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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:37:08 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:37:08 -0700 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/11512-0.txt b/11512-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9357f3c --- /dev/null +++ b/11512-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,14353 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11512 *** + +_O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD PRIZE STORIES of 1921_ + + +CHOSEN BY THE SOCIETY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES + +WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS + +1922 + + + +CONTENTS + + +THE HEART OF LITTLE SHIKARA. By Edison Marshall + +THE MAN WHO CURSED THE LILIES. By Charles Tenney Jackson + +THE URGE. By Maryland Allen + +MUMMERY. By Thomas Beer + +THE VICTIM OF HIS VISION. By Gerald Chittenden + +MARTIN GERRITY GETS EVEN. By Courtney Ryley Cooper and Leo F. Creagan + +STRANGER THINGS. By Mildred Cram + +COMET. By Samuel A. Derieux + +FIFTY-TWO WEEKS FOR FLORETTE. By Elizabeth Alexander Heermann + +WILD EARTH. By Sophie Kerr + +THE TRIBUTE. By Harry Anable Kniffin + +THE GET-AWAY. By O.F. Lewis + +"AURORE." By Ethel Watts Mumford + +MR. DOWNEY SITS DOWN. By L.H. Robbins + +THE MARRIAGE IN KAIRWAN. By Wilbur Daniel Steele + +GRIT. By Tristram Tupper + + + +FOUNDER OF THE O. HENRY MEMORIAL COMMITTEE + +The plan for the creation of the O. Henry Memorial Committee was +conceived and the work of the Committee inaugurated in the year 1918 +by the late John F. Tucker, LL.M., then Directing Manager of the +Society of Arts and Sciences. The Society promptly approved the plan +and appropriated the sum necessary to inaugurate its work and to make +the award. + +The Committee is, therefore, in a sense, a memorial to Mr. Tucker, as +well as to O. Henry. Up to the time of his death Mr. Tucker was a +constant adviser of the Committee and an attendant at most of its +meetings. + +Born in New York City in 1871 and educated for the law, Mr. Tucker's +inclinations quickly swept him into a much wider stream of +intellectual development, literary, artistic, and sociological. He +joined others in reviving the Twilight Club (now the Society of Arts +and Sciences), for the broad discussion of public questions, and to +the genius he developed for such a task the success of the Society up +to the time of his death was chiefly due. The remarkable series of +dinner discussions conducted under his management, for many years, in +New York City, have helped to mould public opinion along liberal +lines, to educate and inspire. Nothing he did gave him greater pride +than the inception of the O. Henry Memorial Committee, and that his +name should be associated with that work perpetually this tribute is +hereby printed at the request of the Society of Arts and Sciences. +E.J.W. + + + +INTRODUCTION + +In 1918 the Society of Arts and Sciences established, through its +Managing Director, John F. Tucker, the O. Henry Memorial. Since that +year the nature of the annual prize and the work of the Committee +awarding it have become familiar to writer, editor, and reader of +short stories. To the best short story written by an American and +published in America the sum of $500 is awarded; to the second best, +the sum of $250. In 1919 the prize winning story was Margaret Prescott +Montague's "England to America"; in 1920 it was Maxwell Struthers +Hurt's "Each in His Generation." Second winners were: 1919, Wilbur +Daniel Steele's "For They Know Not What They Do," and, 1920, Frances +Noyes Hart's "Contact!" [The prizes were delivered on June 2, 1920, +and on March 14, 1921, at the annual memorial dinner, Hotel Astor.] + + +In 1921 the Committee of Award consisted of these members: + + BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS, Ph. D., Chairman + EDWARD J. WHEELER, Litt. D. + ETHEL WATTS MUMFORD + FRANCES GILCHRIST WOOD + GROVE E. WILSON + +And the Committee of Administration: + + JOHN F. TUCKER, [Deceased, February 27, 1921.], Founder of the O. + Henry Memorial + EDWARD J. WHEELER, Litt.D. + GLENN FRANK, Editor of _The Century Magazine_ + GEORGE C. HOWARD, Attorney. + +As in previous years each member of the Committee of Award held +himself responsible for reviewing the brief fiction of certain +magazines and for circulating such stories as warranted reading by +other members. + +Results in 1921 differ in a number of respects from those of 1919 and +1920. In the earlier half year, January excepted, every reader +reported a low average of current fiction, so low as to excite +apprehension lest the art of the short story was rapidly declining. +The latter six months, however, marked a reaction, with a higher +percentage of values in November and December. Explanation of the low +level lies in the financial depression which forced a number of +editors to buy fewer stories, to buy cheaply, or to search their +vaults for remnant of purchases made in happier days. Improvement +began with the return to better financial conditions. + +The several members of the Committee have seldom agreed on the +comparative excellence of stories, few being of sufficient superiority +in the opinion of the Committee as a whole to justify setting them +aside for future consideration. The following three dozen candidates, +more or less, average highest: + +Addington, Sarah, Another Cactus Blooms (_Smart Set_, December). + +Alexander, Elizabeth, Fifty-Two Weeks for Florette [Reprinted as by + Elizabeth Alexander Heermann.] (_Saturday Evening Post_, August 13). + +Allen, Maryland, The Urge (_Everybody's_, September). + +Arbuckle, Mary, Wasted (_Midland_, May). + +Beer, Thomas, Mummery (_Saturday Evening Post_, July 30). + +Burt, Maxwell Struthers, Buchanan Hears the Wind (_Harper's_, August). + +Byrne, Donn, Reynardine (_McClure's_, May). + +Chittenden, Gerald, The Victim of His Vision (_Scribner's_, May). + +Comfort, Will Levington, and Dost, Zamin Ki, The Deadly Karait + (_Asia_, August). + +Cooper, Courtney Ryley, and Creagan, Leo F. Martin, Gerrity Gets Even + (_American_, July). + +Cooper, Courtney Ryley, Old Scarface (_Pictorial Review_, April). + +Cram, Mildred, Stranger Things--(_Metropolitan_, January). + +Derieux, Samuel A., Comet (_American_, December). + +Hull Helen R., Waiting (_Touchstone_, February). + +Jackson, Charles Tenney, The Man who Cursed the Lilies (_Short + Stories_, December 10). + +Kerr, Sophie, Wild Earth (_Saturday Evening Post_, April 2). + +Kniffin, Harry Anable, The Tribute (_Brief Stories_, September). + +Lewis, O.F., The Get-A way (_Red Book_, February); The Day of Judgment + (_Red Book_, October). + +Mahoney, James, Wilfrid Reginald and the Dark Horse (_Century_, + August). + +Marshall, Edison, The Heart of Little Shikara (_Everybody's_, + January). + +Morris, Gouverneur, Groot's Macaw (_Cosmopolitan_, November); Just One + Thing More (_Cosmopolitan_, December). + +Mumford, Ethel Watts, "Aurore" (_Pictorial Review_, February); The + Crowned Dead (_Short Stories_, July); Funeral Frank (_Detective + Stories_, October 29). + +Robbins, L.H., Mr. Downey Sits Down (_Everybody's_, June). + +Steele, Wilbur Daniel, 'Toinette of Maissonnoir (_Pictorial Review_, + July); The Marriage in Kairwan (_Harper's_, December). + +Street, Julian, A Voice in the Hall (_Harper's_, September). + +Stringer, Arthur, A Lion Must Eat (_McClure's_, March). + +Tupper, Tristram, Grit (_Metropolitan_, March). + +Vorse, Mary Heaton, The Halfway House (_Harper's_, October). + +Wolff, William Almon, Thalassa! Thalassa! (_Everybody's_, July). + + * * * * * + +The following stories rank high with a majority of the Committee: + +Anthony, Joseph, A Cask of Ale for Columban (_Century_, March). + +Baker, Karle Wilson, The Porch Swing (_Century_, April). + +Balmer, Edwin, "Settled Down" (_Everybody's_, February). + +Beer, Thomas, Addio (_Saturday Evening Post_, October 29); The Lily + Pond (_Saturday Evening Post_, April 16). + +Biggs, John, Jr., Corkran of the Clamstretch (_Scribner's_, December). + +Boulton, Agnes, The Snob (_Smart Set_, June). + +Boyle, Jack, The Heart of the Lily (_Red Book_, February); The Little + Lord of All the Earth (_Red Book_, March). + +Byrne, Donn, The Keeper of the Bridge (_McClure's_, April). + +Canfield, Dorothy, Pamela's Shawl (_Century_, August). + +Connell, Richard, The Man in the Cape (_Metropolitan_, July). + +Cooper, Courtney Ryley, The Fiend (_Cosmopolitan_, March); Love (_Red + Book_, June). + +Cram, Mildred, Anna (_McCatt's_, March); The Bridge (_Harper's + Bazaar_, April). + +Derieux, Samuel A., Figgers Can't Lie (_Delineator_, April); The + Bolter (_American_, November). + +Dreiser, Theodore, Phantom Gold (_Live Stories_, March). + +Ellerbe, Alma and Paul, When the Ice Went Out (_Everybody's_, May). + +England, George Allan, Test Tubes (_Short Stories_, March). + +Erickson, Howard, The Debt (_Munsey's_, February). + +Fraenkel, H. E., The Yellow Quilt (_Liberator_, December). + +Ginger, Bonnie, The Decoy (_Century_, October). + +Hart, Frances Noyes, The American (_Pictorial Review_, November). + +Hergesheimer, Joseph, Juju (_Saturday Evening Post_, July 30); The + Token (_Saturday Evening Post_, October 22). + +Hopper, Elsie Van de Water, The Flight of the Herons (_Scribner's_, + November). + +Hughes, Rupert, When Crossroads Cross Again (_Collier's_, January 29). + +Hurst, Fannie, She Walks in Beauty (_Cosmopolitan_, August). + +Irwin, Inez Haynes, For Value Received (_Cosmopolitan_, November). + +Irwin, Wallace, The Old School (_Pictorial Review_, April). + +Kabler, Hugh MacNair, Like a Tree (_Saturday Evening Post_) January + 22). + +Lanier, Henry Wysham, Circumstantial (_Collier's_, October 15). + +Lewis, Sinclair, Number Seven (_American_, May). + +Mahoney, James, Taxis of Fate (_Century_, November). + +Mason, Grace Sartwell, Glory (_Harper's_, April). + +Moore, Frederick, The Picture (_Adventure_, September 10). + +Mouat, Helen, Aftermath (_Good Housekeeping_, September). + +Natteford, J. F., A Glimpse of the Heights (_Photoplay_, April). + +Neidig, William F, The Firebug (_Everybody's_, April). + +Pitt, Chart, Debt of the Snows (_Sunset_, April). + +Post, Melville Davisson, The Mottled Butterfly (_Red Book_, August); + The Great Cipher (_Red Book_, November). + +Read, Marion Pugh, Everlasting Grace (_Atlantic Monthly_, March). + +Rhodes, Harrison, Night Life and Thomas Robinson (_Saturday Evening + Post_, June 4). + +Rouse, William Merriam, Arms of Judgment (_Argosy-All-Story Weekly_, + March 12). + +Shore, Viola Brothers, The Heritage (_Saturday Evening Post_, February + 5). + +Singmaster, Elsie, The Magic Mirror (_Pictorial Review_, November). + +Springer, Fleta Campbell, The Mountain of Jehovah (_Harper's_, March). + +Tarkington, Booth, Jeannette (_Red Book_, May). + +Titus, Harold, The Courage of Number Two (_Metropolitan_, June). + +Train, Arthur, The Crooked Fairy (_McCall's_, July). + +Watson, Marion Elizabeth, Bottle Stoppers (_Pictorial Review_, June). + +Wormser, G. Ranger, Gossamer (_Pictorial Review_, March). + +The following stories are regarded the best of the year by the judges +whose names are respectively indicated: + +1. The Marriage in Kairwan, by Wilbur Daniel Steele (_Harper's_, + December). Ethel Watts Mumford. + +2. A Life, by Wilbur Daniel Steele (_Pictorial Review_, August). + Edward J. Wheeler. + +3. Wisdom Buildeth Her House, by Donn Byrne (_Century_, December). + Blanche Colton Williams. + +4. Waiting, by Helen R. Hull (_Touchstone_, February). Grove E. + Wilson. + +5. The Poppies of Wu Fong, by Lee Foster Hartman (_Harper's_, + November). Frances Gilchrist Wood. + +Out of the first list sixteen stories were requested for republication +in this volume. The significance of the third list lies in the fact +that only one story was selected from it, the others meeting +objections from the remainder of the Committee. + +Since no first choice story won the prize, the Committee resorted, as +in former years, to the point system, according to which the leader is +"The Heart of Little Shikara," by Edison Marshall. To Mr. Marshall, +therefore, goes the first prize of $500. In like manner, the second +prize, of $250, is awarded to "The Man Who Cursed the Lilies," by +Charles Tenney Jackson. + +In discussing "A Life," "The Marriage in Kairwan," and "'Toinette of +Maissonnoir," all published by Wilbur Daniel Steele in 1921, in +remarking upon the high merit of his brief fiction in other years, and +in recalling that he alone is represented in the first three volumes +of O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories, the Committee intimated the +wish to express in some tangible fashion its appreciation of this +author's services to American fiction. On the motion of Doctor +Wheeler, therefore, the Committee voted to ask an appropriation from +the Society of Arts and Sciences as a prize to be awarded on account +of general excellence in the short story in 1919, 1920, and 1921. This +sum of $500 was granted by the Society, through the proper +authorities, and is accordingly awarded to Wilbur Daniel Steele. + +Two characteristics of stories published in 1921 reveal editorial +policies that cannot but be harmful to the quality of this art. These +ear-marks are complementary and, yet, paradoxically antipodal. In +order to draw out the torso and tail of a story through Procrustean +lengths of advertising pages, some editors place, or seem to place, a +premium upon length. The writer, with an eye to acceptance by these +editors, consciously or unconsciously pads his matter, giving a +semblance of substance where substance is not. Many stories fall below +first rank in the opinion of the Committee through failure to achieve +by artistic economy the desired end. The comment "Overwritten" +appeared again and again on the margins of such stories. The reverse +of this policy, as practised by other editors, is that of chopping the +tail or, worse, of cutting out sections from the body of the +narrative, then roughly piecing together the parts to fit a smaller +space determined by some expediency. Under the observation of the +Committee have fallen a number of stories patently cut for space +accommodation. Too free use of editorial blue pencil and scissors has +furnished occasion for protest among authors and for comment by the +press. For example, in _The Literary Review_ of _The New York Post_, +September 3, the leading article remarks, after granting it is a rare +script that cannot be improved by good editing, and after making +allowance for the physical law of limitation by space: "Surgery, +however, must not become decapitation or such a trimming of long ears +and projecting toes as savage tribes practise. It seems very probable +that by ruthless reshaping and hampering specifications in our +magazines, stories and articles have been seriously affected." +Further, "the passion for editorial cutting" is graphically +illustrated in The _Authors' League Bulletin_ for December (page 8) by +a mutilation of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. + +Although, by the terms of the Memorial, the Committee were at liberty +to consider only stories by American authors, they could not but +observe the increasing number of races represented through authorship. +Some of the following names will be recognized from preceding years, +some of them are new: Blasco Ibáñez, W. Somerset Maugham, May +Sinclair, Mrs. Henry Dudeney, Mary Butts, Frank Swinnerton, Georges +Clemenceau, Johan Bojer, H. Söderberg, Seumas Macmanus, R. Sabatini, +Demetra Vaka, Achmed Abdullah, Rabindranath Tagore, A. Remizov, Konrad +Bercovici, Anzia Yezierska, and--daughter of an English mother and +Italian father who met in China, she herself having been born in San +Francisco--Adriana Spadoni. Nor do these represent all the nations +whose sons and daughters practise the one indigenous American art on +its native soil. Let the list stand, without completion, sufficient to +the point. + +The note of democracy is sounded, as a sequence, in the subject +matter. East Side Italian and Jew brush shoulders in Miss Spadoni's +tales; Englishman, Dane, and South Sea Islander shake hands on the +same page of W. Somerset Maugham's "The Trembling of a Leaf"; +Norwegian, Frenchman, and Spaniard are among us, as before; +Bercovici's gypsies from the Roumanian Danube, now collected in +"Ghitza," flash colourful and foreign from the Dobrudja Mountains and +the Black Sea. In one remarkable piece of melodrama, "Rra Boloi," by +the Englishman Crosbie Garstin (_Adventure_), and the African witch +doctor of the Chwene Kopjes enters short-story literature. + +The Oriental had been exploited to what appeared the ultimate; but +continued interest in the Eastern problem brings tidal waves of +Japanese and Chinese stories. Disarmament Conferences may or may not +effect the ideal envisioned by the Victorian, a time "when the war +drums throb no longer, and the battle-flags are furled in the +Parliament of Man"; but the short story follows the gleam, merely by +virtue of authorship and by reflecting the peoples of the earth. + +When Lee Foster Hartman created his Chinese hero in "The Poppies of Wu +Fong," dramatized Oriental inscrutability with Occidental suavity and +sureness, and set off the Oriental gentleman in American surroundings, +he brought together the nations in a new vision of the brotherhood of +man. This story was preferred, for the reasons implied, by Frances +Gilchrist Wood, who sees in Wu Fong's garden the subtle urge of acres +of flowers, asleep under the stars, pitted against the greed of +profiteers; who sees in answer to Western fume and fret the wisdom of +Confucius, "Come out and see my poppies." The story was rejected by +other members who, while applauding the author's motivation of +character, his theme, and his general treatment, yet felt a lack of +emotion and a faltering at the dramatic climax. + +Wilbur Daniel Steele's "The Marriage in Kairwan" presents an appalling +tragedy which, if it be typical, may befall any Tunisian lady who +elects for herself man's standard of morality--for himself. Such a +story is possible when the seeing eye and the understanding heart of +an American grasps the situation in Kairwan and through the +technician's art develops it, transforms it, and bears it into the +fourth dimension of literature. The thread of narrative runs thinly, +perhaps, through the stiffly embroidered fabric, heavy as cloth of +gold; the end may be discerned too soon. But who can fail of being +shocked at the actual denouement? The story may be, as Ethel Watts +Mumford admits, caviar. "But if so," she adds, "it is Beluga +Imperial." + +Donn Bryne's "Wisdom Buildeth Her House," is constructed on a +historic foundation, the visit that Balkis, Queen of Sheba, made to +Solomon, King of the Jews. Mr. Bryne has not only built a cunning +mosaic, plunging into the stream of Scriptural narrative for his +tessellations and drawing gems out of The Song of Solomon, but he has +also recalled by virtue of exercising a vigorous imagination, the +glory of the royalty that was Sheba's and the grandeur of her domain +in pictures as gorgeously splendid as those from an Arabian Night. He +has elaborated the Talmud story with mighty conviction from a novel +point of view and has whetted his theme on the story of a love the +King lacked wisdom to accept. The Chairman of the Committee prefers +this story; but other members assert that it lacks novelty and +vitality, nor can they find that it adds anything new to the Song of +Songs. + +These three first choice stories, then, are strong in Oriental +flavour, characters, and setting. + +Again, democracy (in the etymological sense of the word, always, +rather than the political) is exemplified in the fiction of 1921, in +that the humblest life as well as the highest offers matter for +romance. More than in former years, writers seek out the romance that +lies in the lives of the average man or woman. Having learned that the +Russian story of realism, with emphasis too frequently placed upon the +naturalistic and the sordid, is not a vehicle easily adapted to +conveying the American product, the American author of sincerity and +belief in the possibility of realistic material has begun to treat it +in romantic fashion, always the approved fashion of the short story in +this country. So Harry Anable Kniffin's "The Tribute" weaves in 1,700 +words a legend about the Unknown Soldier and makes emotionally vivid +the burial of Tommy Atkins. Commonplace types regarded in the past as +insufficiently drab, on the one hand, and insufficiently picturesque +on the other are reflected in this new romantic treatment. Sarah +Addington's "Another Cactus Blooms" prophesies colour in that hard and +prickly plant the provincial teacher at Columbia for a term of +graduate work. Humorously and sardonically the college professor is +served up in "The Better Recipe," by George Boas (_Atlantic Monthly_, +March); the doctorate degree method is satirized so bitterly, by +Sinclair Lewis, in "The Post Mortem Murder" (_Century_, May), as to +challenge wonder, though so subtly as to escape all save the +initiated. + +Sophie Kerr's "Wild Earth" makes capital in like legitimate manner of +the little shop girl and her farmer husband. Wesley Dean is as far +removed from the Down Easterner of a Mary Wilkins farm as his wife, +Anita, is remote from the Sallies and Nannies of the farmhouse. Of the +soil this story bears the fragrance in a happier manner; its theme of +wild passion belongs to the characters, as it might belong, also, to +the man and woman of another setting. "Here is a romance of the farm," +the author seems to say; not sordid realistic portrayal of earth +grubbers. So, too, Tristram Tupper's "Grit" reveals the inspiration +that flashed from the life of a junkman. So Cooper and Creagan evoke +the drama of the railroad man's world: glare of headlight, crash of +wreckage and voice of the born leader mingle in unwonted +orchestration. "Martin Gerrity Gets Even" is reprinted as their best +story of this _genre_. + +The stories of Ethel Watts Mumford declare her cosmopolitan ability +and her willingness to deal with lives widely diverse. At least three +rank high in the estimation of her fellow-committeemen. "Aurore," by +its terseness and poignant interpretation of the character of the +woman under the Northern Lights touches poetry and is akin to music in +its creative flight. The Committee voted to include it in Volume III, +under the author's protest and under her express stipulation that it +should not be regarded as a candidate for either prize. That another +of her stories might have found place in the collection is indicated +best by the following letter: + +The Players +16 Gramercy Park +New York City + +November 16th + +Re. O. HENRY MEMORIAL PRIZE. + +To Dr. B.C. Williams, +605 West 113 Street, +New York City. + +My Dear Doctor Williams, + +I mailed to you yesterday a copy of a story by Ethel Watts Mumford, +entitled "Funeral Frank," published in the _Detective Story Magazine_ +two weeks ago--for your consideration in awarding the O. Henry +Memorial prize. + +I think it is the best short story I have read in a long time both for +originality of subject and technical construction. + +The choice on the author's part of such an unsuspected (by the reader) +and seemingly insignificant agent for the working of Nemesis, I think +shows great skill. I say _seemingly_ insignificant because a little +dog seems such a small and unlikely thing to act the leading part in a +criminal's judgment and suggested regeneration--and yet all lovers of +animals know what such a tie of affection may mean, especially to one +who has no human friends--and even while it works, the victim of +Nemesis as the author says "is wholly unconscious of the irony of the +situation." + +Apart from this I think the tale is exceedingly well told in good +English and with the greatest possible economy of space. + +Yours very truly, +Oliver Herford. + + +"Waiting," by Helen R. Hull, stands first on the list of Grove E. +Wilson, who thinks its handling of everyday characters, its simplicity +of theme and its high artistry most nearly fulfil, among the stories +of the year, his ideal of short story requirements. Though admired as +literature by the Committee, it seemed to one or two members to +present a character study rather than a story. Certainly, in no other +work of the period have relations between a given mother and daughter +been psychologized with greater deftness and skill. + +Other members of society reflected in the year are preachers, judges, +criminals, actors, and actresses. For some years, it is true, actor +and actress have been treated increasingly as human beings, less as +puppets who walk about on the stage. This volume contains two stories +illustrating the statement: "The Urge," by Maryland Allen, which +marshalls the grimly ironic reasons for the success of the heroine who +is the most famous comedienne of her day; "Fifty-Two Weeks for +Florette," which touches with a pathos that gave the story instant +recognition the lives of vaudeville Florette and her son. It is not +without significance that these stories are the first their respective +authors have published. + +0.F. Lewis brings the judge to his own bar in "The Day of Judgment," +but had difficulty in finding a denouement commensurate with his +antecedent material. The Committee Preferred his "The Get-Away" and +its criminals, who are Presented objectively, without prejudice, save +as their own acts invoke it. Viciously criminal is Tedge, of "The Man +Who Cursed the Lilies," by Charles Tenney Jackson. The Committee value +this narrative for the power and intensity of its subject matter, for +its novel theme, for its familiar yet seldom-used setting, for its +poetic justice and for its fulfilment of short story structural laws. + +"The Victim of His Vision," by Gerald Chittenden, dramatizes the +missionary's reverse, unusual in fiction, and presents a convincing +demonstration of the powers of voodoo. Readers who care for +manifestations of the superstitious and the magical will appreciate +the reality of this story as they will that of "Rra Boloi," mentioned +above. They may also be interested in comparing these with Joseph +Hergesheimer's "Juju." Mr. Hergesheimer's story, however, fails to +maintain in the outcome the high level of the initial concept and the +execution of the earlier stages. + +A number of 1921 stories centre about a historic character. F. Scott +Fitzgerald's "Tarquin of Cheapside" (_Smart Set_, February) offers in +episode form the motivation of Shakespeare's "Rape of Lucrece"; Mary +Raymond Shipman Andrews parallels her "The Perfect Tribute" and eulogy +of Lincoln with "His Soul Goes Marching On" and warm reminiscence of +Roosevelt; Fleta Campbell Springer's "The Role of Madame Ravelles" is +apparently a tapestry in weaving the stately figure of Georgette +LeBlanc. Ranking highest among these personal narratives, however, is +Mildred Cram's "Stranger Things--" Besides calling up, under the name +of Cecil Grimshaw, the irresistible figure of Oscar Wilde, the author +has created a supernatural tale of challenging intricacy and +imaginative genius. The only other stories of the supernatural to find +place in the Committee's first list are Maxwell Struthers Burt's +"Buchanan Hears the Wind" and Mary Heaton Vorse's "The Halfway House." +In all of these, suggestion, delicately managed, is the potent element +of success. + +Animals figure in vaster numbers and under intensive psychological +study. That a race-horse owner goes nowadays to the astrologer for a +horoscope of his racer is a fact that insinuatingly elevates the beast +to the plane of his master. In the short story of 1921, the monkey, +the tiger, the elephant, the dog and all their kind are treated from +an anthropomorphic point of view. Courtney Ryley Cooper's +titles--"Love" and "Vengeance," for example--covering stories +dominated by the animal character, betray the author's ascription of +human attributes to his hero or villain. "Reynardine," by Donn Byrne, +retails with haunting charm the friendship between the Fitzpauls and +the fox, in an instance that tests the friendship. Foxes, for Morgan +of the story, "took on for him now a strange, sinister entity.... They +had become to him a quasi-human, hypernormal race.... They had tabus +as strict as a Maori's. Strange, mystical laws."--"Corkran of the +Clamstretch" uniquely portrays the ugly and heroic "R.T.C." throughout +as a gentleman, "who met triumph with boredom," and "defeat, as a +great gentleman should, with quiet courtesy and good humour." Samuel +A. Derieux adds "Comet" to his list of superintelligent dogs in a +story the Committee regard as one of his best. It should be compared +with R.G. Kirk's "Gun-Shy" (_Saturday Evening Post_, October 22). +Similar in theme, in sympathy and in the struggle--that of a trainer +to overcome a noble dog's fear of the powder roar--the stories diverge +in the matter of workmanship. Yet "Gun-Shy" is based on a plot +superior to that of "Comet." Oddly enough, the Committee preferred not +one of the humanized-beast stories, but Edison Marshall's "The Heart +of Little Shikara." The preference was because of a number of counts, +however; moreover, the man eater takes second place beside Little +Shikara, whose bravery and loyalty motivate the thrilling climax of +the narrative. And it is just this: a superb story, with underscoring +for "story." + +Anthropomorphism is found at its height in "A Life," by Wilbur Daniel +Steele. Dr. Edward J. Wheeler places this story first of the year's +brief fiction, on the score of originality, power, and satisfactory +evolution of the struggle, with its triumphant dramatic reverse. Other +members of the Committee, though sensible of its claim to high +distinction, believe it is a novelette, not to be classed as a short +story, and therefore barred from consideration. Its spirit, one +affirms, lacks something of the vigour which made of "Guiablesse" +(_Harper's_, 1919) so convincing a work of art. Another member finds +its value somewhat decreased in that its theme had been used similarly +in John Masefield's "The Wanderer." + +The child's place in the democracy of the short story was assured +years ago. No remarkably outstanding examples have come from the pen +of Booth Tarkington, amusing as are his adolescents and children of +the _Red Book_ tales. The best combinations of humour and childhood +appeared to the Committee to be "Wilfrid Reginald and the Dark Horse," +by James Mahoney, and "Mr. Downey Sits Down," by L.H. Robbins. For +laughter the reader is recommended to each of these, the latter of +which is reprinted in this volume. For humour plus a trifle more of +excitement, "Mummery," by Thomas Beer, is included. Mr. Beer has +succeeded in handling Mrs. Egg as Miss Addington manages Miss +Titwiler, the "Cactus"; that is, as the equal of author and reader, +but also--and still without condescension--as reason for twinkles and +smiles. + +Apart from consideration of impulses dominating the short story of +1921, impulses here summarized under the general idea of democracy, +the story is different in several particulars. First, its method of +referring to drink, strong drink, marks it of the present year. The +setting is frequently that of a foreign country, where prohibition is +not yet known; the date of the action may be prior to 1919; or the +apology for presence of intoxicating liquors is forthcoming in such +statement as "My cellar is not yet exhausted, you see." + +Second, the war is no longer tabu; witness "The Tribute," and "His +Soul Goes Marching On." Touched by the patina of time and mellowed +through the mellifluence of age, the war now makes an appeal +dissimilar to that which caused readers two or three years ago to +declare they were "fed up." + +Third, Freudian theories have found organic place in the substance of +the story. They have not yet found incorporation in many narratives +that preserve short story structure, however--although it is within +conceivability that the influence may finally burst the mould and +create a new--and the Committee agree in demanding both substance and +structure as short story essentials. + +Finally, the story reflects the changing ideals of a constantly +changing age. Not only are these ideals changing because of +cross-currents that have their many sources in racial springs far +asunder, not only because of contact or conflict between the ideals +and cosmic forces dimly apprehended; also they are changing because of +the undeniable influence of what Emerson called the Oversoul. The +youth of the time is different, as youth is always different. But now +and then a sharp cleavage separates the succeeding generations and it +separates them now. The youth of England has found interpretation in +Clemence Dane's play, "A Bill of Divorcement." In America, the +interpretation is only half articulate; but when the incoherent sounds +are wholly intelligible, the literature of the short story will have +entered, in definite respects, upon a new era. + +The Committee of Award wish once again to thank the authors, editors, +and publishers whose cooperation makes possible this annual volume and +the O. Henry Memorial Prizes. + +Blanche Colton Williams. + +New York City +January 10, 1922 + + + +_O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD PRIZE STORIES of 1921_ + + + +THE HEART OF LITTLE SHIKARA + +By EDISON MARSHALL + +From _Everybody's_ + + +I + +If it hadn't been for a purple moon that came peering up above the +dark jungle just at nightfall, it would have been impossible to tell +that Little Shikara was at his watch. He was really just the colour of +the shadows--a rather pleasant brown--he was very little indeed, and +besides, he was standing very, very still. If he was trembling at all, +from anticipation and excitement, it was no more than Nahar the tiger +trembles as he crouches in ambush. But the moon did show him--peering +down through the leaf-clusters of the heavy vines--and shone very +softly in his wide-open dark eyes. + +And it was a purple moon--no other colour that man could name. It +looked almost unreal, like a paper moon painted very badly by a clumsy +stage-hand. The jungle-moon quite often has that peculiar purplish +tint, most travellers know, but few of them indeed ever try to tell +what causes it. This particular moon probed down here and there +between the tall bamboos, transformed the jungle--just now +waking--into a mystery and a fairyland, glinted on a hard-packed +elephant trail that wound away into the thickets, and always came back +to shine on the coal-black Oriental eyes of the little boy beside the +village gate. It showed him standing very straight and just as tall as +his small stature would permit, and looked oddly silvery and strange +on his long, dark hair. Little Shikara, son of Khoda Dunnoo, was +waiting for the return of a certain idol and demigod who was even now +riding home in his _howdah_ from the tiger hunt. + +Other of the villagers would be down to meet Warwick Sahib as soon as +they heard the shouts of his beaters--but Little Shikara had been +waiting almost an hour. Likely, if they had known about it, they would +have commented on his badness, because he was notoriously bad, if +indeed--as the villagers told each other--he was not actually cursed +with evil spirits. + +In the first place, he was almost valueless as a herder of buffalo. +Three times, when he had been sent with the other boys to watch the +herds in their wallows, he had left his post and crept away into the +fringe of jungle on what was unquestionably some mission of +witchcraft. For small naked brown boys, as a rule, do not go alone and +unarmed into the thick bamboos. Too many things can happen to prevent +them ever coming out again; too many brown silent ribbons crawl in the +grass, or too many yellow, striped creatures, no less lithe, lurk in +the thickets. But the strangest thing of all--and the surest sign of +witchcraft--was that he had always come safely out again, yet with +never any satisfactory explanations as to why he had gone. He had +always looked some way very joyful and tremulous--and perhaps even +pale if from the nature of things a brown boy ever can look pale. But +it was the kind of paleness that one has after a particularly +exquisite experience. It was not the dumb, teeth-chattering paleness +of fear. + +"I saw the sergeant of the jungle," Little Shikara said after one of +these excursions. And this made no sense at all. + +"There are none of the King's soldiers here," the brown village folk +replied to him. "Either thou liest to us, or thine eyes lied to thee. +And didst thou also see the chevron that told his rank?" + +"That was the way I knew him. It was the black bear, and he wore the +pale chevron low on his throat." + +This was Little Shikara all over. Of course he referred to the black +Himalayan bear which all men know wears a yellowish patch, of chevron +shape, just in front of his fore legs; but why he should call him a +jungle-sergeant was quite beyond the wit of the village folk to say. +Their imagination did not run in that direction. It never even +occurred to them that Little Shikara might be a born jungle creature, +expatriated by the accident of birth--one of that free, strange breed +that can never find peace in the villages of men. + +"But remember the name we gave him," his mother would say. "Perhaps he +is only living up to his name." + +For there are certain native hunters in India that are known, far and +wide, as the Shikaris; and possibly she meant in her tolerance that +her little son was merely a born huntsman. But in reality Little +Shikara was not named for these men at all. Rather it was for a +certain fleet-winged little hawk, a hunter of sparrows, that is one of +the most free spirits in all the jungle. + +And it was almost like taking part in some great hunt himself--to be +waiting at the gate for the return of Warwick Sahib. Even now, the +elephant came striding out of the shadows; and Little Shikara could +see the trophy. The hunt had indeed been successful, and the boy's +glowing eyes beheld--even in the shadows--the largest, most beautiful +tiger-skin he had ever seen. It was the great Nahar, the royal tiger, +who had killed one hundred cattle from near-by fields. + +Warwick Sahib rode in his _howdah_, and he did not seem to see the +village people that came out to meet him. In truth, he seemed half +asleep, his muscles limp, his gray eyes full of thoughts. He made no +answer to the triumphant shouts of the village folk. Little Shikara +glanced once at the lean, bronzed face, the limp, white, thin hands, +and something like a shiver of ecstasy went clear to his ten toes. For +like many other small boys, all over the broad world, he was a +hero-worshipper to the last hair of his head; and this quiet man on +the elephant was to him beyond all measure the most wonderful living +creature on the earth. + +He didn't cry out, as the others did. He simply stood in mute worship, +his little body tingling with glory. Warwick Sahib had looked up now, +and his slow eyes were sweeping the line of brown faces. But still he +did not seem to see them. And then--wonder of wonders--his eyes rested +full on the eyes of his little worshipper beside the gate. + +But it was quite the way of Warwick Sahib to sweep his gray, tired-out +eyes over a scene and seemingly perceive nothing; yet in reality +absorbing every detail with the accuracy of a photographic plate. And +his seeming indifference was not a pose with him, either. He was just +a great sportsman who was also an English gentleman, and he had +learned certain lessons of impassiveness from the wild. Only one of +the brown faces he beheld was worth a lingering glance. And when he +met that one his eyes halted in their sweeping survey--and Warwick +Sahib smiled. + +That face was the brown, eager visage of Little Shikara. And the blood +of the boy flowed to the skin, and he glowed red all over through the +brown. + +It was only the faintest of quiet, tolerant smiles; but it meant more +to him than almost any kind of an honour could have meant to the +prematurely gray man in the _howdah_. The latter passed on to his +estate, and some of the villagers went back to their women and their +thatch huts. But still Little Shikara stood motionless--and it wasn't +until the thought suddenly came to him that possibly the beaters had +already gathered and were telling the story of the kill that with +startling suddenness he raced back through the gates to the village. + +Yes, the beaters had assembled in a circle under a tree, and most of +the villagers had gathered to hear the story. He slipped in among +them, and listened with both outstanding little ears. Warwick Sahib +had dismounted from his elephant as usual, the beaters said, and with +but one attendant had advanced up the bed of a dry creek. This was +quite like Warwick Sahib, and Little Shikara felt himself tingling +again. Other hunters, particularly many of the rich sahibs from across +the sea, shot their tigers from the security of the _howdah_; but this +wasn't Warwick's way of doing. The male tiger had risen snarling from +his lair, and had been felled at the first shot. + +Most of the villagers had supposed that the story would end at this +point. Warwick Sahib's tiger hunts were usually just such simple and +expeditious affairs. The gun would lift to his shoulder, the quiet +eyes would glance along the barrel--and the tiger, whether charging or +standing still--would speedily die. But to-day there had been a +curious epilogue. Just as the beaters had started toward the fallen +animal, and the white Heaven-born's cigarette-case was open in his +hand, Nahara, Nahar's great, tawny mate, had suddenly sprung forth +from the bamboo thickets. + +She drove straight to the nearest of the beaters. There was no time +whatever for Warwick to take aim. His rifle leaped, like a live thing, +in his arms, but not one of the horrified beaters had seen his eyes +lower to the sights. Yet the bullet went home--they could tell by the +way the tiger flashed to her breast in the grass. + +Yet she was only wounded. One of the beaters, starting, had permitted +a bough of a tree to whip Warwick in the face, and the blow had +disturbed what little aim he had. It was almost a miracle that he had +hit the great cat at all. At once the thickets had closed around her, +and the beaters had been unable to drive her forth again. + +The circle was silent thereafter. They seemed to be waiting for +Khusru, one of the head men of the village, to give his opinion. He +knew more about the wild animals than any mature native in the +assembly, and his comments on the hunting stories were usually worth +hearing. + +"We will not be in the honoured service of the Protector of the Poor +at this time a year from now," he said. + +They all waited tensely. Shikara shivered. "Speak, Khusru," they urged +him. + +"Warwick Sahib will go again to the jungles--and Nahara will be +waiting. She owes two debts. One is the killing of her mate--and ye +know that these two tigers have been long and faithful mates. Do ye +think she will let that debt go unpaid? She will also avenge her own +wound." + +"Perhaps she will die of bleeding," one of the others suggested. + +"Nay, or ye would have found her this afternoon. Ye know that it is +the wounded tiger that is most to be feared. One day, and he will go +forth in pursuit of her again; and then ye will not see him riding +back so grandly on his elephant. Perhaps she will come here, to carry +away _our_ children." + +Again Shikara tingled--hoping that Nahara would at least come close +enough to cause excitement. And that night, too happy to keep silent, +he told his mother of Warwick Sahib's smile. "And some time I--I, +thine own son," he said as sleepiness came upon him, "will be a killer +of tigers, even as Warwick Sahib." + +"Little sparrow-hawk," his mother laughed at him. "Little one of +mighty words, only the great sahibs that come from afar, and Warwick +Sahib himself, may hunt the tiger, so how canst thou, little +worthless?" + +"I will soon be grown," he persisted, "and I--I, too--will some time +return with such a tiger-skin as the great Heaven-born brought this +afternoon." Little Shikara was very sleepy, and he was telling his +dreams much more frankly than was his wont. "And the village folk will +come out to meet me with shoutings, and I will tell them of the +shot--in the circle under the tree." + +"And where, little hawk, wilt thou procure thine elephants, and such +rupees as are needed?" + +"Warwick Sahib shoots from the ground--and so will I. And sometimes he +goes forth with only one attendant--and I will not need even one. And +who can say--perhaps he will find me even a bolder man than Gunga +Singhai; and he will take me in his place on the hunts in the +jungles." + +For Gunga Singhai was Warwick Sahib's own personal attendant and +gun-carrier--the native that the Protector of the Poor could trust in +the tightest places. So it was only to be expected that Little +Shikara's mother should laugh at him. The idea of her son being an +attendant of Warwick Sahib, not to mention a hunter of tigers, was +only a tale to tell her husband when the boy's bright eyes were closed +in sleep. + +"Nay, little man," she told him. "Would I want thee torn to pieces in +Nahara's claws? Would I want thee smelling of the jungle again, as +thou didst after chasing the water-buck through the bamboos? Nay--thou +wilt be a herdsman, like thy father--and perhaps gather many rupees." + +But Little Shikara did not want to think of rupees. Even now, as sleep +came to him, his childish spirit had left the circle of thatch roofs, +and had gone on tremulous expeditions into the jungle. Far away, the +trumpet-call of a wild tusker trembled through the moist, hot night; +and great bell-shaped flowers made the air pungent and heavy with +perfume. A tigress skulked somewhere in a thicket licking an injured +leg with her rough tongue, pausing to listen to every sound the night +gave forth. Little Shikara whispered in his sleep. + +A half mile distant, in his richly furnished bungalow, Warwick Sahib +dozed over his after-dinner cigar. He was in evening clothes, and +crystal and silver glittered on his board. But his gray eyes were half +closed; and the gleam from his plate could not pass the long, dark +lashes. For his spirit was far distant, too--on the jungle trails with +that of Little Shikara. + + +II + +One sunlit morning, perhaps a month after the skin of Nahar was +brought in from the jungle, Warwick Sahib's mail was late. It was an +unheard-of thing. Always before, just as the clock struck eight, he +would hear the cheerful tinkle of the postman's bells. At first he +considered complaining; but as morning drew to early afternoon he +began to believe that investigation would be the wiser course. + +The postman's route carried him along an old elephant trail through a +patch of thick jungle beside one of the tributaries of the Manipur. +When natives went out to look, he was neither on the path nor drowned +in the creek, nor yet in his thatched hut at the other end of his +route. The truth was that this particular postman's bells would never +be heard by human ears again. And there was enough evidence in the wet +mould of the trail to know what had occurred. + +That night the circle under the tree was silent and shivering. "Who is +next?" they asked of one another. The jungle night came down, +breathless and mysterious, and now and then a twig was cracked by a +heavy foot at the edge of the thickets. In Warwick's house, the great +Protector of the Poor took his rifles from their cases and fitted them +together. + +"To-morrow," he told Gunga Singhai, "we will settle for that postman's +death." Singhai breathed deeply, but said nothing. Perhaps his dark +eyes brightened. The tiger-hunts were nearly as great a delight to him +as they were to Warwick himself. + +But while Nahara, lame from Warwick's bullet, could no longer overtake +cattle, she did with great skilfulness avoid the onrush of the +beaters. Again Little Shikara waited at the village gate for his hero +to return; but the beaters walked silently to-night. Nor were there +any tales to be told under the tree. + +Nahara, a fairly respectable cattle-killer before, had become in a +single night one of the worst terrors of India. Of course she was +still a coward, but she had learned, by virtue of a chance meeting +with a postman on a trail after a week of heart-devouring starvation, +two or three extremely portentous lessons. One of them was that not +even the little deer, drinking beside the Manipur, died half so easily +as these tall, forked forms of which she had previously been so +afraid. She found out also that they could neither run swiftly nor +walk silently, and they could be approached easily even by a tiger +that cracked a twig with every step. It simplified the problem of +living immensely; and just as any other feline would have done, she +took the line of least resistance. If there had been plenty of carrion +in the jungle, Nahara might never have hunted men. But the kites and +the jackals looked after the carrion; and they were much swifter and +keener-eyed than a lame tiger. + +She knew enough not to confine herself to one village; and it is +rather hard to explain how any lower creature, that obviously cannot +reason, could have possessed this knowledge. Perhaps it was because +she had learned that a determined hunt, with many beaters and men on +elephants, invariably followed her killings. It was always well to +travel just as far as possible from the scene. She found out also +that, just as a doe is easier felled than a horned buck, certain of +this new kind of game were more easily taken than the others. +Sometimes children played at the door of their huts, and sometimes old +men were afflicted with such maladies that they could not flee at all. +All these things Nahara learned; and in learning them she caused a +certain civil office of the British Empire to put an exceedingly large +price on her head. + +Gradually the fact dawned on her that unlike the deer and the buffalo, +this new game was more easily hunted in the daylight--particularly in +that tired-out, careless twilight hour when the herders and the +plantation hands came in from their work. At night the village folk +kept in their huts, and such wood-cutters and gipsies as slept without +wakened every hour to tend their fires. Nahara was deathly afraid of +fire. Night after night she would creep round and round a gipsy camp, +her eyes like two pale blue moons in the darkness, and would never +dare attack. + +And because she was taking her living in a manner forbidden by the +laws of the jungle, the glory and beauty of her youth quickly departed +from her. There are no prisons for those that break the jungle laws, +no courts and no appointed officers, but because these are laws that +go down to the roots of life, punishment is always swift and +inevitable. "Thou shall not kill men," is the first law of the wild +creatures; and everyone knows that any animal or breed of animals that +breaks this law has sooner or later been hunted down and slain--just +like any other murderer. The mange came upon her, and she lost flesh, +and certain of her teeth began to come out. She was no longer the +beautiful female of her species, to be sung to by the weaver-birds as +she passed beneath. She was a hag and a vampire, hatred of whom lay +deep in every human heart in her hunting range. + +Often the hunting was poor, and sometimes she went many days in a +stretch without making a single kill. And in all beasts, high and low, +this is the last step to the worst degeneracy of all. It instils a +curious, terrible kind of blood-lust--to kill, not once, but as many +times as possible in the same hunt; to be content not with one death, +but to slay and slay until the whole herd is destroyed. It is the +instinct that makes a little weasel kill all the chickens in a coop, +when one was all it could possibly carry away, and that will cause a +wolf to leap from sheep to sheep in a fold until every one is dead. +Nahara didn't get a chance to kill every day; so when the opportunity +did come, like a certain pitiable kind of human hunter who comes from +afar to hunt small game, she killed as many times as she could in +quick succession. And the British Empire raised the price on her head. + +One afternoon found her within a half mile of Warwick's bungalow, and +for five days she had gone without food. One would not have thought of +her as a royal tigress, the queen of the felines and one of the most +beautiful of all living things. And since she was still tawny and +graceful, it would be hard to understand why she no longer gave the +impression of beauty. It was simply gone, as a flame goes, and her +queenliness was wholly departed, too. In some vague way she had become +a poisonous, a ghastly thing, to be named with such outcasts as the +jackals or hyenas. + +Excessive hunger, in most of the flesh-eating animals, is really a +first cousin to madness. It brings bad dreams and visions, and, worst +of all, it induces an insubordination to all the forest laws of man +and beast. A well-fed wolf-pack will run in stark panic from a human +being; but even the wisest of mountaineers do not care to meet the +same gray band in the starving times of winter. Starvation brings +recklessness, a desperate frenzied courage that is likely to upset all +of one's preconceived notions as to the behaviour of animals. It also +brings, so that all men may be aware of its presence, a peculiar lurid +glow to the balls of the eyes. + +In fact, the two pale circles of fire were the most noticeable +characteristics of the long, tawny cat that crept through the bamboos. +Except for them, she would hardly have been discernible at all. The +yellow grass made a perfect background, her black stripes looked like +the streaks of shadow between the stalks of bamboo, and for one that +is lame she crept with an astounding silence. One couldn't have +believed that such a great creature could lie so close to the earth +and be so utterly invisible in the low thickets. + +A little peninsula of dwarf bamboos and tall jungle grass extended out +into the pasture before the village and Nahara crept out clear to its +point. She didn't seem to be moving. One couldn't catch the stir and +draw of muscles. And yet she slowly glided to the end; then began her +wait. Her head sunk low, her body grew tense, her tail whipped softly +back and forth, with as easy a motion as the swaying of a serpent. The +light flamed and died and flamed and died again in her pale eyes. + +Soon a villager who had been working in Warwick's fields came trotting +in Oriental fashion across the meadow. His eyes were only human, and +he did not see the tawny shape in the tall grass. If any one had told +him that a full-grown tigress could have crept to such a place and +still remained invisible, he would have laughed. He was going to his +thatched hut, to brown wife and babies, and it was no wonder that he +trotted swiftly. The muscles of the great cat bunched, and now the +whipping tail began to have a little vertical motion that is the final +warning of a spring. + +The man was already in leaping range; but the tiger had learned, in +many experiences, always to make sure. Still she crouched--a single +instant in which the trotting native came two paces nearer. Then the +man drew up with a gasp of fright. + +For just as the clear outlines of an object that has long been +concealed in a maze of light and shadow will often leap, with sudden +vividness, to the eyes, the native suddenly perceived the tiger. + +He caught the whole dread picture--the crouching form, the terrible +blue lights of the eyes, the whipping tail. The gasp he uttered from +his closing throat seemed to act like the fall of a firing-pin against +a shell on the bunched muscles of the animal; and she left her covert +in a streak of tawny light. + +But Nahara's leaps had never been quite accurate since she had been +wounded by Warwick's bullet, months before. They were usually straight +enough for the general purposes of hunting, but they missed by a long +way the "theoretical centre of impact" of which artillery officers +speak. Her lame paw always seemed to disturb her balance. By +remembering it, she could usually partly overcome the disadvantage; +but to-day, in the madness of her hunger, she had been unable to +remember anything except the terrible rapture of killing. This +circumstance alone, however, would not have saved the native's life. +Even though her fangs missed his throat, the power of the blow and her +rending talons would have certainly snatched away his life as a storm +snatches a leaf. But there was one other determining factor. The +Burman had seen the tiger just before she leaped; and although there +had been no time for conscious thought, his guardian reflexes had +flung him to one side in a single frenzied effort to miss the full +force of the spring. + +The result of both these things was that he received only an awkward, +sprawling blow from the animal's shoulder. Of course he was hurled to +the ground; for no human body in the world is built to withstand the +ton or so of shocking power of a three-hundred-pound cat leaping +through the air. The tigress sprawled down also, and because she +lighted on her wounded paw, she squealed with pain. It was possibly +three seconds before she had forgotten the stabbing pain in her paw +and had gathered herself to spring on the unconscious form of the +native. And that three seconds gave Warwick Sahib, sitting at the +window of his study, an opportunity to seize his rifle and fire. + +Warwick knew tigers, and he had kept the rifle always ready for just +such a need as this. The distance was nearly five hundred yards, and +the bullet went wide of its mark. Nevertheless, it saved the native's +life. The great cat remembered this same far-off explosion from +another day, in a dry creek-bed of months before, and the sing of the +bullet was a remembered thing, too. Although it would speedily return +to her, her courage fled and she turned and faced into the bamboos. + +In an instant, Warwick was on his great veranda, calling his beaters. +Gunga Singhai, his faithful gun-carrier, slipped shells into the +magazine of his master's high-calibered close-range tiger-rifle. "The +elephant, Sahib?" he asked swiftly. + +"Nay, this will be on foot. Make the beaters circle about the fringe +of bamboos. Thou and I will cross the eastern fields and shoot at her +as she breaks through." + +But there was really no time to plan a complete campaign. Even now, +the first gray of twilight was blurring the sharp outlines of the +jungle, and the soft jungle night was hovering, ready to descend. +Warwick's plan was to cut through to a certain little creek that +flowed into the river and with Singhai to continue on to the edge of +the bamboos that overlooked a wide field. The beaters would prevent +the tigress from turning back beyond the village, and it was at least +possible that he would get a shot at her as she burst from the jungle +and crossed the field to the heavier thickets beyond. + +"Warwick Sahib walks into the teeth of his enemy," Khusru, the hunter, +told a little group that watched from the village gate. "Nahara will +collect her debts." + +A little brown boy shivered at his words and wondered if the beaters +would turn and kick him, as they had always done before, if he should +attempt to follow them. It was the tiger-hunt, in view of his own +village, and he sat down, tremulous with rapture, in the grass to +watch. It was almost as if his dream--that he himself should be a +hunter of tigers--was coming true. He wondered why the beaters seemed +to move so slowly and with so little heart. + +He would have known if he could have looked into their eyes. Each +black pupil was framed with white. Human hearts grow shaken and +bloodless from such sights as this they had just seen, and only the +heart of a jungle creature--the heart of the eagle that the jungle +gods, by some unheard-of fortune, had put in the breast of Little +Shikara--could prevail against them. Besides, the superstitious +Burmans thought that Warwick was walking straight to death--that the +time had come for Nahara to collect her debts. + + +III + +Warwick Sahib and Singhai disappeared at once into the fringe of +jungle, and silence immediately fell upon them. The cries of the +beaters at once seemed curiously dim. It was as if no sound could live +in the great silences under the arching trees. Soon it was as if they +were alone. + +They walked side by side, Warwick with his rifle held ready. He had no +false ideas in regard to this tiger-hunt. He knew that his prey was +desperate with hunger, that she had many old debts to pay, and that +she would charge on sight. + +The self-rage that is felt on missing some particularly fortunate +chance is not confined to human beings alone. There is an old saying +in the forest that a feline that has missed his stroke is like a +jackal in dog-days--and that means that it is not safe to be anywhere +in the region with him. He simply goes rabid and is quite likely to +leap at the first living thing that stirs. Warwick knew that Nahara +had just been cheated out of her kill and someone in the jungle would +pay for it. + +The gaudy birds that looked down from the tree-branches could scarcely +recognize this prematurely gray man as a hunter. He walked rather +quietly, yet with no conscious effort toward stealth. The rifle rested +easily in his arms, his gray eyes were quiet and thoughtful as always. +Singularly, his splendid features were quite in repose. The Burman, +however, had more of the outer signs of alertness; and yet there was +none of the blind terror upon him that marked the