. His face was lighting up. “Why, Father,” he
began, and faltered. “Why, Father--why, Father--you really like me!”
Junior felt strong hands gripping his shoulders and once more the vivid
recollection of the street boys and the big man who comforted him. “You
know what one of those letters says, Junior--I’m just crazy about you.”
“Oh, Father, why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Well, what’s the use of having a great writer in the family anyway!”
They laughed and looked at each other and found that the strange thing
that kept them apart was gone for ever. In the future they might differ,
quarrel even, but the veil between them was torn asunder at last.
The rest of the boys had finished dinner when Junior came down, leading
in his tall bronzed father with the perfectly fitting clothes and the
romantic scar on his handsome face.
“Say, fellows, wait a minute. I want you to know my father.” He did it
quite as if accustomed to it, but Mrs. Fielding down at the end of the
table could see that father and son were reeking with pride. “He’s my
son; I’m his father.”
“So this is Blackie?” said Phil. “Did you give him that message in my
last letter?” Even his father could lie when he wanted to.
“Sorry, I forgot.”
Phil turned and gave his old classmate a shameless wink. “I can’t really
blame the kid. I write him such awfully long letters.”
“Father just landed from South America yesterday,” Junior was explaining
to Smithy. “So he hurried right up here.”
“You see we’re starting for the Canadian Rockies to-morrow,” said Phil.
“This fellow’s got an impudent idea that he can out-cast the old man
now, but I’ll show him his place.”
Mr. Fielding took the floor. “Junior ought to get some good material for
the magazine up there,” he said. “Boys, he’s going to be one of the
editors next year.”
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[A] In the United States, written by citizens of the United States.
[B] Modern advertising needs many media. Mark Sullivan, at the
Author’s League Dinner, Hotel Plaza, 1916, attributed the increase
in short stories to the invention of the gasolene engine. Periodical
literature, if in part literature only by courtesy, meets the taste and
intelligence of all classes.
[C] June, 1850.
[D] January-June, 1887.
[E] “Short Story Writing,” N. Bryllion Fagin, Thomas Seltzer, 1923, p.
98.
[F] _New York Times Book Review_, December 23, 1923. Article by Rose C.
Feld.
[G] “Yet Again,” by Max Beerbohm, Alfred Knopf, 1923.
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
done so with orginality=> done so with originality {pg xvi}
became almost ununbearable=> became almost unbearable {pg 7}
said to Naopleon=> said to Napoleon {pg 22}
he came to Naopleon=> he came to Napoleon {pg 23}
thick atmsophere=> thick atmosphere {pg 31}
I want someobdy=> I want somebody {pg 48}
was appproaching=> was approaching {pg 80}
charged with an electricty=> charged with an electricity {pg 82}
calesa and tood refuge=> calesa and took refuge {pg 90}
two fliers appeard=> two fliers appeared {pg 96}
his horny plams=> his horny palms {pg 104}
the men lengthenend=> the men lengthened {pg 113}
stood one one side=> stood on one side {pg 117}
commites a murder=> commits a murder {pg 137}
faces oppposite her=> faces opposite her {pg 159}
with Wallie=> with Wally {pg 160}
tilted you head back=> tilted your head back {pg 171}
could he commmunicate=> could he communicate {pg 185}
predatory keeness=> predatory keenness {pg 203}
“What’s this?” he sked.=> “What’s this?” he asked. {pg 220}
been accumstomed=> been accustomed {pg 249}
on on reading=> on on reading {pg 259}
that kept tham apart=> that kept them apart {pg 277}
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