beaters. + +"Where are the men?" Warwick asked quietly. "It is strange that we do +not hear them shouting." + +"They are afraid, Sahib," Singhai replied. "The forest pigs have left +us to do our own hunting." + +Warwick corrected him with a smile. "Forest pigs are brave enough," he +answered. "They are sheep--just sheep--sheep of the plains." + +The broad trail divided, like a three-tined candlestick, into narrow +trails. Warwick halted beside the centre of the three that led to the +creek they were obliged to cross. Just for an instant he stood +watching, gazing into the deep-blue dusk of the deeper jungle. +Twilight was falling softly. The trails soon vanished into +shadow--patches of deep gloom, relieved here and there by a bright +leaf that reflected the last twilight rays. A living creature coughed +and rustled away in the thickets beside him. + +"There is little use of going on," he said. "It is growing too dark. +But there will be killings before the dawn if we don't get her first." + +The servant stood still, waiting. It was not his place to advise his +master. + +"If we leave her, she'll come again before the dawn. Many of the +herders haven't returned--she'll get one of them sure. At least we may +cross the creek and get a view of the great fields. She is certain to +cross them if she has heard the beaters." + +In utter silence they went on. One hundred yards farther they came to +the creek, and both strode in together to ford. + +The water was only knee-deep, but Warwick's boots sank three inches in +the mud of the bottom. And at that instant the gods of the jungle, +always waiting with drawn scimitar for the unsuspecting, turned +against them. + +Singhai suddenly splashed down into the water, on his hands and knees. +He did not cry out. If he made any sound at all, it was just a +shivering gasp that the splash of water wholly obscured. But the thing +that brought home the truth to Warwick was the pain that flashed, +vivid as lightning, across his dark face; and the horror of death that +left its shadow. Something churned and writhed in the mud; and then +Warwick fired. + +Both of them had forgotten Mugger, the crocodile, that so loves to +wait in the mud of a ford. He had seized Singhai's foot, and had +already snatched him down into the water when Warwick fired. No living +flesh can withstand the terrible, rending shock of a high-powered +sporting rifle at close range. Mugger had plates of armour, but even +these could not have availed against it if he had been exposed to the +fire. As it was, several inches of water stood between, a more +effective armour than a two-inch steel plate on a battleship. Of +course the shock carried through, a smashing blow that caused the +reptile to release his hold on Singhai's leg; but before the native +could get to his feet he had struck again. The next instant both men +were fighting for their lives. + +They fought with their hands, and Warwick fought with his rifle, and +the native slashed again and again with the long knife that he carried +at his belt. To a casual glance, a crocodile is wholly incapable of +quick action. These two found him a slashing, darting, wolf-like +thing, lunging with astounding speed through the muddied water, +knocking them from their feet and striking at them as they fell. + +The reptile was only half grown, but in the water they had none of the +usual advantages that man has over the beasts with which he does +battle. Warwick could not find a target for his rifle. But even human +bodies, usually so weak, find themselves possessed of an amazing +reserve strength and agility in the moment of need. These men realized +perfectly that their lives were the stakes for which they fought, and +they gave every ounce of strength and energy they had. Their aim was +to hold the mugger off until they could reach the shore. + +At last, by a lucky stroke, Singhai's knife blinded one of the lurid +reptile eyes. He was prone in the water when he administered it, and +it went home just as the savage teeth were snapping at his throat. For +an instant the great reptile flopped in an impotent half-circle, +partly reared out of the water. It gave Warwick a chance to shoot, a +single instant in which the rifle seemed to whirl about in his arms, +drive to his shoulder, and blaze in the deepening twilight. And the +shot went true. It pierced the mugger from beneath, tearing upward +through the brain. And then the agitated waters of the ford slowly +grew quiet. + +The last echo of the report was dying when Singhai stretched his +bleeding arms about Warwick's body, caught up the rifle and dragged +them forty feet up on the shore. It was an effort that cost the last +of his strength. And as the stars popped out of the sky, one by one, +through the gray of dusk, the two men lay silent, side by side, on the +grassy bank. + +Warwick was the first to regain consciousness. At first he didn't +understand the lashing pain in his wrists, the strange numbness in one +of his legs, the darkness with the great white Indian stars shining +through. Then he remembered. And he tried to stretch his arm to the +prone form beside him. + +The attempt was an absolute failure. The cool brain dispatched the +message, it flew along the telegraph-wires of the nerves, but the +muscles refused to react. He remembered that the teeth of the mugger +had met in one of the muscles of his upper arm, but before +unconsciousness had come upon him he had been able to lift the gun to +shoot. Possibly infection from the bite had in some manner temporarily +paralyzed the arm. He turned, wracked with pain, on his side and +lifted his left arm. In doing so his hand crossed before his eyes--and +then he smiled wanly in the darkness. + +It was quite like Warwick, sportsman and English gentleman, to smile +at a time like this. Even in the gray darkness of the jungle night he +could see the hand quite plainly. It no longer looked slim and white. +And he remembered that the mugger had caught his fingers in one of its +last rushes. + +He paused only for one glance at the mutilated member. He knew that +his first work was to see how Singhai had fared. In that glance he was +boundlessly relieved to see that the hand could unquestionably be +saved. The fingers were torn, yet their bones did not seem to be +severed. Temporarily at least, however, the hand was utterly useless. +The fingers felt strange and detached. + +He reached out to the still form beside him, touching the dark skin +first with his fingers, and then, because they had ceased to function, +with the flesh of his wrist. He expected to find it cold. Singhai was +alive, however, and his warm blood beat close to the dark skin. + +But he was deeply unconscious, and it was possible that one foot was +hopelessly mutilated. + +For a moment Warwick lay quite still, looking his situation squarely +in the face. He did not believe that either he or his attendant was +mortally or even very seriously hurt. True, one of his arms had +suffered paralysis, but there was no reason for thinking it had been +permanently injured. His hand would be badly scarred, but soon as good +as ever. The real question that faced them was that of getting back to +the bungalow. + +Walking was out of the question. His whole body was bruised and +lacerated, and he was already dangerously weak from loss of blood. It +would take all his energy, these first few hours, to keep his +consciousness. Besides, it was perfectly obvious that Singhai could +not walk. And English gentlemen do not desert their servants at a time +like this. The real mystery lay in the fact that the beaters had not +already found and rescued them. + +He wore a watch with luminous dial on his left wrist, and he managed +to get it before his eyes. And then understanding came to him. A full +hour had passed since he and his servant had fought the mugger in the +ford. And the utter silence of early night had come down over the +jungle. + +There was only one thing to believe. The beaters had evidently heard +him shoot, sought in vain for him in the thickets, possibly passed +within a few hundred feet of him, and because he had been unconscious +he had not heard them or called to them, and now they had given him up +for lost. He remembered with bitterness how all of them had been sure +that an encounter with Nahara would cost him his life, and would thus +be all the more quick to believe he had died in her talons. Nahara had +her mate and her own lameness to avenge, they had said, attributing in +their superstition human emotions to the brute natures of animals. It +would have been quite useless for Warwick to attempt to tell them that +the male tiger, in the mind of her wicked mate, was no longer even a +memory, and that premeditated vengeance is an emotion almost unknown +in the animal world. Without leaders or encouragement, and terribly +frightened by the scene they had beheld before the village, they had +quickly given up any attempt to find his body. There had been none +among them coolheaded enough to reason out which trail he had likely +taken, and thus look for him by the ford. Likely they were already +huddled in their thatched huts, waiting till daylight. + +Then he called in the darkness. A heavy body brushed through the +creepers, and stepping falsely, broke a twig. He thought at first that +it might be one of the villagers, coming to look for him. But at once +the step was silenced. + +Warwick had a disturbing thought that the creature that had broken the +twig had not gone away, but was crouching down, in a curious manner, +in the deep shadows. Nahara had returned to her hunting. + + +IV + +"Some time I, too, will be a hunter of tigers," Little Shikara told +his mother when the beaters began to circle through the bamboos. "To +carry a gun beside Warwick Sahib--and to be honoured in the circle +under the tree!" + +But his mother hardly listened. She was quivering with fright. She had +seen the last part of the drama in front of the village; and she was +too frightened even to notice the curious imperturbability of her +little son. But there was no orderly retreat after Little Shikara had +heard the two reports of the rifle. At first there were only the +shouts of the beaters, singularly high-pitched, much running back and +forth in the shadows, and then a pell-mell scurry to the shelter of +the villages. + +For a few minutes there was wild excitement at the village gates. +Warwick Sahib was dead, they said--they had heard the shots and run to +the place of firing, and beat up and down through the bamboos; and +Warwick Sahib had surely been killed and carried off by the tigress. +This dreadful story told, most of the villagers went to hide at once +in their huts; only a little circle of the bravest men hovered at the +gate. They watched with drawn faces the growing darkness. + +But there was one among them who was not yet a man grown; a boy so +small that he could hover, unnoticed, in the very smallest of the +terrible shadow-patches. He was Little Shikara, and he was shocked to +the very depths of his worshipping heart. For Warwick had been his +hero, the greatest man of all time, and he felt himself burning with +indignation that the beaters should return so soon. And it was a +curious fact that he had not as yet been infected with the contagion +of terror that was being passed from man to man among the villagers. +Perhaps his indignation was too absorbing an emotion to leave room for +terror, and perhaps, far down in his childish spirit, he was made of +different stuff. He was a child of the jungle, and perhaps he had +shared of that great imperturbability and impassiveness that is the +eternal trait of the wildernesses. + +He went up to one of the younger beaters who had told and retold a +story of catching a glimpse of Nahara in the thickets until no one was +left to tell it to. He was standing silent, and Little Shikara thought +it possible that he might reach his ears. + +"Give ear, Puran," he pleaded. "Didst thou look for his body beside +the ford over Tarai stream?" + +"Nay, little one--though I passed within one hundred paces." + +"Dost thou not know that he and Singhai would of a certainty cross at +the ford to reach the fringe of jungle from which he might watch the +eastern field? Some of you looked on the trail beside the ford, but +none looked at the ford itself. And the sound of the rifle seemed to +come from thence." + +"But why did he not call out?" + +"Dead men could not call, but at least ye might have frightened Nahara +from the body. But perhaps he is wounded, unable to speak, and lies +there still--" + +But Puran had found another listener for his story, and speedily +forgot the boy. He hurried over to another of the villagers, Khusru +the hunter. + +"Did no one look by the ford?" he asked, almost sobbing. "For that is +the place he had gone." + +The native's eyes seemed to light. "_Hai_, little one, thou hast +thought of what thy elders had forgotten. There is level land there, +and clear. And I shall go at the first ray of dawn--" + +"But not to-night, Khusru--?" + +"Nay, little sinner! Wouldst thou have me torn to pieces?" + +Lastly Little Shikara went to his own father, and they had a moment's +talk at the outskirts of the throng. But the answer was nay--just the +same. Even his brave father would not go to look for the body until +daylight came. The boy felt his skin prickling all over. + +"But perhaps he is only wounded--and left to die. If I go and return +with word that he is there, wilt thou take others and go out and bring +him in?" + +"_Thou_ goest!" His father broke forth in a great roar of laughter. +"Why, thou little hawk! One would think that thou wert a hunter of +tigers thyself!" + +Little Shikara blushed beneath the laughter. For he was a very boyish +little boy in most ways. But it seemed to him that his sturdy young +heart was about to break open from bitterness. All of them agreed that +Warwick Sahib, perhaps wounded and dying, might be lying by the ford, +but none of them would venture forth to see. Unknowing, he was +beholding the expression of a certain age-old trait of human nature. +Men do not fight ably in the dark. They need their eyes, and they +particularly require a definite object to give them determination. If +these villagers knew for certain that the Protector of the Poor lay +wounded or even dead beside the ford, they would have rallied bravely, +encouraged one another with words and oaths, and gone forth to rescue +him; but they wholly lacked the courage to venture again into the +jungle on any such blind quest as Little Shikara suggested. + +But the boy's father should not have laughed. He should have +remembered the few past occasions when his straight little son had +gone into the jungle alone; and that remembrance should have silenced +him. The difficulty lay in the fact that he supposed his boy and he +were of the same flesh, and that Little Shikara shared his own great +dread of the night-curtained jungle. In this he was very badly +mistaken. Little Shikara had an inborn understanding and love of the +jungle; and except for such material dangers as that of Nahara, he was +not afraid of it at all. He had no superstitions in regard to it. +Perhaps he was too young. But the main thing that the laugh did was to +set off, as a match sets off powder, a whole heartful of unexploded +indignation in Shikara's breast. These villagers not only had deserted +their patron and protector, but also they had laughed at the thought +of rescue! His own father had laughed at him. + +Little Shikara silently left the circle of villagers and turned into +the darkness. + +At once the jungle silence closed round him. He hadn't dreamed that +the noise of the villagers would die so quickly. Although he could +still see the flame of the fire at the village gate behind him, it was +almost as if he had at once dropped off into another world. Great +flowers poured perfume down upon him, and at seemingly a great +distance he heard the faint murmur of the wind. + +At first, deep down in his heart, he had really not intended to go all +the way. He had expected to steal clear to the outer edge of the +firelight; and then stand listening to the darkness for such +impressions as the jungle would choose to give him. But there had been +no threshold, no interlude of preparation. The jungle in all its +mystery had folded about him at once. + +He trotted softly down the elephant trail, a dim, fleet shadow that +even the keen eyes of Nahara could scarcely have seen. At first he was +too happy to be afraid. He was always happy when the jungle closed +round him. Besides, if Nahara had killed, she would be full-fed by now +and not to be feared. Little Shikara hastened on, trembling all over +with a joyous sort of excitement. + +If a single bird had flapped its wings in the branches, if one little +rodent had stirred in the underbrush, Little Shikara would likely have +turned back. But the jungle-gods, knowing their son, stilled all the +forest voices. He crept on, still looking now and again over his +shoulder to see the village fire. It still made a bright yellow +triangle in the dusk behind him. He didn't stop to think that he was +doing a thing most grown natives and many white men would not have +dared to do--to follow a jungle trail unarmed at night. If he had +stopped to think at all he simply would have been unable to go on. He +was only following his instincts, voices that such forces as maturity +and grown-up intelligence and self-consciousness obscure in older +men--and the terror of the jungle could not touch him. He went +straight to do what service he could for the white sahib that was one +of his lesser gods. + +Time after time he halted, but always he pushed on a few more feet. +Now he was over halfway to the ford, clear to the forks in the trail. +And then he turned about with a little gasp of fear. + +The light from the village had gone out. The thick foliage of the +jungle had come between. + +He was really frightened now. It wasn't that he was afraid he couldn't +get back. The trail was broad and hard and quite gray in the +moonlight. But those far-off beams of light had been a solace to his +spirit, a reminder that he had not yet broken all ties with the +village. He halted, intending to turn back. + +Then a thrill began at his scalp and went clear to his bare toes. +Faint through the jungle silences he heard Warwick Sahib calling to +his faithless beaters. The voice had an unmistakable quality of +distress. + +Certain of the villagers--a very few of them--said afterward that +Little Shikara continued on because he was afraid to go back. They +said that he looked upon the Heaven-born sahib as a source of all +power, in whose protection no harm could befall him, and he sped +toward him because the distance was shorter than back to the haven of +fire at the village. But those who could look deeper into Little +Shikara's soul knew different. In some degree at least he hastened on +down that jungle trail of peril because he knew that his idol was in +distress, and by laws that went deep he knew he must go to his aid. + + +V + +The first few minutes after Warwick had heard a living step in the +thickets he spent in trying to reload his rifle. He carried other +cartridges in the right-hand trousers pocket, but after a few minutes +of futile effort it became perfectly evident that he was not able to +reach them. His right arm was useless, and the fingers of his left, +lacerated by the mugger's bite, refused to take hold. + +He had, however, three of the five shells the rifle held still in his +gun. The single question that remained was whether or not they would +be of use to him. + +The rifle lay half under him, its stock protruding from beneath his +body. With the elbow of his left arm he was able to work it out. +Considering the difficulties under which he worked, he made amazingly +few false motions; and yet he worked with swiftness. Warwick was a man +who had been schooled and trained by many dangers; he had learned to +face them with open eyes and steady hands, to judge with unclouded +thought the exact percentage of his chances. He knew now that he must +work swiftly. The shape in the shadow was not going to wait all night. + +But at that moment the hope of preserving his life that he had clung +to until now broke like a bubble in the sunlight. He could not lift +the gun to swing and aim it at a shape in the darkness. With his +mutilated hands he could not cock the strong-springed hammer. And if +he could do both these things with his fumbling, bleeding, lacerated +fingers, his right hand could not be made to pull the trigger. Warwick +Sahib knew at last just where he stood. Yet if human sight could have +penetrated that dusk, it would have beheld no change of expression in +the lean face. + +An English gentleman lay at the frontier of death. But that occasioned +neither fawning nor a loss of his rigid self-control. + +Two things remained, however, that he might do. One was to call and +continue to call, as long as life lasted in his body. He knew +perfectly that more than once in the history of India a tiger had been +kept at a distance, at least for a short period of time, by shouts +alone. In that interlude, perhaps help might come from the village. +The second thing was almost as impossible as raising and firing the +rifle; but by the luck of the gods he might achieve it. He wanted to +find Singhai's knife and hold it compressed in his palm. + +It wasn't that he had any vain hopes of repelling the tiger's attack +with a single knife-blade that would be practically impossible for his +mutilated hand to hold. Nahara had five or so knife-blades in every +paw and a whole set of them in her mouth. She could stand on four legs +and fight, and Warwick could not lift himself on one elbow and yet +wield the blade. But there were other things to be done with blades, +even held loosely in the palm, at a time like this. + +He knew rather too much of the way of tigers. They do not always kill +swiftly. It is the tiger way to tease, long moments, with half-bared +talons; to let the prey crawl away a few feet for the rapture of +leaping at it again; to fondle with an exquisite cruelty for moments +that seem endless to its prey. A knife, on the other hand, kills +quickly. Warwick much preferred the latter death. + +And even as he called, again and again, he began to feel about in the +grass with his lacerated hand for the hilt of the knife. Nahara was +steadily stealing toward him through the shadows. + +The great tigress was at the height of her hunting madness. The +earlier adventure of the evening when she had missed her stroke, the +stir and tumult of the beaters in the wood, her many days of hunger, +had all combined to intensify her passion. And finally there had come +the knowledge, in subtle ways, that two of her own kind of game were +lying wounded and helpless beside the ford. + +But even the royal tiger never forgets some small measure of its +caution. She did not charge at once. The game looked so easy that it +was in some way suggestive of a trap. She crept forward, a few feet at +a time. The wild blood began to leap through the great veins. The hair +went stiff on the neck muscles. + +But Warwick shouted; and the sound for an instant appalled her. She +lurked in the shadows. And then, as she made a false step, Warwick +heard her for the first time. + +Again she crept forward, to pause when Warwick raised his voice the +second time. The man knew enough to call at intervals rather than +continuously. A long, continued outcry would very likely stretch the +tiger's nerves to a breaking point and hurl her into a frenzy that +would probably result in a death-dealing charge. Every few seconds he +called again. In the intervals between the tiger crept forward. Her +excitement grew upon her. She crouched lower. Her sinewy tail had +whipped softly at first; now it was lashing almost to her sides. And +finally it began to have a slight vertical movement that Warwick, +fortunately for his spirit, could not see. + +Then the little light that the moon poured down was suddenly reflected +in Nahara's eyes. All at once they burned out of the dusk; two +blue-green circles of fire fifty feet distant in the darkness. At that +Warwick gasped--for the first time. In another moment the great cat +would be in range--and he had not yet found the knife. Nothing +remained to believe but that it was lost in the mud of the ford, fifty +feet distant, and that the last dread avenue of escape was cut off. + +But at that instant the gasp gave way to a whispered oath of wonder. +Some living creature was running lightly down the trail toward +him--soft, light feet that came with amazing swiftness. For once in +his life Warwick did not know where he stood. For once he was the +chief figure of a situation he did not entirely understand. He tried +to probe into the darkness with his tired eyes. + +"Here I am!" he called. The tiger, starting to creep forward once +more, halted at the voice. A small straight figure sped like an arrow +out of the thickets and halted at his side. + +It was such an astounding appearance as for an instant completely +paralyzes the mental faculties. Warwick's first emotion was simply a +great and hopeless astonishment. Long inured to the mystery of the +jungle, he thought he had passed the point where any earthly happening +could actually bewilder him. But in spite of it, in spite of the +fire-eyed peril in the darkness, he was quite himself when he spoke. +The voice that came out of the silence was wholly steady--a kindly, +almost amused voice of one who knows life as it is and who has +mastered his own destiny. + +"Who in the world?" he asked in the vernacular. + +"It is I--Little Shikara," a tremulous voice answered. Except for the +tremor he could not keep from his tone, he spoke as one man to +another. + +Warwick knew at once that Little Shikara was not yet aware of the +presence of the tiger fifty feet distant in the shadows. But he knew +nothing else. The whole situation was beyond his ken. + +But his instincts were manly and true. "Then run speedily, little +one," he whispered, "back to the village. There is danger here in the +dark." + +Little Shikara tried to speak, and he swallowed painfully. A lump had +come in his throat that at first would not let him talk. "Nay, +Protector of the Poor!" he answered. "I--I came alone. And I--I am thy +servant." + +Warwick's heart bounded. Not since his youth had left him to a gray +world had his strong heart leaped in just this way before. "Merciful +God!" he whispered in English. "Has a child come to save me?" Then he +whipped again into the vernacular and spoke swiftly; for no further +seconds were to be wasted. "Little Shikara, have you ever fired a +gun?" + +"No, Sahib--" + +"Then lift it up and rest it across my body. Thou knowest how it is +held--" + +Little Shikara didn't know exactly, but he rested the gun on Warwick's +body; and he had seen enough target practice to crook his finger about +the trigger. And together, the strangest pair of huntsmen that the +Indian stars ever looked down upon, they waited. + +"It is Nahara," Warwick explained softly. For he had decided to be +frank with Little Shikara, trusting all to the courage of a child. "It +all depends on thee. Pull back the hammer with thy thumb." + +Little Shikara obeyed. He drew it back until it clicked and did not, +as Warwick had feared, let it slip through his fingers back against +the breach. "Yes, Sahib," he whispered breathlessly. His little brave +heart seemed about to explode in his breast. But it was the test, and +he knew he must not waver in the sahib's eyes. + +"It is Nahara, and thou art a man," Warwick said again. "And now thou +must wait until thou seest her eyes." + +So they strained into the darkness; and in an instant more they saw +again the two circles of greenish, smouldering fire. They were quite +near now--Nahara was almost in leaping range. + +"Thou wilt look through the little hole at the rear and then along the +barrel," Warwick ordered swiftly, "and thou must see the two eyes +along the little notch in front." + +"I see, Sahib--and between the eyes," came the same breathless +whisper. The little brown body held quite still. Warwick could not +even feel it trembling against his own. For the moment, by virtue of +some strange prank of Shiv, the jungle-gods were giving their own +strength to this little brown son of theirs beside the ford. + +"Thou wilt not jerk or move?" + +"Nay, Sahib." And he spoke true. The world might break to pieces or +blink out, but he would not throw off his aim by any terror motions. +They could see the tiger's outline now--the lithe, low-hung body, the +tail that twitched up and down. + +"Then pull the trigger," Warwick whispered. + +The whole jungle world rocked and trembled from the violence of the +report. + +When the villagers, aroused by the roar of the rifle and led by Khusru +and Puran and Little Shikara's father, rushed down with their +firebrands to the ford, their first thought was that they had come +only to the presence of the dead. Three human beings lay very still +beside the stream, and fifty feet in the shadows something else, that +obviously was _not_ a human being, lay very still, too. But they were +not to have any such horror story to tell their wives. Only one of the +three by the ford, Singhai, the gun-bearer, was even really +unconscious; Little Shikara, the rifle still held lovingly in his +arms, had gone into a half-faint from fear and nervous exhaustion, and +Warwick Sahib had merely closed his eyes to the darting light of the +firebrands. The only death that had occurred was that of Nahara the +tigress--and she had a neat hole bored completely through her neck. To +all evidence, she had never stirred after Little Shikara's bullet had +gone home. + +After much confusion and shouting and falling over one another, and +gazing at Little Shikara as if he were some new kind of a ghost, the +villagers got a stretcher each for Singhai and the Protector of the +Poor. And when they got them well loaded into them, and Little Shikara +had quite come to himself and was standing with some bewilderment in a +circle of staring townspeople, a clear, commanding voice ordered that +they all be silent. Warwick Sahib was going to make what was the +nearest approach to a speech that he had made since various of his +friends had decoyed him to a dinner in London some years before. + +The words that he said, the short vernacular words that have a way of +coming straight to the point, established Little Shikara as a legend +through all that corner of British India. It was Little Shikara who +had come alone through the jungle, said he; it was Little Shikara's +shining eyes that had gazed along the barrel, and it was his own brown +finger that had pulled the trigger. Thus, said Warwick, he would get +the bounty that the British Government offered--British rupees that to +a child's eyes would be past counting. Thus in time, with Warwick's +influence, his would be a great voice through all of India. For small +as he was, and not yet grown, he was of the true breed. + +After the shouting was done, Warwick turned to Little Shikara to see +how he thought upon all these things. "Thou shalt have training for +the army, little one, where thy good nerve will be of use, and thou +shalt be a native officer, along with the sons of princes. I, myself, +will see to it, for I do not hold my life so cheap that I will forget +the thing that thou hast done to-night." + +And he meant what he said. The villagers stood still when they saw his +earnest face. "And what, little hawk, wilt thou have more?" he asked. + +Little Shikara trembled and raised his eyes. "Only sometimes to ride +with thee, in thy _howdah_, as thy servant, when thou again seekest +the tiger." + +The whole circle laughed at this. They were just human, after all. +Their firebrands were held high, and gleamed on Little Shikara's dusky +face, and made a lustre in his dark eyes. The circle, roaring with +laughter, did not hear the sahib's reply, but they did see him nod his +head. + +"I would not dare go without thee now," Warwick told him. + +And thus Little Shikara's dreams came true--to be known through many +villages as a hunter of tigers, and a brave follower and comrade of +the forest trails. And thus he came into his own--in those far-off +glades of Burma, in the jungles of the Manipur. + + + +THE MAN WHO CURSED THE LILIES + +By CHARLES TENNEY JACKSON + +From _Short Stories_ + + +Tedge looked from the pilot-house at the sweating deckhand who stood +on the stubby bow of the _Marie Louise_ heaving vainly on the pole +thrust into the barrier of crushed water hyacinths across the channel. + +Crump, the engineer, shot a sullen look at the master ere he turned +back to the crude oil motor whose mad pounding rattled the old bayou +stern-wheeler from keel to hogchains. + +"She's full ahead now!" grunted Crump. And then, with a covert glance +at the single passenger sitting on the fore-deck cattle pens, the +engineman repeated his warning, "Yeh'll lose the cows, Tedge, if you +keep on fightin' the flowers. They're bad f'r feed and water--they +can't stand another day o' sun!" + +Tedge knew it. But he continued to shake his hairy fist at the +deckhand and roar his anathemas upon the flower-choked bayou. He knew +his crew was grinning evilly, for they remembered Bill Tedge's +year-long feud with the lilies. Crump had bluntly told the skipper he +was a fool for trying to push up this little-frequented bayou from +Cote Blanche Bay to the higher land of the west Louisiana coast, where +he had planned to unload his cattle. + +Tedge had bought the cargo himself near Beaumont from a beggared +ranchman whose stock had to go on the market because, for seven +months, there had been no rain in eastern Texas, and the short-grass +range was gone. + +Tedge knew where there was feed for the starving animals, and the +_Marie Louise_ was coming back light. By the Intercoastal Canal and +the shallow string of bays along the Texas-Louisiana line, the bayou +boat could crawl safely back to the grassy swamp lands that fringe the +sugar plantations of Bayou Teche. Tedge had bought his living cargo so +ridiculously cheap that if half of them stood the journey he would +profit. And they would cost him nothing for winter ranging up in the +swamp lands. In the spring he would round up what steers had lived and +sell them, grass-fat, in New Orleans. He'd land them there with his +flap-paddle bayou boat, too, for the _Marie Louise_ ranged up and down +the Inter-coastal Canal and the uncharted swamp lakes and bays +adjoining, trading and thieving and serving the skipper's obscure +ends. + +Only now, when he turned up Cote Blanche Bay, some hundred miles west +of the Mississippi passes, to make the last twenty miles of swamp +channel to his landing, he faced his old problem. Summer long the +water hyacinths were a pest to navigation on the coastal bayous, but +this June they were worse than Tedge had ever seen. He knew the +reason: the mighty Mississippi was at high flood, and as always then, +a third of its yellow waters were sweeping down the Atchafalaya River +on a "short cut" to the Mexican Gulf. And somewhere above, on its west +bank, the Atchafalaya levees had broken and the flood waters were all +through the coastal swamp channels. + +Tedge grimly knew what it meant. He'd have to go farther inland to +find his free range, but now, worst of all, the floating gardens of +the coast swamps were coming out of the numberless channels on the +_crevasse_ water. + +He expected to fight them as he had done for twenty years with his +dirty bayou boat. He'd fight and curse and struggle through the _les +flotantes_, and denounce the Federal Government, because it did not +destroy the lilies in the obscure bayous where he traded, as it did on +Bayou Teche and Terrebonne, with its pump-boats which sprayed the +hyacinths with a mixture of oil and soda until the tops shrivelled and +the trailing roots then dragged the flowers to the bottom. + +"Yeh'll not see open water till the river cleans the swamps of +lilies," growled Crump. "I never seen the beat of 'em! The high +water's liftin' 'em from ponds where they never been touched by a +boat's wheel and they're out in the channels now. If yeh make the +plantations yeh'll have to keep eastard and then up the Atchafalaya +and buck the main flood water, Tedge!" + +Tedge knew that, too. But he suddenly broke into curses upon his +engineer, his boat, the sea and sky and man. But mostly the lilies. He +could see a mile up the bayou between cypress-grown banks, and not a +foot of water showed. A solid field of green, waxy leaves and upright +purple spikes, jammed tight and moving. That was what made the master +rage. They were moving--a flower glacier slipping imperceptibly to the +gulf bays. They were moving slowly but inexorably, and his dirty +cattle boat, frantically driving into the blockade, was moving +backward--stern first! + +He hated them with the implacable fury of a man whose fists had lorded +his world. A water hyacinth--what was it? He could stamp one to a +smear on his deck, but a river of them no man could fight. He swore +the lilies had ruined his whisky-running years ago to the Atchafalaya +lumber camps; they blocked Grand River when he went to log-towing; +they had cost him thousands of dollars for repairs and lost time in +his swamp ventures. + +Bareheaded under the semi-tropic sun, he glowered at the lily-drift. +Then he snarled at Crump to reverse the motor. Tedge would retreat +again! + +"I'll drive the boat clean around Southwest Pass to get shut of 'em! +No feed, huh, for these cows! They'll feed sharks, they will! Huh, Mr. +Cowman, the blisterin' lilies cost me five hundred dollars already!" + +The lone passenger smoked idly and watched the gaunt cattle +staggering, penned in the flat, dead heat of the foredeck. Tedge +cursed him, too, under his breath. Milt Rogers had asked to make the +coast run from Beaumont on Tedge's boat. Tedge remembered what Rogers +said--he was going to see a girl who lived up Bayou Boeuf above +Tedge's destination. Tedge remembered that girl--a Cajan girl whom he +once heard singing in the floating gardens while Tedge was battling +and cursing to pass the blockade. + +He hated her for loving the lilies, and the man for loving her. He +burst out again with his volcanic fury at the green and purple horde. + +"They're a fine sight to see," mused the other, "after a man's eyes +been burned out ridin' the dry range; no rain in nine months up +there--nothin' green or pretty in----" + +"Pretty!" Tedge seemed to menace with his little shifty eyes. "I wish +all them lilies had one neck and I could twist it! Jest one head, and +me stompin' it! Yeh!--and all the damned flowers in the world with it! +Yeh! And me watchin' 'em die!" + +The man from the dry lands smoked idly under the awning. His serenity +evoked all the savagery of Tedge's feud with the lilies. Pretty! A man +who dealt with cows seeing beauty in anything! Well, the girl did +it--that swamp angel this Rogers was going to visit. That Aurelie +Frenet who sang in the flower-starred river--that was it! Tedge +glowered on the Texan--he hated him, too, because this loveliness gave +him peace, while the master of the _Marie Louise_ must fume about his +wheelhouse, a perspiring madman. + +It took an hour for the _Marie_ even to retreat and find steerage-way +easterly off across a shallow lake, mirroring the marsh shores in the +sunset. Across it the bayou boat wheezed and thumped drearily, +drowning the bellowing of the dying steers. Once the deckhand stirred +and pointed. + +"Lilies, Cap'n--pourin' from all the swamps, and dead ahead there +now!" + +Scowling, Tedge held to the starboard. Yes, there they were--a phalanx +of flowers in the dusk. He broke into wild curses at them, his boat, +the staggering cattle. + +"I'll drive to the open gulf to get rid of 'em! Outside, to sea! Yeh! +Stranger, yeh'll see salt water, and lilies drownin' in it! I'll show +yeh 'em dead and dried on the sands like dead men's dried bones! +Yeh'll see yer pretty flowers a-dyin'!" + +The lone cowman ignored the sneer. "You better get the animals to feed +and water. Another mornin' of heat and crowdin'--" + +"Let 'em rot! Yer pretty flowers done it--pretty flowers--spit o' +hell! I knowed 'em--I fought 'em--I'll fight 'em to the death of 'em!" + +His little red-rimmed eyes hardly veiled his contempt for Milt Rogers. +A cowman, sailing this dusky purple bay to see a girl! A girl who sang +in the lily drift--a-sailing on this dirty, reeking bumboat, with +cattle dying jammed in the pens! Suddenly Tedge realized a vast +malevolent pleasure--he couldn't hope to gain from his perishing +cargo; and he began to gloat at the agony spread below his wheelhouse +window, and the cattleman's futile pity for them. + +"They'll rot on Point Au Fer! We'll heave the stink of them, dead and +alive, to the sharks of Au Fer Pass! Drownin' cows in dyin' lilies--" + +And the small craft of his brain suddenly awakened coolly above his +heat. Why, yes! Why hadn't he thought of it? He swung the stubby nose +of the _Marie_ more easterly in the hot, windless dusk. After a while +the black deckhand looked questioningly up at the master. + +"We're takin' round," Tedge grunted, "outside Au Fer!" + +The black stretched on the cattle-pen frame. Tedge was a master-hand +among the reefs and shoals, even if the flappaddle _Marie_ had no +business outside. But the sea was nothing but a star-set velvet ribbon +on which she crawled like a dirty insect. And no man questioned +Tedge's will. + +Only, an hour later, the engineman came up and forward to stare into +the faster-flowing water. Even now he pointed to a hyacinth clump. + +"Yeh!" the master growled. "I'll show yeh, Rogers! Worlds o' flowers! +Out o' the swamps and the tide'll send 'em back again on the reefs. +I'll show yeh 'em--dead, dried white like men's bones." Then he began +to whisper huskily to his engineer: "It's time fer it. Five hundred +fer yeh, Crump--a hundred fer the nigger, or I knock his head in. She +brushes the bar, and yer oil tank goes--yeh understand?" He watched a +red star in the south. + +Crump looked about. No sail or light or coast guard about Au Fer--at +low tide not even a skiff could find the passages. He nodded +cunningly: + +"She's old and fire-fitten. Tedge, I knowed yer mind--I was always +waitin' fer the word. It's a place fer it--and yeh say yeh carry seven +hundred on them cows? Boat an' cargo--three thousand seven hundred--" + +"They'll be that singed and washed in the sands off Au Fer that +nobody'll know what they died of!" retorted Tedge thickly. "Yeh, go +down, Crump, and lay yer waste and oil right. I trust yeh, Crump--the +nigger'll get his, too. She'll ride high and burn flat, hoggin' in the +sand----" + +"She's soaked with oil plumb for'ard to the pens now," grunted Crump. +"She's fitten to go like a match all along when she bumps--" + +He vanished, and the master cunningly watched the ember star +southeasterly. + +He was holding above it now, to port and landward. The white, hard +sands must be shoaling fast under the cattle-freighted _Marie_. It +little mattered about the course now; she would grind her nose in the +quiet reef shortly. + +Tedge merely stared, expectantly awaiting the blow. And when it came +he was malevolently disappointed. A mere slithering along over the +sand, a creak, a slight jar, and she lay dead in the flat, calm +sea--it was ridiculous that that smooth beaching would break an oil +tank, that the engine spark would flare the machine waste, leap to the +greasy beams and floors. + +The wheezy exhaust coughed on; the belt flapped as the paddle wheel +kept on its dead shove of the _Marie's_ keel into the sand. Hogjaw had +shouted and run forward. He was staring into the phosphorescent water +circling about the bow when Crump raised his cry: + +"Fire--amidships!" + +Tedge ran down the after-stairs. Sulphurously he began cursing at the +trickle of smoke under the motor frame. It was nothing--a child could +have put it out with a bucket of sand. But upon it fell Tedge and the +engineer, stamping, shouting, shoving oil-soaked waste upon it, and +covertly blocking off the astounded black deckman when he rushed to +aid. + +"Water, Hogjaw!" roared the master. "She's gainin' on us--she's under +the bilge floor now!" He hurled a bucket viciously at his helper. And +as they pretended to fight the fire, Crump suddenly began laughing and +stood up. The deckman was grinning also. The master watched him +narrowly. + +"Kick the stuff into the waste under the stairs," he grunted. "Hogjaw, +this here boat's goin'--yeh understand? We take the skiff and pull to +the shrimp camps, and she hogs down and burns--" + +The black man was laughing. Then he stopped curiously. "The cows--" + +"Damn the cows! I'll git my money back on 'em! Yeh go lower away on +the skiff davits. Yeh don't ask me nothin'--yeh don't know nothin'!" + +"Sho', boss! I don't know nothin', or see nothin'!" + +He swung out of the smoke already drifting greasily up from the foul +waist of the _Marie Louise_. A little glare of red was beginning to +reflect from the mirrored sea. The ripples of the beaching had +vanished; obscurely, undramatically as she had lived, the _Marie +Louise_ sat on the bar to choke in her own fetid fumes. + +Tedge clambered to the upper deck and hurried to his bunk in the +wheelhouse. There were papers there he must save--the master's +license, the insurance policy, and a few other things. The smell of +burning wood and grease was thickening; and suddenly now, through it, +he saw the quiet, questioning face of the stranger. + +He had forgotten him completely. Tedge's small brain had room but for +one idea at a time: first his rage at the lilies, and then the +wrecking of the _Marie_. And this man knew. He had been staring down +the after-companionway. He had seen and heard. He had seen the master +and crew laughing while the fire mounted. + +Tedge came to him. "We're quittin' ship," he growled. + +"Yes, but the cattle--" The other looked stupefiedly at him. + +"We got to pull inside afore the sea comes up--" + +"Well, break the pens, can't you? Give 'em a chance to swim for a bar. +I'm a cowman myself--I cain't let dumb brutes burn and not lift a +hand--" + +The fire in the waist was beginning to roar. A plume of smoke streamed +straight up in the starlight. The glare showed the younger man's +startled eyes. He shifted them to look over the foredeck rail down to +the cattle. Sparks were falling among them, the fire veered slightly +forward; and the survivors were crowding uneasily over the fallen +ones, catching that curious sense of danger which forewarns creatures +of the wild before the Northers, a burning forest, or creeping flood, +to move on. + +"You cain't leave 'em so," muttered the stranger. "No; I seen you--" + +He did not finish. Tedge had been setting himself for what he knew he +should do. The smaller man had his jaw turned as he stared at the +suffering brutes. And Tedge's mighty fist struck him full on the +temple. The master leaned over the low rail to watch quietly. + +The man who wished to save the cattle was there among them. A little +flurry of sparks drove over the spot he fell upon, and then a maddened +surge of gaunt steers. Tedge wondered if he should go finish the job. +No; there was little use. He had crashed his fist into the face of a +shrimp-seine hauler once, and the fellow's neck had shifted on his +spine--and once he had maced a woman up-river in a shantyboat drinking +bout--Tedge had got away both times. Now and then, boasting about the +shrimp camps, he hinted mysteriously at his two killings, and showed +his freckled, hairy right hand. + +"If they find anything of him--he got hurt in the wreck," the master +grinned. He couldn't see the body, for a black longhorn had fallen +upon his victim, it appeared. Anyhow, the cattle were milling +desperately around in the pen; the stranger who said his name was Milt +Rogers would be a lacerated lump of flesh in that mad stampede long +ere the fire reached him. Tedge got his tin document box and went aft. + +Crump and Hogjaw were already in the flat-bottomed bayou skiff, +holding it off the _Marie Louise's_ port runway, and the master +stepped into it. The heat was singeing their faces by now. + +"Pull off," grunted the skipper, "around east'ard. This bar sticks +clean out o' water off there, and you lay around it, Hogjaw. They +won't be no sea 'til the breeze lifts at sunup." + +The big black heaved on the short oars. The skiff was a hundred yards +out on the glassy sea when Crump spoke cunningly, "I knowed +something----" + +"Yeh?" Tedge turned from his bow seat to look past the oarsman's head +at the engineman. "Yeh knowed----" + +"This Rogers, he was tryin' to get off the burnin' wreck and he fell, +somehow or----" + +"The oil tank blew, and a piece o' pipe took him," grunted Tedge. "I +tried to drag him out o' the fire--Gawd knows I did, didn't I, Crump?" + +Crump nodded scaredly. The black oarsman's eyes narrowed and he +crouched dumbly as he rowed. Tedge was behind him--Tedge of the _Marie +Louise_ who could kill with his fists. No, Hogjaw knew nothing--he +never would know anything. + +"I jest took him on out o' kindness," mumbled Tedge. "I got no license +fer passenger business. Jest a bum I took on to go and see his swamp +girl up Des Amoureaux. Well, it ain't no use sayin' anything, is it +now?" + +A mile away the wreck of the _Marie Louise_ appeared as a yellow-red +rent in the curtain of night. Red, too, was the flat, calm sea, save +northerly where a sand ridge gleamed. Tedge turned to search for its +outlying point. There was a pass here beyond which the reefs began +once more and stretched on, a barrier to the shoal inside waters. When +the skiff had drawn about the sand spit, the reflecting waters around +the _Marie_ had vanished, and the fire appeared as a fallen meteor +burning on the flat, black belt of encircling reef. + +Tedge's murderous little eyes watched easterly. They must find the +other side of the tidal pass and go up it to strike off for the +distant shrimp camps with their story of the end of the _Marie +Louise_--boat and cargo a total loss on Au Fer sands. + +Upon the utter sea silence there came a sound--a faint bawling of +dying cattle, of trampled, choked cattle in the fume and flames. It +was very far off now; and to-morrow's tide and wind would find nothing +but a blackened timber, a swollen, floating carcass or two--nothing +more. + +But the black man could see the funeral pyre; the distant glare of it +was showing the whites of his eyes faintly to the master, when +suddenly he stopped rowing. A drag, the soft sibilance of a moving +thing, was on his oar blade. He jerked it free, staring. + +"Lilies, boss--makin' out dis pass, too, lilies--" + +"I see 'em--drop below 'em!" Tedge felt the glow of an unappeasable +anger mount to his temples. "Damn 'em--I see 'em!" + +There they were, upright, tranquil, immense hyacinths--their +spear-points three feet above the water, their feathery streamers +drifting six feet below; the broad, waxy leaves floating above their +bulbous surface mats--they came on silently under the stars; they +vanished under the stars seaward to their death. + +"Yeh!" roared Tedge. "Sun and sea to-morry--they'll be back on Au Fer +like dried bones o' dead men in the sand! Bear east'ard off of 'em!" + +The oarsman struggled in the deeper pass water. The skiff bow suddenly +plunged into a wall of green-and-purple bloom. The points brushed +Tedge's cheek. He cursed and smote them, tore them from the low bow +and flung them. But the engineman stood up and peered into the +starlight. + +"Yeh'll not make it. Better keep up the port shore. I cain't see +nothin' but lilies east'ard--worlds o'flowers comin' with the +_crevasse_ water behind 'em." He dipped a finger to the water, tasted +of it, and grumbled on: "It ain't hardly salt, the big rivers are +pourin' such a flood out o' the swamps. Worlds o' flowers comin' out +the passes--" + +"Damn the flowers!" Tedge arose, shaking his fist at them. "Back out +o' 'em! Pull up the Au Fer side, and we'll break through 'em in the +bay!" + +Against the ebb tide close along Au Fer reef, the oarsman toiled until +Crump, the lookout, grumbled again. + +"The shoal's blocked wi' 'em! They're stranded on the ebb. Tedge, +yeh'll have to wait for more water to pass this bar inside 'em. Yeh +try to cross the pass, and the lilies 'll have us all to sea in this +crazy skiff when the wind lifts wi' the sun." + +"I'm clean wore out," the black man muttered. "Yeh can wait fer day +and tide on the sand, boss." + +"Well, drive her in, then!" raged the skipper. "The in-tide'll set +before daylight. We'll take it up the bay." + +He rolled over the bow, knee-deep in the warm inlet water, and dragged +the skiff through the shoals. Crump jammed an oar in the sand; and +warping the headline to this, the three trudged on to the white dry +ridge. Tedge flung himself by the first stubby grass clump. + +"Clean beat," he muttered. "By day we'll pass 'em. Damn 'em--and I'll +see 'em dyin' in the sun--lilies like dried, dead weeds on the +sand--that's what they'll be in a couple o' days--he said they was +pretty, that fello' back there--" Lying with his head on his arm, he +lifted a thumb to point over his shoulder. He couldn't see the distant +blotch of fire against the low stars--he didn't want to. He couldn't +mark the silent drift of the sea gardens in the pass, but he gloated +in the thought that they were riding to their death. The pitiless sun, +the salt tides drunk up to their spongy bulbs, and their glory +passed--they would be matted refuse on the shores and a man could +trample them. Yes, the sea was with Tedge, and the rivers, too; the +flood waters were lifting the lilies from their immemorable +strongholds and forcing them out to their last pageant of death. + +The three castaways slept in the warm sand. It was an hour later that +some other living thing stirred at the far end of Au Fer reef. A +scorched and weakened steer came on through salt pools to stagger and +fall. Presently another, and then a slow line of them. They crossed +the higher ridge to huddle about a sink that might have made them +remember the dry drinking holes of their arid home plains. Tired, +gaunt cattle mooing lonesomely, when the man came about them to dig +with his bloody fingers in the sand. + +He tried another place, and another--he didn't know--he was a man of +the short-grass country, not a coaster; perhaps a sandy sink might +mean fresh water. But after each effort the damp feeling on his hands +was from his gashed and battered head and not life-giving water. He +wiped the blood from his eyes and stood up in the starlight. + +"Twenty-one of 'em--alive--and me," he muttered. "I got 'em off--they +trampled me and beat me down, but I got their pens open. Twenty-one +livin'--and me on the sands!" + +He wondered stupidly how he had done it. The stern of the _Marie +Louise_ had burned off and sogged down in deep water, but her bow hung +to the reef, and in smoke and flame he had fought the cattle over it. +They clustered now in the false water-hole, silent, listless, as if +they knew the uselessness of the urge of life on Au Fer reef. + +And after a while the man went on eastward. Where and how far the sand +ridge stretched he did not know. Vaguely he knew of the tides and sun +to-morrow. From the highest point he looked back. The wreck was a dull +red glow, the stars above it cleared now of smoke. The sea, too, +seemed to have gone back to its infinite peace, as if it had washed +itself daintily after this greasy morsel it must hide in its depths. + +A half hour the man walked wearily, and then before him stretched +water again. He turned up past the tide flowing down the pass--perhaps +that was all of Au Fer. A narrow spit of white sand at high tide, and +even over that, the sea breeze freshening, the surf would curl? + +"Ships never come in close, they said," he mused tiredly, "and miles +o' shoals to the land--and then just swamp for miles. Dumb brutes o' +cows, and me on this--and no water nor feed, nor shade from the sun." + +He stumbled on through the shallows, noticing apathetically that the +water was running here. Nearly to his waist he waded, peering into the +starlight. He was a cowman and he couldn't swim; he had never seen +anything but the dry ranges until he said he would go find the girl he +had met once on the upper Brazos--a girl who told him of sea and +sunken forests, of islands of flowers drifting in lonely swamp +lakes--he had wanted to see that land, but mostly the Cajan girl of +Bayou Des Amoureaux. + +He wouldn't see her now; he would die among dying cattle, but maybe it +was fit for a cattleman to go that way--a Texas man and Texas cows. + +Then he saw a moving thing. It rode out of the dark and brushed him. +It touched him with soft fingers and he drew them to him. A water +hyacinth, and its purple spike topped his head as he stood waist-deep. +So cool its leaves, and the dripping bulbs that he pressed them to his +bloody cheek. He sank his teeth into them for that coolness on his +parched tongue. The spongy bulb was sweet; it exhaled odorous +moisture. He seized it ravenously. It carried sweet water, redolent of +green forest swamps! + +He dragged at another floating lily, sought under the leaves for the +buoyant bulb. A drop or two of the fresh water a man could press from +each! + +Like a starving animal he moved in the shoals, seeing more drifting +garden clumps. And then a dark object that did not drift. He felt for +it slowly, and then straightened up, staring about. + +A flat-bottomed bayou skiff, and in it the oars, a riverman's +blanket-roll of greasy clothes, and a tin box! He knew the box. On one +end, in faded gilt, was the name "B. Tedge." Rogers had seen it on the +grimy shelf in the pilothouse on the _Marie Louise_. He felt for the +rope; the skiff was barely scraping bottom. Yes, they had moored it +here--they must be camped on the sands of Au Fer, awaiting the dawn. + +A boat? He didn't know what a Texas cowman could do with a boat on an +alien and unknown shore, but he slipped into it, raised an oar, and +shoved back from the sandy spit. At least he could drift off Au Fer's +waterless desolation. Tedge would kill him to-morrow when he found him +there; because he knew Tedge had fired the _Marie_ for the insurance. + +So he poled slowly off. The skiff drifted now. Rogers tried to turn to +the oar athwart, and awkwardly he stumbled. The oar seemed like a roll +of thunder when it struck the gunwale. + +And instantly a hoarse shout arose behind him. Tedge's voice--Tedge +had not slept well. The gaunt cattle burning or choking in the salt +tide, or perhaps the lilies of Bayou Boeuf--anyhow, he was up with a +cry and dashing for the skiff. In a moment Rogers saw him. + +The Texas man began driving desperately on the oars. He heard the +heavy rush of the skipper's feet in the deepening water. Tedge's voice +became a bull-like roar as the depth began to check him. To his waist, +and the slow skiff was but ten yards away; to his great shoulders, and +the clumsy oarsman was but five. + +And with a yell of triumph Tedge lunged out swimming. Whoever the +fugitive, he was hopeless with the oars. The skiff swung this way and +that, and a strong man at its stern could hurl it and its occupant +bottom-side up in Au Fer Pass. Tedge, swimming in Au Fer Pass, his +fingers to the throat of this unknown marauder! There'd be another one +go--and nothing but his hands--Bill Tedge's hands that the shrimp +camps feared. + +Just hold him under--that was all. Tread water, and hold the throat +beneath until its throbbing ceased. Tedge could; he feared no man. +Another overhand stroke, and he just missed the wobbling stern of the +light skiff. + +He saw the man start up and raise an oar as if to strike. Tedge +laughed triumphantly. Another plunge and his fingers touched the +gunwale. And then he dived; he would bring his back up against the +flat bottom and twist his enemy's footing from under him. Then in the +deep water Tedge lunged up for the flat keel, and slowly across his +brow an invisible hand seemed to caress him. + +He opened his eyes to see a necklace of opalescent jewels gathering +about his neck; he tore at it and the phosphorescent water gleamed all +about him with feathery pendants. And when his head thrust above +water, the moment's respite had allowed the skiff to straggle beyond +his reach. + +Tedge shouted savagely and lunged again--and about his legs came the +soft clasp of the drifting hyacinth roots. Higher, firmer; and he +turned to kick free of them. He saw the man in the boat poling +uncertainly in the tide not six feet beyond him. And now, in open +water, Tedge plunged on in fierce exultance. One stroke--and the stars +beyond the boatman became obscured; the swimmer struck the soft, +yielding barrier of the floating islands. This time he did not lose +time in drawing from them; he raised his mighty arms and strove to +beat them down, flailing the broad leaves until the spiked blossoms +fell about him. A circlet of them caressed his cheek. He lowered his +head and swam bull-like into the drift; and when he knew the pressure +ahead was tightening slowly to rubbery bands, forcing him gently from +his victim, Tedge raised his voice in wild curses. + +He fought and threshed the lilies, and they gave him cool, velvety +kisses in return. He dived and came up through them; and then, staring +upward, he saw the tall, purple spikes against the stars. And they +were drifting--they were sailing seaward to their death. He couldn't +see the boat now for the shadowy hosts; and for the first time fear +glutted his heart. It came as a paroxysm of new sensation--Tedge of +the _Marie Louise_ who had never feared. + +But this was different, this soft and moving web of silence. No, not +quite silence, for past his ear the splendid hyacinths drifted with a +musical creaking, leaf on leaf, the buoyant bulbs brushing each other. +The islets joined and parted; once he saw open water and plunged for +it--and over his shoulders there surged a soft coverlet. He turned and +beat it; he churned his bed into a furious welter, and the silken +curtain lowered. + +He shrank from it now, staring. The feathery roots matted across his +chest, the mass of them felt slimy like the hide of a drowned brute. + +"Drownin' cows"--he muttered thickly--"comin' on a man driftin' and +drownin'--no, no! Lilies, jest lilies--damn 'em!" + +The tall spiked flowers seemed nodding--yes, just lilies, drifting and +singing elfin music to the sea tide. Tedge roared once again his +hatred of them; he raised and battered his huge fists into their +beauty, and they seemed to smile in the starlight. Then, with a howl, +he dived. + +He would beat them--deep water was here in the pass, and he would swim +mightily far beneath the trailing roots--he would find the man with +the boat yet and hurl him to die in the hyacinth bloom. + +He opened his eyes in the deep, clear water and exulted. He, Tedge, +had outwitted the bannered argosies. With bursting lungs he charged +off across the current, thinking swiftly, coolly, now of the escape. +And as he neared the surface he twisted to glance upward. It was light +there--a light brighter than the stars, but softer, evanescent. Mullet +and squib were darting about or clinging to a feathery forest that +hung straight down upon him. Far and near there came little darts of +pale fire, gleaming and expiring with each stir in the phosphorescent +water. + +And he had to rise; a man could not hold the torturing air in his +lungs for ever. Yes, he would tear a path to the stars again and +breathe. His arms flailed into the first tenuous streamers, which +parted in pearly lace before his eyes. He breasted higher, and they +were all about him now; his struggles evoked glowing bubble-jewels +which drifted upward to expire. He grasped the soft roots and twisted +and sought to raise himself. He had a hand to the surface bulbs, but a +silken mesh seemed tightening about him. + +And it was drifting--everything was drifting in the deep pass of Au +Fer. He tried to howl in the hyacinth web, and choked--and then he +merely fought in his close-pressing cocoon, thrusting one hard fist to +grasp the broad leaves. He clung to them dumbly, his face so close to +the surface that the tall spiked flowers smiled down--but they drifted +inexorably with a faint, creaking music, leaf on leaf. + +Tedge opened his eyes to a flicker of myriad lights. The sound was a +roaring now--like the surf on the reefs in the hurricane month; or the +thunder of maddened steers above him across this flowery sea meadow. +Perhaps the man he had killed rode with this stampede? Tedge shrank +under the lilies--perhaps they could protect him now? Even the last +stroke of his hands made luminous beauty of the under-running tide. + +An outward-bound shrimp lugger saw the figures on Au Fer reef and came +to anchor beyond the shoals. The Cajan crew rowed up to where Milt +Rogers and Crump and the black deckhand were watching by a pool. The +shrimpers listened to the cowman, who had tied the sleeve of his shirt +about his bloody head. + +"You can get a barge down from Morgan City and take the cows off +before the sea comes high," said Rogers quietly. "They're eating the +lilies--and they find sweet water in 'em. Worlds o' lilies driftin' to +sea with sweet water in the bulbs!" And he added, watching Crump and +the black man who seemed in terror of him: "I want to get off, too. I +want to see the swamp country where worlds o' flowers come from!" + +He said no more. He did not even look in the pool where Crump pointed. +He was thinking of that girl of the swamps who had bid him come to +her. But all along the white surf line he could see the +green-and-purple plumes of the hyacinth warriors tossing in the +breeze--legion upon legion, coming to die gloriously on Au Fer's +sands. + +But first they sent a herald; for in Tedge's hand, as he lay in the +pool, one waxen-leafed banner with a purple spear-point glittered in +the sun. + + + +THE URGE + +By MARYLAND ALLEN + +From _Everybody's_ + + +She is now a woman ageless because she is famous. She is surrounded by +a swarm of lovers and possesses a great many beautiful things. She has +more than one Ming jar in the library at her country place; yards upon +yards of point de Venise in her top bureau-drawer. She is able to +employ a very pleasant, wholesome woman, whose sole duty it is to keep +her clothes in order. + +She wears superb clothes--the last word in richness and the elegance +of perfection--clothes that no man can declaim over, stimulating +himself the while with shot after shot of that most insidious of all +dope, self-pity. You see, she earns them all herself, along with the +Ming jars, the point de Venise, the country place, and countless other +things. She is the funniest woman in the world--not in her +press-agent's imagination, but in cold, sober fact. She can make +anybody laugh; she does make everybody. + +Night after night in the huge public theatres of the common people; in +the small private ones of the commoner rich; in Greek amphitheatres +where the laughter rolls away in thunderous waves to be echoed back by +distant blue hills; in institutions for the blind; in convalescent +wards; everywhere, every time, she makes them laugh. The day labourer, +sodden and desperate from too much class legislation, the ego in his +cosmos and the struggle for existence; the statesman, fearful of +losing votes, rendered blue and depressed by the unruliness of nations +and all the vast multitude of horrors that lie in between--all of +these, all of them, she makes laugh. She is queen of the profession +she has chosen--unusual for one of her sex. She is the funniest woman +in the world. + +When she is at home--which is seldom--she has many visitors and +strives, if possible, to see none of them. + +"You know, I entertain so much," she pleads in that vivid, whimsical +way of hers that holds as much of sadness as mirth. + +But this time, it being so early in the afternoon, she was caught +unawares. + +The girls--they were nothing but girls, three of them--found her out +upon the lawn, sitting on a seat where the velvety green turf fell +away in a steep hillside, and far beneath them they could see the +river moving whitely beyond the trees. They halted there before her, +happy but trembling, giggling but grave. They were gasping and +incoherent, full of apologies and absurd tremors. It had taken their +combined week's savings to bribe the gardener. And they only wanted to +know one thing: How had she achieved all this fame and splendour, by +what magic process had she become that rarest of all living creatures, +the funniest woman in the world? + +It was an easy enough question to ask and, to them, hovering +twittering upon high heels a trifle worn to one side, a simple one for +her to answer. She looked at them in that humorous, kindly way of +hers, looked at their silly, excited, made-up faces with noses +sticking out stark, like handles, from a too-heavy application of +purplish-white powder. Then her glance travelled down the velvety +green slope to the bright river glancing and leaping beyond the shady +trees. + +Did she think of that other girl? Sitting there with that strange +smile upon her face, the smile that is neither mirth nor sadness, but +a poignant, haunting compound of both, did she remember her and the +Urge that had always been upon her, racking her like actual pain, +driving her with a whip of scorpions, flaying her on and on with a far +more vivid sense of suffering than the actual beatings laid on by her +mother's heavy hand, the thing that found articulation in the words, +"I must be famous, I must!" + +She belonged in the rear of a batch of a dozen, and had never been +properly named. The wind was blowing from the stockyards on the dark +hour when she arrived. It penetrated even to the small airless chamber +where she struggled for her first breath--one of a "flat" in the +poorest tenement in the worst slum in Chicago. Huddled in smelly rags +by a hastily summoned neighbour from the floor above, the newcomer +raised her untried voice in a frail, reedy cry. Perhaps she did not +like the smell that oozed in around the tightly closed window to +combat the foul odours of the airless room. Whatever it was, this +protest availed her nothing, for the neighbour hurriedly departed, +having been unwilling from the first, and the mother turned away and +lay close against the stained, discoloured wall, too apathetic, too +utterly resigned to the fate life had meted out to her to accord this +most unwelcome baby further attention. This first moment of her life +might easily serve as the history of her babyhood. + +Her father was also indifferent. He brought home his money and gave it +to his wife--children were strictly none of his business. Her brothers +and sisters, each one busily and fiercely fending for himself, gave no +attention to her small affairs. + +Tossed by the careless hand of Fate into the dark sea of life to swim +or perish, she awoke to consciousness with but one thought--food; one +ruling passion--to get enough. And since, in her habitual half-starved +state, all food looked superlatively good to her, cake was the first +word she learned to speak. It formed her whole vocabulary for a +surprisingly long time, and Cake was the only name she was ever known +by in her family circle and on the street that to her ran on and on +and on as narrow and dirty, as crowded and as cruel as where it passed +the great dilapidated old rookery that held the four dark rooms that +she called home. + +Up to the age of ten her life was sketchy. A passionate scramble for +food, beatings, tears, slumber, a swift transition from one childish +ailment to another that kept her forever out of reach of the truant +officer. + +She lay upon the floor in a little dark room, and through the window +in the airless air-shaft, high up in one corner, she could see a +three-cornered spot of light. At first she wondered what it was, since +she lived in a tenement, not under the sky. Then it resolved itself +into a ball, white and luminous, that floated remote in that high +place and seemed to draw her, and was somehow akin to the queer, +gnawing pain that developed about that time beneath her breastbone. It +was all inarticulate, queer and confused. She did not think, she did +not know how. She only felt that queer gnawing beneath her breastbone, +distinct from all her other pains, and which she ascribed to hunger, +and saw the lovely, trembling globe of light. At first she felt it +only when she was ill and lay on the tumbled floor bed and looked up +through the dark window; afterward always in her dreams. + +After she passed her tenth birthday the confusion within her seemed to +settle as the queer pain increased, and she began to think, to wonder +what it could be. + +A year or two later her father died, and as she was the only child +over whom her mother could exercise any control, the report of her +death was successfully impressed upon the truant officer, so that she +might be put to work unhindered to help the family in its desperate +scramble for food, a scramble in which she took part with vivid +earnestness. She was hired to Maverick's to wash dishes. + +Maverick was a Greek and kept an open-all-night chop-house, a mean +hole in the wall two doors from the corner, where Cake's surpassing +thinness made her invaluable at the sink. Also the scraps she carried +home in her red, water-puckered hands helped out materially. Then her +mother took a boarder and rested in her endeavours, feeling she had +performed all things well. + +This boarder was a man with a past. And he had left it pretty far +behind, else he had never rented a room and meals from the mother of +Cake. In this boarder drink and debauchery had completely beaten out +of shape what had once been a very noble figure of a man. His body was +shrunken and trembling; the old, ragged clothes he wore flapped about +him like the vestments of a scarecrow. His cheeks had the bruised +congested look of the habitual drinker, his nose seemed a toadstool on +his face, and his red eyes were almost vanished behind puffy, purple, +pillow-like lids. His voice was husky and whispering, except when he +raised it. Then it was surprisingly resonant and mellow, with +something haunting in it like the echo of an echo of a very moving +sweetness. + +One night Cake, returning all weary and played-out from dish-washing +at Maverick's, heard him speaking in this loud voice of his, pushed +the door open a crack, and peeked in. He was standing in the middle of +the floor evidently speaking what the child called to herself "a +piece." Her big mouth crooked derisively in the beginning of what is +now her famous smile. The lodger went on speaking, being fairly well +stimulated at the time, and presently Cake pushed the door wider and +crept in to the dry-goods box, where her mother always kept a candle, +and sat down. + +The lodger talked on and on while Cake sat rapt, the flickering candle +in her hands throwing strange lights and shadows upon her gaunt face. +How was she to know she was the last audience of one of the greatest +Shakespearian actors the world had ever seen? + +It was a grave and wondering Cake that crept to her place to sleep +that night between her two older sisters. And while they ramped +against her and chewed and snorted in her ears, she listened all over +again to that wonderful voice and was awed by the colour and beauty of +the words that it had spoken. She slept, and saw before her the globe +of light, trembling and luminous, the one bright thing of beauty her +life had ever known, that seemed to draw her up from darkness slowly +and with great suffering. Trembling and weeping she awoke in the dawn, +and the strange pain that had tortured her so much and that she had +called hunger and sought to assuage with scraps from the plates that +came to the sink at Maverick's became articulate at last. With her +hands clasped hard against her breast she found relief in words. + +"I gotta be somebody," sobbed the child. "I mus' be famous, I mus'!" + +She arose to find life no longer a confused struggle for food, but a +battle and a march; a battle to get through one day to march on to the +next, and so on and on until, in that long line of days that stretched +out ahead of her like chambers waiting to be visited, she reached the +one where rested Fame, that trembling, luminous globe of beauty it was +so vitally necessary for her to achieve. "How come he c'n talk like +that?" she demanded of herself, musing on the lodger's wonderful +exhibition over the greasy dish-water at Maverick's. + +And that night she asked him, prefacing her question with the offering +of an almost perfect lamb-chop. Only one piece had been cut from it +since the purchaser, at that moment apprised by Maverick himself that +the arrival of the police was imminent, had taken a hasty departure. + +"Who learned you to talk that-a-way?" demanded Cake, licking a faint, +far-away flavour of the chop from her long, thin fingers. + +The lodger, for a moment, had changed places with the candle. That is +to say, he sat upon the dry-goods box, the candle burned upon the +floor. And, having been most unfortunate that day, the lodger was +tragically sober. He bit into the chop voraciously, like a dog, with +his broken, discoloured teeth. + +"A book 'learned' me," he said, "and practice and experience--and +something else." He broke off short. "They called it genius then," he +said bitterly. + +Cake took a short step forward. That thing beneath her prominent +breastbone pained her violently, forced her on to speak. + +"You learn me," she said. + +The lodger ceased to chew and stared, the chop bone uplifted in his +dirty hand. A pupil for him! + +"You want to do this perhaps," he began. "Pray do not mock me; I am a +very foolish, fond old man----" + +The disreputable, swollen-faced lodger with a nose like a poisoned +toadstool vanished. Cake saw an old white-haired man, crazy and +pitiful, yet bearing himself grandly. She gasped, the tears flew to +her eyes, blinding her. The lodger laughed disagreeably, he was +gnawing on the chop bone again. + +"I suppose you think because you've found me here it is likely I'll +teach you--you! You starved alley cat!" he snarled. + +Cake did not even blink. It is repetition that dulls, and she was +utterly familiar with abuse. + +"And suppose I did--'learn' you," he sneered, "what would _you_ do +with it?" + +"I would be famous," cried Cake. + +Then the lodger did laugh, looking at her with his head hanging down, +his swollen face all creased and purple, his hair sticking up rough +and unkempt. He laughed, sitting there a degraded, debauched ruin, +looking down from the height of his memories upon the gaunt, unlovely +child of the slums who was rendered even more unlovely by the very +courage that kept her waiting beside the broken door. + +"So you think I could learn you to be famous, hey?" Even the words of +this gutter filth he sought to construe into something nattering to +himself. + +Cake nodded. Really she had not thought of it that way at all. There +was no thinking connected with her decision. The dumb hours she had +spent staring up the air-shaft had resolved themselves with the +passing years into a strange, numb will to do. There was the light and +she must reach it. Indeed the Thing there behind the narrow walls of +her chest gave her no alternative. She did not think she wanted to be +an actress. It was a long time after that before she knew even what an +actress was. She did not know what the lodger had been. No. +Instinctively, groping and inarticulate, she recognized in him the +rags and shreds of greatness, knew him to be a one-time dweller in +that temple whither, willing or not, she was bound, to reach it or to +die. + +The lodger looked down at the naked chop bone in his hand. The juicy, +broiled meat was comforting to his outraged stomach. Meat. The word +stood out in his mind to be instantly followed by that other word +that, for him, had spelled ruin, made him a ragged panhandler, reduced +him to living among the poorest and most hopeless. Drink! He raised +his head and eyed Cake with crafty calculation. + +"What will you pay me for such teaching?" he demanded, and looked down +again at the bone. + +What he did in the end, Cake herself was satisfied came to him +afterward. At first he was actuated only by the desire to procure food +and drink--more especially the drink--at the cost of the least +possible effort to himself. + +Cake saw the look, and she knew. She even smiled a little in the +greatness of her relief. She saw she had been right to bring the chop, +and appreciated that her progress along road to fame would be as slow +or fast as she could procure food for him in lesser or larger +quantities. + +"I'll bring you eats," she said cunningly. "From Maverick's," she +added. By which she meant the eats would be "has-is"--distinctly +second class, quite possibly third. + +The lodger nodded. "And booze," he put in, watching her face. + +"And booze," Cake assented. + +So the bargain was struck in a way that worked the most cruel hardship +on the girl. Food she could steal and did, blithely enough, since she +had no monitor but the lure of brightness and that Thing within her +breast that hotly justified the theft and only urged her on. But booze +was a very different proposition. It was impossible to steal +booze--even a little. To secure booze she was forced to offer money. +Now what money Cake earned at Maverick's her mother snatched from her +hand before she was well within the door. If she held out even a dime, +she got a beating. And Cake's mother, in the later years of her life, +besides being a clever evader of the police and the truant officer, +developed into a beater of parts. Broken food the child offered in +abundance and piteous hope. But the lodger was brutally indifferent. + +"Food," he scoffed. "Why, it says in the Bible--you never heard of the +Bible, hey?" Cake shook her tangled head. + +"No? Well, it's quite a Book," commented the lodger. He had been +fortunate that day and was, for him, fairly intoxicated. "And it says +right in there--and some consider that Book an authority--man cannot +live by food alone. Drink--I drink when I have occasion, and sometimes +when I have no occasion--Don't you know what drink is, alley-cat? Very +well, then, wine is wont to show the mind of man, and you won't see +mine until you bring me booze. Get out!" + +And Cake got out. Also, being well versed in a very horrid wisdom, she +took the food with her. This was hardly what the lodger had expected, +and I think what respect he was capable of sprouted for her then. + +Behind a screen of barrels in the corner of the alley Cake ate the +broken meats herself, taking what comfort she could, and pondering the +while the awful problem of securing the booze, since she must be +taught, and since the lodger moved in her sphere as the only available +teacher. + +There was a rush up the alley past her hiding-place, a shout, and the +savage thud of blows. Very cautiously, as became one wise in the ways +of life in that place, Cake peered around a barrel. She saw Red Dan, +who sold papers in front of Jeer Dooley's place, thoroughly punishing +another and much larger boy. The bigger boy was crying. + +"Anybody c'n sell pipers," shouted Red Dan, pounding the information +home bloodily. "You hear me?--anybody!" + +Cake crept out of her hiding-place on the opposite side. + +She did not care what happened to the bigger boy, though she respected +Red Dan the more. She knew where the money was going to come from to +buy the lodger's booze. It meant longer hours for her; it meant care +to work only out of school hours; it meant harder knocks than even she +had experienced; it meant a fatigue there were no words to describe +even among the beautiful, wonderful, colourful ones the lodger taught +her. But she sold the papers and she purchased the booze. + +Her mother did not know where she spent this extra time. She did not +care since the money came in from Maverick's steadily each week. +Neither did the lodger care how the booze was procured; the big thing +to him was that it came. + +At first these lessons were fun for him; the big, gawky, half-starved, +overworked child seeing so vividly in pictures all that he told her in +words. Full-fed on the scraps from Maverick's--he was no longer +fastidious--well stimulated by the drink she brought, he took an ugly +sort of degraded pleasure in posturing before her, acting as he alone +could act those most wonderful of all plays, watching with hateful, +sardonic amusement the light and shadow of emotion upon her dirty +face. Oh, he was a magician, no doubt at all of that! Past master in +the rare art of a true genius, that of producing illusion. + +Then he would make Cake try, rave at her, curse her, strike her, kill +himself laughing, drink some more and put her at it again. + +Night after night, almost comatose from the fatigue of a day that +began while it was still dark, she carried a heaped-up plate and a +full bottle to the lodger's room and sat down upon the dry-goods box +with the candle beside her on the floor. And, having thus secured her +welcome, night after night she walked with him among that greatest of +all throngs of soldiers and lovers, kings and cardinals, queens, +prostitutes and thieves. + +If the liquor was short in the bottle a dime's worth, the lesson was +curtailed. At first Cake tried to coax him. "Aw, c'mon, yuh Romeo on +th' street in Mantua." + +But the lodger was never so drunk that he made the slightest +concession. + +"Yes, I'm Romeo all right--the lad's there, never fear, gutter-snipe. +But--the bottle is not full." + +After that she never attempted to change his ruling. She was letter +perfect in the bitter lesson, and if the sale of papers did not bring +in enough to fill the bottle, she accepted the hard fact with the calm +of great determination and did not go near the lodger's room, but went +to bed instead. + +Perhaps it was these rare occasions of rest that kept her alive. + +After the lodger had been teaching her for several years her mother +died and was buried in the potters' field. Cake managed to keep two +rooms of the wretched flat, and no word of his landlady's demise +reached the lodger's drink-dulled ears. Otherwise Cake feared he might +depart, taking with him her one big chance to reach the light. You +see, she did not know the lodger. Things might have been different if +she had. But he was never a human being to her, even after she knew +the truth; only a symbol, a means to the great end. + +Her brothers went away--to the penitentiary and other places. One by +one the flood of life caught her sisters and swept them out, she did +not know to what. She never even wondered. She had not been taught to +care. She had never been taught anything. The knowledge that she must +be famous danced through her dreams like a will-o'-the-wisp; had grown +within her in the shape of a great pain that never ceased; only eased +a little as she strove mightily toward the goal. + +So she still sold papers, a homely, gawky, long-legged girl in ragged +clothes much too small for her, and slaved at Maverick's for the +lodger's nightly dole that he might teach her and she be famous. + +At first he was keen on the meat and drink--more especially the drink. +Later, gradually, a change came over him. Only Cake did not notice +this change. She was too set on being taught so she could become +famous. At first the lodger was all oaths and blows with shouts of +fierce, derisive laughter intermingled. + +"My God!" he would cry. "If Noyes could only see this--if he only +could!" + +This Noyes, it appeared, was a man he furiously despised. When he was +in the third stage of drunkenness he would never teach Cake, but would +only abuse his enemies, and this Noyes invariably came in for a +fearful shower of epithets. It was he as Cake heard it, sitting +huddled on the old dry-goods box, the candle casting strange shadows +into her gaunt, unchildlike face, who was the cause of the lodger's +downfall. But for Noyes--with a blasting array of curses before the +name--he would now have what Cake so ardently strove for: Fame. But +for Noyes he would be acting in his own theatre, riding in his own +limousine, wearing his own diamonds, entertaining his own friends upon +his own gold plate. + +When he was still too sober to take a really vital interest in the +teaching, he was a misanthrope, bitter and brutal, with an astonishing +command of the most terrible words. At these times he made the gravest +charges against Noyes; charges for which the man should be made +accountable, even to such a one as the lodger. One evening Cake sat +watching him, waiting for this mood to pass so that the teaching might +begin. + +"If I was youse," she said at last, "and hated a guy like youse do +this Noyes, I'd fetch 'im a insult that'd get under his skin right. +I'd make evens wit' 'im, I would, not jes' talk about it." + +"Oh, you would!" remarked the lodger. He took a long pull at the +bottle. "You be _Queen Kathrine_, you alley-cat." + +So the nightly teaching began with the usual accompaniment of curses, +blows, and shouts of brutal laughter. But when it was over and the +lodger was sinking to the third stage that came inevitably with the +bottom of the bottle, he kept looking at his pupil queerly. + +"Oh, you would! Oh, you would, would you?" He said it over and over +again. "Oh, you would, would you?" + +And after that he was changed by the leaven of hate her suggestion had +started working in him. For one thing, he took a far greater interest +in the teaching for its own sake. Of that much the girl herself was +thankfully aware. And she thought, Cake did, that the dull husk of +self was wearing away from that part of her destined to be famous, +wearing away at last. The lodger's curses changed in tone as the +nights filed past, the blows diminished, the laughter became far more +frequent. + +Cake, as rapidly reaching the end of her girlhood as the lodger was +nearing the limits of his drink-sapped strength, redoubled her +efforts. It was very plain to her that he could not live much longer; +death in delirium tremens was inevitable. After that, she decided, +school would not keep, and she must try her fortune. + +Then one night in the midst of the potion scene when she felt herself +_Juliet_, soft, passionate, and beautiful, far away in the land of +tragic romance, she heard the lodger crying: + +"Stop--my God, stop! How do you get that way? Don't you know there's a +limit to human endurance, alley-cat?" + +He was fairly toppling from the dry-goods box. His eyes were popping +from his head, and in the flickering candlelight his face looked +strained and queer. In after life she became very familiar with that +expression; she saw it on all types of faces. In fact, she came to +expect to see it there. But she did not know how to analyze it then. +She glimpsed it only as a tribute to her performance, so immense that +she had to be halted in the middle, and felt correspondingly elated. +She was exactly right in her deduction. But Cake and the lodger +advanced along very different lines of thought. + +The next night he was shaky, came all too quickly to the teaching +period, and left it as speedily. Then he retired to the flock mattress +in the corner of the room and called Cake to bring the candle. + +"I've an idea I'm going to leave you, gutter-snipe," he said, "and I +doubt if I ever see you again. The end of life cancels all bands. And +the one that bound you to me, alley-cat, was very material, very +material indeed. The kind that runs easily in and out of a black +bottle." He laughed. + +"You Shakespearian actress!" He laughed again, longer this time. "But +I have not forgotten you," he resumed. "In addition to all that I have +taught you, I am going to leave you something. Here," he fumbled out a +square envelope and Cake took it between her hands. "Take that to the +address written on it," said the lodger, "and see what the gentleman +does." He began to laugh again. + +"Noyes----" he cried and broke off to curse feebly but volubly. Cake +did not even glance in his direction. She went away out of the room, +too utterly stunned with fatigue to look at the letter in her dingy +hand. + +The next morning the lodger was dead. He was buried in the potters' +field quite near his old landlady. + +This second funeral, such as it was, closed the shelter that Cake, for +want of a more fitting name, had called home. She decided to put all +her years of bitterly acquired learning to the test. And as she best +knew what she had bought and paid for it she felt she could not fail. +She unfolded from a scrap of newspaper the envelope presented her by +the lodger and carefully studied the address. + +Cake could both read and write, having acquired these arts from a +waiter at Maverick's, who also helped her steal the broken meats with +which she secured her artistic education. And, watching the steady +disappearance of the food, this waiter marvelled that she got no +fatter as she grew upward, hovering about in hope of becoming her +lover if she ever did. But even if that miracle had ever been +accomplished the helpful waiter would still have waited. Cake's +conception of a real lady was _Queen Katherine_; _Cleopatra_ her dream +of a dangerous, fascinating one. And what chance in the world for +either with a waiter? + +Cake read the name and address upon the envelope freely as the hopeful +bread-caster had taught her: Arthur Payson Noyes, National Theatre. +With the simplicity and dispatch that characterized her, she went to +that place. To the man reposing somnolently in the broken old chair +beside the door she said she had a letter for Mr. Noyes. The +doorkeeper saw it was a large, swanking envelope with very polite +writing. He straightened up in the chair long enough to pass her in, +and then slumped down again. + +Cake found herself in a queer, barnlike place, half room and half +hallway, feebly illumined by a single electric bulb suspended above +the door. Very composedly she looked about her. If Mr. Arthur Noyes +lived in this place, he was one of her own kind and there was no need +for any palpitation on her part. Anyway, she was looking solely for +her chance to become famous, and she brought to this second stage of +her search the same indifference to externals, the same calm, +unfaltering courage as she had to the first. + +"Now, then," said a voice briskly. "Say what you want. We have not +advertised for any extra people. At least--not this year." + +A short, stout man emerged from the shadows. He was very blond, with +his hair cut snapper, and his pale eyes popped perpetual astonishment. +She returned his look steadily and well. She knew she was born to be +famous, and fame has a certain beauty of dignity utterly lacking in +mere success. + +"I am not an extra person," she replied. "I have come to see Mr. +Noyes," and she displayed once more the large square envelope, her +legacy from the lodger, the knife with which she proposed to shuck +from its rough shell that oyster, the world. + +The man looked even more astonished, if the thing could have been +accomplished, and regarded her keenly--stared. + +"Come this way," he said. + +Cake followed him along a narrow passage that turned off to the right, +down five steps, across a narrow entry, up three more steps--although +it seems quite silly, she never in her life forgot the odd number of +those worn steps--and halted before a closed door. On this the fat man +knocked once and opened immediately without waiting. + +"Someone I think you'll see," he said, standing between Cake and the +interior. There came to her a murmur over his chunky shoulder. + +"She has a letter from----" The fat man dropped his voice and mumbled. +"Positive," he said, aloud, after a pause broken only by the vague +murmur within the room. "I'd know his fist anywhere. Yes." Then he +pushed the door open wide, stood aside, and looked at Cake. "Walk in," +he said. + +She did so. Beautifully. Poems have been written about her walk. Two +kinds. + +The room she entered was square, with concrete floor and rough walls. +But Cake did not notice the room for three reasons: The rug on the +floor, four pictures on the walls, and the man who looked at her as +she entered. + +They gazed at each other, Cake and this man, with sudden, intense +concentration. He was a genius in his line, she as surely one in hers. +And, instinctively, to that strange, bright flame each rendered +instant homage. What he saw he described long afterward when a million +voices were vociferously raised in a million different descriptions. +What she saw she likened in her mind to a dark sheath from which a +sword flashed gloriously. That sword was his soul. + +"He says your name is Plain Cake--is that true?" He referred to the +lodger's letter held open in his hand, and by that she knew he was +Arthur Noyes. And great. That last she had not needed any telling. + +"Yes," she replied. + +"He says you are the right Shakespearian actress for me," Noyes +referred to the letter again. "Do you know Shakespeare?" + +"All the way," said Cake. It was not quite the answer _Queen +Katherine_ might have made, perhaps, but her manner was perfect. + +"Come here"--he pointed to the centre of the rapturous rug--"and do +the potion scene for me." Cake stepped forward. + +Perhaps you have been so fortunate as to see her. If so you know that +to step forward is her only preparation. She was poised, she was gone. +Then suddenly she heard the lodger's voice crying: + +"Stop--my God, stop! How do you get that way? Don't you know there's a +limit to human endurance, alley-cat?" + +She broke off, staring confusedly into space just the height of his +debauched old figure crouching on the dry-goods box. Then with swift +realization of her surroundings, her vision cleared. It was the fat +man in the checked suit she saw leaning helplessly against the closed +door. His jaw sagged, his eyes were frightfully popped, his face wore +the same strained, queer look she had come to see so often on the +lodger's, and he made weak little flapping gestures with his hands. + +Cake looked then at Arthur Noyes. His face was white as the letter in +his hand, his dark eyes were dilated with a look of dreadful +suffering, the numb, unconscious reaction of one who has received a +mortal blow. + +"Come here, Crum," he cried as if there was no one else in the room. +And Crum fairly tottered forward. + +"What do you make of this?" asked Noyes, while Cake stood and +listened. + +"I--I--" stammered Crum exhaustedly. "My God," he groaned, "it's too +much for me. And training!" + +"Oh, trained," Cake heard Noyes say. "Such training as only he could +give. Years of it, that's plain. And then to send her to me. A +Shakespearean actress for me! To insult me like that--" + +"It's too much for me, Boss," said Crum again. "Still--Oh--oh, my!" +His back was turned, but Cake saw his whole body shake. + +"Telephone Meier," exclaimed Noyes suddenly. + +"Meier?" Crum became immediately composed, and Cake saw that he was +tremendously surprised. "You don't mean that you're going to--After +this? Why, she's in the know. Look at her. It's perfect!" + +And they both turned and looked at Cake standing unconscious and +serene on the other side of the room. You who have seen her know just +how perfect the pose was. + +"It _is_ perfect," Noyes said. "I'd be a pretty poor sport if I did +not acknowledge that." Then his voice dropped and Cake only caught +snatches here and there. "... such genius ... once in a century ... +get even with him in a way he least expects ... wipe off the slate +entirely ... no comeback to my play ... let him see that for himself. +Call Meier." Then he turned to Cake. + +"Sit down, please," he said courteously. "I have sent for a man who +may give you an engagement." + +She returned his gaze so quietly that he was puzzled. About her was +neither nervous anticipation nor flighty vivacity. The actions of her +audience of two left her in-curious and calm. You see, she was used to +the lodger. Also she had worked to be famous so long that all the +flowery borders of self were worn down to the keen edge of doing. Of +Plain Cake she thought not at all. But then, she never had. Only of +the light at the end of the passage that now loomed so bright to her +watching eyes. + +It seemed only a minute before Noyes spoke again: "This is Mr. Meier." +He regarded her shrewdly all the time. + +Cake bowed to Mr. Meier, a fat, gaudy gentleman with thick, hairy +hands. And Mr. Meier looked at Noyes and shook his head. She realized +they had already been talking together. + +"Never before," Mr. Meier said. + +"If you will repeat the potion scene," Arthur Noyes suggested. "This +time, I trust, you will not be interrupted," he added politely. + +And Cake stepped once more into that rich orgy of emotion. This time, +though dimly aware of noise and a confusion of shouting, she carried +the scene through to the end. "Romeo, I come! This do I drink to +thee." She lay for a moment where she had fallen close to the heavenly +colours of the rug. + +"Goo-hood Gaw-hud!" gasped Mr. Meier, and Cake sat up. + +She saw he was rather collapsed upon a chair near which he had been +standing up when she began. His fat face was purple, and tears stood +in his eyes. But Arthur Noyes had not changed. White, with that look +of mortal hurt, he still stood straight and slim against the table. + +"You cannot offer her less than two hundred a week to begin," he said +with the same air of being alone with Mr. Meier. + +"No, oh, no, no, no, no!" sighed Mr. Meier, wiping his eyes. + +He rose and bowed to Cake with the queerest respect, still wiping his +eyes with the back of his thick, hairy hands. It was a striking +commentary upon her years of training that both of these men, +successful from long and hard experience, paid her the compliment of +thinking her an old hand at the game. + +"Mine is the Imperial Theatre, Miss," said Meier. "You should be there +to-night by seven o'clock. It ain't necessary we should rehearse. No, +oh, no, no, no, no! And now, perhaps"--he looked her up and down, +oddly--"perhaps I can take you to your--hotel?" + +Cake looked him back, serene in her belief in what the lodger had +taught her. + +"I'll be there at seven," she said. "No, thank you." She walked out +and across into a small park where she sat until the appointed time. + +Then she went to the stage entrance of the Imperial Theatre, presented +the card Mr. Meier had given her, and entered. Once inside she was +taken to a dressing room by a fat, comfortable, middle-aged woman who +seemed to be waiting for her. After a very short and, to Cake, +tranquil period, Mr. Meier bustled in. + +"Of course, Miss, you know this is a Revue," he explained, rubbing his +hands with a deference that Cake shed utterly, because she did not +know it was there. + +She nodded, accepting his statement. "We make 'em laugh here," said +Mr. Meier. Again Cake nodded; she knew exactly as much about the show +as she did before. "You close the second act; it's the best place for +you. Leafy, here, will help you dress." + +Cake sat still while Leafy dressed her, very hushed and still. The +light blazed so near after all these hard, lean years of pursuit, +years in which the little affairs of life, like the business of +growing from a child to a woman, had simply passed her by. Of that +Urge to be famous she was even more burningly aware; herself she did +not know at all. + +Mr. Meier came and took her by the hand. His fat face was pale and +sweating, he seemed almost awestruck by Cake's calm. He drew her out +of the dressing room and through a crowd of people, men and women with +painted faces, some beautifully, some extravagantly and strangely +dressed. They all stared. One woman shook her head. A man said: +"Search me! I never saw _her_ before." + +Then Mr. Meier thrust her out in the face of a bright light. "Begin," +he said hoarsely. "Walk over there and begin." + +Quietly Cake obeyed. She had walked right into the bright light that +had drawn her so hard and so long. Of course it was time for her to +begin. And with this bright light in her face, which soon became to +her the candle in that dark room left so far behind, she fared away to +the magic land of beautiful make-believe. + +And only when _Juliet_, that precocious child, sank down poisoned did +she become aware of the uproar about her. The shouts of the lodger, +"Stop--my God, stop! How do you get that way?" augmented a million +times. It was this she heard. + +Slowly Cake lifted herself on her hands, dazedly she peered through +the heart of the great light that had caused her such suffering and +that she had followed faithfully so bitterly long. On the other side +she saw faces, rows and rows of them mounting up to the very roof. +Faces laughing; faces convulsed, streaming with tears; faces with eyes +fixed and wearing that same queer, strained look she had noticed +before; hundreds of faces topping each other in semicircular rows, all +different but all alike in that they were all laughing. + +She rose to her knees and rested there on all fours--staring. + +Laughter! A great clapping of hands rolled about her like thunder, +dying down and rising again to even greater volume. Cries of "Go on," +assailed her ears, mingled with, "Stop, stop! I can't bear it!" + +The curtain fell before her, blotting out the vision of those faces, +making the uproar slightly dimmer. Mr. Meier advanced and lifted her +to her feet. He moved weakly, exhausted with mirth. + +"Even Noyes," he gasped. "He--he can't help it. Oh, my goo-hood +Gaw-hud!" + +Cake looked away from him to the men and women that thronged about +her. The same faces that had turned to her such a short while ago; but +now, how different! + +"Oh, don't criticise," one woman cried. "Hand it to her! She can't be +beat. She's the one that comes once in a century to show the rest of +us what really can be done." + +"Meier," shouted a man. "Meier--she'll have to go back, Meier; she's +stopped the show." + +Quiet and very still, Cake drew away. + +It seemed to her only a moment later that Leafy touched her arm. + +"Mr. Meier has taken a suite for you here in this hotel," she said. +"Can't you eat a little, Miss?" + +Eat? She had never had enough to eat in her life. Her life? She had +spent her life securing food for the lodger that he might teach her to +be famous. Leafy lifted the spoon of hot soup to her lips and +immediately she drank--she who had never had enough to eat in her +life. Morsel by morsel from the bountifully filled table the kindly +dresser fed her. Obediently she ate, and the hot, rich food stimulated +her to swifter, more agonizing thought. + +Then, for the first time, she saw Arthur Noyes standing with his back +against a closed door. She read pity in his eyes, comprehension, great +wonder, and what she did not know then was the love that came to a +rare perfection between them and has never faded--and has no place in +this story. + +"Will you tell me," he said, "what your name is, where your home is, +and who are those that love you there?" + +Then he broke off and shrank a little against the door. "Oh, don't," +he protested. + +Yet she had only looked at him and smiled. But it came to her keenly +in her new awareness that his questions covered the whole of a woman's +life: Her name, her home, and the ones that loved her there. While +she--she had no name, she did not even know the lodger's name. She +looked down with strange astonishment at her grown-up figure, her +woman's hands. She saw herself a ragged, gaunt, bushy-headed child +moving on a tight rope above a dark abyss, intent only upon a luminous +globe floating just out of reach ahead of her, that she stretched out +for eagerly with both her hands. Suddenly the lovely bubble burst and +the child was a woman, falling and falling among rows of convulsed, +shining white faces to the sound of gargantuan laughter. + +"You tell me," Arthur Noyes pleaded gently. + +And she did so very simply and beautifully. She did know Shakespeare; +it was the only English that she had ever been taught. So Noyes heard +how she became an instrument in the hands of the man who hated him +mortally, and owed her debut and her terrible awakening to what he +considered the only sporting answer to that insult. While he listened +he pondered, awestruck, upon the fact that out of all this muck and +blackness, the degradation of hate by the lodger, the refinement of +hate by himself, had flowered that rarest of all human creatures--one +that could make the whole world laugh. + +"He always hated me," he said. "I told him he had traded his genius +for drink, and he never forgave me. Where is he now?" + +"Now?" Cake looked up at him in startled wonder. It came over her +suddenly that he counted upon the lodger's being in the Imperial +Theatre that night. + +"Now?" she repeated. "Why, he is dead." + +It took Noyes a minute to recover. "What will you do?" he asked her. +"Will you go on from this start, continue this--this sort of success?" +He felt it the basest cruelty, in the face of her story, to say it was +the only kind she was ever destined to make. He waited for her answer, +wondering, and a little awestruck. It seemed to him they had come to +the supreme test of her genius. + +And she looked up at him with such sadness and such mirth--such +tragic, humorous appreciation of the darkness in which she had been +born, the toilsome way she had travelled to the Great Light and what +it actually revealed when she arrived. + +"I will go on from this success," she said. Involuntarily she raised +her hand to her breast. "I must, since it is the only way for me. You +see," with a humour far more touching than the saddest tears, "I must +be famous." + +And she smiled that smile that hurt him, the smile the world loves and +will give anything to see. + +The most famous funmaker of her time looked away from the bright river +fleeting beyond the trees to her giggling, half-terrified visitors. + +"Fame," she said, "is a secret that cannot be told. It must be +discovered by the seeker. Let me offer you tea as a substitute." + + + +MUMMERY + +By THOMAS BEER + +From _Saturday Evening Post_ + + +On Monday Mrs. Egg put her husband on the east-bound express with many +orders. He was not to annoy Adam by kissing him when they met, if they +met in public. He was to let Adam alone in the choice of civil dress, +if Adam wanted to change his naval costume in New York. He was not to +get lost in Brooklyn, as he had done before. He was to visit the +largest moving-picture theatres and report the best films on his +return. She made sure that Egg had her written list of lesser commands +safe in his wallet, then folded him to her bosom, sniffed, and patted +him up the steps of the coach. + +A red-haired youth leaned through an open window and inquired, "Say, +lady, would you mind tellin' me just what you weigh?" + +"I ain't been on the scales in years, bub," said Mrs. Egg equably; +"not since about when you was born. Does your mamma ever wash out your +mouth with soap?" + +An immediate chorus of laughter broke from the platform loungers. The +train jerked forward. The youth pulled in his head. Mrs. Egg stood +puffing triumphantly with her hands on her hips. + +"It's a shame," the baggage-master told her, "that a lady can't be +kind of--kind of----" + +"Fat," said Mrs. Egg; "and bein' tall makes it worse. All the Packers +'ve always been tall. When we get fat we're holy shows. But if that +kid's mother's done her duty by him he'd keep his mouth shut." + +The dean of the loungers put in, "Your papa was always skinny, +Myrtle." + +"I can't remember him much," Mrs. Egg panted, "but he looks skinny in +his pictures. Well, I got to get home. There's a gentleman coming over +from Ashland to look at a bull." + +She trod the platform toward the motor at the hitching rails and +several loungers came along gallantly. Mrs. Egg cordially thanked them +as she sank into the driving seat, settled her black straw hat, and +drove off. + +Beholding two of her married daughters on the steps of the drug store, +she stopped the car and shouted: "Hey, girls, the fleet's gettin' in +to-morrow. Your papa's gone to meet Dammy. I just shoved him on the +train. By gee! I forgot to tell him he was to fetch home--no, I wrote +that down--well, you come out to supper Wednesday night." + +"But can Dammy get discharged all in one day?" a daughter asked. + +Mrs. Egg had no patience with such imbecility. She snapped, "Did you +think they'd discharge him a foot at a time, Susie?" and drove on up +the street, where horsechestnuts were ready to bloom, appropriately, +since Adam was fond of the blossoms. She stopped the car five times to +tell the boys that Adam would be discharged tomorrow, and made a sixth +stop at the candy shop, where a clerk brought out a chocolate ice +cream with walnut sauce. He did this mechanically. Mrs. Egg beamed at +him, although the fellow was a newcomer and didn't know Adam. + +"My boy'll be home Wednesday," she said, giving the dish back. + +"Been in the Navy three-four years, ain't he?" + +Mrs. Egg sighed. "April 14, 1917. He was twenty-one las' week, so he +gets discharged soon as the fleet hits New York. My gee, think of +Dammy being twenty-one!" + +She drove on, marvelling at time, and made her seventh stop at the +moving-picture theatre. The posters of the new feature film looked +dull. The heavily typed list of the current-events weekly took her +sharp eye. She read, "Rome Celebrates Anniversary--Fleet Sails from +Guantanamo," and chuckled. She must drive in to see the picture of the +fleet. She hadn't time to stop now, as lunch would be ready. +Anyhow, night was the time for movies. She drove on, and the brick +business buildings gave out into a dribble of small frame cottages, +mostly shabby. Edith Webb was coming out of her father's gate. + +Mrs. Egg made an eighth halt and yelled, "Hey, Edie, Dammy'll be home +Wednesday night," for the pleasure of seeing the pretty girl flush. +Adam had taken Edith to several dances at Christmas. Mrs. Egg chuckled +as the favoured virgin went red, fingering the top of the gatepost. +Edith would do. In fact, Edith was suitable, entirely. + +"Well, I'm glad," the girl said. "Oh, say, was it our house or the +next one you used to live in? Papa was wondering last night." + +"It was yours," Mrs. Egg declared; "and thank your stars you've got a +better father than I had, Edie. Yes, right here's where I lived when I +was your age and helped Mamma do sewin', and sometimes didn't get +enough to eat. I wonder if that's why--well, anyhow, it's a +solid-built house. I expect Dammy'll call you up Wednesday night." She +chuckled immensely and drove on again. + +From the edge of town she passed steadily a quarter of a mile between +her husband's fields. His cows were grazing in the pastures. His apple +trees were looking well. The red paint of his monstrous water tanks +soothed her by their brilliance. A farmhand helped her out of the car +and she took the shallow veranda steps one at a time, a little moody, +wishing that her mother was still alive to see Adam's glory. However, +there were six photographs of Adam about the green sitting room in +various uniforms, and these cheered her moment of sorrow. They weren't +altogether satisfactory. His hard size didn't show in single poses. He +looked merely beautiful. Mrs. Egg sniffled happily, patting the view +of Adam in white duck. The enlarged snapshot portrayed him sitting +astride a turret gun. It was the best of the lot, although he looked +taller in wrestling tights, but that picture worried her. She had +always been afraid that he might kill someone in a wrestling match. +She took the white-duck photograph to lunch and propped it against the +pitcher of iced milk. + +"It'll be awful gettin' him clothes," she told the cook; "except +shoes. Thank God, his feet ain't as big as the rest of him! Say, +remind me to make a coconut cake in the morning in the big pan. He +likes 'em better when they're two three days old so the icin's kind of +spread into the cake. I'd of sent a cake on with his papa, but Mr. Egg +always drops things so much. It does seem----" The doorbell rang. Mrs. +Egg wiped her mouth and complained, "Prob'ly that gentleman from +Ashland to look at that bull calf. It does seem a shame folks drop in +at mealtimes. Well, go let him in Sadie." + +The cook went out through the sitting room and down the hall. Mrs. Egg +patted her black hair, sighed at her third chop and got up. The cook's +voice mingled with a drawling man's tone. Mrs. Egg drank some milk and +waited an announcement. The cook came back into the dining room and +Mrs. Egg set down the milk glass swiftly, saying, "Why, Sadie!" + +"He--he says he's your father, Mis' Egg." + +After a moment Mrs. Egg said, "Stuff and rubbidge! My father ain't +been seen since 1882. What's the fool look like?" + +"Awful tall--kinda skinny--bald----" + +A tremor went down Mrs. Egg's back. She walked through the sitting +room and into the sunny hall. The front door was open. Against the +apple boughs appeared a black length, topped by a gleam. The sun +sparkled on the old man's baldness. A shivering memory recalled that +her father's hair had been thin. His dark face slid into a mass of +twisting furrows as Mrs. Egg approached him. + +He whispered, "I asked for Myrtle Packer down round the station. An +old feller said she was married to John Egg. You ain't Myrtle?" + +"I'm her," said Mrs. Egg. + +Terrible cold invaded her bulk. She laced her fingers across her +breast and gazed at the twisting face. + +The whisper continued: "They tell me your mamma's in the cem'tery, +Myrtle. I've come home to lay alongside of her. I'm grain for the grim +reaper's sickle. In death we sha'n't be divided; and I've walked half +the way from Texas. Don't expect you'd want to kiss me. You look awful +like her, Myrtle." + +Tears rolled out of his eyes down his hollowed cheeks, which seemed +almost black between the high bones. His pointed chin quivered. He +made a wavering gesture of both hands and sat down on the floor. +Behind Mrs. Egg the cook sobbed aloud. A farmhand stood on the grass +by the outer steps, looking in. Mrs. Egg shivered. The old man was +sobbing gently. His head oscillated and its polish repelled her. He +had abandoned her mother in 1882. + +"Mamma died back in 1910," she said. "I dunno--well----" + +The sobbing was thin and weak, like an ailing baby's murmur. It +pounded her breast. + +She stared at the ancient dusty suitcase on the porch and said, "Come +up from Texas, have you?" + +"There's no jobs lef for a man seventy-six years of age, Myrtle, +except dyin.' I run a saloon in San Antonio by the Plaza. Walked from +Greenville, Mississippi, to Little Rock. An old lady give me carfare, +there, when I told her I was goin' home to my wife that I'd treated so +bad. There's plenty Christians in Arkansaw. And they've pulled down +the old Presbyterian church your mamma and I was married in." + +"Yes; last year. Sadie, take Mr. Packer's bag up to the spare room. +Stop cryin', Papa." + +She spoke against her will. She could not let him sit on the floor +sobbing any longer. His gleaming head afflicted her. She had a queer +emotion. This seemed most unreal. The gray hall wavered like a +flashing view in a film. + +"The barn'd be a fitter place for me, daughter. I've been a----" + +"That's all right, Papa. You better go up and lie down, and Sadie'll +fetch you up some lunch." + +His hand was warm and lax. Mrs. Egg fumbled with it for a moment and +let it fall. He passed up the stairs, drooping his head. Mrs. Egg +heard the cook's sympathy explode above and leaned on the wall and +thought of Adam coming home Wednesday night. She had told him a +thousand times that he mustn't gamble or mistreat women or chew +tobacco "like your Grandfather Packer did." And here was Grandfather +Packer, ready to welcome Adam home! + +The farmhand strolled off, outside, taking the seed of this news. It +would be in town directly. + +"Oh, Dammy," she said, "and I wanted everything nice for you!" + +In the still hall her one sob sounded like a shout. Mrs. Egg marched +back to the dining room and drank a full glass of milk to calm +herself. + +"Says he can't eat nothin', Mis' Egg," the cook reported, "but he'd +like a cup of tea. It's real pitiful. He's sayin' the Twenty-third +Psalm to himself. Wasted to a shadder. Asked if Mr. Egg was as +Christian an' forbearin' as you. Mebbe he could eat some buttered +toast." + +"Try and see, Sadie; and don't bother me. I got to think." + +She thought steadily, eating cold rice with cream and apple jelly. Her +memory of Packer was slim. He had spanked her for spilling ink on his +diary. He had been a carpenter. His brothers were all dead. He had run +off with a handsome Swedish servant girl in 1882, leaving her mother +to sew for a living. What would the county say? Mrs. Egg writhed and +recoiled from duty. Perhaps she would get used to the glittering bald +head and the thin voice. It was all most unreal. Her mother had so +seldom talked of the runaway that Mrs. Egg had forgotten him as +possibly alive. And here he was! What did one do with a prodigal +father? With a jolt she remembered that there would be roast veal for +supper. + +At four, while she was showing the Ashland dairyman the bull calf, +child of Red Rover VII and Buttercup IV, Mrs. Egg saw her oldest +daughter's motor sliding across the lane from the turnpike. It held +all three of her female offspring. Mrs. Egg groaned, drawling +commonplaces to her visitor, but he stayed a full hour, admiring the +new milk shed and the cider press. When she waved him good-bye from +the veranda she found her daughters in a stalwart group by the +sitting-room fireplace, pink eyed and comfortably emotional. They +wanted to kiss her. Mrs. Egg dropped into her particular mission chair +and grunted, batting off embraces. + +"I suppose it's all over town? It'd travel fast. Well, what d'you +think of your grandpapa, girls?" + +"Don't talk so loud, Mamma," one daughter urged. + +Another said, "He's so tired he went off asleep while he was telling +us how he nearly got hung for shooting a man in San Antonio." + +Mrs. Egg reached for the glass urn full of chocolate wafers on the +table and put one in her mouth. She remarked, "I can see you've been +having a swell time, girls. A sinner that repenteth----" + +"Why, Mamma!" + +"Listen," said Mrs. Egg; "if there's going to be any forgiving done +around here, it's me that'll do it. You girls was raised with all the +comforts of home and then some. You never helped anybody do plain +sewin' at fifteen cents a hour nor had to borrow money to get a decent +dress to be married in. This thing of hearin' how he shot folks and +kept a saloon in Texas is good as a movie to you. It don't set so easy +on me. I'm old and tough. And I'll thank you to keep your mouths shut. +Here's Dammy comin' home Wednesday out of the Navy, and all this piled +up on me. I don't want every lazyjake in the country pilin' in here to +hear what a bad man he's been, and dirty the carpets up. Dammy likes +things clean. I'm a better Christian than a lot of folks I can think +of, but this looks to me like a good deal of a bread-and-butter +repentance. Been devourin' his substance in Texas and come home +to----" + +"Oh, Mamma, your own papa!" + +"That's as may be. My own mamma busted her eyesight and got heart +trouble for fifteen mortal years until your papa married me and gave +her a home for her old age, and never a whimper out of her, neither. +She's where she can't tell me what she thinks of him and I dunno what +to think. But I'll do my own thinkin' until Dammy and your papa gets +back and tell me what they think. This is your papa's place--and +Dammy's. It ain't a boardin' house for----" + +"Oh, Mamma!" + +"And it's time for my nap." + +Susan, the oldest daughter, made a tremulous protest. "He's +seventy-six years old, Mamma, and whatever he's done----" + +"For a young woman that talked pretty loud of leavin' her husband when +he came home kind of lit up from a club meetin'----" Mrs. Egg broke +in. Susan collapsed and drew her gloves on hastily. Mrs. Egg ate +another chocolate wafer and resumed: "This here's my business--and +your papa's and Dammy's. I've got it in my head that that movie weekly +picture they had of Buttercup Four with her price wrote out must have +been shown in San Antonio. And you'll recollect that your papa and me +stood alongside her while that fresh cameraman took the picture. If I +was needin' a meal and saw I'd got a well-off son-in-law----" + +"Mamma," said Susan, "you're perfectly cynical." + +Mrs. Egg pronounced, "I'm forty-five years of age," and got up. + +The daughters withdrew. Mrs. Egg covered the chocolate urn with a +click and went into the kitchen. Two elderly farmhands went out of the +porch door as she entered. + +Mrs. Egg told the cook: "Least said, soon'st mended, Sadie. Give me +the new cream. I guess I might's well make some spice cookies. Be +pretty busy Wednesday. Dammy likes 'em a little stale." + +"Mis' Egg," said the cook, "if this was Dammy that'd kind of strayed +off and come home sick in his old age----" + +"Give me the cream," Mrs. Egg commanded, and was surprised by the +fierceness of her own voice. "I don't need any help seein' my duty, +thanks!" + +At six o'clock her duty became highly involved. A friend telephoned +from town that the current-events weekly at the moving-picture theatre +showed Adam in the view of the dreadnoughts at Guantánamo. + +"Get out," said Adam's mother. "You're jokin'! ... Honest? Well, it's +about time! What's he doin'? ... Wrestlin'? My! Say, call up the +theatre and tell Mr. Rubenstein to save me a box for the evenin' +show." + +"I hear your father's come home," the friend insinuated. + +"Yes," Mrs. Egg drawled, "and ain't feelin' well and don't need +comp'ny. Be obliged if you'd tell folks that. He's kind of sickly. So +they've got Dammy in a picture. It's about time!" The tremor ran down +her back. She said "Good-night, dearie," and rang off. + +The old man was standing in the hall doorway, his head a vermilion +ball in the crossed light of the red sunset. + +"Feel better, Papa?" + +"As good as I'm likely to feel in this world again. You look real like +your mother settin' there, Myrtle." The whisper seemed likely to ripen +as a sob. + +Mrs. Egg answered, "Mamma had yellow hair and never weighed more'n a +hundred and fifty pounds to the day of her death. What'd you like for +supper?" + +He walked slowly along the room, his knees sagging, twitching from end +to end. She had forgotten how tall he was. His face constantly +wrinkled. It was hard to see his eyes under their long lashes. Mrs. +Egg felt the pity of all this in a cold way. + +She said, when he paused: "That's Adam, there, on the mantelpiece, +Papa. Six feet four and a half he is. It don't show in a picture." + +"The Navy's rough kind of life, Myrtle. I hope he ain't picked up bad +habits. The world's full of pitfalls." + +"Sure," said Mrs. Egg, shearing the whisper. "Only Dammy ain't got any +sense about cards. I tried to teach him pinochle, but he never could +remember none of it, and the hired men always clean him out shakin' +dice. He can't even beat his papa at checkers. And that's an awful +thing to say of a bright boy!" + +The old man stared at the photograph and his forehead smoothed for a +breath. Then he sighed and drooped his chin. + +"If I'd stayed by right principles when I was young----" + +"D'you still keep a diary, Papa?" + +"I did used to keep a diary, didn't I? I'd forgotten that. When you +come to my age, Myrtle, you'll find yourself forgettin' easy. If I +could remember any good things I ever did----" + +The tears dripped from his jaw to the limp breast of his coat. Mrs. +Egg felt that he must be horrible, naked, like a doll carved of +coconut bark Adam had sent home from Havana. He was darker than Adam +even. In the twilight the hollows of his face were sheer black. The +room was gray. Mrs. Egg wished that the film would hurry and show +something brightly lit. + +The dreary whisper mourned, "Grain for the grim reaper's sickle, +that's what I am. Tares mostly. When I'm gone you lay me alongside +your mamma and----" + +"Supper's ready, Mis' Egg," said the cook. + +Supper was odious. He sat crumbling bits of toast into a bowl of hot +milk and whispering feeble questions about dead folk or the business +of the vast dairy farm. The girls had been too kind, he said. + +"I couldn't help but feel that if they knew all about me----" + +"They're nice sociable girls," Mrs. Egg panted, dizzy with dislike of +her veal. She went on: "And they like a good cry, never havin' had +nothin' to cry for." + +His eyes opened wide in the lamplight, gray brilliance sparkled. Mrs. +Egg stiffened in her chair, meeting the look. + +He wailed, "I gave you plenty to cry for, daughter." The tears hurt +her, of course. + +"There's a picture of Dammy in the movies," she gasped. "I'm goin' in +to see it. You better come. It'll cheer you, Papa." + +She wanted to recall the offer too late. In the car she felt chilly. +He sank into a corner of the tonneau like a thrown laprobe. Mrs. Egg +talked loudly about Adam all the way to town and shouted directions to +the driving farmhand in order that the whisper might not start. The +manager of the theatre had saved a box for her and came to usher her +to its discomfort. But all her usual pleasure was gone. She nodded +miserably over the silver-gilt rail at friends. She knew that people +were craning from far seats. Her bulk and her shadow effaced the man +beside her. He seemed to cower a little. At eight the show began, and +Mrs. Egg felt darkness as a blessing, although the shimmer from the +screen ran like phosphorus over the bald head, and a flash of white +between two parts of the advertisement showed the dark wrinkles of his +brow. + +"Like the pictures, Papa?" + +"I don't see well enough to take much pleasure in 'em, Myrtle." + +A whirling globe announced the beginning of the weekly. Mrs. Egg +forgot her burdens. She was going to see Adam. She took a peppermint +from the bag in her hand and set her teeth in its softness, applauded +a view of the President and the arrival of an ambassador in New York. +Then the greenish letters declared: "The fleet leaves Guantánamo +training ground," and her eyes hurt with staring. The familiar lines +of anchored battleships appeared with a motion of men in white on the +gray decks. The screen showed a race of boats which melted without +warning to a mass of white uniforms packed about the raised square of +a roped-in Platform below guns and a turret clouded with men. Two +tanned giants in wrestling tights scrambled under the ropes. There was +a flutter of caps. + +"Oh!" said Mrs. Egg. "Oh!" + +She stood up. The view enlarged. Adam was plain as possible. He +grinned, too; straight from the screen at her. The audience murmured. +Applause broke out, Adam jerked his black head to his opponent--and +the view flicked off in some stupid business of admirals. Mrs. Egg sat +down and sobbed. + +"Was that Adam, daughter? The--the big feller with black hair?" + +"Yes," said Mrs. Egg; "yes." She was hot with rage against the makers +of pictures who'd taken him from her. It was a shame. She crammed four +peppermints into her mouth and groaned about them, "As if people +wouldn't rather look at some good wrestlin' than a lot of captains and +stuff!" + +"How long's the boy been in the Navy, Myrtle?" + +"April 14, 1917." + +The whisper restored her. Mrs. Egg yawned for an hour of nonsense +about a millionaire and his wife who was far too thin. Her father did +not speak, although he moved now and then. The show concluded. Mrs. +Egg lumbered wearily out to her car in the dull street and vaguely +listened to the whisper of old age. She couldn't pay attention. She +was going home to write the film company at length. This abuse of Adam +was intolerable. She told the driver so. The driver agreed. + +He reported, "I was settin' next to Miss Webb." + +"That's Dammy's girl, Papa. Go on, Sam. What did Edie say?" + +"Well," said the driver, "she liked seein' the kid. She cried, +anyhow." + +Mrs. Egg was charmed by the girl's good sense. The moon looked like a +quartered orange over the orchard. + +She sighed, "Well, he'll be home Wednesday night, anyhow. Edie ain't +old enough to get married yet. Hey, what's the house all lit up for? +Sadie ought to know better." + +She prepared a lecture for the cook. The motor shot up the drive into +a babble and halted at the steps. Someone immense rose from a chair +and leaped down the space in one stride. + +Adam said, "H'lo, Mamma," and opened the car door. + +Mrs. Egg squealed. The giant lifted her out of her seat and carried +her into the sitting room. The amazing muscles rose in the flat of his +back. She thought his overshirt ripped. The room spun. Adam fanned her +with his cap and grinned. + +"Worst of radiograms," he observed; "the boys say Papa went on to meet +me. Well, it'll give him a trip. Quit cryin', Mamma." + +"Oh, Dammy, and there ain't nothin' fit to eat in the house!" + +Adam grinned again. The farmhands dispersed at his nod. Mrs. Egg beat +down her sobs with both hands and decried the radio service that could +turn Sunday into Tuesday. Here was Adam, though, silently grinning, +his hands available, willing to eat anything she had in the pantry. +Mrs. Egg crowed her rapture in a dozen bursts. + +The whispering voice crept into a pause with, "You'll be wantin' to +talk to your boy, daughter. I'll go to bed, I guess." + +"Dammy," said Mrs. Egg, "this is----" + +Adam stopped rolling a cigarette and nodded to the shadow by the hall +door. He said, "How you? The boys told me you'd got here," and licked +the cigarette shut with a flash of his red tongue. He struck a match +on the blue coating of one lean thigh and lit the cigarette, then +stared at the shadow. Mrs. Egg hated the old man against reason as the +tears slid down the dark face. + +"Grain for the grim reaper's sickle, daughter. You'll be wantin' to +talk to your boy. I guess I'll say good-night." He faded into the +hall. + +"Well, come, let's see what there is to eat, Mamma," said Adam, and +pulled Mrs. Egg from her chair. + +He sat on the low ice chest in the pantry and ate chocolate cake. Mrs. +Egg uncorked pear cider and reached, panting, among apple-jelly +glasses. Adam seldom spoke. She didn't expect talk from him. He was +sufficient. He nodded and ate. The tanned surface of his throat +dimpled when he swallowed things. His small nose wrinkled when he +chewed. + +Mrs. Egg chattered confusedly. Adam grinned when she patted his smooth +hair and once said "Get out!" when she paused between two kisses to +assure him he was handsome. He had his father's doubts on the point +perhaps. He was not, she admitted, exactly beautiful. He was Adam, +perfect and hard as an oak trunk under his blue clothes. He finished +the chocolate cake and began to eat bread and apple jelly. + +He ate six slices and drank a mug of pear cider, then crossed his legs +and drawled, "Was a fellow on the _Nevada_ they called Frisco Cooley." + +"What about him, Dammy?" + +"Nothin'. He was as tall as me. Skinny, though. Used to imitate actors +in shows. Got discharged in 1919." + +"Was he a nice boy, Dammy?" + +"No," said Adam, and reached for the pear-cider bottle. He fell into +his usual calm and drank another mug of cider. Mrs. Egg talked of Edie +Webb. Adam grinned and kept his black eyes on the pantry ceiling. The +clock struck eleven. He said, "They called him Frisco Cooley 'cause he +came from San Francisco. He could wrinkle his face up like a monkey. +He worked in a gamblin' joint in San Francisco. That's him." Adam +jerked a thumb at the ceiling. + +"Dammy!" + +"That's him," said Adam. "It took me a time to think of him, but +that's him." + +Mrs. Egg fell back against the ice chest and squeaked: "You mean you +know this----" + +"Hush up, Mamma!" + +"But he walked part the way from San Antonio. He----" + +"He ain't your father," said Adam, "so don't cry. Is there any maple +sugar? The grub on the train was fierce." + +Mrs. Egg brought him the tin case of maple sugar. Adam selected a +chunk of the brown stuff and bit a lobe of it. He was silent. Mrs. Egg +marvelled at him. His sisters had hinted that he wasn't clever. She +stood in awe, although her legs ached. Adam finished the lump of maple +sugar and rose. He leaned on the shelves with his narrow waist curved +against them and studied a row of quince-preserve jars. His nose +wrinkled. + +He asked, "You been fumigatin'?" + +"Fumigatin'! Why, Dammy, there ain't been a disease in the house since +you had whoopin' cough." + +"Sulphur," Adam drawled. + +"Why, Dammy Egg! I never used sulphur for nothin' in my life!" + +He took a jar of preserves and ripped off the paraffin wafer that +covered the top. Then he set the jar aside and sat down on the floor. +Mrs. Egg watched him unlace his shoes. + +He commanded, "You sit still, Mamma. Be back in a minute." + +"Dammy, don't you go near that heathen!" + +"I ain't." + +He swung across the kitchen floor in two strides and bumped his head +on the top of the door. Mrs. Egg winced, but all her body seemed to +move after the boy. Shiverings tossed her. She lifted her skirts and +stepped after him. The veranda was empty. Adam had vanished, although +the moon covered the dooryard with silver. The woman stared and shook. +Then something slid down the nearest pillar and dropped like a black +column to the grass. Adam came up the steps and shoved Mrs. Egg back +to the pantry. + +He spread some quince preserve on a slab of bread and stated, "He's +sittin' up readin' a lot of old copybooks, kind of. Got oil all over +his head. It's hair remover. Sulphur in it." + +"How could you ever smell that far, Dammy?" + +"I wonder what's in those books?" Adam pondered. He sat cross-legged +on the ice chest and ate slowly for a time, then remarked, "You didn't +put up these quinces, Mamma." + +"No; they're Sadie's. Think of your noticin'!" + +"You got to teach Edie cookin'," he said. "She can't cook fit for a +Cuban. Lots of time, though. Now, Mamma, we can't let this goof stay +here all night. I guess he's a thief. I ain't goin' to let the folks +have a laugh on you. Didn't your father always keep a diary?" + +"Think of your rememberin' that, Dammy! Yes, always." + +"That's what Frisco's readin' up in. He's smart. Used to do im'tations +of actors and cry like a hose pipe. Spotted that. Where's the +strawb'ry jam?" + +"Right here, Dammy. Dammy, suppose he killed Papa somewheres off and +stole his diaries!" + +"Well," said Adam, beginning strawberry jam, "I thought of that. Mebbe +he did. I'd better find out. Y'oughtn't to kill folks even if they're +no good for nothin'." + +"I'll go down to the barn and wake some of the boys up," Mrs. Egg +hissed. + +"You won't neither, Mamma. This'd be a joke on you. I ain't goin' to +have folks sayin' you took this guy for your father. Fewer knows it, +the better. This is awful good jam." He grinned and pulled Mrs. Egg +down beside him on the chest. She forgot to be frightened, watching +the marvel eat. She must get larger jars for jam. He reflected: "You +always get enough to eat on a boat, but it ain't satisfyin'. Frisco +prob'ly uses walnut juice to paint his face with. It don't wash off. +Don't talkin' make a person thirsty?" + +"Wait till I get you some more cider, Dammy." + +Adam thoughtfully drank more pear cider and made a cigarette. +Wonderful ideas must be moving behind the blank brown of his forehead. +His mother adored him and planned a recital of his acts to Egg, who +had accused Adam of being slow witted. + +She wanted to justify herself, and muttered: "I just felt he wasn't +Papa all along. He was like one of those awful sorrowful persons in a +movie." + +"Sure," said Adam, patting her arm. "I wish Edie'd got as nice a +complexion as you, Mamma." + +"Mercy, Dammy!" his mother tittered and blushed. + +Adam finished a third mug of cider and got up to examine the shelves. +He scratched the rear of one calf with the other toe, and muscles +cavorted in both legs as he reached for a jar of grapefruit marmalade. +He peered through this at the lamp and put the jar back. Mrs. Egg felt +hurt. + +The paragon explained: "Too sour after strawb'ry, Mamma. I'd like some +for breakfast, though. Back in a minute." + +He trotted out through the kitchen and vanished on the veranda. She +shivered, being alone. + +Adam came back and nodded: "Light's out. Any key to that room?" + +"No." + +"I can always think better when I'm eatin'," he confessed, and lifted +down the plate of spiced cookies, rejected them as too fresh, and +pounced on a covered dish of apple sauce. + +This he absorbed in stillness, wriggling his toes on the oilcloth. +Mrs. Egg felt entirely comfortable and real. She could hear the cook +snoring. Behind her the curtain of the pantry window fluttered. The +cool breeze was pleasant on her neck. Adam licked the spoon and said, +"Back in a minute, Mamma," as he started for the veranda door. + +Mrs. Egg reposed on the ice chest thinking about Adam. He was like +Egg, in that nothing fattened him. She puzzled over to-morrow's lunch. +Baked ham and sweet potatoes, sugared; creamed asparagus; hot corn +muffins. Dessert perplexed her. Were there any brandied peaches left? +She feared not. They belonged on the upper shelf nearest the ice +chest. Anxiety chewed her. Mrs. Egg climbed the lid by the aid of the +window sill and reached up an arm to the shelf. + +Adam said, "Here y'are, Mamma." + +The pantry door shut. Mrs. Egg swung about. Adam stood behind a shape +in blue pajamas, a hand locked on either of its elbows. He grinned at +Mrs. Egg over the mummer's shoulder. As the woman panted sulphur +entered her throat. The lamp threw a glare into the dark face, which +seemed paler. + +"Go on, Frisco," said Adam, about the skull, "tell Mamma about her +father." + +A sharp voice answered, "Let go my arms. You're killin' me!" + +"Quit kiddin'," Adam growled. "Go on!" + +"He ran a joint in San Francisco and gave me a job after I got out the +Navy. Died last fall. I kind of nursed him. Told me to burn all these +books--diaries. I read 'em. He called himself Peterson. Left all his +money to a woman. She shut the joint. I looked some like him so I took +a chance. Leggo my arms, Egg!" + +"He'd ought to go to jail, Dammy," said Mrs. Egg. "It's just awful! I +bet the police are lookin' for him right now." + +"Mamma, if we put him in jail this'll be all over the county and +you'll never hear the end of it." + +She stared at the ape with loathing. There was a star tattooed on one +of his naked insteps. He looked no longer frail, but wiry and +snakelike. The pallor behind his dark tan showed the triangles of +black stain in his cheeks and eye sockets. + +"He's too smart to leave loose, Dammy." + +"It'll be an awful joke on you, Mamma." + +"I can't help it, Dammy. He----" + +The prisoner figure toppled back against Adam's breast and the mouth +opened hideously. The lean legs bent. + +"You squeezed him too tight, Dammy. He's fainted. Lay him down." + +Adam let the figure slide to the floor. It rose in a whirl of blue +linen. Mrs. Egg rocked on the chest. + +The man thrust something at Adam's middle and said in a rasp, "Get +your arms up!" + +Adam's face turned purple beyond the gleaming skull. His hands rose a +little and his fingers crisped. He drawled, + +"Fact. I ought have looked under your duds, you----" + +"Stick 'em up!" said the man. + +Mrs. Egg saw Adam's arms tremble. His lower lip drew down. He wasn't +going to put his arms up. The man would kill him. She could not +breathe. She fell forward from the ice chest and knew nothing. + +She roused with a sense of great cold and was sitting against the +shelves. Adam stopped rubbing her face with a lump of ice and grinned +at her. + +He cried, "By gee, you did that quick, Mamma! Knocked the wind clear +out of him." + +"Where is he, Dammy?" + +"Dunno. Took his gun and let him get dressed. He's gone. Say, that was +slick!" + +Mrs. Egg blushed and asked for a drink. Adam dropped the ice into a +mug of pear cider and squatted beside her with a shabby notebook. + +"Here's somethin' for October 10, 1919." He read: "'Talked to a man +from Ilium to-day in Palace Bar. Myrtle married to John Egg. Four +children. Egg worth a wad. Dairy and cider business. Going to build +new Presbyterian church.' That's it, Mamma. He doped it all out from +the diary." + +"The dirty dog!" said Mrs. Egg. She ached terribly and put her head on +Adam's shoulder. + +"I'll put all the diaries up in the attic. Kind of good readin.' Say, +it's after two. You better go to bed." + +In her dreams Mrs. Egg beheld a bronze menacing skeleton beside her +pillow. It whispered and rattled. She woke, gulping, in bright +sunlight, and the rattle changed to the noise of a motor halting on +the drive. She gave yesterday a fleet review, rubbing her blackened +elbows, but felt charitable toward Frisco Cooley by connotation; she +had once sat down on a collie pup. But her bedroom clock struck ten +times. Mrs. Egg groaned and rolled out of bed, reaching for a wrapper. +What had the cook given Adam for breakfast? She charged along the +upper hall into a smell of coffee, and heard Adam speaking below. His +sisters made some feeble united interjection. + +The hero said sharply: "Of course he was a fake! Mamma knew he was, +all along, but she didn't want to let on she did in front of folks. +That ain't dignified. She just flattened him out and he went away +quiet. You girls always talk like Mamma hadn't as much sense as you. +She's kind of used up this morning. Wait till I give her her +breakfast, and I'll come talk to you." + +A tray jingled. + +Mrs. Egg retreated into her bedroom, awed. Adam carried in her +breakfast and shut the door with a foot. + +He complained: "Went in to breakfast at Edie's. Of course she's only +sixteen, but I could make better biscuits myself. Lay down, Mamma." + +He began to butter slices of toast, in silence, expertly. Mrs. Egg +drank her coffee in rapture that rose toward ecstasy as Adam made +himself a sandwich of toast and marmalade and sat down at her feet to +consume it. + + + +THE VICTIM OF HIS VISION + +By GERALD CHITTENDEN + +From _Scribner's_ + + +I + +"There's no doubt about it," said the hardware drummer with the +pock-pitted cheeks. He seemed glad that there was no doubt--smacked +his lips over it and went on. "Obeah--that's black magic; and +voodoo--that's snake-worship. The island is rotten with 'em--rotten +with 'em." + +He looked sidelong over his empty glass at the Reverend Arthur +Simpson. Many human things were foreign to the clergyman: he was +uneasy about being in the _Arequipa's_ smoke-room at all, for +instance, and especially uneasy about sitting there with the drummer. + +"But--human sacrifice!" he protested. "You spoke of human sacrifice." + +"And cannibalism. _La chèvre sans cornes_--the goat without +horns--that means an unblemished child less than three years old. It's +frequently done. They string it up by its heels, cut its throat, and +drink the blood. Then they eat it. Regular ceremony--the _mamaloi_ +officiates." + +"Who officiates?" + +"The _mamaloi_--the priestess." + +Simpson jerked himself out of his chair and went on deck. Occasionally +his imagination worked loose from control and tormented him as it was +doing now. There was a grizzly vividness in the drummer's description. +It was well toward morning before Simpson grasped again his usual +certainty of purpose and grew able to thank God that he had been born +into a very wicked world. There was much for a missionary to do in +Hayti--he saw that before the night grew thin, and was glad. + +Between dawn and daylight the land leaped out of the sea, all clear +blues and purples, incomparably fresh and incomparably 111 wistful in +that one golden hour of the tropic day before the sun has risen very +high--the disembodied spirit of an island. It lay, vague as hope at +first, in a jewel-tinted sea; the ship steamed toward it as through +the mists of creation's third morning, and all good things seemed +possible. Thus had Simpson, reared in an unfriendly land, imagined it, +for beneath the dour Puritanism that had lapped him in its armour +there still stirred the power of wonder and surprise that has so often +through the ages changed Puritans to poets. That glimpse of Hayti +would remain with him, he thought, yet within the hour he was striving +desperately to hold it. For soon the ruffle of the breeze died from +off the sea, and it became gray glass through which the anchor sank +almost without a sound and was lost. + +"Sweet place, isn't it, Mr. Simpson?" said Bunsen, the purser, pausing +on his way to the gangway. + +"So that," Simpson rejoined slowly--and because it was a port of his +desire his voice shook on the words--"is Port au Prince!" + +"That," Bunsen spat into the sea, "is Port au Prince." + +He moved away. A dirty little launch full of uniforms was coming +alongside. Until the yellow flag--a polite symbol in that port--should +be hauled down Simpson would be left alone. The uniforms had climbed +to the deck and were chattering in a bastard patois behind him; now +and then the smell of the town struck across the smells of the sea and +the bush like the flick of a snake's tail. Simpson covered his eyes +for a moment, and immediately the vision of the island as he had seen +it at dawn swam in his mind. But he could not keep his eyes forever +shut--there was the necessity of living and of doing his work in the +world to be remembered always. He removed his hand. A bumboat was made +fast below the well of the deck, and a boy with an obscenely twisted +body and a twisted black face was selling pineapples to the sailors. +Simpson watched him for a while, and because his education had been +far too closely specialized he quoted the inevitable: + + "Where every prospect pleases, + And only man is vile" + +The verse uplifted him unreasonably. He went below to pack his +baggage. He said good-bye to the officers, painfully conscious that +they were grinning behind his back, and was rowed ashore by the +deformed boy. + +The boy said something in abominable French. He repeated it--Simpson +guessed at its meaning. + +"I shall stay a long time," he answered in the same language. "I am a +minister of the gospel--a missionary." + +The cripple, bent revoltingly over his oar, suddenly broke out into +laughter, soulless, without meaning. Simpson, stung sharply in his +stiff-necked pride, sprang up and took one step forward, his fist +raised. The boy dropped the oars and writhed to starboard, his neck +askew at an eldritch angle, his eyes glaring upward. But he did not +raise a hand to ward off the blow that he feared, and that was more +uncanny still. + +The blow never fell. Simpson's hand unclinched and shame reddened in +his face. + +"Give me the oars," he said. "_Pauvre garçon_--did you think that I +would strike you?" + +The boy surrendered the oars and sidled aft like a crab, his eyes +still rolling at his passenger. + +"Why should the maimed row the sound?" said Simpson. + +He rowed awkwardly. The boy watched him for a moment, then grinned +uncertainly; presently he lolled back in the stern-sheets, personating +dignity. A white man was doing his work--it was splendid, as it should +be, and comic in the extreme. He threw back his head and cackled at +the hot sky. + +"Stop that!" Simpson, his nerves raw, spoke in English, but the +laughter jarred to a blunt end. The boy huddled farther away from him, +watching him with unwinking eyes which showed white all around the +pupil. Simpson, labouring with the clumsy oars, tried to forget him. +It was hot--hotter than it had seemed at first; sweat ran into his +eyes and he grew a little dizzy. The quarantine launch with its load +of uniforms, among which the purser's white was conspicuous, passed, +giving them its wake; there was no sound from it, only a blaze of +teeth and eyeballs. Simpson glanced over his shoulder at it. The +purser was standing in the stern, clear of the awning, his head +quizzically on one side and a cigarette in his fingers. + +The rowboat came abreast of a worm-eaten jetty. + +"_Ici_," said the cripple. + +Simpson, inexpert, bumped into it bow on, and sculled the stern +around. The cripple, hideously agile, scrambled out and held the boat; +Simpson gathered up his bag and followed. + +A Roman priest, black as the top of a stove, strode down the jetty +toward them. + +"You--you!" he shouted to the cripple when he was yet ten strides +away. His voice rose as he approached. "You let the m'sieu' row you +ashore! You----" A square, heavy boot shot out from beneath his +cassock into the boy's stomach. "_Cochon_!" said the priest, turning +to Simpson. His manner became suddenly suave, grandiose. "These +swine!" he said. "One keeps them in their place. I am Father Antoine. +And you?" + +"Simpson--Arthur Simpson." He said his own name slowly as thought +there was magic in it, magic that would keep him in touch with his +beginnings. + +"Simpson?" The priest gave it the French sound; suspicion struggled +for expression on his black mask; his eyes took in the high-cut +waistcoat, the unmistakable clerical look. "You were sent?" + +"By the board of foreign missions." + +"I do not know it. Not by the archbishop?" + +"There is no archbishop in my Church." + +"In your Church?" Father Antoine's eyes sprang wide--wide as they had +been when he kicked the boatman. "In your Church? You are not of the +true faith, then?" + +Pride of race, unchastened because he had not till that moment been +conscious that it existed in him, swelled in Simpson. + +"Are you?" he asked. + +Father Antoine stared at him, not as an angry white man stares, but +with head thrown back and mouth partly open, in the manner of his +race. Then, with the unreasoned impetuousness of a charging bull, he +turned and flung shoreward down the pier. The cripple, groaning still, +crawled to Simpson's feet and sat there. + +"_Pauvre garçon_!" repeated Simpson dully. "_Pauvre garçon_!" + +Suddenly the boy stopped groaning, swung Simpson's kit-bag on his +shoulder, and sidled up the pier. His right leg bent outward at the +knee, and his left inward; his head, inclined away from his burden, +seemed curiously detached from his body; his gait was a halting sort +of shuffle; yet he got along with unexpected speed. Simpson, still +dazed, followed him into the Grand Rue--a street of smells and piled +filth, where gorged buzzards, reeking of the tomb, flapped upward +under his nose from the garbage and offal of their feast. Simpson +paused for a moment at the market-stalls, where negroes of all shades +looked out at him in a silence that seemed devoid of curiosity. The +cripple beckoned him and he hurried on. On the steps of the cathedral +he saw Father Antoine, but, although the priest must have seen him, he +gave no sign as he passed. He kept to what shade there was. Presently +his guide turned down a narrow alley, opened a dilapidated picket +gate, and stood waiting. + +"_Maman_!" he called. "_Oh! Maman_!" + +Simpson, his curiosity faintly stirring, accepted the invitation of +the open gate, and stepped into an untidy yard, where three or four +pigs and a dozen chickens rooted and scratched among the bayonets of +yucca that clustered without regularity on both sides of the path. The +house had some pretensions; there were two stories, and, although the +blue and red paint had mostly flaked away, the boarding looked sound. +In the yard there was less fetor than there had been outside. + +"_Maman_!" called the boy again. + +A pot-lid clashed inside the house, and a tall negress, dressed in a +blue-striped Mother Hubbard, came to the door. She stared at Simpson +and at the boy. + +"_Qui_?" was all she said. + +The boy sidled nearer her and dropped the bag on the threshold. + +"_Qui_?" she said again. + +Simpson waited in silence. His affairs had got beyond him somehow, and +he seemed to himself but the tool of circumstance. It did occur to +him, though dimly, that he was being introduced to native life rather +quickly. + +The cripple, squatting with his back against the bag, launched into a +stream of patois, of which Simpson could not understand a word. +Gestures explained somewhat; he was reënacting the scenes of the last +half hour. When he had finished, the negress, not so hostile as she +had been but by no means friendly, turned to Simpson and looked at him +a long time without speaking. He had all he could do not to fidget +under her gaze; finally, she stood aside from the door and said, +without enthusiasm: + +"_B'en venu. C'est vo' masson_." + +Simpson entered automatically. The kitchen, with its hard earth floor +and the sunlight drifting in through the bamboo sides, was not +unclean, and a savoury smell came from the stew-pot on the ramshackle +stove. In one of the bars of sunlight a mango-coloured child of two +years or so was playing with his toes--he was surprisingly clean and +perfectly formed. + +"_Aha, mon petit_!" exclaimed Simpson. He loved children. "He is +handsome," he added, addressing the woman. + +"Mine!" She turned the baby gently with her foot; he caught at the hem +of her dress, laughing. But she did not laugh. "Neither spot nor +blemish," she said, and then: "He is not yet three years old." + +Simpson shuddered, recalling the pock-marked drummer on the +_Arequipa_. That was momentary--a coincidence, he told himself. The +woman was looking down at the child, her eyes softer than they had +been, and the child was lying on its back and playing with her Mother +Hubbard. + +The woman lifted the lid from the pot and peered into it through the +sun-shot steam. + +"It is ready," she said. She lifted it from the stove and set it on +the earthen floor. The cripple placed a handful of knives and spoons +on the table and three tin plates; he thrust a long fork and a long +spoon into the pot and stood aside. + +"Seat yourself," said the woman, without looking at Simpson, "and +eat." + +She explored the pot with the fork, and stabbed it firmly--there was a +suggestion of ruthlessness about her action that made Simpson shudder +again--into a slab of meat, which she dropped on a plate, using a +callous thumb to disengage it from the tines. She covered it with +gravy and began to eat without further ceremony. The cripple followed +her example, slobbering the gravy noisily; some of it ran down his +chin. Neither of them paid any attention to Simpson. + +He took the remaining plate from the table and stood irresolute with +it in his hand. He was hungry, but his essential Puritan +fastidiousness, combined with that pride of race which he knew to be +un-Christian, rendered him reluctant to dip into the common pot or to +eat on equal terms with these people. Besides, the sun and his amazing +introduction to the island had given him a raging headache: he could +not think clearly nor rid himself of the sinister suggestion of the +town, of the house, of its three occupants in particular. + +The child touched a ringer to the hot lip of the pot, burned itself, +and began to cry. + +"_Taise_," said the woman. Her voice was low but curt, and she did not +raise her eyes from her plate. The child, its finger in its mouth, +stopped crying at once. + +Simpson shook himself; his normal point of view was beginning to +assert itself. He must not--must not hold himself superior to the +people he expected to convert; nothing, he insisted to himself, was to +be gained, and much might be lost by a refusal to meet the people "on +their own ground." Chance--he did not call it chance--had favoured him +incredibly thus far, and if he failed to follow the guidance that had +been vouchsafed him he would prove himself but an unworthy vessel. He +took up the long fork--it chattered against the pot as he seized +it--and, overcoming a momentary and inexplicable nausea, impaled the +first piece of meat that rolled to the surface. There were yams also +and a sort of dumpling made of manioc. When he had filled his plate he +rose and turned suddenly; the woman and the cripple had stopped eating +and were watching him. They did not take their eyes away at once but +gave him stare for stare. He sat down; without a word they began to +eat once again. + +The stew was good, and once he had begun Simpson ate heartily of it. +The tacit devilry fell away from his surroundings as his hunger grew +less, and his companions became no more than a middle-aged negress in +a turban, a black boy pitifully deformed, and a beautiful child. He +looked at his watch--he had not thought of the time for hours--and +found that it was a little after noon. It was time that he bestirred +himself and found lodgings. + +"Is there a hotel?" he asked cheerfully. He had noticed that the +islanders understood legitimate French, though they could not speak +it. + +"There is one," said the woman. She pushed away her plate and became +suddenly dourly communicative. "But I doubt if the _propriétaire_ +would find room for m'sieu'." + +"Has he so many guests, then?" + +"But no. M'sieu' has forgotten the priest." + +"The priest? What has he to do with it?" + +"My son tells me that m'sieu' offended him, and the _propriétaire_ is +a good Catholic. He will close his house to you." + +She shaved a splinter to a point with a table knife and picked her +teeth with it, both elbows on the table and her eyes on Simpson. +"There is nowhere else to stay," she said. "Unless--here." + +"I should prefer that," said Simpson--quickly, for reluctance and +distrust were rising in him again. "But have you a room?" + +She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at a door behind her. + +"There," she said. Simpson waited for her to move, saw that she had no +intention of doing so, and opened the door himself. + +The room was fairly large, with two windows screened but unglazed; a +canvas cot stood in one corner, a packing-box table and a decrepit +chair in another. Like the kitchen it was surprisingly clean. He +returned to his hostess, who showed no anxiety about his intentions. + +"How much by the week?" he asked. + +"Eight _gourdes_." + +"And you will feed me for how much?" + +"Fifteen _gourdes_." + +"I will take it." He forced himself to decision again; had he +hesitated he knew he would have gone elsewhere. The price also--less +than four dollars gold--attracted him, and he could doubtless buy some +furniture in the town. Moreover, experienced missionaries who had +talked before the board had always emphasized the value of living +among the natives. + +"_B'en_," said the negress. She rose and emptied the remains from her +plate into a tin pail, sponging the plate with a piece of bread. + +"I have a trunk on the steamer," said Simpson. "The boy--can he----" + +"He will go with you," the negress interrupted. + +The cripple slid from his chair, scraped his plate and Simpson's, put +on his battered straw hat, and shambled into the yard. Simpson +followed. + +He turned at the gate and looked back. The child had toddled to the +door and was standing there, holding on to the door-post. Inside, the +shadow of the woman flickered across the close bars of bamboo. + + +II + +Bunsen was standing on the jetty when they reached it talking +excitedly with a tall bowed man of fifty or so whose complexion showed +the stippled pallor of long residence in the tropics. + +"Here he is now!" Bunsen exclaimed as Simpson approached. "I was just +getting anxious about you. Stopped at the hotel--you hadn't been +there, they said. Port au Prince is a bad place to get lost in. +Oh--this gentleman is our consul. Mr. Witherbee--Mr. Simpson." + +Simpson shook hands. Witherbee's face was just a pair of dull eyes +behind a ragged moustache, but there was unusual vigour in his grip. + +"I'll see a lot of you, if you stay long," he said. He looked at +Simpson more closely. "At least, I hope so. But where have you been? I +was getting as anxious as Mr. Bunsen--afraid you'd been sacrificed to +the snake or something." + +Simpson raised a clerical hand, protesting. His amazing morning swept +before his mind like a moving-picture film; there were so many things +he could not explain even to himself, much less to these two Gentiles. + +"I found lodgings," he said. + +"Lodgings?" Witherbee and Bunsen chorused the word. "Where, for +heaven's sake?" + +"I don't know the name of the street," Simpson admitted. "I don't even +know the name of my hostess. That"--indicating the cripple--"is her +son." + +"Good God!" Witherbee exclaimed. "Madame Picard! The _mamaloi_!" + +"The--the what?" But Simpson had heard well enough. + +"The _mamaloi_--the _mamaloi_--high priestess of voodoo." + +"Her house is fairly clean," Simpson said. He was hardly aware of his +own inconsequence. It was his instinct to defend any one who was +attacked on moral grounds, whether they deserved the attack or not. + +"Ye-es," Witherbee drawled. "I dare say it is. It's her company that's +unsavoury. Especially for a parson. Eh? What's the matter now?" + +Simpson had flared up at his last words. His mouth set and his eyes +burned suddenly. Bunsen, watching him coolly, wondered that he could +kindle so; until that moment he had seemed but half alive. When he +spoke his words came hurriedly--were almost unintelligible; yet there +was some quality in his voice that compelled attention, affecting the +senses more than the mind. + +"Unsavoury company? That's best for a parson. 'I come not to bring the +righteous but sinners to repentance.' And who are you to brand the +woman as common or unclean? If she is a heathen priestess, yet she +worships a god of some sort. Do you?" He stopped suddenly; the +humility which men hated in him again blanketed his fanaticism. "It is +my task to give her a better god--the only true God--Christ." + +Bunsen, his legs wide apart, kept his eyes on the sea, for he did not +want to let Simpson see him smiling, and he was smiling. Witherbee, +who had no emotions of any sort, pulled his moustache farther down and +looked at the clergyman as though he were under glass--a curiosity. + +"So you're going to convert the whole island?" he said. + +"I hope to make a beginning in the Lord's vineyard." + +"Humph! The devil's game-preserve, you mean," Bunsen suddenly broke +in. + +"The devil's game-preserve, then!" Simpson was defiant. + +"The ship calls here every other Saturday," was all Bunsen said to +that. "You may need to know. I'll send your trunk ashore." + +He stepped into the cripple's boat and started for the ship. Witherbee +did not speak; Simpson, still raging, left him, strode to the end of +the pier, and stood there, leaning on a pile. + +His gust of emotion had left him; a not unfamiliar feeling of +exaltation had taken its place. It is often so with the extreme +Puritan type; control relaxed for however brief a moment sends their +slow blood whirling, and leaves them light-headed as those who breathe +thin air. From boyhood Simpson had been practised in control, until +repression had become a prime tenet of his faith. The cheerful and +generally innocent excursions of other men assumed in his mind the +proportions of crime, of sin against the stern disciplining of the +soul which he conceived to be the goal of life. Probably he had never +in all his days been so shocked as once when a young pagan had scorned +certain views of his, saying; "There's more education--soul education, +if you will have it--in five minutes of sheer joy than in a century of +sorrow." It was an appalling statement, that--more appalling because +he had tried to contradict it and had been unable to do so. He himself +had been too eager to find his work in life--his pre-ordained +work--ever to discover the deep truths that light-heartedness only can +reveal; even when he heard his call to foreign missions--to Hayti, in +particular--he felt no such felicity as a man should feel who has +climbed to his place in the scheme of things. His was rather the +sombre fury of the Covenanters--an intense conviction that his way was +the only way of grace--a conviction that transcended reason and took +flight into the realm of overmastering emotion--the only overmastering +emotion, by the way, that he had ever experienced. + +His choice, therefore, was in itself a loss of control and a dangerous +one, for nothing is more perilous to sanity than the certainty that +most other people in the world are wrong. Such conviction leads to a +Jesuitical contempt of means; in cases where the Puritan shell has +grown to be impregnable from the outside it sets up an internal +ferment which sometimes bursts shell and man and all into disastrous +fragments. Until old age kills them, the passions and emotions never +die in man; suppress them how we will, we can never ignore them; they +rise again to mock us when we think we are done with them forever. And +the man of Simpson's type suffers from them most of all, for he dams +against them all normal channels of expression. + +Simpson, standing at the pier-end, was suffering from them now. His +exaltation--a thing of a moment, as his fervour had been--had gone out +of him, leaving him limp, uncertain of his own powers, of his own +calling, even--the prey to the discouragement that precedes action, +which is the deepest discouragement of all. Except for himself and +Witherbee the pier was deserted; behind him the filthy town slept in +its filth. Four buzzards wheeled above it, gorged and slow; the +harbour lay before him like a green mirror, so still that the ship was +reflected in it down to the last rope-yarn. Over all, the sun, +colourless and furnace-hot, burned in a sky of steel. There was +insolence in the scorched slopes that shouldered up from the bay, a +threatening permanence in the saw-edged sky-line. The indifference of +it all, its rock-ribbed impenetrability to human influence, laid a +crushing weight on Simpson's soul, so that he almost sank to his knees +in sheer oppression of spirit. + +"Do you know much about Hayti?" asked Witherbee, coming up behind him. + +"As much as I could learn from books." Simpson wanted to be angry at +the consul--why he could not tell--but Witherbee's voice was so +carefully courteous that he yielded perforce to its persuasion and +swung around, facing him. Suddenly, because he was measuring himself +against man and not against Nature, his weakness left him, and +confidence in himself and his mission flooded back upon him. "As much +as I could get from books." He paused. "You have lived here long?" + +"Long enough," Witherbee answered. "Five years." + +"You know the natives, then?" + +"Can't help knowing them. There are quite a lot of them, you see, and +there's almost no one else. Do you know negroes at all?" + +"Very little." + +"You'd better study them a bit before you--before you do anything you +have it in mind to do--the Haytian negro in particular. They're not +like white men, you know." + +"Like children, you mean?" + +"Like some children. I'd hate to have them for nephews and nieces." + +"Why?" + +"We-ell"--Witherbee, looking sidelong at Simpson, bit off the end of a +cigar--"a number of reasons. They're superstitious, treacherous, +savage, cruel, and--worst of all--emotional. They've gone back. +They've been going back for a hundred years. The West Coast--I've been +there--is not so bad as Hayti. It's never been anything else than what +it is now, you see, and if it moves at all it must move forward. +There's nothing awful about savagery when people have never known +anything else. Hayti has. You know what the island used to be before +Desalines." + +"I've read. But just what do you mean by West Coast savagery--here?" + +"Snake-worship. Voodoo." Witherbee lit the cigar "Human sacrifice." + +"And the Roman Church does nothing!" There was exultation in Simpson's +voice. His distrust of the Roman Church had been aggravated by his +encounter with the black priest that morning. + +"The Roman Church does what it can. It's been unfortunate in its +instruments. Especially unfortunate now." + +"Father Antoine?" + +"Father Antoine. You met him?" + +"This morning. A brute, and nothing more." + +"Just that." Witherbee let a mouthful of smoke drift into the +motionless air. "It's curious," he said. + +"What is?" + +"Father Antoine will make it unpleasant for you. He may try to have +you knifed, or something." + +"Impossible!" + +"Not at all. Human life is worth nothing here. No wonder--it's not +really worth living. But you're safe enough, and that's the curious +thing." + +"Why am I safe?" + +"Because your landlady is who she is." Witherbee glanced over his +shoulder, and, although they were the only people on the pier, from +force of habit he dropped his voice. "The _mamaloi_ has more power +than the Church." He straightened and looked out toward the ship. +"Here's her idiot with your trunk. My office is the first house on the +left after you leave the pier. Don't forget that." + +He turned quickly and was gone before the cripple's boat had reached +the landing. + + +III + +The town, just stirring out of its siesta as Simpson followed the +cripple through the streets, somehow reassured him. Men like Bunsen +and Witherbee, who smiled at his opinions and remained cold to his +rhapsodies, always oppressed him with a sense of ineffectuality. He +knew them of old--knew them superficially, of course, for, since he +was incapable of talking impersonally about religion, he had never had +the chance to listen to the cool and yet often strangely mystical +opinions which such men hold about it. He knew, in a dim sort of way, +that men not clergymen sometimes speculated about religious matters, +seeking light from each other in long, fragmentary conversations. He +knew that much, and disapproved of it--almost resented it. It seemed +to him wrong to discuss God without becoming angry, and very wrong for +laymen to discuss God at all. When circumstances trapped him into talk +with them about things divine, he felt baffled by their silences and +their reserves, seemed to himself to be scrabbling for entrance to +their souls through some sort of a slippery, impenetrable casing; he +never tried to enter through their minds, where the door stood always +open. The trouble was that he wanted to teach and be listened to; +wherefore he was subtly more at home among the ignorant and in such +streets as he was now traversing than with educated men. He had been +born a few decades too late; here in Hayti he had stepped back a +century or so into the age of credulity. Credulity, he believed, was a +good thing, almost a divine thing, if it were properly used; he did +not carry his processes far enough to realize that credulity could +never become fixed--that it was always open to conviction. A receptive +and not an inquiring mind seemed to him the prerequisite for a +convert. And black people, he had heard, were peculiarly receptive. + +The question was, then, where and how to start his work. Hayti +differed from most mission fields, for, so far as he knew, no one had +ever worked in it before him. The first step was to cultivate the +intimacy of the people, and that he found difficult in the extreme. He +had one obvious channel of approach to them; when buying necessary +things for his room, he could enter into conversation with the +shopkeepers and the market-women, but this he found it difficult to +do. They did not want to talk to him, even seemed reluctant to sell +him anything; and when he left their shops or stalls, did not answer +his "Au revoir." He wondered how much the priest had to do with their +attitude. They had little also that he wanted--he shopped for a week +before he found a gaudy pitcher and basin and a strip of matting for +his floor. Chairs, bureaus, bookcases, and tables did not exist. He +said as much to Madame Picard, and gathered from her growled response +that he must find a carpenter. The cripple, his constant companion in +his first days on the island, took him to one--a gray old negro who +wore on a shoe-string about his neck a pouch which Simpson thought at +first to be a scapular, and whom age and his profession had made +approachable. He was garrulous even; he ceased working when at length +he understood what Simpson wanted, sat in his doorway with his head in +the sun and his feet in the shade, and lit a pipe made out of a tiny +cocoanut. Yes--he could build chairs, tables, anything m'sieu' wanted +There was wood also--black palm for drawer-knobs and cedar and +mahogany and rosewood, but especially mahogany. An excellent wood, +pleasant to work in and suave to the touch. Did they use it in the +United States, he wondered? + +"A great deal," answered Simpson. "And the San Domingo wood is the +best, I believe." + +"San Domingo--but yes," the carpenter said; "the Haytian also--that is +excellent. Look!" + +He led Simpson to the yard at the rear of his house and showed him +half a dozen boards, their grain showing where the broad axe had hewed +them smooth. Was it not a beautiful wood? And what furniture did +m'sieu' desire? + +Simpson had some little skill with his pencil--a real love for drawing +was one of the instincts which his austere obsessions had crushed out +of him. He revolved several styles in his mind, decided at length on +the simplest, and drew his designs on a ragged scrap of wrapping +paper, while the carpenter, leaning down from his chair by the door, +watched him, smoking, and now and then fingering the leather pouch +about his neck. Simpson, looking up occasionally to see that his +sketch was understood, could not keep his eyes away from the +pouch--whatever it was, it was not a scapular. He did not ask about +it, though he wanted to; curiosity, he had heard, should be repressed +when one is dealing with barbarians. But he knew that that was not his +real reason for not asking. + +"But it is easy," said the carpenter, picking up the paper and +examining it. "And the seats of the chairs shall be of white hide, is +it not?" + +Simpson assented. He did not leave the shop at once, but remained +seated on the threshold, following his usual policy of picking up +acquaintances where he could. + +"M'sieu' is a priest?" the old man asked, squinting at he filled the +cocoanut pipe again and thrust it between his ragged yellow teeth. + +"Not a priest. A minister of the gospel." + +"_Quoi_?" said the carpenter. + +Simpson saw that he must explain. It was difficult. He had on the one +hand to avoid suggesting that the Roman Church was insufficient--that +denunciation he intended to arrive at when he had gained firmer ground +with the people--and on the other to refrain from hinting that Haytian +civilization stood in crying need of uplift. That also could come +later. He wallowed a little in his explanation, and then put the whole +matter on a personal basis. + +"I think I have a message--something new to say to you about Christ. +But I have been here a week now and have found none to listen to me." + +"Something new?" the carpenter rejoined. "But that is easy if it is +something new. In Hayti we like new things." + +"No one will listen to me," Simpson repeated. + +The carpenter reflected for a moment, or seemed to be doing so. + +"Many men come here about sunset," he said. "We sit and drink a little +rum before dark; it is good against the fever." + +"I will come also," said Simpson, rising. "It is every evening?" + +"Every evening." The carpenter's right hand rose to the pouch which +was not a scapular and he caressed it. + +"Au revoir," said Simpson suddenly. + +"'_Voir_," the carpenter replied, still immobile in his chair by the +door. + +Up to now a walk through the streets had been a night-mare to Simpson, +for the squalor of them excited to protest every New England nerve in +his body, and the evident hostility of the people constantly +threatened his success with them. He had felt very small and lonely, +like a man who has undertaken to combat a natural force; he did not +like to feel small and lonely, and he did not want to believe in +natural forces. Chosen vessel as he believed himself to be, thus far +the island had successfully defied him, and he had feared more than +once that it would do so to the end. He had compelled himself to +frequent the markets, hoping always that he would find in them the key +to the door that was closed against him; he had not found it, and, +although he recognized that three weeks was but a fractional moment of +eternity, and comforted himself by quoting things about the "mills of +God," he could not approach satisfaction with what he had accomplished +so far. + +His interview with the carpenter had changed all that, and on his way +home he trod the Grand Rue more lightly than he had ever done. Even +the cathedral, even the company of half-starved conscripts that +straggled past him in the tail of three generals, dismayed him no +longer, for the cathedral was but the symbol of a frozen Christianity +which he need no longer fear, and the conscripts were his +people--his--or soon would be. All that he had wanted was a start; he +had it now, though he deplored the rum which would be drunk at his +first meeting with the natives. One must begin where one could. + +Witherbee, sitting in the window of the consulate, called twice before +Simpson heard him. + +"You look pretty cheerful," he said. "Things going well?" + +"They've just begun to, I think--I think I've found the way to reach +these people." + +"Ah?" The monosyllable was incredulous though polite. "How's that?" + +"I've just been ordering some furniture from a carpenter," Simpson +answered. It was the first time since the day of his arrival that he +had seen Witherbee to speak to, and he found it a relief to speak in +his own language and without calculating the result of his words. + +"A carpenter? Vieux Michaud, I suppose?" + +"That's his name. You know him?" + +"Very well." The consul tipped back his chair and tapped his lips with +a pencil. "Very well. He's a clever workman. He'll follow any design +you give him, and the woods, of course, are excellent." + +"Yes. He showed me some. But he's more than a carpenter to me. He's +more--receptive--than most of the natives, and it seems that his shop +is a gathering place--a centre. He asked me to come in the evenings." + +"And drink rum?" Witherbee could not resist that. + +"Ye-es. He said they drank rum. I sha'n't do that, of course, but one +must begin where one can." + +"I suppose so," Witherbee answered slowly. The office was darkened to +just above reading-light, and the consul's face was in the shadow. +Evidently he had more to say, but he allowed a long silence to +intervene before he went on. Simpson, imaging wholesale conversions, +sat quietly; he was hardly aware of his surroundings. + +"Don't misunderstand what I'm going to say," the consul began at +length. Simpson straightened, on his guard at once. "It may be of use +to you--in your work," he added quickly. "It's this. Somehow--by +chance perhaps, though I don't think so--you've fallen into strange +company--stranger than any white man I've ever known." + +"I am not afraid of voodoo," said Simpson rather scornfully. + +"It would be better if you were a little afraid of it. I am--and I +know what I'm talking about. Look what's happened to you. There's the +Picard woman--she's the one who had President Simon Sam under her +thumb. Did you know he carried the symbols of voodoo next his heart? +And now Michaud, who's her right hand and has been for years. Looks +like deep water to me." + +"I must not fear for my own body." + +"That's not what I mean exactly, though I wish you were a little more +afraid for it. It might save me trouble--possibly save our government +trouble--in the end. But the consequences of letting voodoo acquire +any more power than it has may be far-reaching." + +"I am not here to give it more power." Simpson, thoroughly angry, rose +to go. "It is my business to defeat it--to root it out." + +"Godspeed to you in that"--Witherbee's voice was ironical. "But +remember what I tell you. The Picard woman is subtle, and Michaud is +subtle." Simpson had crossed the threshold, and only half heard the +consul's next remark. "Voodoo is more subtle than both of them +together. Look out for it." + +Witherbee's warning did no more than make Simpson angry; he attributed +it to wrong motives--to jealousy perhaps to hostility certainly, and +neither jealousy nor hostility could speak true words. In spite of all +that he had heard he could not believe that voodoo was so powerful in +the island; this was the twentieth century, he insisted, and the most +enlightened country in the world was less than fifteen hundred miles +away; he forgot that opinions and not figures number the centuries, +and refused to see that distance had nothing to do with the case. +These were a people groping through the dark; when they saw the light +they could not help but welcome it, he thought. The idea that they +preferred their own way of life and their own religion, that they +would not embrace civilization till they were forced to do so at the +point of benevolent bayonets, never entered his head. His own way of +life was so obviously superior. He resolved to have nothing more to do +with Witherbee. + +When he returned to the carpenter's house at about six that evening he +entered the council of elders that he found there with the +determination to place himself on an equality with them. It was to his +credit that he accomplished this feat, but it was not surprising for +the humility of his mind at least was genuine. He joined in their +conversation, somewhat stiffly at first, but perhaps no more so than +became a stranger. Presently, because he saw that he could not refuse +without offending his host, he conquered prejudice and took a little +rum and sugar and water. It went to his head without his knowing it, +as rum has a habit of doing; he became cheerfully familiar with the +old men and made long strides into their friendship--or thought he +did. He did not once mention religion to them at that first meeting, +though he had to exercise considerable self-restraint to prevent +himself from doing so. + +On his way home he met Father Antoine not far from Michaud's door. The +priest would have passed with his usual surly look if Simpson had not +stopped him. + +"Well?" Antoine demanded. + +"Why should we quarrel--you and I?" Simpson asked. "Can we not work +together for these people of yours?" + +"Your friends are not my people, heretic!" Father Antoine retorted." +Rot in hell with them!" + +He plunged past Simpson and was gone down the darkling alley. + +"You are late, m'sieu'," remarked Madame Picard as he came into the +kitchen and sat down in a chair near the cripple. Her manner was less +rough than usual. + +"I've been at Michaud's," he answered. + +"Ah? But you were there this morning." + +"He asked me to come this evening, when his friends came, madame. +There were several there." + +"They are often there," she answered. There was nothing significant in +her tone, but Simpson had an uneasy feeling that she had known all the +time of his visit to the carpenter. + +"I met Father Antoine on the way home," he said. + +"A bad man!" She flamed into sudden violence. "A bad man!" + +"I had thought so." Her loquacity this evening was amazing. Simpson +thought he saw an opening to her confidence and plunged in. "And he is +a priest. It is bad, that. Here are sheep without a shepherd." + +"_Quoi_?" + +"Here are many people--all good Christians." Simpson, eager and +hopeful, leaned forward in his chair. His gaunt face with the +down-drawn mouth and the hungry eyes--grown more hungry in the last +three weeks--glowed, took on fervour; his hand shot out expressive +fingers. The woman raised her head slowly, staring at him; more slowly +still she seated herself at the table that stood between them. She +rested her arms on it, and narrowed her eyelids as he spoke till her +eyes glittered through the slits of them. + +"All good Christians," Simpson went on; "and there is none to lead +them save a black----" He slurred the word just in time. The woman's +eyes flashed open and narrowed again. "Save a renegade priest," +Simpson concluded. "It is wrong, is it not? And I knew it was wrong, +though I live far away and came--was led--here to you." His voice, +though it had not been loud, left the room echoing. "It was a real +call." He whispered that. + +"You are a Catholic?" asked Madame Picard. + +"Yes. Of the English Catholic Church." He suspected that the +qualifying adjective meant nothing to her, but let the ambiguity rest. + +"I was not sure," she said slowly, "though you told the boy." Her +eyes, velvet-black in the shadow upcast by the lamp, opened slowly. +"There has been much trouble with Father Antoine, and now small +numbers go to mass or confession." Her voice had the effect of +shrillness though it remained low; her hands flew out, grasping the +table-edge at arms' length with an oddly masculine gesture. "He +deserved that! To tell his _canaille_ that I--that we----He dared! But +now--now--we shall see!" + +Her voice rasped in a subdued sort of a shriek; she sprang up from her +chair, and stood for the fraction of a second with her hands raised +and her fists clinched. Simpson, puzzled, amazed, and a little scared +at last, had barely time to notice the position before it dissolved. +The child, frightened, screamed from the floor. + +"_Taisez-vous--taisez-vous, mon enfant. Le temps vient_." + +She was silent for a long time after that. Simpson sat wondering what +she would do next, aware of an uncanny fascination that emanated from +her. It seemed to him as though there were subterranean fires in the +ground that he walked on. + +"You shall teach us," she said in her usual monotone. "You shall teach +us--preach to many people. No house will hold them all." She leaned +down and caressed the child. "_Le temps vient, mon petit. Le temps +vient_." + +Under Simpson's sudden horror quivered an eerie thrill. He mistook it +for joy at the promised fulfilment of his dreams. He stepped to his +own doorway and hesitated there with his hand on the latch. + +"To many people? Some time, I hope." + +"Soon." She looked up from the child; there was a snakiness in the +angle of her head and neck. "Soon." + +He opened the door, slammed it behind him, and dropped on tense knees +beside his bed. In the kitchen the cripple laughed--laughed for a long +time. Simpson's tightly pressed palms could not keep the sound from +his ears. + + +IV + +Each night the gathering at Vieux Michaud's became larger; it grew too +large for the house, and presently overflowed into the yard behind, +where Michaud kept his lumber. Generally thirty or forty natives +collected between six and seven in the evening, roosting on the piled +boards or sitting on the dusty ground in little groups, their +cigarettes puncturing the blue darkness that clung close to the earth +under the young moon. There were few women among them at first and +fewer young men; Simpson, who knew that youth ought to be more +hospitable to new ideas than age, thought this a little strange and +spoke to Michaud about it. + +"But they are my friends, m'sieu'," answered Michaud. + +The statement might have been true of the smaller group that Simpson +had first encountered at the carpenter's house; it was not true of the +additions to it, for he was evidently not on intimate terms with them. +Nor did he supply rum for all of them; many brought their own. That +was odd also, if Simpson had only known it; the many _cantinas_ +offered attractions which the carpenter's house did not. That fact +occurred to him at length. + +"They have heard of you, m'sieu'--and that you have something new to +say to them. We Haytians like new things." + +Thus, very quietly, almost as though it had been a natural growth of +interest, did Simpson's ministry begin. He stepped one evening to the +platform that overhung the carpenter's backyard, and began to talk. +Long study had placed the missionary method at his utter command, and +he began with parables and simple tales which they heard eagerly. +Purposely, he eschewed anything striking or startling in this his +first sermon. It was an attempt to establish a sympathetic +understanding between himself and his audience, and not altogether an +unsuccessful one, for his motives were still unmixed. He felt that he +had started well; when he was through speaking small groups gathered +around him as children might have done, and told him inconsequent, +wandering tales of their own--tales which were rather fables, folklore +transplanted from another hemisphere and strangely crossed with +Christianity. He was happy; if it had not been that most of them wore +about their necks the leather pouches that were not scapulars he would +have been happier than any man has a right to be. One of these +pouches, showing through the ragged shirt of an old man with thin lips +and a squint, was ripped at the edge, and the unmistakable sheen of a +snake's scale glistened in the seam. Simpson could not keep his eyes +from it. + +He dared to be more formal after that, and on the next night preached +from a text--the Macedonian cry, "Come over and help us." That sermon +also was effective: toward the end of it two or three women were +weeping a little, and the sight of their tears warmed him with the +sense of power. In that warmth certain of his prejudices and +inhibitions began to melt away; the display of feelings and +sensibilities could not be wicked or even undesirable if it prepared +the way for the gospel by softening the heart. He began to dabble in +emotion himself, and that was a dangerous matter, for he knew nothing +whatever about it save that, if he felt strongly, he could arouse +strong feeling in others. Day by day he unwittingly became less sure +of the moral beauty of restraint, and ardours which he had never +dreamed of began to flame free of his soul. + +He wondered now and then why Madame Picard, who almost from the first +had been a constant attendant at his meetings, watched him so closely, +so secretly--both when he sat with her and the cripple at meals and at +the carpenter's house, where he was never unconscious of her eyes. He +wondered also why she brought her baby with her, and why all who came +fondled it so much and so respectfully. He did not wonder at the +deference, almost the fear, which all men showed her--that seemed +somehow her due. She had shed her taciturnity and was even voluble at +times. But behind her volubility lurked always an inexplicable +intensity of purpose whose cause Simpson could never fathom and was +afraid to seek for. It was there, however--a nervous determination, +not altogether alien to his own, which he associated with religion and +with nothing else in the world. Religiosity, he called it--and he was +not far wrong. + +Soon after his first sermon he began little by little to introduce +ritual into the meetings at Michaud's, so that they became decorous; +rum-drinking was postponed till after the concluding prayer, and that +in itself was a triumph. He began to feel the need of hymns, and, +since he could find in French none that had associations for himself, +he set about translating some of the more familiar ones, mostly those +of a militant nature. Some of them, especially "The Son of God goes +forth to war," leaped into immediate popularity and were sung two or +three times in a single service. He liked that repetition; he thought +it laid the groundwork for the enthusiasm which he aroused more and +more as time went on, and which he took more pains to arouse. +Nevertheless, the first time that his feverish eloquence brought tears +and incoherent shoutings from the audience, he became suddenly fearful +before the ecstasies which he had touched to life, he faltered, and +brought his discourse to an abrupt end. As the crowd slowly quieted +and reluctantly began to drift away there flashed on him with blinding +suddenness the realization that his excitement had been as great as +their own; for a moment he wondered if such passion were godly. Only +for a moment, however, of course it was godly, as any rapture informed +by religion must be. He was sorry he had lost courage and stopped so +soon. These were an emotional and not an intellectual people--if they +were to be reached at all, it must be through the channels of their +emotions. Thus far he thought clearly, and that was as far as he did +think, for he was discovering in himself a capacity for religious +excitement that was only in part a reflex of the crowd's fervour, and +the discovery quickened and adorned the memory of the few great +moments of his life. Thus had he felt when he resolved to take orders, +thus, although in a less degree, because he had been doubtful and +afraid, had he felt when he heard the Macedonian cry from this West +Indian island. He had swayed the crowd also as he had always believed +that he could sway crowds if only the spirit would burn in him +brightly enough; he had no doubt that he could sway them again, govern +them completely perhaps. That possibility was cause for prayerful and +lonely consideration, for meditation among the hills, whence he might +draw strength. He hired a pony forthwith and set out for a few days in +the hinterland. + +It was the most perilous thing he could have done. There is neither +sanctity nor holy calm in the tropic jungle, nothing of the hallowed +quietude that, in northern forests, clears the mind of life's muddle +and leads the soul to God. There lurks instead a poisonous anodyne in +the heavy, scented air--a drug that lulls the spirit to an evil repose +counterfeiting the peacefulness whence alone high thoughts can spring. +In the North, Nature displays a certain restraint even in her most +flamboyant moods: the green fires of spring temper their sensuousness +in chill winds, and autumn is rich in suggestion not of love, but of +gracious age, having the aloof beauty of age and its true estimates of +life. The perception of its loveliness is impersonal and leaves the +line between the aesthetic and the sensuous clearly marked. Beneath a +straighter sun the line is blurred and sometimes vanishes: no +orchid-musk, no azure and distant hill, no tinted bay but accosts the +senses, confusing one with another, mingling all the emotions in a +single cup, persuading man that he knows good from evil as little as +though he lived still in Eden. From such stealthy influences the man +of rigid convictions is often in more danger than the man of no +convictions at all, for rigid convictions rather often indicate +inexperience and imperfect observation; experience, +therefore--especially emotional experience--sometimes warps them into +strange and hideous shapes. + +Simpson did not find in the bush the enlightenment that he had hoped +for. He did, however, anaesthetize his mind into the belief that he +had found it. Returning, he approached Port au Prince by a route new +to him. A well-beaten trail aroused his curiosity and he followed it +into a grove of ceiba and mahogany. It was clear under foot, as no +tropic grove uncared for by man can be clear; in the middle of it lay +the ashes of a great fire, and three minaca-palm huts in good repair +huddled almost invisible under the vast trees. The ground, bare of +grass, was trodden hard, as though a multitude had stamped it +down--danced it down, perhaps--and kept it bare by frequent use. + +"What a place for a camp-meeting!" thought Simpson as he turned to +leave it. "God's cathedral aisles, and roofed by God's blue sky." + +His pony shied and whirled around, a long snake--a +fer-de-lance--flowed across the path. + +The desire to hold his services in the grove remained in his mind; the +only reason he did not transfer them there at once was that he was not +yet quite sure of his people. They came eagerly to hear him, they +reflected his enthusiasm at his behest, they wept and praised God. +Yet, underneath all his hopes and all his pride in what he had done +ran a cold current of doubt, an undefined and indefinable fear of +something devilish and malign that might thwart him in the end. He +thrust it resolutely out of his mind. + + +V + +"I have told your people--your _canaille_," said Father Antoine, "that +I shall excommunicate them all." + +The priest had been graver than his wont--more dignified, less +volcanic, as though he was but the mouthpiece of authority, having +none of it himself. + +"They are better out of your Church than in it," Simpson answered. + +Father Antoine trembled a little; it was the first sign he had given +that his violent personality was still alive under the perplexing new +power that had covered it. + +"You are determined?" Simpson nodded with compressed lips. "Their +damnation be on your head, then." + +The priest stood aside. Simpson squeezed by him on the narrow +sidewalk; as he did so, Antoine drew aside the skirts of his cassock. + +From the beginning Simpson had preached more of hell than of heaven; +he could not help doing so, for he held eternal punishment to be more +imminent than eternal joy, and thought it a finer thing to scare +people into heaven than to attract them thither. He took an inverted +pleasure also in dwelling on the tortures of the damned, and had +combed the minor prophets and Revelation for threatening texts to hurl +at his congregation. Such devil-worship, furthermore, gave him greater +opportunity for oratory, greater immediate results also; he had used +it sometimes against his better judgment, and was not so far gone that +he did not sometimes tremble at the possible consequences of its use. +His encounter with the priest, however, had driven all doubts from his +mind, and that evening he did what he had never done before--he openly +attacked the Roman Church. + +"What has it done for you?" he shouted, and his voice rang in the +rafters of the warehouse where a hundred or so Negroes had gathered to +hear him. "What has it done for you? You cultivate your ground, and +its tithes take the food from the mouths of your children. Does the +priest tell you of salvation, which is without money and without +price, for all--for all--for all? Does he live among you as I do? Does +he minister to your bodies? Or your souls?" + +There was a stir at the door, and the eyes of the congregation turned +from the platform. + +"Father Antoine!" shrieked a voice. It was Madame Picard's; Simpson +could see her in the gloom at the far end of the hall and could see +the child astride of her hip. "Father Antoine! He is here!" + +In response to the whip of her voice there was a roar like the roar of +a train in a tunnel. It died away; the crowd eddied back upon the +platform. Father Antoine--he was robed, and there were two acolytes +with him, one with a bell and the other with a candle--began to read +in a voice as thundering as Simpson's own. + +"_Excommunicado_ ----" + +The Latin rolled on, sonorous, menacing. It ceased; the candle-flame +snuffed out, the bell tinkled, there was the flash of a cope in the +doorway, and the priest was gone. + +"He has excommunicated you!" Simpson shouted, almost shrieked. "Thank +God for that, my people!" + +They faced him again; ecstatic, beside himself, he flung at them +incoherent words. But the Latin, mysterious as magic, fateful as a +charm, had frightened them, and they did not yield to Simpson +immediately. Perhaps they would not have yielded to him at all if it +had not been for Madame Picard. + +From her corner rose an eerie chant in broken minors; it swelled +louder, and down the lane her people made for her she came dancing. +Her turban was off, her dress torn open to the breasts; she held the +child horizontally and above her in both hands. Her body swayed +rhythmically, but she just did not take up the swing of the votive +African dance that is as old as Africa. Up to the foot of the platform +she wavered, and there the cripple joined her, laughing as always. +Together they shuffled first to the right and then to the left, their +feet marking the earth floor in prints that overlapped like scales. +She laid the baby on the platform, sinking slowly to her knees as she +did so; as though at a signal the wordless chant rumbled upward from +the entire building, rolled over the platform like a wave, engulfing +the white man in its flood. + +"Symbolism! Sacrifice!" Simpson yelled. "She offers all to God!" + +He bent and raised the child at arm's length above his head. Instantly +the chanting ceased. + +"To the grove!" screamed the _mamaloi_. She leaped to the platform, +almost from her knees it seemed, and snatched the child. "To the +grove!" + +The crowd took up the cry; it swelled till Simpson's ears ached under +the impact of it. + +"To the grove!" + +Doubt assailed him as his mind--a white man's mind--rebelled. + +"This is wrong," he said dully; "wrong." + +Madame Picard's fingers gripped his arm. Except for the spasms of the +talons which were her fingers she seemed calm. + +"No, m'sieu'," she said. "You have them now. Atonement--atonement, +m'sieu'. You have many times spoken of atonement. But they do not +understand what they cannot see. They are behind you--you cannot leave +them now." + +"But--the child?" + +"The child shall show them--a child shall lead them, m'sieu'. They +must see a _théâtre_ of atonement--then they will believe. Come." + +Protesting, he was swept into the crowd and forward--forward to the +van of it, into the Grand Rue. Always the thunderous rumble of the mob +continued; high shrieks flickered like lightning above it; the name of +Christ dinned into his ears from foul throats. On one side of him the +cripple appeared; on the other strode the _mamaloi_--the child, +screaming with fear, on her hip. A hymn-tune stirred under the +tumult--rose above it. + + "_Le fils de Dieu se va Pen guerre + Son drapeau rouge comme sang_." + +Wild quavers adorned the tune obscenely; the mob marched to it, +falling into step. Torches came, flaming high at the edges of the +crowd, flaming wan and lurid on hundreds of black faces. + + "_Il va pour gagner sa couronne + Qui est-ce que suit dans son train_?" + +"A crusade!" Simpson suddenly shouted. "It is a crusade!" + +Yells answered him. Somewhere a drum began, reverberating as though +unfixed in space; now before them, now behind; now, it seemed, in the +air. The sound was maddening A swaying began in the crowd that took on +cadence, became a dance. Simpson, his brain drugged, his senses +perfervid marched on in exultation. These were his people at last. + +The drum thundered more loudly, became unbearable. They were clear of +the town and in the bush at last; huge fires gleamed through the +trees, and the mob spilled into the grove. The cripple and the +_mamaloi_ were beside him still. + +In the grove, with the drums--more than one of them now--palpitating +unceasingly, the dancing became wilder, more savage. In the light of +the fire the _mamaloi_ swayed, holding the screaming child, and close +to the flames crouched the cripple. The hymn had given place to the +formless chant, through which the minors quivered like the wails of +lost souls. + +The scales fell from Simpson's eyes. He rose to his full height and +stretched out his arm, demanding silence; there was some vague hope in +him that even now he might guide them. His only answer was a louder +yell than ever. + +It took form. Vieux Michaud sprang from the circle into the full +firelight, feet stamping, eyes glaring. + +"_La ch vre_!" he yelled. "_La chèvre sans cornes_!" + +The drums rolled in menacing crescendo, the fire licked higher. All +sounds melted into one. + +"_La chèvre sans cornes_!" + +The _mamaloi_ tore the child from her neck and held it high by one +leg. Simpson, seeing clearly as men do before they die, flung himself +toward her. + +The cripple's knife, thrust from below, went home between his ribs +just as the _mamaloi's_ blade crossed the throat of the sacrifice. + +"So I signed the death-certificate," Witherbee concluded. "Death at +the hands of persons unknown." + +"And they'll call him a martyr," said Bunsen. + +"Who knows?" the consul responded gravely. "Perhaps he was one." + + + +MARTIN GARRITY GETS EVEN + +By COURTNEY RYLEY COOPER and LEO. F. CREAGAN + +From _American Magazine_ + + +The entrance of Martin Garrity, superintendent of the Blue Ribbon +Division of the O.R.& T. Railroad, had been attended by all the +niceties of such an occasion, when Martin, grand, handsome, and +magnificent, arrived at his office for the day. True to form, he had +cussed out the office boy, spoken in fatherly fashion to the +trainmaster over the telephone about the lateness of No. 210, remarked +to the stenographer that her last letter had looked like the exquisite +tracks of a cow's hoof--and then he had read two telegrams. A moment +later, white, a bit stooped, a little old in features, he had left the +office, nor had he paused to note the grinning faces of those in his +wake, those who had known hours before! + +Home, and stumbling slightly as he mounted the steps of the veranda, +he faced a person in screaming foulard and a red toque, Mrs. Jewel +Garrity, just starting for the morning's assault upon the market. +Wordlessly he poked forward the first of the telegrams as he pulled +her within the hall and shut the door. And with bulging eyes Jewel +read it aloud: + +Chicago, April 30. +GARRITY, +Montgomery City: + +Effective arrival successor J.P. Aldrich must dispense your valuable +services. Kindly forward resignation by wire confirming this telegram. + +W.W. WALKER, +Vice-President & General +Manager. + +"And who is this Walker person?" Jewel asked, with a vindictive gasp. +"'Tis me that never heard of him. Why should he sign hisself vice +prisident and giniral manager when the whole world knows Mr. Barstow, +bless his soul, is the----" + +"Will ye listen?" Martin bellowed with sorrowful asperity. "Somethin's +happened. And now: + +GARRITY, +Montgomery City. + +Alabaster abound celebrity conglomerate commensurate constituency +effective arrival successor. Meet me Planters Hotel St. Louis this +P.M. + LEMUEL C. BARSTOW." + +And while Jewel gasped Martin went on: + +"'Tis code it is, from Barstow. It says Walker's taken his place--and +I'm out." + +Mouth drawn at the corners, hand trembling slightly, Jewel reached for +the message and stared blankly at the railroad code. Then silently she +turned and thumped up the stairs. In a moment she was down again; the +screaming foulard had given place to a house dress; the red toque had +been substituted by a shawl. But the lips were drawn no longer--a +smile was on them, and a soft hand touched Martin's white cheek as she +reached the door. + +"'Tis me that's goin' to the cash-carry, Marty darlin'," came quietly. +"I never liked that high-toned market annyhow. About--about that +other, Marty, me bye, 'tis all right, it is, it is. We can always +start over again." + +Over again! It had opened the doors of memory for Martin Garrity as, +at the window, he stared after her with eyes that saw in the portly, +middle-aged figure a picture of other days, when the world had centred +about a fluttering honour flag, which flew above a tiny section house +at a bit of a place called Glen Echo, when the rotund form of Jewel +Garrity was slender and graceful, when Martin's freckled face was +thinner and more engaging, and when---- + +Visions of the old days floated before him, days on the section with +his crew of "snipes" back in the Honour Flag times. Memories returned +to him, of blazing hours in the summer, when even the grease-lizards +panted and died, when the heat rays curled in maddening serpent-like +spirals before his glazed eyes. + +And why? Why had he been willing to sacrifice, to work for wages +pitiful indeed, compared to the emoluments of other lines of +endeavour? Why had she, his Jewel, accepted the loneliness, the +impoverishment of those younger days with light-heartedness? He never +had thought of it before. Now, deposed, dethroned, defeated at the +very pinnacle of his life, the answer came, with a force that brought +a lump to his throat and a tear to his eyes. Why? Because they had +loved this great, human, glistening thing of shining steel and +thundering noise, loved it because the Blue Ribbon division had +included the Blue Ribbon section, their section, which they had built +together. + +Now, all they had worked for, lived for, longed for, and enjoyed +together had been taken away, without warning, without reason, and +given to another! Martin groaned with the thought of it. Three hours +later he kissed his Jewel good-bye, roaring at her because a tear +stood in each eye--to cover the fact that tears were in his own. That +night, still grim, still white, he faced Lemuel C. Barstow, former +vice-president and general manager of the O.R.& T. in his hotel room +in St. Louis. That person spoke with biting directness. + +"Politics, Martin," came his announcement. "They shelved me because I +wouldn't play the tricks of a clique that got into power before I +could stop 'em. You were my pet appointee, so you went, too. It wasn't +because we weren't efficient. They lifted the pin on me, and that +meant you. So here we are. But"--and a fist banged on the +table--"they're going to pay for it! This new crowd knows as much +about railroading as a baby does about chess. I tried to tell that to +the men with the money. They wouldn't listen. So I went to men who +could hear, the Ozark Central. I'm to be the new president of that +road." + +"That wooden axle outfit?" Martin squinted. "Sure, Mr. Barstow, I'm +not knockin' the new deal, or----" + +"Never mind that." Lemuel C. Barstow smiled genially. "That's where +your part of the job comes in. That's why I need you. But we'll let +that go for the present. Go back to Montgomery City, turn over the +reins to this new fish, who doesn't know an air brake from a boiler +tube, and keep quiet until I send for you." + +Then ensued two weeks of nothing to do but wait. Nothing to do but to +pace the floor like some belligerent, red-faced caged animal, daring +his Jewel to feel hurt because sneering remarks had been made about +her husband's downfall. Two weeks--then came the summons. + +"Careful now, Martin! No wild throws, remember!" Lemuel Barstow was +giving the final instructions. "We've got a big job ahead. I've +brought you down here because you have the faculty of making men think +they hate you--then going out and working their heads off for you, +because well, to be frank, you're the biggest, blunderingest, +hardest-working blusterer that I ever saw--and you're the only man who +can pull me through. This road's in rotten shape, especially as +concerns the roadbed. The steel and ties are all right, but the +ballast is rotten. You've got to make it the best in Missouri, and +you've got only eight months to do it in. So tear loose. Your job's +that of special superintendent, with no strings on it. Pay no +attention to any one but me. If you need equipment, buy it and tell +the purchasing agent to go to the hot place. By March 1st, and no +later, I want the track from St. Louis to Kansas City to be as smooth +as a ballroom floor." + +"And why the rush?" + +"Just this: The O.R.& T. treated me like a dirty dog. I'm going to +make 'em pay for it; I'm after my pound of flesh now! There's just one +thing that road prizes above all else--it's St. Louis-Kansas City mail +contracts. The award comes up again in March. The system that can make +the fastest time in the government speed trials gets the plum. +Understand?" + +"I do!" answered Martin, with the first real enthusiasm he had known +in weeks. "'Tis me budget I'll be fixin' up immejiate at once. Ye'll +get action, ye will." He departed for a frenzied month. Then he +returned at the request of President Barstow. + +"You're doing wonderful work, Martin," said that official. "It's +coming along splendidly. But--but----I understand there's a bit of a +laugh going around among the railroad men about you." + +"About me?" Garrity's chest bulged aggressively. "An' who's laughin?" + +"Nearly everybody in the railroad game in Missouri. They say you let +some slick salesman sting you for a full set of Rocky Mountain +snow-fighting machinery, even up to a rotary snow plough. I----" + +"Sting me?" Martin bellowed the words. "That I did not!" + +"Good! I knew----" + +"I ordered it of me own free will. And if annybody laughs----" + +"But, Martin"--and there was pathos in the voice--"a rotary snow +plough? On a Missouri railroad? Flangers, jull-ploughs, wedge +ploughs--tunnel wideners--and a rotary? Here? Why--I--I thought better +of you than that. We haven't had a snow in Missouri that would require +all of those things, not in the last ten years. What did they cost?" + +"Eighty-three thousand, fi'hunnerd an' ten dollars," answered Martin +gloomily. He _had_ pulled a boner. Mr. Barstow figured on a sheet of +paper. + +"At three dollars a day, that would hire nearly a thousand track +labourers for thirty days. A thousand men could tamp a lot of ballast +in a month, Martin." + +"That they could, sir," came dolefully. Then Garrity, the old lump in +his throat, waited to be excused, and backed from the office. That +rotary snow plough had been his own, his pet idea--and it had been +wrong! + +Gloomily he returned to Northport, his headquarters, there to observe +a group of grinning railroad men gathered about a great, bulky object +parked in front of the roundhouse. Behind it were other contraptions +of shining steel, all of which Martin recognized without a second +glance--his snow-fighting equipment, just arrived. Nor did he approach +for a closer view. Faintly he heard jeering remarks from the crowd; +then laughter. He caught the mention of his own name, coupled with +derisive comment. His hands clenched. His red neck bulged. His big +lungs filled--then slowly deflated; and Martin went slowly homeward, +in silence. + +"And is it your liver?" asked Jewel Garrity as they sat at dinner. + +"It is not!" bawled Martin. He rose. He pulled his napkin from his +chin with Garrity emphasis and dropped it in the gravy. He thumped +about the table, then stopped. + +One big freckled paw reached uncertainly outward and plunked with +intended gentleness upon the woman's shoulder, to rest, trembling +there, a second. Then silently Martin went on upstairs. For that touch +had told her that it was--his heart! + +A heart that ached with a throbbing sorrow which could not be downed +as the summer passed and Martin heard again and again the reflexes +brought about by the purchase of his snow ploughs. Vainly he stormed +up and down the line of the Ozark Central with its thousands of +labourers. Vainly he busied himself with a thousand intricacies of +construction, in the hope of forgetfulness. None of it could take from +his mind the fact that railroad men were laughing at him, that +chuckling train-butchers were pointing out the giant machinery to +grinning passengers, that even the railroad journals were printing +funny quips about Barstow's prize superintendent and his mountain snow +plough. Nor could even the news that Aldrich, over on the Blue Ribbon +division, was allowing that once proud bit of rail to degenerate into +an ordinary portion of a railroad bring even a passing cheer. They, +too, were laughing! In a last doglike hope Martin looked up the +precipitation reports. It only brought more gloom. Only four times in +thirty years had there been a snowfall in Missouri that could block a +railroad! + +The summer crept into autumn; autumn to early winter, bringing with it +the transformation of the rickety old Ozark Central to a smooth, +well-cushioned line of gleaming steel, where the trains shot to and +fro with hardly a tremor, where the hollow thunder of culvert and +trestle spoke of sturdy strength, where the trackwalker searched in +vain for loose plates or jutting joints; but to Garrity, it was only +the fulfilment or the work of a mechanical second nature. December was +gliding by in warmth and sunshine. January came, with no more than a +hatful of snow, and once more Martin found himself facing the +president. + +"We'll win that contract, Martin!" It almost brought a smile to the +superintendent's face. "I've just been over the road--on the quiet. We +made eighty miles an hour with hardly a jolt!" + +"Thankee, sir." A vague sense of joy touched Martin's aching +heart--only to depart. + +"By the way, I noticed when I went through Northport that you've still +got that rotary where everybody can see it. I wish you'd move that +stuff--behind the roundhouse, out of sight." + +Then Martin, heavier at heart than ever, went back to Northport. There +he said a quaking good-bye to his last hope--and executed the +president's orders, trying not to notice the grins of the "goat" crew +as they shunted the machinery into hiding. That night, after Jewel was +asleep, and the cat outside had ceased yowling, Martin climbed +stealthily out of bed and went on his knees, praying with all the +fervour of his big being for snow. And the prayer was answered---- + +By the worst rain that a Missouri January had known in years, +scattering the freshly tamped gravel, loosening the piles of trestles, +sending Martin forth once more to bawl his orders with the thunder of +the old days back at Glen Echo, even to leap side by side with the +track labourers, a tamping bar in his big hands, that one more blow +might be struck, one more impression made upon the giant task ahead. + +January slid by; February went into the third week before the job was +finished. Martin looked at the sky with hopeful eyes. It was useless. +March the first--and Martin went into St. Louis to make his report, +and to spend an uneasy, restless night with the president in his room +at the hotel. + +"It's only a few days off now"--they were in bed the next morning, +finishing the conversation begun the night before--"and I want you to +keep your eyes open every second! The mail marathon agreement reads +that no postponement can be made on account of physical or mechanical +obstacles. If a trestle should happen to go out--that would be our +finish." + +"I wish"--Martin rolled out of bed and groped for his shoes--"we'd +been workin' with me old Blue Ribbon division. I know every foot o' +----" + +"Oh, chase the Blue Ribbon division! Every time I see you you've got +something on your chest about it. Why, man, don't you know it's the +Blue Ribbon division that I'm counting on! Aldrich has let it run down +until it's worse than a hog trail. If they can make forty-five an hour +on it, I'm crazy. You can't win mail contracts with that. So forget +it. Anyhow, you're working for the Ozark Central now." + +Martin nodded, then for a long moment crouched silent humiliated, his +thick fingers fumbling with the laces of his shoes. At last, with a +sigh, he poked his shirt into his trousers and thumped across the room +to raise the drawn shades. + +He stared. He gulped. He yelped--with an exclamation of joy, of +deliverance, of victory! The outside world was white! A blinding, +swirling veil shrouded even the next building. The street below was +like a stricken thing; the vague forms of the cars seemed to no more +than crawl. Wildly Martin pawed for the telephone and bawled a number. +Barstow sat up in bed. + +"Snow!" he gasped. "A blizzard!" + +"Order the snow ploughs!" Garrity had got the chief dispatcher, and +was bawling louder than ever. "All of thim! Put an injine on each and +keep thim movin'! Run that rotary till the wheels drop off!" + +Then he whirled, grasping wildly at coat, hat, and overcoat. + +"And now will ye laugh?" he roared, as he backed to the door. "Now +will ye laugh at me snow plough?" + +Twenty-four hours later, when trains were limping into terminals hours +behind time, when call after call was going forth to summon aid for +the stricken systems of Missouri, when double-headers, frost-caked +wheels churning uselessly, bucked the drifts in a constantly losing +battle; when cattle trains were being cut from the schedules, and +every wire was loaded with the messages of frantic officials, someone +happened to wonder what that big boob Garrity was doing with his snow +ploughs. The answer was curt and sharp--there on the announcement +board of the Union Station: + +OZARK CENTRAL ALL TRAINS ON TIME + +But Martin had only one remark to make, that it still was snowing. +Noon of the third day came, and the Ozark Central became the detour +route of every cross-Missouri mail train. Night, and Martin Garrity, +snow-crusted, his face cut and cracked by the bite of wind and the +sting of splintered, wind-driven ice, his head aching from loss of +sleep, but his heart thumping with happiness, took on the serious +business of moving every St. Louis-Kansas City passenger and express +train, blinked vacuously when someone called him a wizard. + +Railroad officials gave him cigars, and slapped him on his snow-caked +shoulders. He cussed them out of the way. The telephone at Northport +clanged and sang with calls from President Barstow; but Martin only +waved a hand in answer as he ground through with the rotary. + +"Tell him to send me tilegrams!" he blustered. "Don't he know I'm +busy?" + +Twelve hours more. The snow ceased. The wind died. Ten miles out of +Kansas City Martin gave the homeward-bound order for Northport, then +slumped weakly into a corner. Five minutes before he had heard the +news--news that hurt. The O.R.& T., fighting with every available man +it could summon, had partially opened its line, with the exception of +one division, hopelessly snowed under--his old, his beloved Blue +Ribbon. + +"Tis me that would have kept 'er open," he mused bitterly. "And they +fired me!" + +He nodded and slept. He awoke--and he said the same thing again. He +reached Northport, late at night, to roar at Jewel and the hot water +she had heated for his frost-bitten feet--then to hug her with an +embrace that she had not known since the days when her Marty wore a +red undershirt. + +"And do ye be hearin?" she asked. "The Blue Ribbon's tied up! Not a +wheel----" + +"Will ye shut up?" Martin suddenly had remembered something. The mail +test! Not forty-eight hours away! He blinked. One big hand smacked +into the other. "The pound of flesh!" he bellowed. "Be gar! The pound +of flesh!" + +"And what are ye talkin' ----" + +"Woman, shut up," said Martin Garrity. "'Tis me that's goin' to bed. +See that I'm not disturbed. Not even for Mr. Barstow." + +"That I will," said Jewel--but that she didn't. It was Martin himself +who answered the pounding on the door four hours later, then, in the +frigid dining room, stared at the message which the chief dispatcher +had handed him: + +GARRITY, NORTHPORT: If line is free of snow assemble all snow-fighting +equipment and necessary locomotives to handle same, delivering same +fully equipped and manned with your own force to Blue Ribbon Division +O.R. & T. Accompany this equipment personally to carry out +instructions as I would like to have them carried out. Everything +depends on your success or failure to open this line. + +LEMUEL C. BARSTOW. + +So! He was to make the effort; but if he failed that mail contract +came automatically to the one road free to make the test, the Ozark +Central! That was what Barstow meant! Make the effort, appear to fight +with every weapon, that the O.R. & T. might have no claim in the +future of unfairness but to fail! Let it be so! The O.R. & T. had +broken his heart. Now, at last, his turn had come! + +He turned to the telephone and gave his orders. Then up the stairs he +clambered and into his clothes. Jewel snorted and awoke. + +"Goo'by!" roared Martin as he climbed into his coat. "They've sent for +me to open the Blue Ribbon." + +"And have they?" Jewel sat up, her eyes beaming. "I'd been wishin' +it--and ye'll do it, Marty; I've been thinkin' about the old section +snowed under--and all the folks we knew----" + +"Will ye shut up?" This was something Martin did not want to hear. Out +of the house he plumped, to the waiting double-header of locomotives +attached to the rotary, and the other engines, parked on the switches, +with their wedge ploughs, jull-ploughs, flangers, and tunnel wideners. +The "high-ball" sounded. At daybreak, boring his way through the +snow-clogged transfer at Missouri City, Martin came out upon the main +line of the O.R. & T.--and to his duty of revenge. + +On they went, a slow, deliberate journey, steam hissing, black smoke +curling, whistles tooting, wheels crunching, as the rotary bucked the +bigger drifts and the smaller ploughs eliminated the slighter raises, +a triumphant procession toward that thing which Martin knew he could +attack with all the seeming ferocity of desperation and yet fail--the +fifty-foot thickness of Bander Cut. + +Face to face, in the gaunt sun of early morning he saw it--a little +shack, half covered with snow, bleak and forbidding in its loneliness, +yet all in all to the man who stared at it with eyes suddenly +wistful--his little old section house, where once the honour flag had +flown. + +He gulped. Suddenly his hand tugged at the bell cord. Voices had come +from without, they were calling his name! He sought the door, then +gulped again. The steps and platform of his car were filled with +eager, homely-faced men, men he had known in other days, his old crew +of section "snipes." + +All about him they crowded; Martin heard his voice answering their +queries, as though someone were talking far away. His eyes had turned +back to that section house, seeking instinctively the old flag, his +flag. It spoke for a man who gave the best that was in him, who +surpassed because he worked with his heart and with his soul in the +every task before him. But the flag was not there. The pace had not +been maintained. Then the louder tones of a straw boss called him +back: + +"You'll sure need that big screw and all the rest of them babies, +Garrity. That ole Bander Cut's full to the sky--and Sni-a-bend Hill! +Good-night! But you'll make 'er. You've got to, Garrity; we've made up +a purse an' bet it down in Montgomery that you'll make 'er!" + +Martin went within and the crew waited for a high-ball order that did +not come. In his private car, alone, Martin Garrity was pacing the +floor. The call of the old division, which he had loved and built, was +upon him, swaying him with all the force of memory. + +"I guess we could sell the flivver----" he was repeating. "Then I've +got me diamond ... and Jewel ... she's got a bit, besides what we've +saved bechune us. And he'll win the test, anyhow ... they'll never +beat him over this division ... if I give him back what I've earned +... and if he wins anyhow------" + +Up ahead they still waited. Fifteen minutes. Twenty. At last a figure +appeared in the cab of the big rotary, looking for a last time at that +bleak little section house and the bare flagpole. Then: + +"Start 'er up and give 'er hell!" + +Martin was on the job once more, while outside his old section snipes +cheered, and reminded him that their hopes and dreams for a division +still beloved in spite of a downfall rested upon his shoulders. The +whistles screamed. The bells clanged. Smoke poured from the stacks of +the double-header, and the freshening sun, a short time later, glinted +upon the white-splotched equipment, as the great auger followed by its +lesser allies, bored into the mass of snow at Bander Cut. + +Hours of backing and filling, of retreats and attacks, hours in which +there came, time after time, the opportunity to quit. But Martin did +not give the word. Out the other side they came, the steam shooting +high, and on toward the next obstacle, the first of forty, lesser and +greater, which lay between them and Montgomery City. + +Afternoon ... night. Still the crunching, whining roar of the rotary +as it struck the icy stretches fought against them in vain, then +retreated until pick and bar and dynamite could break the way for its +further attack. Midnight, and one by one the exhausted crew approached +the white-faced, grim-lipped man who stood tense and determined in the +rotary cab. One by one they asked the same question: + +"Hadn't we better tie up for the night?" + +"Goon! D'ye hear me? Goon! What is it ye are, annyhow, a bunch of +white-livered cowards that ye can't work without rest?" + +The old, dynamic, bulldozing force, the force that had made men hate +Martin Garrity only to love him, had returned into its full power, the +force that had built him from a section snipe to the exalted possessor +of the blue pennon which once had fluttered from that flagpole, was +again on the throne, fighting onward to the conclusion of a purpose, +no matter what it might wreck for him personally, no matter what the +cost might be to him in the days to come. He was on his last job--he +knew that. The mail contract might be won a thousand times over, but +there ever would rest the stigma that he had received a telegram which +should have been plain to him, and that he had failed to carry out its +hidden orders. But with the thought of it Martin straightened, and he +roared anew the message which carried tired, aching men through the +night: + +"Go on! Go on! What's stoppin' ye? Are ye going to let these +milk-an'-water fellys over here say that ye tried and quit?" + +Early morning--and there came Sni-a-bend Hill, with the snow packed +against it in a new plane which obliterated the railroad as though it +had never been there. Hot coffee came from the containers, sandwiches +from the baskets, and the men ate and drank as they worked--all but +Garrity. This was the final battle, and with it came his battle cry: + +"Keep goin'! This is the tough one--we've got to go on--we've got to +go on!" + +And on they went. The streaking rays of dawn played for a moment upon +an untroubled mound of white, smooth and deep upon the eastern end of +Sni-a-bend. Then, as though from some great internal upheaval, the +mass began to tremble. Great heaps of snow broke from their place and +tumbled down the embankment. From farther at the rear, steam, +augmented by the vapours of melting snow and the far-blown gushes of +spitting smoke, hissed upward toward the heights of the white-clad +hill. Then a bulging break--the roar of machinery, and a monster came +grinding forth, forcing its way hungrily onward, toward the next and +smaller contest. Within the giant auger a man turned to Garrity. + +"Guess it's over, Boss. They said up at Glen Echo--" + +A silent nod. Then Garrity turned, and reaching into the +telegram-blank holder at the side of the cab, brought forth paper and +an envelope. Long he wrote as the rotary clattered along, devouring +the smaller drifts in steady succession, a letter of the soul, a +letter which told of an effort that had failed, of a decision that +could not hold. And it told, too, of the return of all that Martin had +worked for--Mr. Barstow had been good to him, and he, Martin Garrity, +could not take his money and disobey him. He'd pay him back. + +Whistles sounded, shrieking in answer to the tooting of others from +far away, the wild eerie ones of yard engines, the deeper, throatier +tones of factories. It was the end. Montgomery City! + +Slowly Martin addressed the envelope, and as the big bore came to a +stop, evaded the thronging crowds and sought the railroad mail box. He +raised the letter.... + +"Mr. Garrity!" He turned. The day agent was running toward him. "Mr. +Garrity, Mr. Barstow wants to see you. He's here--in the station. He +came to see the finish." + +So the execution must be a personal one! The letter was crunched into +a pocket. Dimly, soddenly, Martin followed the agent. As through a +haze he saw the figure of Barstow, and felt that person tug at his +sleeve. + +"Come over here, where we can talk in private!" There was a queer ring +in the voice and Martin obeyed. Then--"Shake, Old Kid!" + +Martin knew that a hand was clasping his. But why? + +"You made it! I knew you would. Didn't I tell you we'd get our pound +of flesh?" + +"But--but the contract----" + +"To thunder with the contract!" came the happy answer of Barstow. "If +you had only answered the 'phone, you wouldn't be so much in the dark. +What do I care about mail contracts now--with the best two lines in +Missouri under my supervision? Don't you understand? This was the hole +that I had prayed for this O.R. & T. bunch to get into from the first +minute I saw that snow. They would have been tied up for a week +longer--if it hadn't been for us. Can't you see? It was the argument I +needed--that politics isn't what counts--it's brains and doing things! +Now do you understand? Well"--and Barstow stood off and laughed--"if I +have to diagram things for you, the money interests behind the O.R. & +T. have seen the light. I'll admit it took about three hours of +telephoning to New York to cause the illumination; but they've seen +it, and that's enough. They also have agreed to buy the Ozark Central +and to merge the two. Further, they have realized that the only +possible president of the new lines is a man with brains like, for +instance, Lemuel C. Barstow, who has working directly with him a +general superintendent--and don't overlook that general part--a +_general_ superintendent named Martin Garrity!" + + + +STRANGER THINGS + +By MILDRED CRAM + +From _Metropolitan Magazine_ + + +We were seated in the saloon of a small steamer which plies between +Naples and Trieste on irregular schedule. Outside, the night was +thickly black and a driving rain swept down the narrow decks. + +"You Englishmen laugh at ghosts," the Corsican merchant said. "In my +country, we are less pretentious. Frankly, we are afraid. You, too, +are afraid, and so you laugh! A difference, it seems to me, which +lies, not in the essence but in the manner." + +Doctor Fenton smiled queerly. "Perhaps. What do any of us know about +it, one way or the other? Ticklish business! We poke a little too far +beyond our ken and get a shock that withers our souls. Cosmic force! +We stumble forward, bleating for comfort, and fall over a charged +cable. It may have been put there to hold us out--or in." + +Aldobrandini, the Italian inventor, was playing cards with a German +engineer. He lost the game to his opponent, and turning about in his +chair, came into the conversation. + +"You are talking about ghosts. I have seen them. Once in the Carso. +Again on the campagna near Rome. I met a company of Caesar's +legionaries tramping through a bed of asphodels. The asphodels lay +down beneath those crushing sandals, and then stood upright again, +unharmed." + +The engineer shuffled the cards between short, capable fingers. +"Ghosts. Yes, I agree; there are such things. Created out of our +subconscious selves; mirages of the mind; photographic spiritual +projections; hereditary memories. There are always explanations." + +Doctor Fenton poked into the bowl of his pipe with a broad thumb. "Did +any of you happen to know the English poet, Cecil Grimshaw? No? I'll +tell you a story about him if you care to listen. A long story, I warn +you. Very curious. Very suggestive. I cannot vouch for the entire +truth of it, since I got the tale from many sources--a word here, a +chance encounter there, and at last only the puzzling reports of men +who saw Grimshaw out in Africa. He wasn't a friend of mine, or I +wouldn't tell these things." + +Aldobrandini's dark eyes softened. He leaned forward. "Cecil Grimshaw +... We Latins admire his work more than that of any modern +Englishman." + +The doctor tipped his head back against the worn red velvet of the +lounge. An oil lamp, swinging from the ceiling, seemed to isolate him +in a pool of light. Outside, the invisible sea raced astern, hissing +slightly beneath the driving impact of the rain. + +I first heard of Grimshaw [the doctor began] in my student days in +London. He was perhaps five years my senior, just beginning to be +famous, not yet infamous, but indiscreet enough to get himself talked +about. He had written a little book of verse, "Vision of Helen," he +called it, I believe.... The oblique stare of the hostile Trojans. +Helen coifed with flame. Menelaus. Love ... Greater men than Grimshaw +had written of Priam's tragedy. His audacity called attention to his +imperfect, colourful verse, his love of beauty, his sense of the +exotic, the strange, the unhealthy. People read his book on the sly +and talked about it in whispers. It was indecent, but it was +beautiful. At that time you spoke of Cecil Grimshaw with disapproval, +if you spoke of him at all, or, if you happened to be a prophet, you +saw in him the ultimate bomb beneath the Victorian literary edifice. +And so he was. + +I saw him once at the Alhambra--poetry in a top hat! He wore evening +clothes that were a little too elaborate, a white camellia in his +buttonhole, and a thick-lensed monocle on a black ribbon. During the +entr'acte he stood up and surveyed the house from pit to gallery, as +if he wanted to be seen. He was very tall and the ugliest man in +England. Imagine the body of a Lincoln, the hands of a woman, the jaw +and mouth of Disraeli, an aristocratic nose, unpleasant eyes, and then +that shock of yellow hair--hyacinthine--the curly locks of an insane +virtuoso or a baby prodigy. + +"Who is that?" I demanded. + +"Grimshaw. The chap who wrote the book about naughty Helen. _La belle +Hélène_ and the shepherd boy." + +I stared. Everyone else stared. The pit stopped shuffling and giggling +to gaze at that prodigious monstrosity, and people in the boxes turned +their glasses on him. Grimshaw seemed to be enjoying it. He spoke to +someone across the aisle and smiled, showing a set of huge white +teeth, veritable tombstones. + +"Abominable," I said. + +But I got his book and read it. He was the first Englishman to dare +break away from literary conventions. Of course he shocked England. He +was a savage aesthete. I read the slim volume through at one sitting; +I was horrified and fascinated. + +I met Grimshaw a year later. He was having a play produced at the +Lyceum--"The Labyrinth"--with Esther Levenson as Simonetta. She +entertained for him at her house in Chelsea and I got myself invited +because I wanted to see the atrocious genius at close range. He wore a +lemon-coloured vest and lemon-yellow spats. + +"How d'you do?" he said, gazing at me out of those queer eyes of his. +"I hear that you admire my work." + +"You have been misinformed," I replied. "Your work interests me, +because I am a student of nervous and mental diseases." + +"Ah. Psychotherapy." + +"All of the characters in your poem, 'The Vision of Helen,' are +neurotics. They suffer from morbid fears, delusions, hysteria, violent +mental and emotional complexities. A text-book in madness." + +Grimshaw laughed. "You flatter me. I am attracted by neurotic types. +Insanity has its source in the unconscious, and we English are afraid +of looking inward." He glanced around the crowded room with an amused +and cynical look. "Most of these people are as bad as my Trojans, +Doctor Fenton. Only they conceal their badness, and it isn't good for +them." + +We talked for a few moments. I amused him, I think, by my diagnosis of +his Helen's mental malady. But he soon tired of me and his restless +gaze went over my head, searching for admiration. Esther Levenson +brought Ellen Terry over and he forgot me entirely in sparkling for +the good lady--showing his teeth, shaking his yellow locks, bellowing +like a centaur. + +"The fellow's an ass," I decided. + +But when "The Labyrinth" was produced, I changed my mind. There again +was that disturbing loveliness. It was a story of the passionate +Florence of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and Esther Levenson drifted +through the four long acts against a background of Tuscan walls, +scarlet hangings, oaths, blood-spilling, dark and terrible vengeance. +Grimshaw took London by the throat and put it down on its knees. + +Then for a year or two he lived on his laurels, lapping up admiration +like a drunkard in his cups. Unquestionably, Esther Levenson was his +mistress, since she presided over his house in Cheyne Walk. They say +she was not the only string to his lute. A Jewess, a Greek poetess, +and a dancer from Stockholm made up his amorous medley at that time. +Scandalized society flocked to his drawing-room, there to be received +by Simonetta herself, wearing the blanched draperies and tragic pearls +of the labyrinth he had made for her. Grimshaw offered no apologies. +He was the uncrowned laureate and kings can do no wrong. He was +painted by the young Sargent, of course, and by the aging +Whistler--you remember the butterfly's portrait of him in a yellow +kimono leaning against a black mantel? I, for one, think he was vastly +amused by all this fury of admiration; he despised it and fed upon it. +If he had been less great, he would have been utterly destroyed by it, +even then. + +I went to Vienna, and lost track of him for several years. Then I +heard that he had married a dear friend of mine--Lady Dagmar Cooper, +one of the greatest beauties and perhaps the sternest prude in +England. She wrote me, soon after that unbelievable mating: "I have +married Cecil Grimshaw. I know you won't approve; I do not altogether +approve myself. He is not like the men I have known--not at all +_English_. But he intrigues me; there is a sense of power behind his +awfulness--you see I know that he is awful! I think I will be able to +make him look at things--I mean visible, material things--my way. We +have taken a house in town and he has promised to behave--no more +Chelsea parties, no dancers, no yellow waistcoats and chrysanthemums. +That was all very well for his 'student' days. Now that he is a +personage, it will scarcely do. I am tremendously interested and +happy...." + +Interested and happy! She was a typical product of Victoria's reign, a +beautiful creature whose faith was pinned to the most unimportant +things--class, position, a snobbish religion, a traditional morality +and her own place in an intricate little world of ladies and +gentlemen. God save us! What was Cecil Grimshaw going to do in an +atmosphere of titled bores, bishops, military men, and cautious +statesmen? I could fancy him in his new town house, struggling through +some endless dinner party--his cynical, stone-gray eyes sweeping up +and down the table, his lips curled in that habitual sneer, his mind, +perhaps, gone back to the red-and-blue room in Chelsea, where he had +been wont to stand astride before the black mantel, bellowing +indecencies into the ears of witty modernists. Could he bellow any +longer? + +Apparently not. I heard of him now and then from this friend and that. +He was indeed "behaving" well. He wrote nothing to shock the +sensibilities of his wife's world--a few fantastic short stories, +touched with a certain childish spirituality, and that was all. They +say that he bent his manners to hers--a tamed centaur grazing with a +milk-white doe. He grew a trifle fat. Quite like a model English +husband, he called Dagmar "My dear" and drove with her in the Park at +the fashionable hour, his hands crossed on the head of his cane, his +eyes half closed. She wrote me: "I am completely happy. So is Cecil. +Surely he can have made no mistake in marrying me." + +You all know that this affectation of respectability did not last +long--not more than five years; long enough for the novelty to wear +off. The genius or the devil that was in Cecil Grimshaw made its +reappearance. He was tossed out of Dagmar's circle like a burning rock +hurled from the mouth of a crater; he fell into Chelsea again. Esther +Levenson had come back from the States and was casting about for a +play. She sought out Grimshaw and with her presence, her grace and +pallor and seduction, lured him into his old ways. "The leaves are +yellow," he said to her, "but still they dance in a south wind. The +altar fires are ash and grass has grown upon the temple floor---- I +have been away too long. Get me my pipe, you laughing dryad, and I +will play for you." + +He played for her and all England heard. Dagmar heard and pretended +acquiescence. According to her lights, she was magnificent--she +invited Esther Levenson to Broadenham, the Grimshaw place in Kent, nor +did she wince when the actress accepted. When I got back to England, +Dagmar was fighting for his soul with all the weapons she had. I went +to see her in her cool little town house, that house so typical of +her, so untouched by Grimshaw. And, looking at me with steady eyes, +she said: "I'm sorry Cecil isn't here. He's writing again--a play--for +Esther Levenson, who was Simonetta, you remember?" + +I promised you a ghost story. If it is slow in coming, it is because +all these things have a bearing on the mysterious, the extraordinary +things that happened---- + +You probably know about the last phase of Grimshaw's career--who +doesn't? There is something fascinating about the escapades of a +famous man, but when he happens also to be a great poet, we cannot +forget his very human sins--in them he is akin to us. + +Not all you have heard and read about Grimshaw's career is true. But +the best you can say of him is bad enough. He squandered his own +fortune first--on Esther Levenson and the production of "The Sunken +City"--and then stole ruthlessly from Dagmar; that is, until she found +legal ways to put a stop to it. We had passed into Edward's reign and +the decadence which ended in the war had already set in--Grimshaw was +the last of the "pomegranate school," the first of the bolder, more +sinister futurists. A frank hedonist. An intellectual voluptuary. He +set the pace, and a whole tribe of idolaters and imitators panted at +his heels. They copied his yellow waistcoats, his chrysanthemums, his +eye-glass, his bellow. Nice young men, otherwise sane, let their hair +grow long like their idol's and professed themselves unbelievers. +Unbelievers in what? God save us! Ten years later most of them were +wading through the mud of Flanders, believing something pretty +definite---- + +One night I was called to the telephone by the Grimshaws' physician. +I'll tell you his name, because he has a lot to do with the rest of +the story--Doctor Waram, Douglas Waram--an Australian. + +"Grimshaw has murdered a man," he said briefly. "I want you to help +me. Come to Cheyne Walk. Take a cab. Hurry." + +Of course I went, with a very clear vision of the future of Dagmar, +Lady Cooper, to occupy my thoughts during that lurching drive through +the slippery streets. I knew that she was at Broadenham, holding up +her head in seclusion. + +Grimshaw's house was one of a row of red brick buildings not far from +the river. Doctor Waram himself opened the door to me. + +"I say, this is an awful mess," he said, in a shocked voice. "The +woman sent for me--Levenson, that actress. There's some mystery. A man +dead--his head knocked in. And Grimshaw sound asleep. It may be +hysterical, but I can't wake him. Have a look before I get the +police." + +I followed him into the studio, the famous Pompeian room, on the +second floor. I shall never forget the frozen immobility of the three +actors in the tragedy. Esther Levenson, wrapped in peacock-blue +scarves, stood upright before the black mantel, her hands crossed on +her breast. Cecil Grimshaw was lying full length on a brick-red satin +couch, his head thrown back, his eyes closed. The dead man sprawled on +the floor, face down, between them. Two lamps made of sapphire glass +swung from the gilded ceiling.... Bowls of perfumed, waxen flowers. A +silver statuette of a nude girl. A tessellated floor strewn with rugs. +Orange trees in tubs. Cigarette smoke hanging motionless in the still, +overheated air.... + +I stooped over the dead man. "Who is he?" + +"Tucker. Leading man in 'The Sunken City.' Look at Grimshaw, will you? +We mustn't be too long--" + +I went to the poet. The inevitable monocle was still caught and held +by the yellow thatch of his thick brow. He was breathing slowly. + +"Grimshaw," I said, touching his forehead, "open your eyes." + +He did so, and I was startled by the expression of despair in their +depths. "Ah," he-said, "it's the psychopathologist." + +"How did this happen?" + +He sat up--I am convinced that he had been faking that drunken +sleep--and stared at the sprawling figure on the floor. "Tucker +quarrelled with me," he said. "I knocked him down and his forehead +struck against the table. Then he crawled over here and died. From +fright, d'you think?" He shuddered. "Take him away, Waram, will you? +I've got work to do." + +Suddenly Esther Levenson spoke in a flat voice, without emotion: "It +isn't true! He struck him with that silver statuette. Like this----" +She made a violent gesture with both arms. "And before God in heaven, +I'll make him pay for it. I will! I will! I will!" + +"Keep still," I said sharply. + +Grimshaw looked up at her. He made a gesture of surrender. Then he +smiled. "Simonetta," he said, "you are no better than the rest." + +She sobbed, ran over to him, and went down on her knees, twisting her +arms about his waist. There was a look of distaste in Grimshaw's eyes; +he stared into her distraught face a moment, then he freed himself +from her arms and got to his feet. + +"I think I'll telephone to Dagmar," he said. + +But Waram shook his head. "I'll do that. I'm sorry, Grimshaw; the +police will have to know. While we're waiting for them, you might +write a letter to Mrs. Grimshaw. I'll see that she gets it in the +morning." + +I don't remember whether the poet wrote to Dagmar then or not. But +surely you remember how she stayed by him during the trial--still +Victorian in her black gown and veil, mourning for the hope that was +dead, at least! You remember his imprisonment; the bitter invective of +his enemies; the defection of his followers; the dark scandals that +filled the newspapers, offended public taste, and destroyed Cecil +Grimshaw's popularity in an England that had worshipped him! + +Esther Levenson lied to save him. That was the strangest thing of all. +She denied what she had told us that night of the tragedy. Tucker, she +said, had been in love with her; he followed her to Grimshaw's house +in Chelsea and quarrelled violently with the poet. His death was an +accident. Grimshaw had not touched the statuette. When he saw what had +happened, he telephoned to Doctor Waram and then lay down on the +couch--apparently fainted there, for he did not speak until Doctor +Fenton came. Waram perjured himself, too--for Dagmar's sake. He had +not, he swore, heard the actress speak of a silver statuette, or of +revenge before God.... And since there was nothing to prove how the +blow had been struck, save the deep dent in Tucker's forehead, +Grimshaw was set free. + +He had been a year in prison. He drove away from the jail in a cab +with Doctor Waram, and when the crowd saw that he was wearing the old +symbol--a yellow chrysanthemum--a hiss went up that was like a geyser +of contempt and ridicule. Grimshaw's pallid face flushed. But he +lifted his hat and smiled into the host of faces as the cab jerked +forward. + +He went at once to Broadenham. Years later, Waram told me about the +meeting between those two--the centaur and the milk-white doe! Dagmar +received him standing and she remained standing all during the +interview. She had put aside her mourning for a dress made of some +clear blue stuff, and Waram said that as she stood in the breakfast +room, with a sun-flooded window behind her, she was very lovely +indeed. + +Grimshaw held out his hands, but she ignored them. Then Grimshaw +smiled and shrugged his shoulders and said: "I have made two +discoveries this past year: That conventionalized religion is the most +shocking evil of our day, and that you, my wife, are in love with +Doctor Waram." + +Dagmar held her ground. There was in her eyes a look of inevitable +security. She was mistress of the house, proprietor of the land, +conscious of tradition, prerogative, position. The man she faced had +nothing except his tortured imagination. For the first time in her +life she was in a position to hurt him. So she looked away from him to +Waram and confirmed his discovery with a smile full of pride and +happiness. + +"My dear fellow," Grimshaw shouted, clapping Waram on the back, "I'm +confoundedly pleased! We'll arrange a divorce for Dagmar. Good heaven, +she deserves a decent future. I'm not the sort for her. I hate the +things she cares most about. And now I'm done for in England. Just to +make it look conventional--nice, Victorian, _English_, you +understand--you and I can go off to the Continent together while +Dagmar's getting rid of me. There'll be no trouble about that. I'm +properly dished. Besides, I want freedom. A new life. Beauty, without +having to buck this confounded distrust of beauty. Sensation, without +being ashamed of sensation. I want to drop out of sight. Reform? No! I +am being honest." + +So they went off together, as friendly as you please, to France. Waram +was still thinking of Dagmar; Grimshaw was thinking only of himself. +He swaggered up and down the Paris boulevards showing his tombstone +teeth and staring at the women. "The Europeans admire me," he said to +Waram. "May England go to the devil." He groaned. "I despise +respectability, my dear Waram. You and Dagmar are well rid of me. I +see I'm offending you here in Paris--you look nauseated most of the +time. Let's go on to Switzerland and climb mountains." + +Waram _was_ nauseated. They went to Salvan and there a curious thing +happened. + +They were walking one afternoon along the road to Martigny. The valley +was full of shadows like a deep green cup of purple wine. High above +them the mountains were tipped with flame. Grimshaw walked slowly--he +was a man of great physical laziness--slashing his cane at the +tasselled tips of the crowding larches. Once, when a herd of little +goats trotted by, he stood aside and laughed uproariously, and the +goatherd's dog, bristling, snapped in passing at his legs. + +Waram was silent, full of bitterness and disgust. They went on again, +and well down the springlike coils of the descent of Martigny they +came upon the body of a man--one of those wandering vendors of +pocket-knives and key-rings, scissors and cheap watches. He lay on his +back on a low bank by the roadside. His hat had rolled off into a pool +of muddy water. Doctor Waram saw, as he bent down to stare at the +face, that the fellow looked like Grimshaw. Not exactly, of course. +The nose was coarser--it had not that Wellington spring at the bridge, +nor the curved nostrils. But it might have been a dirty, unshaven, +dead Grimshaw lying there. Waram told me that he felt a shock of +gratification before he heard the poet's voice behind him: "What's +this? A drunkard?" He shook his head and opened the dead man's shirt +to feel for any possible flutter of life in the heart. There was none. +And he thought: "If this were only Grimshaw! If the whole miserable +business were only done with." + +"By Jove!" Grimshaw said. "The chap looks like me! I thought I was the +ugliest man in the world. I know better... D'you suppose he's German, +or Lombardian? His hands are warm. He must have been alive when the +goatherd passed just now. Nothing you can do?" + +Waram stayed where he was, on his knees. He tore his eyes away from +the grotesque dead face and fixed them on Grimshaw. He told me that +the force of his desire must have spoken in that look because Grimshaw +started and stepped back a pace, gripping his cane. Then he laughed. +"Why not?" he said. "Let this be me. And I'll go on, with that +clanking hardware store around my neck. It can be done, can't it? +Better for you and for Dagmar. I'm not being philanthropic. I'm +looking, not for a reprieve, but for release. No one knows this fellow +in Salvan--he probably came up from the Rhone and was on his way to +Chamonix. What d'you think was the matter with him?" + +"Heart," Doctor Waram answered. + +"Well, what d'you say? This pedlar and I are social outcasts. And +there is Dagmar in England, weeping her eyes out because of divorce +courts and more public washing of dirty linen. You love her. I don't! +Why not carry this fellow to the _rochers_, to-night after dark? +To-morrow, when I have changed clothes with him, we can throw him into +the valley. It's a good thousand feet or more. Would there be much +left of that face, for purposes of identification? I think not. You +can take the mutilated body back to England and I can go on to +Chamonix, as he would have gone." Grimshaw touched the pedlar with his +foot. "Free." + +That is exactly what they did. The body, hidden near the roadside +until nightfall, was carried through the woods to the _rochers du +soir_, that little plateau on the brink of the tremendous wall of rock +which rises from the Rhone valley to the heights near Salvan. There +the two men left it and returned to their hotel to sleep. + +In the morning they set out, taking care that the proprietor of the +hotel and the professional guide who hung about the village should +know that they were going to attempt the descent of the "wall" to the +valley. The proprietor shook his head and said: "_Bonne chance, +messieurs_!" The guide, letting his small blue eyes rest for a moment +on Grimshaw's slow-moving hulk, advised them gravely to take the road. +"The tall gentleman will not arrive," he remarked. + +"Nonsense," Grimshaw answered. + +They went off together, laughing. Grimshaw was wearing his conspicuous +climbing clothes--tweed jacket, yellow suede waistcoat, +knickerbockers, and high-laced boots with hob-nailed soles. His green +felt hat, tipped at an angle, was ornamented with a little orange +feather. He was in tremendous spirits. He bellowed, made faces at +scared peasant children in the village, swung his stick. They stopped +at a barber shop in the place and those famous hyacinthine locks were +clipped. Waram insisted upon this, he told me, because the pedlar's +hair was fairly short and they had to establish some sort of a +tonsorial alibi. When the floor of the little shop was thick with the +sheared "petals," Grimshaw shook his head, brushed off his shoulders, +and smiled. "It took twenty years to create that visible +personality--and behold, a Swiss barber destroys it in twenty minutes! +I am no longer a living poet. I am already an immortal--halfway up the +flowery slopes of Olympus, impatient to go the rest of the way. + +"Shall we be off?" + +"By all means," Waram said. + +They found the body where they had hidden it the night before, and in +the shelter of a little grove of larches Grimshaw stripped and then +reclothed himself in the pedlar's coarse and soiled under-linen, the +worn corduroy trousers, the flannel shirt, short coat, and old black +velvet hat. Waram was astounded by the beauty and strength of +Grimshaw's body. Like the pedlar, he was blonde-skinned, thin-waisted, +broad of back. + +Grimshaw shuddered as he helped to clothe the dead pedlar in his own +fashionable garments. "Death," he said. "Ugh! How ugly. How +terrifying. How abominable." + +They carried the body across the plateau. The height where they stood +was touched by the sun, but the valley below was still immersed in +shadow, a broad purple shadow threaded by the shining Rhone. + +"Well?" Waram demanded. "Are you eager to die? For this means death +for you, you know." + +"A living death," Grimshaw said. He glanced down at the replica of +himself. A convulsive shudder passed through him from head to foot; +his face twisted; his eyes dilated. He made a strong effort to control +himself and whispered: "I understand. Go ahead. Do it. I can't. It is +like destroying me myself.... I can't. Do it--" + +Waram lifted the dead body and pushed it over the edge. Grimshaw, +trembling violently, watched it fall. I think, from what Doctor Waram +told me many years later, that the poet must have suffered the +violence and terror of that plummet drop, must have felt the tearing +clutch of pointed rocks in the wall face, must have known the leaping +upward of the earth, the whine of wind in his bursting ears, the dizzy +spinning, the rending, obliterating impact at last.... + +The pedlar lay in the valley. Grimshaw stood on the brink of the +"wall." He turned, and saw Doctor Waram walking quickly away across +the plateau without a backward glance. They had agreed that Waram was +to return at once to the village and report the death of "his friend, +Mr. Grimshaw." The body, they knew, would be crushed beyond +recognition--a bruised and broken fragment, like enough to Cecil +Grimshaw to pass whatever examination would be given it. Grimshaw +himself was to go through the wood to the highroad, then on to Finhaut +and Chamonix and into France. He was never again to write to Dagmar, +to return to England, or to claim his English property.... + +Can you imagine his feelings--deprived of his arrogant personality, +his fame, his very identity, clothed in another man's dirty garments, +wearing about his neck a clattering pedlar's outfit, upon his feet the +clumsy boots of a peasant? Grimshaw--the exquisite futurist, the +daffodil, apostle of the aesthetic! + +He stood for a moment looking after Douglas Waram. Once, in a panic, +he called. But Waram disappeared between the larches, without, +apparently, having heard. Grimshaw wavered, unable to decide upon the +way to the highroad. He could not shake off a sense of loneliness and +terror, as if he himself had gone whirling down to his death. Like a +man who comes slowly back from the effects of ether, he perceived, one +by one, the familiar aspects of the landscape--the delicate flowers +powdering the plateau, the tasselled larches on the slope, the lofty +snow-peaks still suffused with rosy morning light. This, then, was the +world. This clumsy being, moving slowly toward the forest, was +himself--not Cecil Grimshaw but another man. His mind sought clumsily +for a name. Pierre--no, not Pierre; too common-place! Was he still +fastidious? No. Then Pierre, by all means! Pierre Pilleux. That would +do. Pilleux. A name suggestive of a good amiable fellow, honest and +slow. When he got down into France he would change his identity +again--grow a beard, buy some decent clothes. A boulevardier... gay, +perverse, witty.... The thought delighted him and he hurried through +the forest, anxious to pass through Salvan before Doctor Waram got +there. He felt extraordinarily light and exhilarated now, intoxicated, +vibrant. His spirit soared; almost he heard the rushing of his old +self forward toward some unrecognizable and beautiful freedom. + +When he struck the road the sun was high and it was very hot. Little +spirals of dust kicked up at his heels. He was not afraid of +recognition. Happening to glance at his hands, he became aware of +their whiteness, and stooping, rubbed them in the dust. + +Then a strange thing happened. Another herd of goats trotted down from +the grassy slopes and spilled into the road-way. And another dog with +lolling tongue and wagging tail wove in and out, shepherding the +little beasts. They eddied about Grimshaw, brushing against him, their +moon-stone eyes full of a vague terror of that barking guardian at +their heels. The dog drove them ahead, circled, and with a low whine +came back to Grimshaw, leaping up to lick his hand. + +Grimshaw winced, for he had never had success with animals. Then, with +a sudden change of mood, he stooped and caressed the dog's head. + +"A good fellow," he said in French to the goatherd. + +The goatherd looked at him curiously. "Not always," he answered. "He +is an unpleasant beast with most strangers. For you, he seems to have +taken a fancy.... What have you got there--any two-bladed knives?" + +Grimshaw started and recovered himself with: "Knives. Yes. All sorts." + +The goatherd fingered his collection, trying the blades on his broad +thumb. + +"You come from France," he said. + +Grimshaw nodded. "From Lyons." + +"I thought so. You speak French like a gentleman." + +Grimshaw shrugged. "That is usual in Lyons." + +The peasant paid for the knife he fancied, placing two francs in the +poet's palm. Then he whistled to the dog and set off after his flock. +But the dog, whining and trembling, followed Grimshaw, and would not +be shaken off until Grimshaw had pelted him with small stones. I think +the poet was strangely flattered by this encounter. He passed through +Salvan with his head in the air, challenging recognition. But there +was no recognition. The guide who had said "The tall monsieur will not +arrive" now greeted him with a fraternal: "How is trade?" + +"Very good, thanks," Grimshaw said. + +Beyond the village he quickened his pace, and easing the load on his +back by putting his hands under the leather straps, he swung toward +Finhaut. Behind him he heard the faint ringing of the church bells in +Salvan. Waram had reported the "tragedy." Grimshaw could fancy the +excitement--the priest hurrying toward the "wall" with his crucifix in +his hands; the barber, a-quiver with morbid excitement; the stolid +guide, not at all surprised, rather gratified, preparing to make the +descent to recover the body of that "tall monsieur" who had, after +all, "arrived." The telegraph wires were already humming with the +message. In a few hours Dagmar would know. + +He laughed aloud. The white road spun beneath him. His hands, pressed +against his body by the weight of the leather straps, were hot and +wet; he could feel the loud beating of his heart. + +His senses were acute; he had never before felt with such +gratification the warmth of the sun or known the ecstasy of motion. He +saw every flower in the roadbank, every small glacial brook, every new +conformation of the snow clouds hanging above the ragged peaks of the +Argentières. He sniffed with delight the pungent wind from off the +glaciers, the short, warm puffs of grass-scented air from the fields +in the Valley of Trient. He noticed the flight of birds, the lazy +swinging of pine boughs, the rainbow spray of waterfalls. Once he +shouted and ran, mad with exuberance. Again he flung himself down by +the roadside and, lying on his back, sang outrageous songs and laughed +and slapped his breast with both hands. + +That night he came to Chamonix and got lodging in a small hotel on the +skirts of the town. His spirits fell when he entered the room. He put +his pedlar's pack on the floor and sat down on the narrow bed, +suddenly conscious of an enormous fatigue. His feet burned, his legs +ached, his back was raw where the heavy pack had rested. He thought: +"What am I doing here? I have nothing but the few hundred pounds Waram +gave me. I'm alone. Dead and alive." + +He scarcely looked up when the door opened and a young girl came in, +carrying a pitcher of water and a coarse towel. She hesitated and said +rather prettily: "You'll be tired, perhaps?" + +Grimshaw felt within him the tug of the old personality. He stared at +her, suddenly conscious that she was a woman and that she was smiling +at him. Charming, in her way. Bare arms. A little black bodice laced +over a white waist. Straight blonde hair, braided thickly and twisted +around her head. A peasant, but pretty.... You see, his desire was to +frighten her, as he most certainly would have frightened her had he +been true to Cecil Grimshaw. But the impulse passed, leaving him sick +and ashamed. He heard her saying: "A sad thing occurred to-day down +the valley. A gentleman.... Salvan ... a very famous gentleman.... And +they have telegraphed his wife.... I heard it from Simon Ravanel.... +It seems that the gentleman was smashed to bits--_brise en morceau. +Épouvantable, n'est ce pas_?" + +Grimshaw began to tremble. "Yes, yes," he said irritably. "But I am +tired, little one. Go out, and shut the door!" + +The girl gave him a startled glance, frightened at last, but for +nothing more than the lost look in his eyes. He raised his arms, and +she fled with a little scream. + +Grimshaw sat for a moment staring at the door. Then with a violent +gesture he threw himself back on the bed, buried his face in the dirty +pillow and wept as a child weeps, until, just before dawn, he fell +asleep.... + +As far as the public knows, Cecil Grimshaw perished on the +"wall"--perished and was buried at Broadenham beneath a pyramid of +chrysanthemums. Perished, and became an English immortal--his sins +erased by his unconscious sacrifice. Perished, and was forgiven by +Dagmar. Yet hers was the victory--he belonged to her at last. She had +not buried his body at Broadenham, but she had buried his work there. +He could never write again.... + +During those days of posthumous whitewashing he read the papers with a +certain contemptuous eagerness. Some of them he crumpled between his +hands and threw away. He hated his own image, staring balefully from +the first page of the illustrated reviews. He despised England for +honouring him. Once, happening upon a volume of the "Vision of +Helen"--the first edition illustrated by Beardsley--in a book-stall at +Aix-les-Bains, he read it from cover to cover. + +"Poor stuff," he said to the bookseller, tossing it down again. "Give +me 'Ars ne Lupin'." And he paid two sous for a paper-covered, +dog-eared, much-thumbed copy of the famous detective story, not +because he intended to read it, but in payment for his hour of +disillusionment. Then he slung his pack over his shoulders and tramped +out into the country. He laughed aloud at the thought of Helen and her +idolaters. A poetic hoax. Overripe words. Seductive sounds. Nonsense! + +"Surely I can do better than that to-day," he thought. + +He saw two children working in a field, and called to them. + +"If you will give me a cup of cold water," he said, "I'll tell you a +story." + +"Gladly, monsieur." + +The boy put down his spade, went to a brook which threaded the field +and came back with an earthenware jug full to the brim. The little +girl stared gravely at Grimshaw while he drank. Grimshaw wiped his +mouth with the back of his hand. + +"What story shall it be?" he demanded. + +The little girl said quickly: "The black king and the white princess +and the beast who lived in the wood." + +"Not that one," the boy cried. "Tell us about a battle." + +"I will sing about life," Grimshaw said. + +It was hot in the field. A warm, sweet smell rose from the spaded +earth and near by the brook rustled through the grass like a beautiful +silver serpent. Grimshaw sat cross-legged on the ground and words spun +from his lips--simple words. And he sang of things he had recently +learned--the gaiety of birds, the strength of his arms, the scent of +dusk, the fine crystal of a young moon, wind in a field of wheat.... + +At first the children listened. Then, because he talked so long, the +little girl leaned slowly over against his shoulder and fell asleep, +while the boy fingered the knives, jangled the key-rings, clipped +grass stalks with the scissors, and wound the watches one after the +other. The sun was low before Grimshaw left them. "When you are grown +up," he said, "remember that Pierre Pilleux sang to you of life." + +"_Oui, monsieur_," the boy said politely. "But I should like a watch." + +Grimshaw shook his head. "The song is enough." + +Thereafter he sang to any one who would listen to him. I say that he +sang--I mean, of course, that he spoke his verses; it was a minstrel's +simple improvisation. But there are people in the villages of southern +France who still recall that ungainly, shambling figure. He had grown +a beard; it crinkled thickly, hiding his mouth and chin. He laughed a +great deal. He was not altogether clean. And he slept wherever he +could find a bed--in farmhouses, cheap hotels, haylofts, stables, open +fields. Waram's few hundred pounds were gone. The poet lived by his +wits and his gift of song. And for the first time in his remembrance +he was happy. + +Then one day he read in _Le Matin_ that Ada Rubenstein was to play +"The Labyrinth" in Paris. Grimshaw was in Poitiers. He borrowed three +hundred francs from the proprietor of a small café in the Rue Carnot, +left his pack as security, and went to Paris. Can you imagine him in +the theatre--it was the Odéon, I believe--conscious of curious, amused +glances--a peasant, bulking conspicuously in that scented auditorium? + +When the curtain rose, he felt again the familiar pain of creation. A +rush of hot blood surged around his heart. His temples throbbed. His +eyes filled with tears. Then the flood receded and left him trembling +with weakness. He sat through the rest of the performance without +emotion of any sort. He felt no resentment, no curiosity. + +This was the last time he showed any interest in his old existence. He +went back to Poitiers, and then took to the road again. People who saw +him at that time have said that there was always a pack of dogs at his +heels. Once a fashionable spaniel followed him out of Lyons and he was +arrested for theft. You understand, he never made any effort to +attract the little fellows--they joined on, as it were, for the +journey. And it was a queer fact that after a few miles they always +whined, as if they were disappointed about something, and turned +back.... + +He finally heard that Dagmar had married Waram. She had waited a +decent interval--Victorian to the end! A man who happened to be in +Marseilles at the time told me that "that vagabond poet, Pilleux, +appeared in one of the cafés, roaring drunk, and recited a marriage +poem--obscene, vicious, terrific. A crowd came in from the street to +listen. Some of them laughed. Others were frightened. He was an ugly +brute--well over six feet tall, with a blonde beard, a hooked nose, +and a pair of eyes that saw beyond reality. He was fascinating. He +could turn his eloquence off and on like a tap. He sat in a drunken +stupor, glaring at the crowd, until someone shouted: "_Eh bien, +Pilleux_--you were saying?" Then the deluge! He had a peasant's +acceptance of the elemental facts of life--it was raw, that hymn of +his! The women of the streets who had crowded into the caf listened +with a sort of terror; they admired him. One of them said: "Pilleux's +wife betrayed him." He lifted his glass and drank. "No, _ma petite_," +he said politely, "she buried me." + +That night his pack was stolen from him. He was too drunk to know or +to care. They say that he went from café to café, paying for wine with +verse, and getting it, too! At his heels a crowd of loafers, frowsy +women and dogs. His hat gone. His eyes mad. A trickle of wine through +his beard. Bellowing. Bellowing again--the untamed centaur cheated of +the doe! + +And now, perhaps, I can get back to the reasons for this story. And I +am almost at the end of it.... + +In the most obscure alley in Marseilles there is a caf frequented by +sailors, riff-raff from the waterfront and thieves. Grimshaw appeared +there at midnight. A woman clung to his arm. She had no eyes for any +one else. Her name, I believe, was Marie--a very humble Magdalen of +that tragic back-water of civilization. Putting her cheek against +Grimshaw's arm, she listened to him with a curious patience as one +listens to the eloquence of the sea. + +"This is no place for thee," he said to her. "Leave me now, _ma +petite_." + +But she laughed and went with him. Imagine that room--foul air, sanded +floor, kerosene lamps, an odour of bad wine, tobacco, and stale +humanity. Grimshaw pushed his way to a table and sat down with a surly +Gascon and an enormous Negro from some American ship in the harbour. + +They brought the poet wine but he did not drink it--sat staring at the +smoky ceiling, assailed by a sudden sharp vision of Dagmar and Waram +at Broadenham, alone together for the first time, perhaps on the +terrace in the starlight, perhaps in Dagmar's bright room which had +always been scented, warm, remote---- + +He had been reciting, of course, in French. Now he broke abruptly into +English. No one but the American Negro understood. The proprietor +shouted: "Hi, there, Pilleux--no gibberish!" The woman, her eyes on +Grimshaw's face, said warningly: "Ssh! He speaks English. He is +clever, this poet! Pay attention." And the Negro, startled, jerked his +drunken body straight and listened. + +I don't know what Grimshaw said. It must have been a poem of home, the +bitter longing of an exile for familiar things. At any rate, the Negro +was touched--he was a Louisianian, a son of New Orleans. He saw the +gentleman, where you and I, perhaps, would have seen only a maudlin +savage. There is no other explanation for the thing that happened.... + +The Gascon, it seems, hated poetry. He tipped over Grimshaw's glass, +spilling the wine into the woman's lap. She leaped back, trembling +with rage, swearing in the manner of her kind. + +"Quiet," Grimshaw said. And her fury receded before his glance; she +melted, acquiesced, smiled. Then Grimshaw smiled, too, and putting the +glass to rights with a leisurely gesture, said, "Cabbage. Son of pig," +and flipped the dregs into the Gascon's face. + +The fellow groaned and leaped. Grimshaw didn't stir--he was too drunk +to protect himself. But the Negro saw what was in the Gascon's hand. +He kicked back his chair, stretched out his arms--too late. The +Gascon's knife, intended for Grimshaw, sliced into his heart. He +coughed, looked at the man he had saved with a strange questioning, +and collapsed. + +Grimshaw was sobered instantly. They say that he broke the Gascon's +arm before the crowd could separate them. Then he knelt down by the +dying Negro, turned him gently over and lifted him in his arms, +supporting that ugly bullet head against his knee. The Negro coughed +again, and whispered: "I saw it comin', boss." Grimshaw said simply: +"Thank you." + +"I'm scared, boss." + +"That's all right. I'll see you through." + +"I'm dyin', boss." + +"Is it hard?" + +"Yessir." + +"Hold my hand. That's right. Nothing to be afraid of." + +The Negro's eyes fixed themselves on Grimshaw's face--a sombre look +came into their depths. "I'm goin', boss." + +Grimshaw lifted him again. As he did so, he was conscious of feeling +faint and dizzy. The Negro's blood was warm on his hands and wrists, +but it was not wholly that--He had a sensation of rushing forward; of +pressure against his ear-drums; a violent nausea; the crowd of curious +faces blurred, disappeared--he was drowning in a noisy darkness.... He +gasped, struggled, struck out with his arms, shouted, went down in +that suffocating flood of unconsciousness.... + +Opening his eyes after an indeterminate interval, he found himself in +the street. The air was cool after the fetid staleness of that room. +He was still holding the Negro's hand. And above them the stars +burned, remote and calm, like beacon lamps in a dark harbour.... + +The Negro whimpered: "I don't know the way, boss. I'm lost." + +"Where is your ship?" + +"In the _Vieux Port_, near the fort." + +They walked together through the silent streets. I say that they +walked. It was rather that Grimshaw found himself on the quay, the +Negro still at his side. A few prowling sailors passed them. But for +the most part the waterfront was deserted. The ships lay side by +side--an intricate tangle of bowsprits and rigging, masts and chains. +Around them the water was black as basalt, only that now and again a +spark of light was struck by the faint lifting of the current against +the immovable hulls. + +The Negro shuffled forward, peering. A lantern flashed on one of the +big schooners. Looking up, Grimshaw saw the name: "_Anne Beebe, New +Orleans_." A querulous voice, somewhere on the deck, demanded: "That +you, Richardson?" And then, angrily: "This damned place--dark as +hell.... Who's there?" + +Grimshaw answered: "One of your crew." + +The man on deck stared down at the quay a moment. Then, apparently +having seen nothing, he turned away, and the lantern bobbed aft like a +drifting ember. The Negro moaned. Holding both hands over the deep +wound in his breast, he slowly climbed the side ladder, turned once, +to look at Grimshaw, and disappeared.... + +Grimshaw felt again the rushing darkness. Again he struggled. And +again, opening his eyes after a moment of blankness, he found himself +kneeling on the sanded floor of the cafe, holding the dead Negro in +his arms. He glanced down at the face, astounded by the look of placid +satisfaction in those wide-open eyes, the smile of recognition, of +gratification, of some nameless and magnificent content.... + +The woman Marie touched his shoulder. "The fellow's dead, _m'sieur_. +We had better go." + +Grimshaw followed her into the street. He noticed that there were no +stars. A bitter wind, forerunner of the implacable _mistral_, had come +up. The door of the café slammed behind them, muffling a sudden uproar +of voices that had burst out with his going.... + +Grimshaw had a room somewhere in the Old Town; he went there, followed +by the woman. He thought: "I am mad! Mad!" He was frightened, not by +what had happened to him, but because he could not understand. Nor can +I make it clear to you, since no explanation is final when we are +dealing with the inexplicable.... + +When they reached his room, Marie lighted the kerosene lamp and, +smoothing down her black hair with both hands, said simply: "I stay +with you." + +"You must not," Grimshaw answered. + +"I love you," she said. "You are a great man. _C'est ça_. That is +that! Besides, I must love someone--I mean, do for someone. You think +that I like pleasure. Ah! Perhaps. I am young. But my heart follows +you. I stay here." + +Grimshaw stared at her without hearing. "I opened the door. I went +beyond.... I am perhaps mad. Perhaps privileged. Perhaps what they +have always called me--an incorrigible poet." Suddenly he jumped to +his feet and shouted: "I went a little way with his soul! Victory! +Eternity!" + +The woman Marie put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back +into his chair again. She thought, of course, that he was drunk. So +she attempted a simple seduction, striving to call attention to +herself by the coquetries of her kind. Grimshaw pushed her aside and +lay down on the bed with his arms crossed over his eyes. Had he +witnessed a soul's first uncertain steps into a new state? One thing +he knew--he had himself suffered the confusion of death, and had +shared the desperate struggle to penetrate the barrier between the +mortal and the immortal, the known and the unknown, the real and the +incomprehensible. With that realization, he stepped finally out of his +personality into that of the mystic philosopher, Pierre Pilleux. He +heard the woman Marie saying: "Let me stay. I am unhappy." And without +opening his eyes, simply making a brief gesture, he said: "_Eh bien_." +And she stayed. + +She never left him again. In the years that followed, wherever +Grimshaw was, there also was Marie--little, swarthy, broad of cheek +and hip, unimaginative, faithful. She had a passion for service. She +cooked for Grimshaw, knitted woollen socks for him, brushed and mended +his clothes, watched out for his health--often, I am convinced, she +stole for him. As for Grimshaw, he didn't know that she existed, +beyond the fact that she was there and that she made material +existence endurable. He never again knew physical love. That I am sure +of, for I have talked with Marie. "He was good to me," she said. "But +he never loved me." And I believe her. + +That night of the Negro's death Grimshaw stood in a wilderness of his +own. He emerged from it a believer in life after death. He preached +this belief in the slums of Marseilles. It began to be said of him +that his presence made death easy, that the touch of his hand steadied +those who were about to die. Feverish, terrified, reluctant, they +became suddenly calm, wistful, and passed quietly as one falls asleep. +"Send for Pierre Pilleux" became a familiar phrase in the Old Town. + +I do not believe that he could have touched these simple people had he +not looked the part of prophet and saint. The old Grimshaw was gone. +In his place an emaciated fanatic, unconscious of appetite, unaware of +self, with burning eyes and tangled beard! That finished ugliness +turned spiritual--a self-flagellated aesthete. He claimed that he +could enter the shadowy confines of the "next world." Not heaven. Not +hell. A neutral ground between the familiar earth and an inexplicable +territory of the spirit. Here, he said, the dead suffered +bewilderment; they remembered, desired, and regretted the life they +had just left, without understanding what lay ahead. So far he could +go with them. So far and no farther.... + +Personal immortality is the most alluring hope ever dangled before +humanity. All of us secretly desire it. None of us really believe in +it. As you say, all of us are afraid and some of us laugh to hide our +fear. Grimshaw wasn't afraid. Nor did he laugh. He _knew_. And you +remember his eloquence--seductive words, poignant, delicious, +memorable words! In his Chelsea days, he had made you sultry with +hate. Now, as Pierre Pilleux, he made you believe in the shining +beauty of the indestructible, the unconquerable dead. You saw them, a +host of familiar figures, walking fearlessly away from you toward the +brightness of a distant horizon. You heard them, murmuring together, +as they passed out of sight, going forward to share the common and +ineffable experience. + +Well.... The pagan had disappeared in the psychic! Cecil Grimshaw's +melancholy and pessimism, his love of power, his delight in cruelty, +in beauty, in the erotic, the violent, the strange, had vanished! +Pierre Pilleux was a humanitarian. Cecil Grimshaw never had been. +Grimshaw had revolted against ugliness as a dilettante objects to the +mediocre in art. Pierre Pilleux was conscious of social ugliness. +Having become aware of it, he was a potent rebel. He began to write in +French, spreading his revolutionary doctrine of facile spiritual +reward. He splintered purgatory into fragments; what he offered was an +earthly paradise--humanity given eternal absolution, freed of fear, +prejudice, hatred--above all, of fear--and certain of endless life. + +Now that we have entered the cosmic era, we look back at him with +understanding. Then, he was a radical and an atheist. + +Of course he had followers--seekers after eternity who drank his +promises like thirsty wanderers come upon a spring in the desert. To +some of them he was a god. To some, a mystic. To some, a healer. To +some--and they were the ones who finally controlled his destiny--he +was simply a dangerous lunatic. + +Two women in Marseilles committed suicide--they were followers, +disciples, whatever you choose to call them. At any rate, they +believed that where it was so simple a matter to die, it was foolish +to stay on in a world that had treated them badly. One had lost a son, +the other a lover. One shot herself; the other drowned herself in the +canal. And both of them left letters addressed to Pilleux--enough to +damn him in the eyes of authority. He was told that he might leave +France, or take the consequences--a mild enough warning, but it +worked. He dared not provoke an inquiry into his past. So he shipped +on board a small Mediterranean steamer as fireman, and disappeared, no +one knew where. + +Two years later he reappeared in Africa. Marie was with him. They were +living in a small town on the rim of the desert near Biskra. Grimshaw +occupied a native house--a mere hovel, flat-roofed, sun-baked, bare as +a hermit's cell. Marie had hired herself out as _femme de chambre_ in +the only hotel in the place. "I watched over him," she told me. "And +believe me, _monsieur_, he needed care! He was thin as a ghost. He had +starved more than once during those two years. He told me to go back +to France, to seek happiness for myself. But for me happiness was with +him. I laughed and stayed. I loved him--magnificently, _monsieur_." + +Grimshaw was writing again--in French--and his work began to appear in +the Parisian journals, a strange poetic prose impregnated with +mysticism. It was Grimshaw, sublimated. I saw it myself, although at +that time I had not heard Waram's story. The French critics saw it. +"This Pilleux is as picturesque as the English poet, Grimshaw. The +style is identical." Waram saw it. He read everything that Pilleux +wrote--with eagerness, with terror. Finally, driven by curiosity, he +went to Paris, got Pilleux's address from the editor of _Gil Blas_, +and started for Africa. + +Grimshaw is a misty figure at the last. You see him faintly--an exile, +racially featureless, wearing a dirty white native robe, his face +wrinkled by exposure to the sun, his eyes burning. Marie says that he +prowled about the village at night, whispering to himself, his head +thrown back, pointing his beard at the stars. He wrote in the cool +hours before dawn, and later, when the village quivered in heat fumes +and he slept, Marie posted what he had written to Paris. + +One day he took her head between his hands and said very gently: "Why +don't you get a lover? Take life while you can." + +"You say there is eternal life," she protested. + +"_N'en doutez-pas_! But you must be rich in knowledge. Put flowers in +your hair. And place your palms against a lover's palms and kiss him +with generosity, _ma petite_. I am not a man; I am a shadow." + +Marie slipped her arms around him and, standing on tiptoe, put her +lips against his. "_Je t'aime_," she said simply. + +His eyes deepened. There flashed into them the old, mad humour, the +old vitality, the old passion for beauty. The look faded, leaving his +eyes "like flames that are quenched." Marie shivered, covered her face +with her hands, and ran out. "There was no blood in him," she told me. +"He was like a spirit--a ghost. So meagre! So wan! Waxen hands. Yellow +flesh. And those eyes, in which, _monsieur_, the flame was quenched!" + +And this is the end of the curious story.... Waram went to Biskra and +from there to the village where Grimshaw lived. Grimshaw saw him in +the street one evening and followed him to the hotel. He lingered +outside until Waram had registered at the _bureau_ and had gone to his +room. Then he went in and sent word that "Pierre Pilleux was below and +ready to see Doctor Waram." + +He waited in the "garden" at the back of the hotel. No one was about. +A cat slept on the wall. Overhead the arch of the sky was flooded with +orange light. Dust lay on the leaves of the potted plants and bushes. +It was breathless, hot, quiet. He thought: "Waram has come because +Dagmar is dead. Or the public has found me out!" + +Waram came immediately. He stood in the doorway a moment, staring at +the grotesque figure which faced him. He made a terrified gesture, as +if he would shut out what he saw. Then he came into the garden, +steadying himself by holding on to the backs of the little iron garden +chairs. The poet saw that Waram had not changed so very much--a little +gray hair in that thick, black mop, a few wrinkles, a rather stodgy +look about the waist. No more. He was still Waram, neat, +self-satisfied, essentially English.... Grimshaw strangled a feeling +of aversion and said quietly: "Well, Waram. How d'you do? I call +myself Pilleux now." + +Waram ignored his hand. Leaning heavily on one of the chairs, he +stared with a passionate intentness. "Grimshaw?" he said at last. + +"Why, yes," Grimshaw answered. "Didn't you know?" + +Waram licked his lips. In a whisper he said: "I killed you in +Switzerland six years ago. Killed you, you understand." + +Grimshaw touched his breast with both hands. "You lie. + +"Here I am." + +"You are dead." + +"Dead?" + +"Before God, I swear it." + +"Dead?" + +Grimshaw felt once more the on-rushing flood of darkness. His thoughts +flashed back over the years. The "wall." His suffering. The dog. The +song in the field. The Negro. The door that opened. The stars. His own +flesh, fading into spirit, into shadows.... + +"Dead?" he demanded again. + +Waram's eyes wavered. He laughed unsteadily and looked behind him. +"Strange," he said. "I thought I saw----" He turned and went quickly +across the garden into the hotel. Grimshaw called once, in a loud +voice: "Waram!" But the doctor did not even turn his head. Grimshaw +followed him, overtook him, touched his shoulder. Waram paid no +attention. Going to the _bureau_ he said to the proprietor: "You told +me that a Monsieur Pilleux wished to see me." + +"_Oui, monsieur_. He was waiting for you in the garden." + +"He is not there now." + +"But just a moment ago----" + +"I am _here_," Grimshaw interrupted. + +The proprietor brushed past Waram and peered into the garden. It was +twilight out there now. The cat still slept on the wall. Dust on the +leaves. Stillness.... + +"I'm sorry, _monsieur_. He seems to have disappeared." + +Doctor Waram straightened his shoulders. "Ah," he said. "Disappeared. +Exactly." And passing Grimshaw without a glance he went upstairs. + +Grimshaw spoke to the proprietor. But the little man bent over the +desk, and began to write in an account book. His pen went on +scratching, inscribing large, flourishing numbers in a neat column.... + +Grimshaw shrugged and went into the street. The crowds paid no +attention to him--but then, they never had. A dog sniffed at his +heels, whined, and thrust a cold nose into his hand. + +He went to his house. "I'll ask Marie," he thought.... She was sitting +before a mirror, her hands clasped under her chin, smiling at +herself.... She had put a flower in her hair. Her lips were parted. +She smiled at some secret thought. Grimshaw watched her a moment; then +with a leap of his heart he touched her shoulder. And she did not +turn, did not move.... + +He knew! He put his fingers on her cheek, her neck, the shining braids +of her coarse black hair. Then he walked quickly out of the house, out +of the village, toward the desert. + +Two men joined him. One of them said: "I have just died." They went on +together, their feet whispering in the sand, walking in a globe of +darkness until the stars came out--then they saw one another's pale +faces and eager, frightened eyes. Others joined them. And others. Men. +Women. A child. Some wept and some murmured and some laughed. + +"Is this death?" + +"Where now, brother?" + +Grimshaw thought: "The end. What next? Beauty. Love. Illusion. +Forgetfulness." + +He clasped his hands behind his back, lifted his face to the stars, +walked steadily forward with that company of the dead, into the +desert, out of the story at last. + + + +COMET [Published originally under title, "The Comet."] + +By SAMUEL A. DERIEUX + +From _American Magazine_ + + +No puppy ever came into the world under more favourable conditions +than Comet. He was descended from a famous family of pointers. Both +his mother and father were champions. Before he opened his eyes, while +he was still crawling about over his brothers and sisters, blind as +puppies are at birth, Jim Thompson, Mr. Devant's kennel master, picked +him out. + +"That's the best un in the bunch." + +When he was only three weeks old he pointed a butterfly that lit in +the yard in front of his nose. + +"Come here, Molly," yelled Jim to his wife. "Pointed--the little +cuss!" + +When Thompson started taking the growing pups out of the yard, into +the fields to the side of the Devants' great southern winter home, Oak +Knob, it was Comet who strayed farthest from the man's protecting +care. And when Jim taught them all to follow when he said "Heel," to +drop when he said "Drop," and to stand stock-still when he said "Ho," +he learned far more quickly than the others. + +At six months he set his first covey of quail, and remained perfectly +staunch. "He's goin' to make a great dog," said Thompson. +Everything--size, muscle, nose, intelligence, earnestness--pointed to +the same conclusion. Comet was one of the favoured of the gods. + +One day, after the leaves had turned red and brown and the mornings +grown chilly, a crowd of people, strangers to him, arrived at Oak +Knob. Then out of the house with Thompson came a big man in tweed +clothes, and the two walked straight to the curious young dogs, who +were watching them with shining eyes and wagging tails. + +"Well, Thompson," said the big man, "which is the future champion +you've been writing me about?" + +"Pick him out for yourself, sir," said Thompson confidently. + +After that they talked a long time planning for the future of Comet. +His yard training was now over (Thompson was only yard trainer), and +he must be sent to a man experienced in training and handling for +field trials. + +"Larsen's the man to bring him out," said the big man in tweeds, who +was George Devant himself. "I saw his dogs work in the Canadian +Derby." + +Thompson spoke hesitatingly, apologetically, as if he hated to bring +the matter up. "Mr. Devant, ... you remember, sir, a long time ago +Larsen sued us for old Ben." + +"Yes, Thompson; I remember, now that you speak of it." + +"Well, you remember the court decided against him, which was the only +thing it could do, for Larsen didn't have any more right to that dog +than the Sultan of Turkey. But, Mr. Devant, I was there, and I saw +Larsen's face when the case went against him." + +Devant looked keenly at Thompson. + +"Another thing, Mr. Devant," Thompson went on, still hesitatingly; +"Larsen had a chance to get hold of this breed of pointers and lost +out, because he dickered too long, and acted cheesy. Now they've +turned out to be famous. Some men never forget a thing like that. +Larsen's been talkin' these pointers down ever since, sir." + +"Go on," said Devant. + +"I know Larsen's a good trainer. But it'll mean a long trip for the +young dog to where he lives. Now, there's an old trainer lives near +here, Wade Swygert. There never was a straighter man than him. He used +to train dogs in England." + +Devant smiled. "Thompson, I admire your loyalty to your friends; but I +don't think much of your business sense. We'll turn over some of the +others to Swygert, if he wants 'em. Comet must have the best. I'll +write Larsen to-night, Thompson. To-morrow, crate Comet and send him +off." + +Just as no dog ever came into the world under more favourable +auspices, so no dog ever had a bigger "send-off" than Comet. Even the +ladies of the house came out to exclaim over him, and Marian Devant, +pretty, eighteen, and a sports-woman, stooped down, caught his head +between her hands, looked into his fine eyes, and wished him "Good +luck, old man." In the living-room the men laughingly drank toasts to +his future, and from the high-columned portico Marian Devant waved him +good-bye, as in his clean padded crate he was driven off, a bewildered +youngster, to the station. + +Two days and two nights he travelled, and at noon of the third day, at +a lonely railroad station in a prairie country that rolled like a +heavy sea, he was lifted, crate and all, off the train. A lean, +pale-eyed, sanctimonious-looking man came toward him. + +"Some beauty that, Mr. Larsen," said the agent as he helped Larsen's +man lift the crate onto a small truck. + +"Yes," drawled Larsen in a meditative voice, "pretty enough to look +at--but he looks scared--er--timid." + +"Of course he's scared," said the agent; "so would you be if they was +to put you in some kind of a whale of a balloon an' ship you in a +crate to Mars." + +The station agent poked his hands through the slats and patted the +head. Comet was grateful for that, because everything was strange. He +had not whined nor complained on the trip, but his heart had pounded +fast, and he had been homesick. + +And everything continued to be strange: the treeless country through +which he was driven, the bald house and huge barns where he was lifted +out, the dogs that crowded about him when he was turned into the +kennel yard. These eyed him with enmity and walked round and round +him. But he stood his ground staunchly for a youngster, returning +fierce look for fierce look, growl for growl, until the man called him +away and chained him to a kennel. + +For days Comet remained chained, a stranger in a strange land. Each +time at the click of the gate announcing Larson's entrance he sprang +to his feet from force of habit, and stared hungrily at the man for +the light he was accustomed to see in human eyes. But with just a +glance at him the man would turn one or more of the other dogs loose +and ride off to train them. + +But he was not without friends of his own kind. Now and then another +young dog (he alone was chained up) would stroll his way with wagging +tail, or lie down near by, in that strange bond of sympathy that is +not confined to man. Then Comet would feel better and would want to +play, for he was still half puppy. Sometimes he would pick up a stick +and shake it, and his partner would catch the other end. They would +tug and growl with mock ferocity, and then lie down and look at each +other curiously. + +If any attention had been paid him by Larsen, Comet would have quickly +overcome his feeling of strangeness. He was no milksop. He was like an +overgrown boy, off at college or in some foreign city. He was +sensitive, and not sure of himself. Had Larsen gained his confidence, +it would all have been different. And as for Larsen--he knew that +perfectly well. + +One fine sunny afternoon Larsen entered the yard, came straight to +him, and turned him loose. In the exuberance of his spirits he ran +round and round the yard, barking in the faces of his friends. Larsen +let him out, mounted a horse, and commanded him to heel. He obeyed +with wagging tail. + +A mile or more down the road Larsen turned off into the fields. Across +his saddle was something the young pointer had had no experience +with--a gun. That part of his education Thompson had neglected, at +least put off, for he had not expected that Comet would be sent away +so soon. That was where Thompson had made a mistake. + +At the command "Hi on" the young pointer ran eagerly around the horse, +and looked up into the man's face to be sure he had heard aright. At +something he saw there the tail and ears drooped momentarily, and +there came over him again a feeling of strangeness, almost of dismay. +Larsen's eyes were mere slits of blue glass, and his mouth was set in +a thin line. + +At a second command, though, he galloped off swiftly, boldly. Round +and round an extensive field of straw he circled, forgetting any +feeling of strangeness now, every fibre of his being intent on the +hunt, while Larsen, sitting on his horse, watched him with appraising +eyes. + +Suddenly there came to Comet's nose the smell of game birds, strong, +pungent, compelling. He stiffened into an earnest, beautiful point. +Heretofore in the little training he had had Thompson had come up +behind him, flushed the birds, and made him drop. And now Larsen, +having quickly dismounted and tied his horse, came up behind him, just +as Thompson had done, except that in Larsen's hand was the gun. + +The old-fashioned black powder of a generation ago makes a loud +explosion. It sounds like a cannon compared with the modern smokeless +powder now used by all hunters. Perhaps it was only an accident that +had caused Larsen before he left the house to load his pump gun with +black powder shells. + +As for Comet he only knew that the birds rose; then above his head +burst an awful roar, almost splitting his tender eardrums, shocking +every sensitive nerve, filling him with terror such as he had never +felt before. Even then, in the confusion and horror of the surprise, +he turned to the man, head ringing, eyes dilated. A single reassuring +word, and he would have steadied. As for Larsen, though, he declared +afterward (to others and to himself even) that he noticed no +nervousness in the dog; that he was only intent on getting several +birds for breakfast. + +Twice, three times, four times, the pump gun bellowed in its +cannon-like roar, piercing the eardrums, shattering the nerves. Comet +turned; one more glance backward at a face, strange, exultant--and +then the puppy in him conquered. Tail tucked, he ran away from that +shattering noise. + +Miles he ran. Now and then, stumbling over briars, he yelped. Not once +did he look back. His tail was tucked, his eyes crazy with fear. +Seeing a house, he made for that. It was the noon hour, and a group of +farm hands was gathered in the yard. One of them, with a cry "Mad +dog!" ran into the house after a gun. When he came out, they told him +the dog was under the porch. And so he was. Pressed against the wall, +in the darkness, the magnificent young pointer with the quivering soul +waited, panting, eyes gleaming, the horror still ringing in his ears. + +Here Larsen found him that afternoon. A boy crawled underneath the +porch and dragged him out. He, who had started life favoured of the +gods, who that morning even had been full of high spirits, who had +circled a field like a champion, was now a cringing, shaking creature, +like a homeless cur. + +And thus it happened that Comet came home, in disgrace--a gun-shy dog, +a coward, expelled from college, not for some youthful prank, but +because he was--yellow. And he knew he was disgraced. He saw it in the +face of the big man, Devant, who looked at him in the yard where he +had spent his happy puppyhood, then turned away. He knew it because of +what he saw in the face of Jim Thompson. + +In the house was a long and plausible letter, explaining how it +happened: + +I did everything I could. I never was as surprised in my life. The +dog's hopeless. + +As for the other inhabitants of the big house, their minds were full +of the events of the season: de luxe hunting parties, more society +events than hunts; lunches in the woods served by uniformed butlers; +launch rides up the river; arriving and departing guests. Only one of +them, except Devant himself, gave the gun-shy dog a thought. Marian +Devant came out to visit him in his disgrace. She stooped before him +as she had done on that other and happier day, and again caught his +head between her hands. But his eyes did not meet hers, for in his dim +way he knew he was not now what he had been. + +"I don't believe he's yellow--inside!" she declared, looking up at +Thompson, her cheeks flushed. + +Thompson shook his head. + +"I tried him with a gun, Miss Marian," he declared. "I just showed it +to him, and he ran into his kennel." + +"I'll go get mine. He won't run from me." + +But at sight of her small gun it all came back. Again he seemed to +hear the explosion that had shattered his nerves. The Terror had +entered his very soul. In spite of her pleading, he made for his +kennel. Even the girl turned away from him now. And as he lay panting +in the shelter of his kennel he knew that never again would men look +at him as they had looked, or life be sweet to him as it had been. + +Then there came to Oak Knob an old man to see Thompson. He had been on +many seas, he had fought in a dozen wars, and had settled at last on a +little truck farm near by. Somewhere, in his life full of adventure +and odd jobs, he had trained dogs and horses. His face was lined and +seamed, his hair was white, his eyes piercing, blue and kind. Wade +Swygert was his name. + +"There's been dirty work," he said, when he looked at the dog. "I'll +take him if you're goin' to give him away." + +Give him away--who had been Championship hope! + +Marian Devant came out and looked into the face of the old man, +shrewdly, understandingly. + +"Can you cure him?" she demanded. + +"I doubt it, miss," was the sturdy answer. + +"You will try?" + +The blue eyes lighted up. "Yes, I'll try." + +"Then you can have him. And--if there's any expense----" + +"Come, Comet," said the old man. + +That night, in a neat, humble house, Comet ate supper placed before +him by a stout old woman, who had followed this old man to the ends of +the world. That night he slept before their fire. Next day he followed +the old man all about the place. Several days and nights passed this +way, then, while he lay before the fire, old Swygert came in with a +gun. At sight of it Comet sprang to his feet. He tried to rush out of +the room, but the doors were closed. Finally, he crawled under the +bed. + +Every night after that Swygert got out the gun, until he crawled under +the bed no more. Finally, one day the man fastened the dog to a tree +in the yard, then came out with a gun. A sparrow lit in a tree, and he +shot it. Comet tried to break the rope. All his panic had returned; +but the report had not shattered him as that other did, for the gun +was loaded light. + +After that, frequently the old man shot a bird in his sight, loading +the gun more and more heavily, and each time after the shot coming to +him, showing him the bird, and speaking to him kindly, gently. But for +all that the Terror remained in his heart. + +One afternoon the girl, accompanied by a young man, rode over on +horseback, dismounted, and came in. She always stopped when she was +riding by. + +"It's mighty slow business," old Swygert reported; "I don't know +whether I'm makin' any headway or not." + +That night old Mrs. Swygert told him she thought he had better give it +up. It wasn't worth the time and worry. The dog was just yellow. + +Swygert pondered a long time. "When I was a kid," he said at last, +"there came up a terrible thunderstorm. It was in South America. I was +water boy for a railroad gang, and the storm drove us in a shack. +While lightnin' was hittin' all around, one of the grown men told me +it always picked out boys with red hair. My hair was red, an' I was +little and ignorant. For years I was skeered of lightnin'. I never +have quite got over it. But no man ever said I was yellow." + +Again he was silent for a while. Then he went on: "I don't seem to be +makin' much headway, I admit that. I'm lettin' him run away as far as +he can. Now I've got to shoot an' make him come toward the gun +himself, right while I'm shootin' it." + +Next day Comet was tied up and fasted, and next, until he was gaunt +and famished. Then, on the afternoon of the third day, Mrs. Swygert, +at her husband's direction, placed before him, within reach of his +chain, some raw beefsteak. As he started for it, Swygert shot. He drew +back, panting, then, hunger getting the better of him, started again. +Again Swygert shot. + +After that for days Comet "Ate to music," as Swygert expressed it. +"Now," he said, "he's got to come toward the gun when he's not even +tied up." + +Not far from Swygert's house is a small pond, and on one side the +banks are perpendicular. Toward this pond the old man, with the gun +under his arm and the dog following, went. Here in the silence of the +woods, with just the two of them together, was to be a final test. + +On the shelving bank Swygert picked up a stick and tossed it into the +middle of the pond with the command to "fetch." Comet sprang eagerly +in and retrieved it. Twice this was repeated. But the third time, as +the dog approached the shore, Swygert picked up the gun and fired. + +Quickly the dog dropped the stick, then turned and swam toward the +other shore. Here, so precipitous were the banks, he could not get a +foothold. He turned once more and struck out diagonally across the +pond. Swygert met him and fired. + +Over and over it happened. Each time, after he fired, the old man +stooped down with extended hand and begged him to come on. His face +was grim now, and, though the day was cool, sweat stood out on his +brow. "You'll face the music," he said, "or you'll drown. Better be +dead than called yellow." + +The dog was growing weary now. His head was barely above water. His +efforts to clamber up the opposite bank were feeble, frantic. Yet, +each time as he drew near the shore Swygert fired. + +He was not using light loads now. He was using the regular load of the +bird hunter. Time had passed for temporizing. The sweat was standing +out all over his face. The sternness in his eyes was terrible to see, +for it was the sternness of a man who is suffering. + +A dog can swim a long time. The sun dropped over the trees. Still the +firing went on, regularly, like a minute gun. + +Just before the sun set an exhausted dog staggered toward an old man +almost as exhausted as he. The dog had been too near death and was too +faint to care now for the gun that was being fired over his head. On +and on he came, toward the man, disregarding the noise of the gun. It +would not hurt him, that he knew at last. He might have many enemies, +but the gun, in the hands of this man, was not one of them. Suddenly +old Swygert sank down and took the dripping dog in his arms. + +"Old boy," he said, "old boy." + +That night Comet lay before the fire, and looked straight into the +eyes of a man, as he used to look in the old days. + +Next season Larsen, glancing over his sporting papers, was astonished +to see that among promising Derbys the fall trials had called forth +was a pointer named Comet. He would have thought it some other dog +than the one who had disappointed him so by turning out gun-shy, in +spite of all his efforts to prevent, had it not been for the fact that +the entry was booked as: "Comet; owner, Miss Marian Devant; handler, +Wade Swygert." + +Next year he was still more astonished to see in the same paper that +Comet, handled by Swygert, had won first place in a Western trial, and +was prominently spoken of as a National Championship possibility. As +for him, he had no young entries to offer, but was staking everything +on the National Championship, where he was to enter Larsen's Peerless +II. + +It was strange how things fell out--but things have a habit of turning +out strangely in field trials, as well as elsewhere. When Larsen +reached the town where the National Championship was to be run, there +on the street, straining at the leash held by old Swygert, whom he +used to know, was a seasoned young pointer, with a white body, a brown +head, and a brown saddle spot--the same pointer he had seen two years +before turn tail and run in that terror a dog never quite overcomes. + +But the strangest thing of all happened that night at the drawing, +when, according to the slips taken at random from a hat, it was +declared that on the following Wednesday Comet, the pointer, was to +run with Peerless II. + +It gave Larsen a strange thrill, this announcement. He left the +meeting and went straightway to his room. There for a long time he sat +pondering. Next day at a hardware store he bought some black powder +and some shells. + +The race was to be run next day, and that night in his room he loaded +half-a-dozen shells. It would have been a study in faces to watch him +as he bent over his work, on his lips a smile. Into the shells he +packed all the powder they could stand, all the powder his trusted gun +could stand, without bursting. It was a load big enough to kill a +bear, to bring down a buffalo. It was a load that would echo and +reecho in the hills. + +On the morning that Larsen walked out in front of the judges and the +field, Peerless II at the leash, old Swygert, with Comet at his side, +he glanced around at the "field," or spectators. Among them was a +handsome young woman, and with her, to his amazement, George Devant. +He could not help chuckling inside himself as he thought of what would +happen that day, for once a gun-shy dog, always a gun-shy dog--that +was _his_ experience. + +As for Comet, he faced the straw fields eagerly, confidently, already +a veteran. Long ago fear of the gun had left him, for the most part. +There were times when at a report above his head he still trembled, +and the shocked nerves in his ear gave a twinge like that of a bad +tooth. But always at the quiet voice of the old man, his god, he grew +steady, and remained staunch. + +Some disturbing memory did start within him to-day as he glanced at +the man with the other dog. It seemed to him as if in another and an +evil world he had seen that face. His heart began to pound fast, and +his tail drooped for a moment. Within an hour it was all to come back +to him--the terror, the panic, the agony of that far-away time. + +He looked up at old Swygert, who was his god, and to whom his soul +belonged, though he was booked as the property of Miss Marian Devant. +Of the arrangements he could know nothing, being a dog. Old Swygert, +having cured him, could not meet the expenses of taking him to field +trials. The girl had come to the old man's assistance, an assistance +which he had accepted only under condition that the dog should be +entered as hers, with himself as handler. + +"Are you ready, gentlemen?" the judges asked. + +"Ready," said Larsen and old Swygert. + +And Comet and Peerless II were speeding away across that field, and +behind them came handlers, and judges and spectators, all mounted. + +It was a race people still talk about, and for a reason, for strange +things happened that day. At first there was nothing unusual. It was +like any other field trial. Comet found birds, and Swygert, his +handler, flushed them and shot. Comet remained steady. Then Peerless +II found a covey, and Larsen flushed them and shot. And so for an hour +it went. + +Then Comet disappeared, and old Swygert, riding hard and looking for +him, went out of sight over a hill. But Comet had not gone far. As a +matter of fact, he was near by, hidden in some high straw, pointing a +covey of birds. One of the spectators spied him, and called the +judges' attention to him. Everybody, including Larsen, rode up to him, +but still Swygert had not come back. + +They called him, but the old man was a little deaf. Some of the men +rode to the top of the hill but could not see him. In his zeal he had +got a considerable distance away. Meanwhile, here was his dog, +pointed. + +If any one had looked at Larsen's face he would have seen the +exultation there, for now his chance had come--the very chance he had +been looking for. It's a courtesy one handler sometimes extends +another who is absent from the spot, to go in and flush his dog's +birds. + +"I'll handle this covey for Mr. Swygert," said Larsen to the judges, +his voice smooth and plausible, on his face a smile. + +And thus it happened that Comet faced his supreme ordeal without the +steadying voice of his god. + +He only knew that ahead of him were birds, and that behind him a man +was coming through the straw, and that behind the man a crowd of +people on horseback were watching him. He had become used to that, but +when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the face of the advancing +man, his soul began to tremble. + +"Call your dog in, Mr. Larsen," directed the judge. "Make him +back stand." + +Only a moment was lost, while Peerless, a young dog himself, came +running in and at a command from Larsen stopped in his tracks behind +Comet, and pointed. Larsen's dogs always obeyed, quickly, +mechanically. Without ever gaining their confidence, Larsen had a way +of turning them into finished field-trial dogs. They obeyed, because +they were afraid not to. + +According to the rules the man handling the dog has to shoot as the +birds rise. This is done in order to test the dog's steadiness when a +gun is fired over him. No specification is made as to the size of the +shotgun to be used. Usually, however, small-gauge guns are carried. +The one in Larsen's hands was a twelve gauge, and consequently large. + +All morning he had been using it over his own dog. Nobody had paid any +attention to it, because he shot smokeless powder. But now, as he +advanced, he reached into the left-hand pocket of his hunting coat, +where six shells rattled as he hurried along. Two of these he took out +and rammed into the barrels. + +As for Comet, still standing rigid, statuesque, he heard, as has been +said, the brush of steps through the straw, glimpsed a face, and +trembled. But only for a moment. Then he steadied, head high, tail +straight out. The birds rose with a whir--and then was repeated that +horror of his youth. Above his ears, ears that would always be tender, +broke a great roar. Either because of his excitement, or because of a +sudden wave of revenge, or of a determination to make sure of the +dog's flight, Larsen had pulled both triggers at once. The combined +report shattered through the dog's eardrums, it shivered through his +nerves, he sank in agony into the straw. + +Then the old impulse to flee was upon him, and he sprang to his feet, +and looked about wildly. But from somewhere in that crowd behind him +came to his tingling ears a voice--clear, ringing, deep, the voice of +a woman--a woman he knew--pleading as his master used to plead, +calling on him not to run, but to stand. + +"Steady," it said. "Steady, Comet!" + +It called him to himself, it soothed him, it calmed him, and he turned +and looked toward the crowd. With the roar of the shotgun the usual +order observed in field trials was broken up. All rules seemed to have +been suspended. Ordinarily, no one belonging to "the field" is allowed +to speak to a dog. Yet the girl had spoken to him. Ordinarily, the +spectators must remain in the rear of the judges. Yet one of the +judges had himself wheeled his horse about and was galloping off, and +Marian Devant had pushed through the crowd and was riding toward the +bewildered dog. + +He stood staunch where he was, though in his ears was still a +throbbing pain, and though all about him was this growing confusion he +could not understand. The man he feared was running across the field +yonder, in the direction taken by the judge. He was blowing his +whistle as he ran. Through the crowd, his face terrible to see, his +own master was coming. Both the old man and the girl had dismounted +now, and were running toward him. + +"I heard," old Swygert was saying to her. "I heard it! I might 'a' +known! I might 'a' known!" + +"He stood," she panted, "like a rock--oh, the brave, beautiful thing!" + +"Where is that----" Swygert suddenly checked himself and looked +around. + +A man in the crowd (they had all gathered about now), laughed. + +"He's gone after his dog," he said. "Peerless has run away!" + + + +FIFTY-TWO WEEKS FOR FLORETTE + +By ELIZABETH ALEXANDER HEERMANN [ELIZABETH ALEXANDER in _Saturday +Evening Post_, August 13,1921.] + + +It had been over two months since Freddy Le Fay's bill had been paid, +and Miss Nellie Blair was worried. She had written to Freddy's mother +repeatedly, but there had been no answer. + +"It's all your own fault, sister. You should never have taken Freddy," +Miss Eva said sharply. "I told you so at the time, when I saw his +mother's hair. And of course Le Fay is not her real name. It looks to +me like a clear case of desertion." + +"I can't believe it. She seemed so devoted," faltered Miss Nellie. + +"Oh, a girl like that!" Miss Eva sniffed. "You should never have +consented." + +"Well, the poor thing was so worried, and if it meant saving a child +from a dreadful life----" + +"There are other schools more suitable." + +"But, sister, she seemed to have her heart set on ours. She begged me +to make a little gentleman out of him." + +"As if you could ever do that!" + +"Why not?" asked Mary, their niece. + +"That dreadful child!" + +"Freddy isn't dreadful!" cried Mary hotly. + +"With that atrocious slang! Won't eat his oatmeal! And he's such a +queer child--queer! So pale, never laughs, doesn't like any one. Why +should you take up for him? He doesn't even like you. Hates me, I +suppose." + +"It's because we are so different from the women he has known," said +Mary. + +"I should hope so! Well, sister, what are you going to do about it?" + +"I don't know what to do," sighed Miss Nellie. "He hasn't any other +relatives as far as I know. And the summer coming on, what shall we +do?" + +"Nothing for it but to send him to an orphanage if she doesn't write +soon," said Miss Eva. + +"Oh, auntie, you wouldn't!" + +"Why not? How can we afford to give children free board and +education?" + +"It's only one child." + +"It would be a dozen, if we once started it." + +"I'll wait another month," said Miss Nellie, "and then, really, +something will have to be done." + +The girl looked out of the window. + +"There he is now," she said, "sitting on the stone wall at the end of +the garden. It's his favourite spot." + +"What on earth he wants to sit there for--away from all the other +children! He never plays. Look at him! Just sitting there--not moving. +How stupid!" exclaimed Miss Eva impatiently. + +"I do declare, I believe he's fallen asleep," said Miss Nellie. + +Freddy was not asleep. He had only to close his eyes and it would all +come back to him. Memories that he could not put into words, +sensations without definite thought, crowded in upon him. The +smell--the thick smell of grease paint, choking powder, dust, gas, old +walls, bodies, and breath, and sharp perfume; the sickening, +delicious, stale, enchanting, never-to-be-forgotten odour of the +theatre; the nerves' sudden tension at the cry of "Ov-a-chure"; their +tingling as the jaded music blares; the lift of the heart as the +curtain rises; the catch in the throat as Florette runs on to do her +turn. + +Florette was a performer on the trapeze in vaudeville. Her figure was +perfect from the strenuous daily exercise. She was small, young, and a +shade too blonde. First she appeared in a sort of blue evening dress, +except that it was shorter even than a d butante's. She ran out +quickly from the wings, bowed excessively, smiled appealingly, and, +skipping over to the trapeze, seized the two iron rings that hung from +ropes. Lifting her own weight by the strength in her slender wrists, +she flung her legs upward and hooked her knees into the rings. Then +hanging head downward she swung back and forth; flung herself upright +again, sat and swung; climbed to the topmost bar of the trapeze and +hung down again. Her partner ran on and repeated her monkeylike +manoeuvres. Then Florette held his hands while he swung upside down, +he held Florette while she swung upside down. They turned head over +heels, over and over each other, up and down, catching and slipping, +and adjusting their balance, in time to gay tunes. + +Sometimes the audience clapped. Sometimes they were too familiar with +their kind of flirtation with death to clap. Then Florette and her +partner would invent something a little more daring. They would learn +to balance themselves on chairs tilted on two legs on the trapeze, or +Florette would hang by only one hand, or she would support her partner +by a strap held in her teeth. Sometimes Florette's risks were great +enough to thrill the audience with the thought of death. + +The thought of a slip, broken bones, delighted the safe people in +comfortable chairs. They laughed. Florette laughed, too, for Freddy +was waiting in the wings. + +There were mothers in the audience who cooked and mended, swept and +dusted, ran up and down innumerable stairs, washed greasy dishes, wore +ugly house dresses, slaved and scolded and got chapped hands, all for +their children. Florette, always dainty and pretty, had nothing to do +but airily, gracefully swing, and smile. Other mothers spent their +lives for their little boys. Florette only risked hers twice a day. + +While the partner played an accordion Florette ran out for her quick +change. Freddy was waiting, with her dress hung over a chair. He flew +to meet her. His eager, nimble fingers unfastened the blue frock. He +slipped the next costume over her head without mussing a single +beloved blonde hair. The second costume was a tight-fitting silver +bodice with a fluff of green skirt underneath. Freddy had it fastened +up in a twinkling. Florette ran out again and pulled herself up into +the trapeze. + +While Florette went through the second part of her act Freddy folded +up the blue costume and trudged upstairs with it. Florette's dressing +room was usually up four flights. Freddy put the blue dress on a coat +hanger and wrapped a muslin cover about it. Then he trudged down the +four flights again, with the third costume over his arm. It was a +Chinese jacket and a pair of tight, short blue satin trousers, and +Freddy was very proud of this confection. He stood as a screen for +Florette while she put on the trousers, and there are not many little +boys who have a mamma who could look so pretty in them. + +Florette skipped out lightly and finished her act by swinging far out +over the audience, back and forth, faster and faster, farther and +farther out, until it seemed as if she were going to fling herself +into the lap of some middle-aged gentleman in the third row. His wife +invariably murmured something about a hussy as Florette's pretty bare +legs flashed overhead. The music played louder, ended with a boom from +the drum. Florette flung herself upright, kissed her hands, the +curtain fell, and the barelegged hussy ran up to the dressing room +where her little son waited. + +Freddy had already hung up and shrouded the silver-and-green costume, +and was waiting for the Chinese one. He pounced upon it, muttered +about some wrinkles, put it into place, and went to the dressing table +to hand Florette the cold cream. He found her make-up towel, all caked +with red and blue, which she had flung down on the floor. He patted +her highly glittering hair and adjusted a pin. He marshalled the jars +and little pans and sticks of grease paint on her shelf into an +orderly row and blew off the deep layers of powder she had scattered. +Then he took down her street dress from its hook and slipped it deftly +over her shoulders and had it buttoned up before Florette could yawn. +He handed her her saucy bright hat. He flung himself into his own +coat. + +"Well, le's go, Florette!" cried Freddy gayly, with dancing eyes. He +had never called her mamma. She was too little and cute. + +Then they would go to the hotel, never the best, where they were +stopping. The room with its greenish light, its soiled lace curtains, +the water pitcher always cracked, the bed always lumpy, the sheets +always damp, was home to Freddy. Florette made it warm and cozy even +when there was no heat in the radiator. She had all sorts of clever +home-making tricks. She toasted marshmallows over the gas jet; she +spread a shawl on the trunk; or she surprised Freddy by pinning +pictures out of the funny page on the wall. She could make the nicest +tea on a little alcohol stove she carried in her trunk. There was +always a little feast after the theatre on the table that invariably +wabbled. Freddy would pretend that the foot of the iron bed was a +trapeze. How they laughed. On freezing nights in Maine or Minnesota, +Florette would let Freddy warm his feet against hers, or she would get +up and spread her coat that looked just like fur over the bed. + +When they struck a new town at the beginning of each week Freddy and +Florette would go bumming and see all the sights, whether it was +Niagara Falls or just the new Methodist Church in Cedar Rapids. Freddy +would have been sorry for little boys who had to stay in one home all +the time--that is, if he had known anything at all about them. But the +life of the strolling player was all that he had ever known, and he +found it delightful, except for the dreaded intervals of "bookin' the +ac'." + +The dream of every vaudevillian is to be booked for fifty-two unbroken +weeks in the year, but few attain such popularity. Florette's seasons +were sometimes long, sometimes short; but there always came the +tedious worrying intervals when managers and agents must be besought +for work. Perhaps she would find that people were tired of her old +tricks, and she would have to rehearse new ones, or interpolate new +songs and gags. Then the new act would be tried out at some obscure +vaudeville house, and if it didn't go the rehearsals and trampings to +agents must begin all over again. Freddy shared the anxieties and +hardships of these times. But the only hardship he really minded was +the loss of Florette, for of course the pretty Miss Le Fay, who was +only nineteen on the agents' books, could not appear on Broadway with +a great big boy like Freddy. + +However, the bad times always ended, and Florette and Freddy would set +out gayly once more for Oshkosh or Atlanta, Dallas or Des Moines. +Meals expanded, Florette bought a rhinestone-covered comb, and the two +adventurers indulged in an orgy of chocolate drops. With the optimism +of the actor, they forgot all about the dismal past weeks, and saw the +new tour as never ending. + +Freddy felt himself once more a real and important human being with a +place in the sun, not just a child to be shushed by a dingy landlady +while his mother was out looking for a job. He knew that he was as +necessary a part of Florette's act as her make-up box. He believed +himself to be as necessary a part of her life as the heart in her +breast, for Florette lavished all her beauty, all her sweetness on +him. No Johns for Florette, pretty and blonde though she was. To the +contempt of her contemporaries Florette refused every chance for a +free meal. Freddy was her sweetheart, her man. She had showered so +many pretty love words on him, she had assured him so often that he +was all in the world she wanted, that Freddy was stunned one day to +hear that he was to have a papa. + +"I don' wan' one," said Freddy flatly. "I ain't never had one, an' I +ain't got no use for one." + +Florette looked cross--an unusual thing. + +"Aw, now, Freddy, don't be a grouch," she said. + +"I don' wan' one," repeated Freddy. + +"You ought to be glad to get a papa!" cried Florette. + +"Why?" + +"Makes you respectable." + +"What's that?" + +"Who'd believe I was a widow--in this profession?" + +Freddy still looked blank. + +"Well," said Florette, "you're goin' to get a nice papa, so there +now!" + +Then the cruel truth dawned on Freddy. It was Florette who wanted a +papa. He had not been enough for her. In some way Florette had found +him lacking. + +Tactfully, Freddy dropped the subject of papas, wooed Florette, and +tried to atone for his shortcomings. He redoubled his compliments, +trotted out all the love words he knew, coaxed Florette with +everything she liked best in him. He even offered to have his nails +filed. At night, in bed, he kissed Florette's bare back between the +shoulder blades, and snuggled close to her, hugging her desperately +with his little thin arms. + +"Flo," he quavered, "you--you ain't lonesome no more, are you?" + +"Me? Lonesome? Whatcher talkin' about, kid?" sleepily murmured +Florette. + +"You ain't never lonesome when you got me around, are you, Flo?" + +"Sure I ain't. Go to sleep, honey." + +"But, Florette----" + +Florette was dozing. + +"Oh, Florette! Florette!" + +"Florette, if you ain't lonesome----" + +"Sh-h-h, now, sh-h-h! Le's go to sleep." + +"But, Florette, you don' wan'--you don' wan'--a pop----" + +"Sh-h-h! Sh-h-h! I'm so tired, honey." + +Florette slept. Freddy lay awake, but he lay still so as not to +disturb her. His arms ached, but he dared not let her go. Finally he +slept, and dreamed of a world in which there was no Florette. He +shuddered and kicked his mother. She gave him a little impatient +shove. He woke. Day was dawning. It was Florette's wedding day. Freddy +did not know it until Florette put on her best coral-velvet hat with +the jet things dangling over her ears. + +"You ain' gonna wear that hat," said Freddy severely. "It's rainin'." + +"Yeah, I'm gonna wear this hat," said Florette, pulling her blonde +earbobs into greater prominence. "An' you put on your best suit an' +new necktie. We're goin' to a weddin'." + +Her tone was gay, arch, her eyes were happy. + +"Who--whose?" Freddy faltered. + +"Mine!" chirped Florette. "I'm goin' to get you that papa I promised +you." + +Freddy turned away. + +"Sulkin'!" chided Florette. "Naughty, jealous boy!" + +The new papa did not appear so formidable as Freddy had expected. In +fact, he turned out to be only Howard, Florette's acrobatic partner. +Freddy philosophically reflected that if one must have a new papa, far +better so to call Howard, who necessarily encroached on Florette's +time, than a stranger who might take up some of her leisure hours. + +But Freddy received a distinct shock when the new papa joined them +after the evening performance and accompanied them up to their room. + +Freddy had always regarded Florette's room as his, too. He felt that +the new papa was an intruder in their home. Alas! It soon became all +too apparent that it was Freddy who was _de trop_, or, as he would +have expressed it, a Mister Buttinski. + +They were having a little supper of pickles and cheese and liver +sausage and jam. Florette and the papa drank out of a bottle by turns +and laughed a great deal. Florette seemed to think the papa very +clever and funny. She laughed at everything he said. She looked at him +with shining eyes. She squeezed his hand under the table. Freddy tried +in vain to attract her attention. Finally he gave up and sat staring +at the oblivious couple with a stupid expression. + +"That kid's half asleep," said the new papa. + +Florette looked at Freddy and was annoyed by his vacant eyes. + +"Go to bed right away," she commanded. + +Freddy looked at her in amazement. + +"Ain't you goin', too, Florette?" he asked. + +"No, you go on--go to sleep." + +"Git into that nice li'l cot an' go by-by," said the new papa +genially. + +Freddy had not seen the cot before. It had been moved in during his +absence at the theatre, and stood white, narrow, and lonely, partly +concealed by a screen. + +"I--I always slep' with Florette," faltered Freddy. + +This seemed to amuse the new papa. But Florette flushed and looked +annoyed. + +"Now, Freddy, are you goin' to be a grouch?" she wailed. + +Freddy was kissed good-night, and went to sleep in the cot. He found +it cold and unfriendly. But habit, the much maligned, is kind as well +as cruel; if it can accustom us to evil, so can it soften pain. Freddy +was beginning to assume proprietary airs toward the cot, which +appeared in every town, and even to express views as to the relative +values of cots in Springfield, Akron, or Joliet--when one night he +woke to hear Florette sobbing. + +Freddy lay awake listening. He had sobbed, too, when he was first +banished to the cot. Was Florette missing him as he had missed her? +Ah, if she at last had seen that papas were not half so nice as +Freddy's, he would not be hard on her. His heart swelled with +forgiveness and love. He stole on tiptoe to Florette's bedside. + +"Flo," he whispered. + +The sobbing ceased. Florette held her breath and pretended to be +asleep. Freddy wriggled his little thin body under the covers and +threw his arms around Florette. With a gulp, she turned and threw her +arms around him. They clasped each other tight and clung without +speaking. They lay on the edge of the bed, holding their breath in +order not to wake the papa who snored loudly. Freddy's cheeks and hair +were wet, a cold tear trickled down his neck, his body ached from the +hard edge of the bed; but he was happy, as only a child or a lover can +be, and Freddy was both. + +In the morning the papa was cross. He did not seem to care for his own +breakfast, but concentrated his attention on Freddy's. Freddy had +always been accustomed to a nice breakfast of tea and toast and jam, +but Howard insisted on ordering oatmeal for him. + +"Naw, Freddy can't stand oatmeal," Florette objected. + +"It's good for him," said Howard, staring severely at his son across +the white-topped restaurant table. + +"I don' see no use forcin' a person to eat what they can't stomach," +said Florette. + +"Yeah, tha's the way you've always spoiled that kid. Look a' them pale +cheeks! Li'l ole pale face!" Howard taunted, stretching a teasing hand +toward Freddy. "Mamma's boy! Reg'lar sissy, he is!" + +He gave Freddy a poke in the ribs. Freddy shrank back, made himself as +small as possible in his chair, looked mutely at Florette. + +"Aw, cut it out, Howard," she begged. "Quit raggin' the kid, can't +you?" + +"Mamma's blessed sugar lump!" jeered Howard, with an ugly gleam in his +eye. "Ought to wear a bib with pink ribbons, so he ought. Gimme a +nursin' bottle for the baby, waiter!" + +The impertinence of this person amazed Freddy. He could only look at +his tormentor speechlessly. Freddy and Florette had been such great +chums that she had never used the maternal prerogative of rudeness. He +had never had any home life, so he was unaware of the coolness with +which members of a family can insult one another. Howard's tones, +never low, were unusually loud this morning, and people turned around +to laugh at the blushing child. The greasy waiter grinned and set the +oatmeal which Howard had ordered before Freddy. + +"Now, then, young man," commanded Howard sternly, "you eat that, and +you eat it quick!" + +Freddy obeyed literally, swallowing as fast as he could, with painful +gasps and gulps, fighting to keep the tears back. Florette reached +under the table and silently squeezed his knee. He flashed her a smile +and swallowed a huge slimy mouthful. + +"You ain't eatin' nothin' yourse'f, Howard," said Florette acidly. +"W'y don' you have some oatmeal?" + +"Tha's right!" shouted Howard. "Side with the kid against me! Tha's +all the thanks I get for tryin' to make a man out o' the li'l sissy. +Oughta known better'n to marry a woman with a spoiled brat." + +"Sh-h-h!" whispered Florette. "Don't tell the whole resterunt about +your fam'ly troubles." + +"Say," hissed Howard, bending down toward her and thrusting out his +jaw, "lay off o' me, will yer?" + +"Lay off yourse'f!" retorted Florette under her breath. "If you wanna +fight le's go back to the hotel where it's private." + +"I don' min' tellin' the world I bin stung!" roared Howard. + +Florette flushed up to the slightly darker roots of her too-blonde +hair. + +"You?" she gasped furiously. "After all I've put up with!" + +"Say, you ain't got any kick comin'! I treated you white, marryin' +you, an' no questions asked." + +"What-ta you mean?" breathed Florette, growing deathly pale. + +Freddy, alarmed, half rose from his chair. + +"Sit down there you!" roared Howard. "What-ta I mean, Miss Innocence?" +he said, mimicking Florette's tone. "Oh, no, of course you ain't no +idea of what I mean!" + +"Come on, Freddy," Florette broke in quickly. "It's a katzenjammer. He +ain't got over last night yet." + +She seized Freddy's hand and walked rapidly toward the door. Howard +lurched after her, followed by the interested stares of the +spectators. On the street he caught up with her and the quarrel +recommenced. + +The act went badly that afternoon. It must be hard to frolic in midair +with a heavy heart. Under cover of the gay music there were angry +muttered words and reproaches. + +"Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!" Florette would trill happily to the audience as +she poised on one toe. "What-ta you tryin' to do--shake me off'n the +bar?" she would mutter under her breath to her partner. + +"That's right! Leggo o' me an' lemme bus' my bean, damn you!" snarled +Howard. And to the audience he sang, "Oh, ain't it great to have a +little girlie you can trust for--life!" + +They were still muttering angrily as they came off. The handclapping +had been faint. + +"Aw, for God's sake, stop your jawin'!" half screamed Florette. "It +ain't no more my fault than it is yours. If they don' like us they +don' like us, tha's all." + +She ran up the stairs, sobbing. Howard followed her. They shared a +dressing room now. It was small, and Freddy was in the way, although +he tried to squeeze himself into the corner by the dingy stationary +washstand. Howard shoved Freddy. Florette protested. The quarrelling +broke out afresh. Howard tipped over a bottle of liquid white. +Florette screamed at him, and he raised his fist. Freddy darted out of +his corner. + +"Say, ya big stiff, cut out that rough stuff, see?" cried little +Freddy in the only language of chivalry that he knew. + +Howard whirled upon him furiously, calling him a name that Freddy did +not understand, but Florette flung herself between them and caught the +blow. + + * * * * * + +"He certainly looks as if he had fallen asleep," Miss Nellie Blair +repeated. "Better run out and get him, Mary. He might tumble off the +wall." + +As Mary went out a maid came in. + +"A gen'l'mun to see you, Miss Blair," she announced. + +"Is it a parent?" asked Miss Nellie. + +The maid's eyebrows twitched, and she looked faintly grieved, as all +good servants do when they are forced to consider someone whom they +cannot acknowledge as their superior. + +"No, ma'am, he doesn't look like a parent," she complained. + +"He really is a very queer-lookin' sort of person, ma'am. I wouldn't +know exactly where to place him. Shall I say you are out, ma'am?" + +"Yes," said Miss Eva. "No doubt he wants to sell an encyclopedia." + +"No, let him come in," said Miss Nellie. "It might be a reporter about +Madame d'Avala," she added, turning to her sister. "Sometimes they +look queer." + +"If it turns out to be an encyclopedia I shall leave you at once," +said Miss Eva. "You are so kind-hearted that you will look through +twenty-four volumes, and miss your dinner----" + +But the gentleman who came in carried no books, nor did he look like +one who had ever been associated with them. Carefully dressed in the +very worst of taste from his scarfpin to his boots, he had evidently +just been too carefully shaved, for there were scratches on his wide, +ludicrous face, and his smile was as rueful as a clown's. + +"The Misses Blair, I presume?" he asked in what was unmistakably his +society manner, and he held out a card. + +Miss Eva took it and read aloud, "Mr. Bert Brannigan, Brannigan and +Bowers, Black-Face Comedians." + +"Ah?" murmured Miss Nellie, who was always polite even in the most +trying circumstances. + +But Miss Eva could only stare at the rich brown suit, the lavender tie +and matching socks and handkerchief. + +"Well?" said Miss Eva. + +Mr. Brannigan cleared his throat and looked cautiously about the room. +His heavy, clownlike face was troubled. + +"Where's the kid?" he asked in a hoarse whisper. + +"What child?" Miss Eva snapped. + +"You've come to see one of our pupils?" Miss Nellie faltered. + +"Yeah. Hers." + +"Hers?" + +"W'y, Miss Le Fay's li'l boy." + +"Oh, Freddy?" + +"Sure! Does he--he don't--you ain't tole 'im yet, have you?" + +"Told him what?" + +"My God! don't you know?" + +Bert Brannigan stared at the ladies, mopping his brow with the +lavender handkerchief. + +"Please explain yourself, Mr. Brannigan," said Miss Eva. + +"She's dead. I thought you knew." + +"Miss Le Fay is dead?" gasped Miss Nellie. + +"Why weren't we told?" asked Miss Eva. + +"It was in the papers," said Bert. "But they didn't give Florette no +front-page headlines, an' maybe you don't read the theatrical news." + +"No," said Miss Eva. + +"Well, not bein' in the profession," Mr. Brannigan said as if he were +apologizing for her. + +He sat down and continued to mop his brow mechanically. The two +sisters stared in dismay at the clown who had brought bad news. + +"W'at I don' know is how to tell the kid," said Bert. "He was nutty +about Florette; didn't give a darn for no one else. I bin on the bill +with them two lots of times, an' I seen how it was. The money ain't +goin' to be no comfort to that kid!" + +"The money?" + +"Florette's insurance--made out to him. Tha's w'y I come. She wan'ed +him to stay on here, see, till he was all educated. They's enough, +too. She was always insured heavy for the kid. They's some back money +comin' to you, too. She tole me. The reason w'y she didn't sen' it on +was because she was out of luck an' broke, see?" + +"But why didn't Miss Le Fay write to us?" asked Miss Nellie. "If she +was in difficulties we----" + +"Naw, Florette wasn' that kind; nev' put up any hard-luck story y' +un'erstan'. But she'd bin outa work, sick. An' w'en she come back it +looked like her ac' was a frost. I run up on her in K.C., an'----" + +"What is K.C.?" + +"Why, Kansas City! We was on the bill there two weeks ago. Me an' +Florette was ole friends, see? No foolishness, if you know what I +mean. I'm a married man myse'f--Bowers there on the card's my +wife--but me an' Florette met about five years ago, an' kep' on +runnin' on to one another on the bill, first one place an' then +another. So she was glad to see me again, an' me her. 'W'y, w'ere's +Freddy?' I says, first thing. An' then I never seen any person's face +look so sad. But she begun tellin' me right off w'at a fine place the +kid was at, an' how the theayter wasn't no place for a chile. An' she +says, 'Bert, I wan' him to stay w'ere he's happy an' safe,' she says. +'Even if I nev' see him again,' she says. Well, it give me the shivers +then. Psychic, I guess." + +Bert paused, staring into space. + +"And then?" Miss Nellie asked gently. + +"Well, like I was tellin' you, Florette had been playin' in hard luck. +Now I don' know whether you ladies know anything about the vodvil +game. Some ac's is booked out through the circuit from N' Yawk; others +is booked up by some li'l fly-by-night agent, gettin' a date here an' +a date there, terrible jumps between stands, see?--and nev' knowin' +one week where you're goin' the nex', or whether at all. Well, +Florette was gettin' her bookin' that way. An' on that you gotta make +good with each house you play, get me? An' somethin' had went wrong +with the ac' since I seen it las'. It useter be A Number I, y' +un'erstan', but looked like Florette had lost int'rust or somethin'. +She didn't put no pep into it, if you know what I mean. An' vodvil's +gotta be all pep. Then, too, her an' that partner of hers jawin' all +the time somethin' fierce. I could hear him raggin' her that af'noon, +an' me standin' in the wings, an' they slipped up on some of their +tricks terrible, an' the audience laughed. But not with 'em, at 'em, +y' un'erstan'! Well, so the ac' was a fros', an' they was cancelled." + +"Cancelled?" + +"Fired, I guess you'd call it. They was to play again that night an' +then move on, see?" + +"Oh, yes." + +"An' they didn't have no bookin' ahead. Florette come an' talked to me +again, an' she says again she wanted Freddy to be happy, an' git a +better start'n she'd had an' all. 'An,' Bert,' she says, 'if anything +ev' happens to me, you go an' give 'um the money for Freddy,' she +says." + +"Poor thing! Perhaps she had a premonition of her death," murmured +Miss Nellie. + +Bert gave her a queer look. + +"Yeah--yes, ma'am, p'raps so. I was watchin' her from the wings that +night," he went on. "The ac' was almos' over, an' I couldn't see +nothin' wrong. Howard had run off an' Florette was standin' up on the +trapeze kissin' her ban's like she always done at the finish. But all +of a sudden she sort of trem'led an' turned ha'f way roun' like she +couldn't make up her min' what to do, an' los' her balance, an' caught +holt of a rope--an' let go--an' fell." + +Miss Nellie covered her face with her hands. Miss Eva turned away to +the window. + +"She was dead w'en I got to her," said Bert. + +"Be careful!" said Miss Eva sharply. "The child is coming in." + +"Freddy wasn't asleep at all," said Mary, opening the door. "He was +just playing a game, but he won't tell me----Oh, I beg your pardon! I +didn't know any one was here." + +Freddy had stopped round-eyed, open-mouthed with incredulous delight. + +"Bert!" he gasped. "The son of a gun!" + +"Freddy!" cried the Misses Blair. + +But Bert held out his arms and Freddy ran into them. + +"Gee, Bert, I'm glad to see ya!" rejoiced Freddy. + +"Me, too, kid, glad to see you! How's the boy, huh? Gettin' educated, +huh? Swell school, ain't it?" babbled Bert, fighting for time. + +"Aw, it's all right, I guess," Freddy replied listlessly, glancing at +the Misses Blair. Then turning again with eager interest to Bert, "But +say, Bert, what in the hell a----I mean what-ta you doin' here?" + +"Why--ah--ah--jus' stoppin' by to say howdy, see, an'----" + +"Playin'in N'Yawk?" + +"No." + +"Jus'come in?" + +"Yeah." + +Freddy drew his breath in quickly. + +"Say, Bert, you--you ain't seen Florette anywheres?" + +"Why, ye-yeah." + +"Where is she, Bert?" + +There was a deathly hush. + +Then Miss Eva motioned to Miss Nellie and said, "If you will excuse +us, Mr. Brannigan, we have some arrangements to make about the concert +to-night. Madame d'Avala is to sing in the school auditorium, a +benefit performance," and she went out, followed by her sister and +niece. + +"Where's Florette?" Freddy asked again, his voice trembling with +eagerness. + +"I--seen her in K.C., sonny." + +"How's the ac'?" + +"Fine! Fine! Great!" + +"No kiddin'?" + +"No kiddin'." + +"Florette--all right?" + +"Why, what made you think any different?" + +"Who hooks her up now, Bert?" + +"She hires the dresser at the theatre." + +"I could 'a' kep' on doin' it," said Freddy, with a sigh. + +"Aw, now, kid, it's better for you here, gettin' educated an' all." + +"I don't like it, Bert." + +"You don't like it?" + +"Naw." + +"You don't like it! After all she done!" + +"I hate this ole school. I wanna leave. You tell Florette." + +"Aw, now, Freddy----" + +"I'm lonesome. I don't like nobody here." His voice dropped. "An'--an' +they don't like me." + +"Aw, now, Freddy----" + +"Maybe Miss Mary does. But Miss Eva don't. Anyway, I ain't no use to +anybody here. What's the sense of stayin' where you ain't no use? An' +they're always callin' me down. I don't do nothin' right. I can't even +talk so's they'll like it. Florette liked the way I talked all right. +An' you get what I mean, don't you, Bert? But they don't know nothin'. +Why, they don't know nothin', Bert! Why, there's one boy ain't ever +been inside a theatre! What-ta you know about that, Bert? Gee, Bert, +I'm awful glad you come! I'd 'a' bust not havin' somebody to talk to." + +Bert was silent. He still held Freddy in his arms. His heart reeled at +the thought of what he must tell the child. He cleared his throat, +opened his mouth to speak, but the words would not come. + +Freddy chattered on, loosing the flood gates of his accumulated +loneliness. He told how Florette had bidden him "learn to be a li'l +gem'mum," and how he really tried; but how silly were the rules that +governed a gentlemanly existence; how the other li'l gem'mum laughed +at him, and talked of things he had never heard of, and never heard of +the things he talked of, until at last he had ceased trying to be one +of them. + +"You tell Florette I gotta leave this place," he concluded firmly. +"Bert, now you tell Florette. Will you, Bert? Huh?" + +"Freddy--I----Freddy, lissen now. I got somethin' to tell you." + +"What?" + +"I--I come on to tell you, Freddy. Tha's why I come out to tell you, +see?" + +"Well, spit it out," Freddy laughed. + +Bert groaned. + +"Whassa matter, Bert? What's eatin' you?" + +"I--I----Say, Freddy, lissen--lissen, now, Freddy. I----" + +"Florette! She ain't sick? Bert, is Florette sick?" + +"No! No, I----" + +"You tell me, Bert! If it's bad news about Florette----" + +His voice died out. His face grew white. Bert could not meet his eyes. + +"No, no, now, Freddy," Bert mumbled, turning away his head. "You got +me all wrong. It--it's good news, sonny." + +Like a flash Freddy's face cleared. + +"What about, Bert? Good news about what?" + +"Why--ah--why, the ac's goin' big, like I tole you. An'--an' say, boy, +out at one place--out at K.C., it--why, it stopped the show!" + +"Stopped the show!" breathed Freddy in awe. "Oh, Bert, we never done +that before!" + +"An' so--so she--ah, Florette--y'see, kid, account of the ac' goin' so +big, why, she--has to--go away--for a little while." + +"Go away, Bert! Where?" + +"To--to--Englund, an'--Australia." + +"To Englund, an'--Australia?" + +"Yeah, they booked her up 'count o' the ac' goin' so great." + +"Oh, Bert!" + +"Yeah. An' lissen. She's booked for fifty-two weeks solid!" + +"Fifty-two weeks! Oh, Bert, that ain't never happened to us before!" + +"I know. It's--great!" + +Bert blew out his breath loudly, mopped his forehead. He could look at +Freddy now, and he saw a face all aglow with love and pride. + +"When she comin' to get me, Bert?" the child asked confidently. + +"Why--why, Freddy--now--you---" + +Bert could only flounder and look dismayed. + +"She ain't goin' off an' leave me!" wailed the child. + +"Now, lissen! Say, wait a minute! Lissen!" + +"But, Bert! Bert! She--" + +"Say, don't you wanna help Florette, now she's got this gran' bookin' +an' all?" + +"Sure I do, Bert. I wanna he'p her with her quick changes like I +useter." + +"You he'p her! Say, how would that look in all them swell places she's +goin' to? W'y, she'll have a maid!" + +"Like the headliners, Bert?" + +"Sure!" + +"A coon, Bert?" + +"Sure! Like a li'l musical com'dy star." + +"Honest?" + +"Honest!" + +"But, Bert, w'y can't I go, too?" + +"Aw, now, say--w'y--w'y, you're too big!" + +"What-ta y' mean, Bert?" + +"W'y, kid, you talk's if you never bin in the p'fession. How ole does +Miss Le Fay look? Nineteen, tha's all. But with a great big boy like +you taggin' on--W'y, say, you'd queer her with them English managers +right off. You don' wanna do that now, Freddy?" + +"No, but I--" + +"I knew you'd take it sensible. You always bin a lot of help to +Florette." + +"Did she tell you, Bert?" + +"Sure!" + +"A' right. I'll stay. When--when's she comin' to tell me goo'-by?" + +"Why--why--look-a-here. Brace up, ole man. She had to leave a'ready." + +"She's gone?" + +"Say, you don' think bookin' like that can wait, do you? It was take +it or leave it--quick. You didn't wan' her to throw away a chancet +like that, huh, Freddy? Huh?" + +Freddy's head sank on his chest. His hands fell limp. "A' right," he +murmured without looking up. + +The big man bent over the child clumsily and tried to raise his +quivering chin. + +"Aw, now, Freddy," he coaxed, "wanna come out with me an'--an' have a +soda?" + +Freddy shook his head. + +"Buy ya some candy, too. Choc'late drops! An' how about one o' them +li'l airyplane toys I seen in the window down the street? Huh? Or some +marbles? Huh? Freddy, le's go buy out this here dinky li'l ole town. +What-ta ya say, huh? Le's paint this li'l ole town red! What-ta ya +say, sport?" + +Freddy managed a feeble smile. + +"How come you so flush, Brudder Johnsing?" he asked in what he +considered an imitation of darky talk. "Mus' 'a' bin rollin' dem +bones!" + +"Tha's a boy!" shouted Bert with a great guffaw. "There's a comeback +for you! Game! Tha's what I always liked about you, Freddy. You was +always game." + +"I wanna be game!" said Freddy, stiffening his lips. "You tell +Florette. You write to her I was game. Will ya, Bert?" + +A bell rang. + +"Aw, I gotta go dress for supper, Bert. They dress up for supper +here." + +"A' right, kid. Then I'll be goin'----" + +"Goo'-by, Bert. You tell her, Bert." + +"So long, kid." + +"Will ya tell her I was game, Bert?" + +"Aw, she'll know!" + +Madame Margarita d'Avala found herself in a situation all the more +annoying because it was so absurd. She had promised to sing at the +Misses Blair's School for the benefit of a popular charity, and she +had motored out from New York, leaving her maid to do some errands and +to follow by train. But it was eight o'clock and the great Madame +d'Avala found herself alone in the prim guest room of the Misses +Blair's School, with her bag and dressing case, to be sure, but with +no one to help her into the complicated draperies of her gown. There +was no bell. She could not very well run down the corridor, half nude, +shouting for help, especially as she had no idea of where the Misses +Blair kept either themselves or their servants. The Misses Blair had +been so fatiguingly polite on her arrival. Perhaps she had been a +little abrupt in refusing their many offers of service and saying that +she wanted to rest quite alone. Now, of course, they were afraid to +come near her. And, besides, they would think that her maid was with +her by this time. They had given orders to have Madame d'Avala's maid +shown up to her as soon as she arrived, and of course their maid would +be too stupid to know that Madame d'Avala's maid had never come. + +Margarita d'Avala bit her lips and paced the floor, looked out of the +window, opened the door, but there was no one in sight. Well, no help +for it. She must try to get into the gown alone. She stepped into it +and became entangled in the lace; stepped out again, shook the dress +angrily and pushed it on over her head, giving a little impatient +scream as she rumpled her hair. Then she reached up and back, +straining her arms to push the top snap of the corsage into place. But +with the quiet glee of inanimate things the snap immediately snapped +out again. Flushing, Madame d'Avala repeated her performance, and the +snap repeated its. Madame d'Avala stamped both feet and gave a little +gasp of rage. She attacked the belt with no better luck. Chiffon and +lace became entangled in hooks, snaps flew out as fast as she could +push them in. Her arms ached, and the dress assumed strange humpy +outlines as she fastened it up all wrong. + +She would like to rip the cursed thing from her shoulders and tear it +into a million pieces! She felt hysteria sweeping over her. She knew +that she was going to have one of her famous fits of temper in a +minute. + +"Oh! Oh! Oh!" Madame d'Avala screamed aloud, stamping her feet up and +down as fast as they could go. "Oh! Oh! Oh! Damn! Damn! Damn!" + +She did not swear in Italian, because she was not an Italian except by +profession. Her name had been Maggie Davis, but that was a secret +between herself and her press agent. + +"Oh! Damn!" screamed Madame d'Avala again. + +"Ain't it hell?" remarked an interested voice, and Madame d'Avala saw +a small pale face staring at her through the door which she had left +ajar. + +"Come in!" she ordered, and a small thin boy entered, quite unabashed, +looking at her with an air of complete understanding. + +"Who are you?" asked Madame d'Avala. + +"Freddy." + +"Well, Freddy, run at once and find a maid for me, please. Mine hasn't +come, and I'm frantic, simply frantic. Well, why don't you go?" + +"I'll hook you up," said Freddy. + +"You!" + +"Sure! I kin do it better'n any maid you'd get in this helluva +school." + +"Why, Freddy!" + +"Aw, I heard you sayin' damn! You're in the p'fession, +huh? Me, too." + +"You, too?" + +His face clouded. + +"Oh! And now--you have retired?" + +"Yeah--learnin' to be a gem'mum. Lemme there," said Freddy, stepping +behind Madame d'Avala. "Say, you've got it all started wrong." He +attacked the stubborn hooks with light, deft fingers. + +"Why, you can really do it!" cried Madame d'Avala. + +"Sure! This ain't nothin'." Freddy's fingers flew. + +"Careful of that drapery. It's tricky." + +"Say, drapery's pie to me. I fastened up lots harder dresses than +this." + +"Really?" + +"Sure! Florette had swell clo'es. This'n's swell, too. My! ain't it +great to see a classy gown again!" + +Madame d'Avala laughed and Freddy joined her. + +"Say, you seen the teachers at this school?" he asked. "You seen 'em?" + +Madame d'Avala nodded. + +"Nice ladies," said Freddy in an effort to be fair. "But no class--you +know what I mean. Way they slick their hair back, an' no paint or +powder. Gee, Florette wouldn't wear their clo'es to a dog fight!" + +"Nor I," said Madame d'Avala; "I love dogs." + +"I tole Miss Eva she ought to put peroxide in the rinsin' water for +her hair like Florette useter, but it made her mad. I b'lieve in a +woman fixin' herself up all she can, don't you?" asked Freddy +earnestly. + +"Indeed, I do! But tell me, who is Florette?" + +So Freddy told her all about his mother, and about the good fortune +that had come to her. + +"Fifty-two weeks solid! Some ac' to get that kinda bookin, huh?" he +ended. + +"Yes! Oh, yes, indeed!" + +"There y'ah now! Look at youse'f! See if it's a'right." + +Madame d'Avala turned to the mirror. Her gown fell in serene, lovely +folds. It seemed incredible that it was the little demon of a few +minutes before. + +"Perfect! Freddy, you're a wonder. How can I thank you?" + +"Tha's a'right. You're welcome." + +He was regarding her with worshipful eyes. + +"You're awful pretty," he breathed. + +"Thank you," said Madame d'Avala. "Are you coming to my concert?" + +"No, they put us to bed!" cried Freddy in disgust. "Puttin' me to bed +at 8:30 every night! What-ta y' know about that! Jus' w'en the +orchestra would be tunin' up for the evenin' p'formance." + +"What a shame! I'd like to have you see my act." + +"I bet it's great. You got the looks, too. Tha's what it takes in this +p'fession. Make a quick change?" + +"No, I wear the same dress all through." + +"Oh! Well," he sighed deeply--"well, it's been great to see you, +anyway. Goo'-bye." + +The great lady bent down to him and kissed his forehead. + +"Good-bye, Freddy," she said. "You've helped me so much." + +Freddy drew in a long breath. + +"M-m," he sighed, "you know how I come to peek in your door like +that?" + +"Because you heard me screaming 'damn'?" + +"No, before that. Comin' all the way down the hall I could smell it. +Smelled so nice. Don't none of these ladies use perfume. I jus' knew +somebody I'd like was in here soon's I got that smell." + +"Oh, Freddy, I like you, too! But I've got to hurry now. Good-bye. And +thanks so much, dear." + +She started out the door. + +"Oh, gee! I can't go to bed!" Freddy wailed. + +"Come along, then!" cried Madame d'Avala, impetuously seizing his +hand. "I'll make them let you go to the concert. They must!" + +They ran down the hall together hand in hand, Freddy directing the way +to the Misses Blair's study. Miss Eva and Miss Nellie and Mary were +there, and they looked at Freddy compassionately. And though Miss Eva +said it was most unusual, Miss Nellie agreed to Madame d'Avala's +request. + +"For," said gentle Miss Nellie, drawing Madame d'Avala aside and +lowering her voice--"for we are very sorry for Freddy now. His +mother----" + +"Oh, yes, she has gone to England." + +"Why, no! She--is dead!" + +"Oh, _mio povero bambino_! And how he adores her!" + +"Yes." + +"And what will he do then?" + +"He can stay on here. But I am afraid he doesn't like us," Miss Nellie +sighed. + +"Has he no one else?" + +"No--that is, a stepfather. But his mother put him here to save him +from the stepfather's abuse, and--and all the coarsening influences of +stage life, if you understand." + +"Ah, yes, I understand," said Madame d'Avala. "And yet I think I +understand the little one, too. He and I--we have the same nature. We +cannot breathe in the too-high altitudes. For us there must be dancing +in the valley, laughter and roses, perfume and sunshine--always +sunshine." + +"Oh--er--yes," replied Miss Nellie, taken aback by this effusiveness, +which she could only explain as being foreign. + +"It's 8:30," said Miss Eva, looking at her watch. + +"Ah, then I must fly," cried Madame d'Avala. + +"Goo'-bye!" said Freddy wistfully. + +"_Au revoir_," said Madame d'Avala, and electrified the Misses Blair +by adding, "See you after the show, kid." + +"I am very lonely, too," said Margarita d'Avala after the +concert--"lonely and sad." + +"You are?" Freddy cried in amazement. Then, practically, "What about?" + +"It's about a man," confessed the lady. + +"Aw, g'wan!" exclaimed Freddy incredulously. "Say," lowering his voice +confidentially, "lemme tell you something! They ain't a man on earth +worth crying for." + +"How did you know?" asked Margarita. + +"Flo--Florette used to say so." Then a cloud passed over his face. +"She used to say so," he added. + +There was a moment's silence, while the lady watched him. Then +Freddy's mobile face cleared, his eyes shone with their old gay +confidence. + +"Say, I'm telln' you!" said Freddy, spreading his feet apart, +thrusting his hands in his pockets. "I ain't got no use for men +a-tall! An' you take my advice--don't bother over 'em!" + +Margarita laughed. She laughed so hard that Freddy had joined her, and +without knowing how, he was by her side, holding on to her hand while +they both rocked with merriment. When they could laugh no more he +snuggled up to the shoulder that smelled so nice. His face became +babyish and wistful. He stroked the satin of the lovely gown with one +timid finger, while his blue eyes implored hers. + +"Ladies an' children is nicest, ain't they?" he appealed. + +Suddenly the great Margarita d'Avala caught him in her arms and drew +him to that warm, beautiful breast where no child's head had ever +rested. + +"Oh, Freddy, Freddy!" she cried. "You are right, and I must have you!" + +"You kin, s' long's Florette's away," said Freddy. + + + +WILD EARTH + +By SOPHIE KERR + +From _Saturday Evening Post_ + + +The big department store so terrified Wesley Dean that he got no +farther than five steps beyond the entrance. Crowds of well-dressed +ladies milling round like cattle, the noise of many feminine voices, +the excessive warmth and the heady odour of powder and perfume--the +toilet goods were grouped very near the door--all combined to bewilder +and frighten him. He got out before the floorwalker of the centre +aisle could so much as ask him what he wanted. + +Once outside he stood in the spring wind and meditated. There must be +other stores in Baltimore, little ones, where a man could buy things +in quiet and decency. Until the four-o'clock motor stage started for +Frederick he had nothing to do. + +He stuck his hands in his pockets and started down the crowded +crookedness of Lexington Street. He reached the market and strolled +through it leisurely, feeling very much at home with the meats and +vegetables and the good country look of many of the stall keepers. Its +size amazed him; but then he'd always heard that Baltimore was a big +city, and so many people must take a lot to eat. He went on, all the +way through, and after a little hesitation struck down a quiet street +to the right. But he saw no shops of the sort he was looking for, and +he had thoughts of going back and braving the big store again. He +turned again and again, pleased by the orderly rows of +red-brick-with-white-trim houses, homey-looking places in spite of +their smallness and close setting. At last, right in the middle of a +row of these, he saw a large window set in place of the two usual +smaller ones, a window filled with unmistakable feminine stuff, and +the sign, small, neatly gilt lettered: Miss Tolman's Ladies' Shop. +Hemstitching Done. + +There wasn't a soul going in or out, so he braved it, and was happier +still when he found himself the sole customer. The opening of the door +made a bell tinkle in a back room. + +A girl came through parted green wool curtains, a girl so +flaxen-haired, with such blue eyes--like a friendly kitten--that +Wesley Dean almost forgot the errand that had brought him so far. + +As for the girl, she was surprised to see a man, and particularly a +young country man, among the gloves and stockings, cheap pink +underthings, and embroideries of Miss Tolman's shop. + +"You got any--any aprons?" he stammered. + +"White aprons or gingham?" The girl's smile helped Wesley a great +deal. A very nice girl, he decided; but she made him feel queer, +light-headed. + +"I'm not sure, ma'am. When I come away from home this morning I asked +Aunt Dolcey did she need anything, and she said 'yes, a couple of +aprons,' but she didn't say what kind." + +The girl thought it over. "I reckon maybe if she's your auntie she'd +want white aprons." + +Her mistake gave him a chance for the conversation which he felt a +most surprising wish to make. + +"No'm, she's not my auntie. She's the old coloured woman keeps house +for me." + +Oh, she was a very nice girl; something about the way she held her +head made Wesley think of his spunky little riding mare, Teeny. + +"H'm. Then I think you'd be safe to get a gingham; anyway, a gingham +apron comes in handy to anybody working round a kitchen. We got some +nice big ones." + +"Aunt Dolcey's not so awful big; not any bigger'n you, but heavier +set, like." + +There is a distinct advance in friendly intimacy when one has one's +size considered in relation to a customer's needs, particularly when +the consideration shows how little a man knows about women's garments. +The girl reached beneath the counter and brought up an armful of +blue-and-white-checked aprons. She unfolded them deftly, and Wesley +saw that she had small strong hands and round wrists. + +"These got bibs and nice long strings, cover you all up while you're +cooking. They're a dollar." + +His gaze, intent on her rather than the aprons, brought her eyes to +his. + +"Good-looking, but country," was her swift appraisal, adding to it, +"And what a funny mark he's got on his forehead." + +It was true. His young hawklike face, tanned brown by sun and wind, +was made strangely grim by a dark vein on his brow, which lent a +frowning shadow to his whole visage. Yet the eyes she had looked into +were shy and gentle and reassuringly full of open admiration. + +"If you think she'll like 'em I'll take two," he said after an +instant's pause. + +"I'm sure she'll like 'em. They're good gingham and real well made. We +don't keep shoddy stuff. You could go into one of the big stores and +get aprons for fifty, sixty cents, but they wouldn't be good value." + +The soft cadence of her voice gave Wesley a strange and stifled +feeling around the heart. He must--he must stay and talk to her. +Hardly knowing what he said, he burst into loquacity. + +"I did go into one of the big stores, and it sort of scared +me--everything so stuffy and heaped up, and such a lot of people. I +don't get down to Baltimore very often, you see. I do most of my +buying right in Frederick, but I'd broke my disker, and if you send, +it's maybe weeks before the implement house will 'tend to you. So I +just come down and got the piece, so there won't be but one day lost." + +The girl looked up at him again, and he could feel his heart pound +against his ribs. This time she was a little wistful. + +"They say it's real pretty country out round Frederick. I've never +been out of Baltimore, 'cept to go down the bay on +excursions--Betterton and Love Point, and places like that. It makes a +grand sail in hot weather." + +She handed him the package and picked up the two bills he had laid +down on the counter. There was plainly no reason for his further +lingering. But he had an artful idea. + +"Look here--maybe I ought to get Aunt Dolcey a white apron, too. Maybe +she won't want the gingham ones at all." + +The girl looked surprised at such extravagance. + +"But if she doesn't you can bring 'em back when you come to Baltimore +again, and we'd exchange 'em," she argued mildly. + +"No, I better get a white one now. She puts on a white apron +evenings," he added craftily. + +A box of white aprons was lifted from the shelf and a choice made, but +even that transaction could not last forever, as Wesley Dean was +desperately aware. + +"Look here, are you Miss Tolman?" he burst out. "I saw the name +outside on the window." + +"Mercy, no! Miss Tolman's a kind of cousin of mine. She's fifty-two, +and she can't hardly get through that door there." + +He disregarded the description, for the second bundle was being tied +up fast. He had never seen any one tie so fast, he thought. + +"My name's Wesley Dean, and I got a farm in the mountains back of +Frederick. Say--I don't want you to think I'm fresh, but--but--say, +would you go to the movies with me to-night?" + +It had come to him in a flash that he could disregard the seat in the +four-o'clock bus and go back to-morrow morning. Sweat stood out on his +forehead and on his curving, clean-shaven upper lip. His boy's eyes +hung on hers, pleading. All the happiness of his life, he felt, waited +for this girl's answer, this little yellow-haired girl whom he had +never seen until a quarter of an hour before. + +"We-ell," she hesitated, "I--I don't like to have you think I'd pick +up like this with any fellow that come along----" + +"I don't think so!" he broke in fiercely. "If I thought so I'd +never've asked you." + +There was a strange breathless moment in the tiny cluttered shop, a +moment such as some men and women are lucky enough to feel once in a +lifetime. It is the moment when the heart's wireless sends its clear +message, "This is my woman" and "This is my man." The flaxen-haired +girl and the dark boy were caught in the golden magic of it and, half +scared, half ecstatic, were thrown into confusion. + +"I'll go," she whispered breathlessly. "There's a little park a block +down the street. I'll be there at seven o'clock, by the statue." + +"I'll be there, waiting for you," he replied, and because he could not +bear the strange sweet pain that filled him he plunged out of the +shop, jerking the door so that the little bell squealed with surprise. +He had forgotten his packages. + +Also, as he remembered presently, he did not know her name. + +He was at the feet of the statue in the park by half-past six, and +spent a restless half hour there in the cool spring twilight. Perhaps +she would not come! Perhaps he had frightened her, even as he had +frightened himself, by this inexplicable boldness. Other girls passed +by, and some of them glanced with a coquettish challenge at the +handsome tall youth with his frowning brow. But he did not see them. +Presently--and it was just on the stroke of seven--he saw her coming, +hesitantly, and with an air of complete and proper primness. She had +on a plain little shabby suit and hat, but round her throat was a +string of beads of a blue to match her eyes, an enticing, naive +harmony. + +She carried the forgotten aprons, and handed them to him gravely. + +"You left these," she said; and then, to regularize the situation, "My +name's Anita Smithers. I ought've told you this afternoon, but--I +guess I was kind of forgetful, too." + +That made them both smile, and the smile left them less shy. He +stuffed the forgotten aprons into his overcoat pocket. + +"I was so afraid you wouldn't come. Where can we go? I don't know +anything much about the city. I'd like to take you to a nice picture +show, the best there is." + +She flushed with the glory of it. + +"There's a real nice picture house only a little ways from here. They +got a Pauline Frederick film on. I'm just crazy about Pauline +Frederick." + +By this time they were walking sedately out of the park, not daring to +look at each other. She watched him while he bought the tickets and +then a box of caramels from the candy stand inside. + +"He knows what to do," she thought proudly. "He's not a bit of a +hick." + +"D'you go to the pictures a lot?" he asked when they were seated. + +"'Most every night. I'm just crazy about 'em." + +"I expect you've got steady company, then?" The question fairly jerked +out of him. + +She shook her head. "No, I almost always go by myself. My girl friend, +she goes with me sometimes." + +He sighed with relief. "They got good picture shows in Frederick. I go +'most every Saturday night." + +"But you don't live right in Frederick, you said." + +He seized the chance to tell her about himself. + +"Oh, my, no. I live back in the mountains. Say, I just wish you could +see my place. It's up high, and you can look out, ever so +far--everything kind of drops away below, and you can see the river +and the woods, and it takes different colours, 'cording to the season +and the weather. Some days when I'm ploughing or disking and I get up +on the ridge, it's so high up and far away seems like I'm on top the +whole world. It's lonesome--it's off the pike, you see--but I like it. +Here in the city everything crowds on you so close." + +She had listened with the keenest interest. + +"That's so. It must be grand to get off by yourself and have plenty +room. I get so tired of that squinched-in, narrow, stuffy shop; and +the place where I board is worse. I don't make enough to have a room +by myself. There's two other girls in with me, and seems like we're +always under-foot to each other. And there isn't any parlour, and we +got only one bureau for the three of us, and you can guess what a mess +that is. And the closet's about as big as a pocket handkerchief." + +"Ain't you got any folks?" + +The blue eyes held a sudden mist. + +"Nobody but Miss Tolman, and she's only a distant cousin. Ma died two +years ago. She used to sew, but she wasn't strong, and we never could +get ahead." + +"My folks are all gone, too." + +How little and alone she was, but how much nearer to him her aloneness +brought her. He wanted to put his hand over hers and tell her that he +would take care of her, that she need never be alone again. But the +beginning of the film choked back the words. He poked the box of +caramels at her, and she took it, opened it with a murmured "Oh, my, +thank you!" Presently they both had sweetly bulging cheeks. Where +their elbows touched on the narrow chair arm made tingling thrills run +all over him. Once she gave him an unconscious nudge of excitement. + +Out of the corner of his eye he studied her delicate side face as she +sat, with her lips parted, intent on the film. + +"She's pretty--and she's good," thought Wesley Dean. "I expect she's +too good for me." + +But that unwontedly humble thought did not alter it a hair's breadth +that she must be his. The Deans had their way always. The veins in his +wrists and the vein in his forehead beat with his hot purpose. He +shifted so that his arm did not touch hers, for he found the nearness +of her disturbing; he could not plan or think clearly while she was so +close. And he must think clearly. + +When the last flicker of the feature was over and the comic and the +news had wrung their last laugh and gasp of interest from the crowd, +they joined the slow exit of the audience in silence. On the sidewalk, +however, she found her voice. + +"It was an awful nice picture," she said softly. "'Most the nicest I +ever saw." + +"Look here, let's go somewhere and have a hot choc'late, or some soda, +or ice cream," he broke in hurriedly. He could not let her go with so +much yet unsaid. "Or would you like an oyster stew in a reg'lar +restaurant? Yes, that'd be better. Come on; it isn't late." + +"Well, after all those caramels, I shouldn't think an oyster stew----" + +"You can have something else, then." The main thing was to get her at +a table opposite him, where they wouldn't have to hurry away. "Let's +go in there." + +He pointed toward a small restaurant across the street where red +candlelights glimmered warmly through panelled lace. + +"But that looks like such a stylish place," she protested, even as she +let him guide her toward it. + +But it was not so stylish when they got inside, and the appearance of +the stout woman, evidently both proprietor and cashier, who presided +over the scene at a table on a low platform near the door reassured +them both. And the red candleshades were only crinkled paper; the lace +curtains showed many careful darns. A rebellious boy of fourteen, in a +white jacket and apron, evidently the proprietor's son, came to take +their order. After a good bit of urging Anita said that she would take +a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee. + +Wesley ordered an oyster stew for himself, and coffee, and then +grandly added that they would both have vanilla and chocolate ice +cream. + +"He looks as if he just hated being a waiter," said Anita, indicating +the departing boy servitor. + +"Sh'd think he would," said Wesley. He put his arms on the table and +leaned toward her. "I was going home this afternoon till I saw you. I +stayed over just to see you again. I've got to go back in the morning, +for I've not got my spring work done; but--you're going with me." + +The vein on his forehead heightened his look of desperate +determination. He was not so much a suitor as a commander. + +"You haven't got any folks and neither have I, so that makes it easy. +I'll come for you in the morning, about eight o'clock, and we'll go +get a license and get married, and then we can get the ten-o'clock bus +out to Frederick. Oh, girl, I never saw any one like you! I--I'll be +good to you--I'll take care of you. It don't matter if I didn't ever +see you till this afternoon, I'd never find anybody else that I want +so much in a hundred thousand years. I've not got a lot of money, but +the farm's mine, all free and clear, and if my wheat turns out all +right I'll have a thousand dollars' cash outright come the end of the +year, even after the taxes are paid and everything. Won't you look at +me, Anita--won't you tell me something? Don't you like me?" + +The girl had listened with her eyes cast down, her hands nervously +picking at the edge of the tablecloth. But he was not mistaken in her. +She had wherewith to meet him, and her gaze was honest, without +coquetry or evasion. + +"Oh, I do like you!" she cried with quick colour. "I do! I do! I +always thought somebody like you'd come along some day, just like +this, and then--it just seemed foolish to expect it. But look here. I +told you a story, right off. My name's not Anita--it's Annie. I took +to pretending it's Anita because--it does seem sort of silly, but I +got to tell you--because I saw it in the movies, and it seemed sort of +cute and different, and Annie's such a plain, common name. But I +couldn't let you go on talking like that and calling me by it, now +could I?" + +The mutinous young waiter brought their food and thumped it +truculently down before them. + +"Look out!" said Dean with sudden violent harshness, the vein in his +forehead darkening ominously. "What do you think you're doing, feeding +cattle?" + +The boy drew back in confusion, and Annie exclaimed: "Oh, he didn't +mean it anything against us--he's just mad because he has to be a +waiter." + +"Well, he'd better be careful; kids can be too smart Aleck." + +The little gust had deflected them away from their own affairs. But +Annie brought them back. She leaned toward him. + +"You make me kind of afraid of you. If you ever spoke to me like that +it'd just about kill me." + +He was contrite. "Why, I couldn't ever speak to you like that, honey; +it just made me mad the way he banged things down in front of you. I +don't want people to treat you like that." + +"And you look so fierce, too--scowling so all the time." + +He put up a brown finger and touched his savage vein. + +"Now, now--you mustn't mind my look. All the Dean men are marked like +that; it's in the blood. It don't mean a thing." He smiled winningly. +"I reckon if you're beginning to scold me you're going to marry me, +huh?" + +Something very sweet and womanly leaped in Annie's blue eyes. + +"I--I reckon I am," she said, and then confessed herself a brave +adventurer and philosopher in one. "Yes, I'd be a fool to sit round +and make excuses and pretend it wouldn't do to be so out of the +ordinary when here you are and here I am, and it means--our whole +lives. I don't care, either, if I didn't ever set eyes on you till +to-day--I know you're all right and that what you say's true. And I +feel as if I'd known you for years and years." + +"That's the way I felt about you the minute I looked at you. Oh"--he +gave a vast and shaking sigh--"I can't hardly believe my luck. Eat up +your supper and let's get out of here. Maybe there's some stores open +yet and I could buy you a ring." + +"And I have to be in my boarding house by half-past ten," offered +Annie, "or I'll be locked out. What the girls are going to say when I +come in and tell 'em----" She looked at him with intense and piteous +question--the question that every woman at the moment of surrender +asks sometimes with her lips, but always with her heart: "It is going +to be all right, isn't it? And you'll be good to me?" + +"So help me God," said young Wesley Dean. + + * * * * * + +The farm lay high, as Wesley had said. Indeed, all the way from +Baltimore they had seemed to be going into the hills, those placidly +rounding friendly Maryland hills that rise so softly, so gradually +that the traveller is not conscious of ascent. The long straight road +dips across them gallantly, a silver band of travel to tie them to the +city, with little cities or towns pendent from it at wide intervals. +Trees edge it with a fringe of green; poor trees, maimed by the +trimmers' saws and shears into twisted caricatures of what a tree +should be, because the telegraph wires and telephone wires must pass, +and oaks and locusts, pines and maples, must be butchered of their +spreading branches to give them room. + +It was along this highway that the motor bus, filled with passengers +and baggage and driven with considerably more haste than discretion, +carried the newly married pair. Annie's eyes grew wide at the wonder +and beauty of it. She was not at all afraid. She snuggled her hand +into Wes's and loved it--and loved him, too, with his look of pride +and joy in her. She was content to be silent and let him talk. Now and +then she looked at the little turquoise ring on her finger above the +shiny new wedding ring, and loved that, too, for he had chosen it at +once from the trayful offered them, blurting out that she must have it +because it matched her eyes. + +"All this country out here's rich," he bragged, "but Fred'rick +County's far the richest land of all. Richest in the state. Maybe +richest in the whole United States, I dunno. And all the farms are +big. Great big farms--and great big teams to till 'em. People don't +use mules here s'much as they do over on the Eastern Shore. And +there's not any sand, like there is over there--in spots, that is." + +"What's that man doing?" asked Annie alertly. + +"Ploughin'. Say, didn't you ever see a man ploughin' before?" "Only in +the movies," said Annie, unabashed. "Do you ever plough?" + +He laughed outright. + +"Say, you're going to be some little farmer's wife. I can see that. +Yes'm, I plough a little now and then. It's like fancywork--awful +fascinating--and once you get started you don't want to stop till you +get a whole field done." + +"Quit kidding." + +"Say, Annie, do you know a chicken when you see it walking round? Or a +turkey? Or a guinea keet? We got 'em all. Aunt Dolcey, she takes care +of 'em." + +"I'd like to take care of 'em. I'll feed 'em, if she'll show me how." + +"Aunt Dolcey'll show you. She'll be tickled to death to have somebody +feed 'em when she's got the mis'ry." + +At Frederick they left the big motor bus and got into Wes's own +rackety flivver, the possession of which delighted Annie's heart. + +"My land, I never thought I'd get married to a man that owned an +automobile," she confessed with flattering frankness in her voice. + +"This ain't an automobile," said Wes. "It's a coffeepot, and an awful +mean one. Sometimes she won't boil, no matter what I do." + +The coffeepot on this particular day chose to boil. They rattled +merrily out of Frederick and off into the higher hills beyond. It was +a little after noon when they reached the farm. + +They had had to turn off the pike and take a winding wood road, rough +and muddy from the spring rains. All through the budding green of the +trees dogwood had hung out white bridal garlands for them, and there +were violets in all the little mossy hollows. At last they came +through to the clearing, where lay the farm, right on the ridge, its +fields smiling in the sun, a truce of Nature with man's energy and +persistence. Yet not a final truce. For all around, the woods crept up +to the open and thrust in tentative fingers--tiny pine trees, sprouts +and seedlings of hardwood, scraps of underbrush--all trying to gain a +foothold and even when cut and overturned by the sharp plough still +clinging tenaciously to their feeble rooting. + +"It looks somehow," said Annie, vaguely understanding this, "as if the +trees and things were just waiting to climb over the walls." + +"And that's what they are," said Wesley Dean. "The time I put in +grubbing! Well--let's go in and see Aunt Dolcey." + +He had told her, coming out, that he was afraid she would find the +house sort of plain, but just the space of it delighted her. The rooms +were bare and square, whitewashed exquisitely, the furniture dark old +cherry and walnut of a style three generations past. + +There were no blinds or curtains, and in the streaming sunlight Annie +could see that everything was clean and polished to the last flicker +of high light. Here and there were bits of colour--crimson and blue in +the rag carpet, golden brass candlesticks on the mantel, a red-beaded +mat on the table under the lamp, the lamp itself clear glass and +filled with red kerosene that happily repeated the tint of the mat. It +all pleased Annie, touching some hitherto untwanged chord of beauty in +her nature. And there was about it the unmistakable atmosphere of +home. + +"Old-fashioned but sort of swell, too," she decided. "Looks kind of +like some of the parlours of those old houses on Charles Street that I +used to rubber into in the evenings when the lights were lit and +they'd forgot to put the blinds down." + +She liked the impassive almost Egyptian face of Aunt Dolcey, too. The +old coloured woman had received her with a serious regard but +friendly. + +"Mist' Wes, he stahtle me mighty frequen', but he nevah stahtle me +with no marryin' befo'," she said. "Honey, it'll be mighty nice to +have a pret' young gal in de house. I'll serve you de bes' I kin, +faithful an' stiddy, like I always serve him. Ef I'd 'a' known you was +a-comin' I'd sho' had somethin' fo' dinneh to-day besides greens an' +po'k, cracklin' pone an' apple dumplin's. That's nuffin' fo' a weddin' +dinneh." + +But when they came to eat it, it was delicious--the greens delicately +seasoned, not greasy, the salt pork home-cured and sweet, the +cracklin' pone crumbling with richness, and the apple dumpling a +delight of spicy flavour. + +They sat opposite each other, in as matter-of-fact fashion as if they +had been married for years. They were young and exceedingly hungry, +and hunger destroys self-consciousness. + +The china was very old--white plates with a curving pattern of blue +leaves and yellow berries. The knives and forks were polished steel +with horn handles. The spoons were silver; old handmade rat-tail +spoons they were, with the mark of the smith's mallet still upon them +and the initials W.D. cut in uneven letters. + +"Those were my great-granddad's," said Wesley. "Same name as mine. He +had 'em made out of silver money by a man down in Frederick. They must +be nearly a hundred years old. My great-granddad, he was the man that +bought this land and began to clear it. He wanted to be away off from +everybody." + +"Why?" asked Annie, interested in the story. + +The vein on Wesley's forehead seemed to grow larger and darker as he +answered: + +"Oh, he got into trouble--knocked a man down, and the fellow struck +his head on a stone and died. It didn't come to trial--it really was +an accident--but it didn't make granddad popular. Not that he cared. +He was a hard-headed, hard-fisted old son of a gun, if there ever was +one, according to the stories they tell about him." + +"What were they fighting about?" + +"Oh, I dunno--granddad was high-tempered, and this fellow was sort of +smart Aleck; give him some lip about something and dared him to touch +him. And quick's a wink granddad punched him. At least that's the way +I always heard it. Prob'ly they'd both been taking too much hard +cider. Bring me another dumplin', Aunt Dolcey, please." + +As the old woman entered, bringing the dumpling, Annie fancied there +were both warning and sympathy in her eyes. Why, she couldn't imagine. +In a moment she forgot it, for Wesley was looking at her hard. + +"It's funny," he said, "to think I only saw you yesterday, and that we +got married this morning. Seems as if you'd been here for years and +years. Does it seem awful strange to you, honey?" + +"No," said Annie. "No, it doesn't. It is queer, but all the way here, +and when I come into the house, I had a sense of having been here +before sometime; kind of as if it was my home all along and I hadn't +known about it." + +"So it was--and if I hadn't ever met you I'd been an old bach all my +life." + +"Yes, you would." + +"Yes, I wouldn't." + +They were both laughing now. He got up and stretched himself. + +"Well, Mrs. Dean," he said, "I gotta go out and fix my disker, and you +gotta come along. I don't want to let you out of my sight. You might +fly off somewhere, and I'd never find you again." + +"Don't you worry about that. You couldn't lose me if you tried." + +They went through the kitchen, and there a tall gaunt old coloured man +rose and bowed respectfully. He and Aunt Dolcey were having their own +dinner at the kitchen table. + +"This here's Unc' Zenas," said Wesley. "He's Aunt Dolcey's husband, +and helps me on the place." + +And again Annie saw, this time in the old man's eyes, the flicker of +sympathy and apprehension that she had marked in Aunt Dolcey's. + +"And right glad to welcome y', Missy," said Unc' Zenas. "We didn' +'spect Marse Wes to bring home a wife whenas he lef', but that ain' no +sign that it ain' a mighty fine thing." + +They went out into the mellow spring day. Wesley Dean, now in his blue +overalls and working shirt, became a king in his own domain, a part of +the fair primitiveness about them. It was as if he had sprung from +this dark fertile soil, was made of its elements, at one with it. Here +he belonged, and the very spring of the earth beneath his feet was +repeated in the measured beating of his blood. The land could not warp +or break him, as it does so many, for he belonged to it as essentially +and as completely as it belonged to him. Dimly the little town girl +beside him felt this, and dimly she hoped that she, too, might prove +to be of the same mould. + +"Look at the barn, and the stables, and the corncrib," he was saying. +"See how they're all built? Hand-hewn logs chinked with plaster. +Great-granddad built them all, helped by his two slaves. That's all +the slaves he had, just two and one of 'em was Unc' Zenas's +grandfather. Everything's strong and sound as the day he finished it." + +"That one looks newer," said Annie, pointing. + +Wesley looked a little shamefaced, as does every typical Anglo-Saxon +discovered in sentiment. + +"I built that," he confessed. "It's a chicken house. Somehow I didn't +want to go down to the sawmill and get planks and build with 'em +'mongst all these old log things. So I got the logs out in the woods +and build same as great-granddad. Maybe it was foolish, but I couldn't +help it." + +"It wasn't foolish; it was nice," she affirmed. + +She perched on the tongue of a wagon while he mended the disker, +dividing her attention between him and the live things of the +barnyard. A string of decorative white ducks marched in single file +about the edge of the cow pound. Beyond them a proud red-wattled cock +paraded and purred among his harem of trim hens, now and then +disturbed in his dignity by the darting nervousness of a pair of +malicious guineas, acknowledged brigands of the feathered tribes. Trim +iridescent pigeons toddled about on their coral feet, looking for +leftovers from the chickens' table. + +"Say, Wes, I should think you'd have a dog," she said suddenly. "A +nice big dog lazying round here would sort of complete it." + +He bent suddenly over his disker and gave the nut he was working on a +mighty twist, but he had tossed aside his hat, and she could see the +sudden jump and darkening of his menacing vein. + +"I had a dog," he said in a low voice, "but he died." + +A curious restraint fell on them, and for the first time Annie felt +herself an alien, a stranger, far adrift from familiar shores. +She shivered in the light wind. + +"You cold? You better go in the house and get something round you," +Wes said to her. + +"I guess I'd better." And she left him hammering. + +In the house she found Aunt Dolcey in the big bedroom over the living +room. She had just finished remaking the bed--an old maple +four-poster, the wood a soft and mellowed orange, fine and colourful +against the white quilt, the lace-edged pillow slips. + +"I put on clean sheets," said Aunt Dolcey as Annie hesitated on the +threshold. "Yes'm, I put on everything clean, an' the bes'. I know +what's fitten. My chile, dish yer de third bridal bed I made up for +wives of de Dean men." + +Something caught in Annie's throat, terrified her. This old black +woman, with her remoteness, her pitying wise eyes, what did she mean? +Annie wanted terribly to ask her. But how begin? How get through this +wall of inscrutability which the black and yellow races have raised +for their protection? + +She fluttered nearer to the old woman. + +"Look," she began tremulously--"look--it's all right, isn't it, my +marrying him so quick? I haven't got any folks, and--and I suppose I +haven't got much sense; but there was something about him that just +made me trust him and--and want him. But it was all so quick, and--now +I'm here it seems like maybe--there was--something----Oh, you'd tell +me, wouldn't you? It is all right, isn't it?" + +The old woman considered. "It's all right ef you're all right," she +pronounced at length. + +"But--but what do you mean? And--and look here--Aunt Dolcey--tell +me--what'd he do to that dog he had?" + +"What you know 'bout any dog?" + +"I don't know--anything; but when I asked him why he didn't have a +dog--he was queer. It scared me." + +"Doan be skeered. They ain' nuffin' to be skeered of 'bout Marse Wes. +Eve'ything all right ef you got patience, an' ef you got sense, an' ef +you got haht enough. Sperrit an' sense go far, but the haht gwine +carry you froo. Now I said my say"--her tone mellowed into unctuous +kindness--"what you want, Missy? Som'n Aun' Dolcey c'n fotch you? +Temme what it is, f'r I got to be up an' erbout my wuk. I got er +weddin' cake to mek yit this ebenin'. Yes, ma'am--I gwi' mek you +weddin' cake fill de bigges' pan in de kitchen." + +She helped Annie rummage in her trunk and get out the sweater she had +come in for, and it was not until the girl was running back to the +barns that she realized Aunt Dolcey had not answered her question. But +the old woman's words had steadied her, reassured her. + +And Wes received her gayly. His repairs were done, his team in +harness, ready to start. + +"It's a shame," he said. "We ought to go off down to town and play +round and have a big time, but I'm so behind with my disking, Annie, +honey. You see I had to stay over a day in Baltimore. Fact. Important +business." He winked at her jocosely. "So I've got to work rest of the +day. That's what comes of marrying a farmer. Farm work don't even wait +on a bride, not even the prettiest bride in the world." + +He stooped to kiss her, and she held tight to his arm. + +"I don't mind. You go on about your business and I'll get all unpacked +and settled. But don't be late to supper--Aunt Dolcey's making us a +wedding cake." + +She watched him as he drove down the lane and turned into the field +and steadied the first straining rush of his team. Again she felt her +abandonment, her utter forlornity, her distance from everything she +had known and been accustomed to. But once more she proved herself an +adventurer and a philosopher. + +Shrugging her shoulders, she turned back to the house. + +"It may be a funny way to get married; but everything's all right +until it stops being all right, and--and I like it here." + + * * * * * + +She had been married a week now, and the week had been the fairest of +fair weather, indoors as well as out. Now she sat at the clumsy old +secretary desk to write a letter to Miss Tolman. + + ... For all you said, and hought I was crazy, I am just as happy as I +can be. Wes is kind and full of fun, and he works very hard. This farm +is a pretty place, and the house is ten times as big as your shop. I +am learning to cook and churn butter, and Aunt Dolcey, the old +coloured woman, teaches me and doesn't laugh when I am dumb. She says, +and Wes does, too, that I am a born farmer's wife, and I think maybe I +am, for I like it in the country more than I ever thought I'd like any +place, and I don't get a bit lonely. You ought to see our wheat--it's +like green satin, only prettier. + +I hope the rheumatism in your hands is better, and that you have got +somebody good in my place. Cousin Lorena, I am a very lucky girl to +fall in love with such a nice man, with a piece of property and a +flivver, even if it is an old one; but better than all that he has is +Wes himself, for you never saw a better, kinder man. He is not rough +and does not chew tobacco as you thought maybe he did, only smokes a +pipe once in a while. I made a sweet-potato custard yesterday, and he +said it was the best he ever tasted. He says I must not do anything +that is too hard for me, but I am going to drop seed corn. We have +been down to town once, and went to the movies and bought some candy, +and he wanted to buy me a new hat, but I wouldn't let him. He is so +kind.... + + * * * * * + +She had written in a glow of happiness, trying to tell everything and +finding it hard to get it into words that would allay Cousin Lorena's +forebodings and impress her properly. Annie frowned at the paper. How +inform a bilious, middle-aged prophet of evil that she had not only +wedded prosperity and industry but also a glorious young demigod whose +tenderness and goodness passed belief? + +Suddenly she heard a voice, loud, angry, incoherent. She dropped the +pen and ran out to the kitchen door. + +Wes stood there, confronting Uncle Zenas--a Wes she had never dreamed +could exist. The vein on his forehead was black and swollen; indeed +his whole face was distorted with rage. + +"You damned old liar--don't you tell me again you put that pitchfork +away when I found it myself in the stable behind the mare's stall. +Pretty business if she'd knocked it down and run one of the tines into +her." + +"Marse Wes, you haddat pitchfo'k dere yo'se'f dis mawnin'; I ain't +nevah touch dat pitchfo'k." Unc' Zenas's voice was low and even. + +Behind Wes's back Aunt Dolcey made signs to her husband for silence. + +"I tell you you're a liar, and by rights I ought to cut your lying +tongue out of your head! I haven't even seen that pitchfork for three +days, and when I went to look for it just now I found it in the stable +where you'd had it cleaning out the stalls. Now shut up and get out +about your work! Don't let me hear another word out of you!" + +Unc' Zenas turned away and Wes, without a word or look at the two +women, strode after him. Annie, shaken, caught Aunt Dolcey's arm. + +"Oh, Aunt Dolcey," she breathed, "what on earth was the matter?" + +Aunt Dolcey drew her into the kitchen. + +"Nuffin' but Marse Wes flyin' int' one his bad Dean temper fits, +honey," said the old woman "No use to min' him. No use payin' any +'tention. Dat why I waggle my head at Zenas to say nuffin' back. Talk +back to Marse Wes when he's high-flyin' on'y meks things worse." + +Annie beheld an abyss yawning beneath her feet. + +"Yes, but, Aunt Dolcey--what's the sense in talking that way? It +wasn't anything, just a pitchfork out of place. And he went on so. And +he looked so dreadful." + +Aunt Dolcey rattled her pans. + +"I been dreadin' dis moment, whenas you firs' see Marse Wes in his +anger. Zenas an' me, we's use to it. Marse Wes dataway; som'n go wrong +he fly off de handle. Zenas ain't mislay no pitchfo'k--I seed Marse +Wes mahse'f wid dat pitchfo'k dis mawnin'. But eve'y once in a while +he git a temper fit an' blow off he mouf like dat. Sometimes he strike +some-buddy--but he doan often strike Zenas. Sometimes he git mad at +oner de hosses an' frail it proper. Dat high temper run in de Dean +fambly, chile. Dey gits mad, an' dey flies off, an' you just got to +stan' it." + +"But does he--does he get over it quick?" + +The old negress shook her head. + +"He'll be mighty quiet come suppeh-time, not talkin' much, lookin' +dahk. Walk light, an' don't say nuffin' rile him up, eve'ything all +right. T'-morrow mawnin' come, he's outer it." Her voice rose into a +minor cadence, almost a chant. "Chile, it's a dahk shadder on all de +Deans--dey all mahked wid dat frown on deir foreheads, an' dey all got +dahk hours come to um. Marse Wes's maw she fade out an' die caze she +cain' stan' no such. His grammaw, she leave his grampaw. An' so on +back. Ontell some ooman marry a Dean who kin chase dat debbil outer +him, jes so long de Dean men lib in de shadder. I tole you, ain' I, de +day you come, sperrit an' sense carry you fur, but it's de haht gwine +carry you froo. Now you un'stan'." + +Yes, Annie understood, imperfectly. So might Red Riding Hood have +understood when the wolf suddenly appeared beside her peaceful +pathway. She asked one more question, "Does he get mad often?" and +waited, trembling, for the answer. + +Aunt Dolcey stuck out her underlip. "Sometime he do, en den again, +sometime he doan'. Mos' giner'ly he do." + +Annie walked back to her letter, and looked at its last phrase. She +picked up the pen, but did not write. + +Then with a quick intake of breath she took her first conscious step +in the path of loyal wifehood. + +She added, writing fast: "He is the best man that ever lived, I do +believe," and signed her name, folded the letter and sealed it in its +envelope as quickly as she could. + +At supper she watched Wes. He was, as Aunt Dolcey had predicted, very +silent; the vein in his forehead still twitched menacingly and the +pupils of his eyes were distended until the colour about them +disappeared in blackness. After he had eaten he went outside and +smoked, while Annie sat fiddling with a bit of sewing and dreading she +knew not what. + +But nothing happened. Presently he came in, announced that he was +tired and had a hard day before him to-morrow, and thought he'd go to +bed. + +Long after he had fallen into immobile slumber Annie lay beside him, +awake, marvelling how suddenly he had become a stranger, almost an +ogre. Yet she loved him and yearned to him. The impulse that had made +her finish the letter to Cousin Lorena in the same spirit in which she +had begun it called her to pity and help him. She must conceal his +weakness from their world. She listened to his deep, regular +breathing, she put her hand against his hard palm. + +"I'm his wife," thought Annie Dean with inarticulate tenderness. "I'm +going to try to be everything a wife ought to be." + +The next morning he was his old self again, laughing, joking, teasing +her as usual. The scene of yesterday seemed to have gone utterly from +his memory, though he must have known that she had seen and heard it. +But he made no allusion to it, nor did she. The farm work was +pressing; the warm spring days foretold an early season. + +As he went whistling out toward the barn Annie heard him salute Unc' +Zenas with familiar friendliness: + +"How's tricks this morning? Think the Jersey'll be fresh next week?" + +Aunt Dolcey heard him, too, and she and Annie exchanged long glances. +The old woman's said, "You see--what I told you was true"; and the +young woman's answered, "Yes, I see, and I understand. I'm going to +see it through." + +But something in her youth had definitely vanished, as it always does +when responsibility lays its heavy hand on us. She went about her new +life questioningly eager for understanding. There was so much for her +to see and learn--the erratic ways of setting hens, the care of +foolish little baby chicks; the spring house, cool and damp and +gray-walled, with its trickle of cold water forever eddying about the +crocks of cream-topped milk; the garden making, left to her and Aunt +Dolcey after the first spading; the various messes and mashes to be +prepared for cows with calf; the use of the stored vegetables and +fruits, and meat dried and salted in such generous quantity that she +marvelled at it. All the farm woman's primer she learned, bit by bit, +seeing how it supplemented and harmonized with that life of the fields +that so engrossed and commanded Wes. + +But through it all, beneath it all, she found herself waiting, with +dread, for another outburst. Against whom would it be this time--Unc' +Zenas again--Aunt Dolcey--one of the animals--or perhaps herself? She +wondered if she could bear it if he turned on her. + +She was working in the spring house mixing cream with curd for cottage +cheese, very busy and anxious over it, for this was her first essay +alone, when she heard Wes again in anger. She dropped her spoon, but +did not go to look, only concentrated herself to listen. + +This time he was cursing one of his horses, and she could hear the +stinging whish of a whip, a wicked and sinister emphasis to the +beast's snorting and frenzied thumping of hoofs. Her blue eyes dilated +with fear; she knew in what pain and fright the horse must be lunging +under those blows. And Wes, raucous, violent, his mouth foul with +unclean words--only this morning he had told her that when Sunday came +they'd go into the woods and find a wild clematis to plant beside the +front door. Wild clematis! She could have laughed at the irony of it. + +At last she could bear it no longer; she put her hands to her ears to +shut out the hideousness of it. After an interminable wait she took +them down. He had stopped--there was silence--but she heard footsteps +outside, and she literally cowered into the darkest corner of the +spring house. But it was only Aunt Dolcey, her lips set in a line of +endurance. + +"I was lookin' erbout foh you, honey," she said reassuringly. "I di'n' +know where you was, en den I remembah you come off down heah. Let Aunt +Dolcey finish up dat cheese." + +"What--what started him?" asked Annie piteously. + +"I doan' jes' know--sound' like one de big team di'n' go inter his +right stall, er som'n like dat. It's always som'n triflin', en no +'count. But land, he'll be ovah it come night. Doan' look so white en +skeer, chile." + +"But--but I been thinking--what if he might turn on me--what if he'd +strike me? Aunt Dolcey--did he ever strike you?" + +"Oncet." + +"Oh, Aunt Dolcey, what did you do?" + +Something flared in Aunt Dolcey's eyes that was as old as her race. +She looked past Annie as if she saw something she rather relished; +just so her ancestors must have looked when they were dancing before a +bloodstained Congo fetish. + +"You see dat big white scar on Marse Wes' lef' wris'? When he struck +me I mahk him dere wid my hot flatiron. Am' no man eveh gwine lif' his +hand to Dolcey, no matter who." + +A shrewd question came to Annie: + +"Aunt Dolcey, did he ever strike you again?" + +"No, ma'am, no 'ndeedy, he didn'. Wil' Marse Wes may be, but he ain' +no crazy man. It's dat ole debbil in his nature, Miss Annie, honey. En +ef ever once som'n tremenjus happen to Marse Wes, dat debbil'll be +cas' out. But hit's got to be stronger en mo' pow'ful dan he is. Not +'ligion, fer 'ligion goes f'm de outside in. Som'n got to come from +inside Marse Wes out befo' dat ole debbil is laid." + +This was meagre comfort, and Annie did not follow the primitive +psychology of it. She only knew that into her happiness there had come +again the darkening of a fear, fear that was to be her devil, no less +terrible because his presence was for the most part veiled. + +But again she steeled her courage. "I won't let him spoil everything; +I won't let him make me afraid of him," she vowed, seeing Wes in his +silent mood that night. "I won't be afraid of him. I wish I could cut +that old vein out of his forehead. I hate it--it's just as if it was +the thing that starts him. Never seems as if it was part of the real +Wes, my Wes." + +In the depths of the woods, on Sunday, she stood by while he dug up +the wild clematis--stood so he could not see her lips quiver--and she +put her clenched hands behind her for fear they, too, would betray +her. + +"Wes," she asked, "what made you get so mad last Thursday and beat old +Pomp so?" + +He turned toward her in genuine surprise. + +"I wasn't mad; not much, that is. And all I laid on Pomp's tough old +hide couldn't hurt him. He's as mean as a mule, that old scoundrel. +Gets me riled every once in a while." + +"I wish you wouldn't ever do it again. It scared me almost to death." + +"Scared you!" he laughed. "Oh, Annie, you little silly--you aren't +scared of me. Now don't let on you are. What you doing--trying to kid +me? There, ain't that a splendid plant? I believe I'll take back a +couple shovelfuls this rich wood earth to put in under it. It'll never +know it's not at home." + +"Yes, but, Wes--I wish you'd promise me something." + +"Promise you anything." + +"Then--promise me not to get mad and beat the horses any more or +holler at Unc' Zenas. I don't like it." + +"Annie, you little simp--what's the matter with you? A fellow's got to +let off steam once in a while, and if you'd been pestered like I have +with Unc' Zenas's ornery trifling spells and old Pomp's general +cussedness, you'd wonder that I don't get mad and stay mad every +minute. Don't let's talk any more about it. Say, look there--there's a +scarlet tanager! Ain't it pretty? Shyest bird there is, but up here in +the woods there's a couple pairs 'most every year. Pull that old +newspaper up round the earth a little, so's I can get a better holt of +it. That's the girl. Gee, I never knew what fun it'd be to have a wife +who'd be so darn chummy as you are. How d'you like your husband, Mrs. +Dean? Ain't it about time you said something nice to the poor feller +instead of scolding his lights and liver out of place on a nice +peaceful Sabbath day? You ought to be ashamed of yourself." + +She pushed back the fear devil and answered his smile. + +'No, sir, I'm not going to say anything nice to my husband. I'll tell +you a secret about him--he's awful stuck on himself now." + +"Why shouldn't he be? Look who he picked out to marry." + +Who could stand against such beguiling? Annie looked up at him and saw +his Dean mark give a little mocking twitch as if it rejoiced in her +thwarting. + +But she said no more; and they planted the wild clematis with its +black woods earth beneath at the side of the front door, and Annie +twisted its pliable green stems round one of the posts of the little +benched entrance. + +Her hands moved deftly, and Wes, who had finished firming the earth +about the plant, watched them. + +"Your little paws are gettin' awful brown," he said. "I remember that +first day, in the shop, how white they were--and how quick they moved. +You wrapped up them aprons like somethin' was after you, and I was +trying to get my nerve up to speak to you." + +"Tryin' to get up your nerve! I reckon it wasn't much effort. There, +don't that vine look's if it grew there of itself?" + +"Yeh--it looks fine." He sat down on the bench and pulled her down +beside him, his arm about her. "Annie, baby, are y' happy?" + +She put her cheek against his shoulder and shut her eyes. + +"I'm so happy I wouldn't darst be any happier." + +"You're not sorry you picked up with me so quick? You don't wish't +you'd stayed down in Balt'mer and got you a city beau?" + +"I'd rather be with you--here--than any place in the world. And, +Wes--I think you're the best and kindest man that ever lived. I +wouldn't have you changed, any way, one little bit." + +She defied her fears and that mocking, twitching vein with the words. + +"Same here. Made to order for me, you were. First minute I looked in +those round blue eyes of yours I knew it." + +"It isn't possible," she thought. "It isn't possible that he can get +so mad and be so dreadful. Maybe if I can make him think he's awful +good and kind"--oh, simple subtlety--"believe he is, too, and he'll +stop getting such spells. Oh, if he would always be just like this!" + +But it was only two days later when she called him to help her; there +was a hen that was possessed to brood, and Aunt Dolcey had declared +that it was too late, that summer chickens never thrived. + +"I can't get her out, Wes," said Annie. "She's 'way in under the +stable, and she pecks at me so mean. You got longer arms'n me--you +reach in and grab her." + +He came, smiling. He reached in and grabbed, and the incensed biddy +pecked viciously. + +In a flash his anger was on him. He snatched again, and this time +brought out the creature and dropped her with wrung neck, a mass of +quivering feathers and horribly jerking feet, before Annie. + +"I reckon that'll learn the old crow!" he snarled, and strode away. + +"We might's well have soup for supper," remarked Aunt Dolcey, coming +on the scene a moment later. "Dere, chile, what's a chicken, anyway?" + +"It's not that," said Annie briefly; "but he makes me afraid of him. +If I get too afraid of him I'll stop caring anything about him. I +don't want to do that." + +"Den," answered Aunt Dolcey with equal brevity, "you got think up some +manner er means to dribe his debbil out. Like I done tol' you." + +"Yes, but----" + +Aunt Dolcey paused, holding the carcass of the chicken in her hands, +and faced her. + +"Dishyer ain' nuthin'. Wait tell he gits one his still spells, whenas +he doan' speak ter nobody an' doan' do no work. Why ain' we got no +seed potaters? Marse Wes he took a contrairy spell an' he wouldn't dig +'em, an' he wouldn't let Zenas tech 'em needer. Me, I went out +moonlight nights an' dug some to eat an' hid 'em in de cellar. Miss +Annie, you doan' know nuffin' erbout de Dean temper yit." + +They went silently to the house. Aunt Dolcey stopped in the kitchen +and Annie went on into the living room. There on the walls hung the +pictures of Wes's father and mother, cabinet photographs framed square +in light wood. Annie looked at those pictured faces in accusing +inquiry. Why had they bequeathed Wes such a legacy? In his father's +face, despite the beard that was the fashion of those days, there was +the same unmistakable pride and passion of Wes to-day. And his mother +was a meek woman who could not live and endure the Dean temper. Well, +Annie was not going to be meek. She thought with satisfaction of Aunt +Dolcey and the hot flatiron. The fact that he had never lifted finger +to Aunt Dolcey again proved that if one person could thus conquer him, +so might another. Was she, his wife, to be less resourceful, less +self-respecting than that old Negro woman? Was she to endure what Aunt +Dolcey would not? + +Suddenly she snatched out the little old family album from its place +in the top of the desk secretary, an old-fashioned affair bound in +shabby brown leather with two gilt clasps. Here were more pictures of +the Dean line--his grandfather, more bearded than his father, his Dean +vein even more prominent; his grandmother, another meek woman. + +"Probably the old wretch beat her," thought Annie angrily. + +Another page and here was great-grandfather himself, in middle age, +his picture--a faded daguerreotype--showing him in his Sunday best, +but plainly in no Sunday mood. "Looks like a pirate," was Annie's +comment. There was no picture of great-grandmother. "Probably he +killed her off too young, before she had time to get her picture +taken." And Annie's eyes darted blue fire at the supposed culprit. She +shook her brown little fist at him. "You started all this," she said +aloud. "You began it. If you'd had a wife who'd've stood up to you +you'd never got drunk and killed a man, and you wouldn't have left +your family a nasty old mad vein in the middle of their foreheads, +looking perfectly unChristian. I just wish I had you here, you old +scoundrel! I'll bet I'd tell you something that'd make your ears +smart." + +She banged to the album and put it in its place. + +"Well, not me!" said Annie. "Not me! I'm not going to be bullied and +scared to death by any man with a bad temper, and the very next time +Mister Wes flies off the handle and raises Cain I'm going to raise +Cain, two to his one. I won't be scared! I won't be a little gump and +take such actions off any man. We'll see!" + +It is easy enough to be bold and resolute and threaten a picture. It +is easy enough to plot action either before or after the need for it +arises. But when it comes to raising Cain two to your husband's one, +and that husband has been a long and successful cultivator of that +particular crop--why, that is quite a different thing. + +Besides, as it happened, Annie did not wholly lack sympathy for his +next outburst, which was directed toward a tramp, a bold dirty +creature who appeared one morning at the kitchen door and asked for +food. + +"You two Janes all by your lonesome here?" he asked, stepping in. + +Wes had come into the house for another shirt--he had split the one he +was wearing in a mighty bout with the grubbing hoe--and he entered the +kitchen from the inner door just in time to catch the words. + +He leaped and struck in one movement, and it carried the tramp and +himself outside on the grass of the drying yard. The tramp was a burly +man, and after the surprise of the attack he attempted to fight. He +might as well have battled with a locomotive going full speed. + +"What you doin' way up here, you lousy loafer?" demanded Wes between +blows. "Get to hell out of here before I kill you, like you deserve, +comin' into my house and scarin' women. I've a great mind to get my +gun and blow you full of holes." + +In two minutes the tramp was running full speed toward the road, +followed by Wes, who assisted his flight with kicks whenever he could +reach him. After twenty minutes or so the victor came back. His eyes +were red with rage that possessed him. He did not stop to speak, but +hurried out his rackety little car and was gone. Later they found out +he had overtaken the tramp, fought him again, knocked him out, and +then, roping him, had taken him to the nearest constable and seen him +committed to jail. + +But the encounter left him strange and silent for a week, and his Dean +mark twitched and leaped in triumph. During that time the only notice +he took of Annie was to teach her to use his rifle. + +"Another tramp comes round, shoot him," he commanded. + +"En in de meantime," counselled Aunt Dolcey, "it'll come in mighty +handy fer you to kill off some deseyer chicken hawks what makin' so +free wid our nex' crap br'ilers." + +But beyond the learning how to use the gun Annie had learned something +more: she added it to her knowledge that Aunt Dolcey had once outfaced +that tyrant. It was this--that Wes's rage was the same, whether the +cause of it was real or imaginary. + + * * * * * + +The advancing summer, with its sultriness, its sudden evening storms +shot through with flaming lightning and reverberant with the drums of +thunder, brought to Annie a cessation of her purpose. She was languid, +subject to whimsical desires and appetites, at times a prey to sudden +nervous tears. The household work slipped back into Aunt Dolcey's +faithful hands, save now and then when Annie felt more buoyant and +instinct with life and energy than she had ever felt before. Then she +would weed her garden or churn and print a dozen rolls of butter with +a keen and vivid delight in her activity. + +In the evening she and Wes walked down the long lane and looked at the +wheat, wide level green plains already turning yellow; or at the corn, +regiments of tall soldiers, each shako tipped with a feathery tassel. +Beyond lay the woods--dark, mysterious. Little dim plants of the soil +bloomed and shed faint scent along the pathway in the dewy twilight. +Sometimes they sat under the wild clematis, flowering now, and that, +too, was perfumed, a wild and tangy scent that did not cloy. They did +not talk very much, but he was tender with her, and his fits of anger +seemed forgotten. + +When they did talk it was usually about the crops--the wheat. It was +wonderful heavy wheat. It was the best wheat in all the neighbourhood. +Occasionally they took out the little coffeepot and drove through the +country and looked at other wheat, but there was none so fine as +theirs. + +And with the money it would bring--the golden wheat turned into +gold--they would---- And now came endless dreams. + +"I thought we'd sell the old coffeepot to the junkman and get a +brand-new car, a good one, but now----" This was Wes. + +"I think we ought to save, too. A boy'll need so many things." + +"Girls don't need anything much, I suppose--oh, no!" He touched her +cheek with gentle fingers. + +"It's not going to be a girl." + +"How d'you know?" + +"I know." + +So went their talk, over and over, an endless garland of happy +conjectures, plans, air castles. Cousin Lorena sent little patterns +and thin scraps of material, tiny laces, blue ribbons. + +"I told her blue--blue's for boys," said Annie. And Wes laughed at +her. It was all a blessed interlude of peace and expectancy. + +The wheat was ready for harvest. From her place under the clematis +vine, where she sat with her sewing, Annie could see the fields of +pale gold, ready for the reaper. Wes had taken the coffeepot and gone +down to the valley to see when the threshers would be able to come. In +the morning he would begin to cut. Annie cocked a questioning eye at +the sky, for she had already learned to watch the farmer's greatest +ally and enemy--weather. + +"If this good spell of weather only holds until he gets it all cut!" +She remembered stories he had told her of sudden storms that flattened +the ripe grain to the ground, beyond saving; of long-continued rains +that mildewed it as it stood in the shocks. But if the good weather +held! And there was not a cloud in the sky, nor any of those faint +signs by which changing winds or clouds are forecast. + +She heard the rattle and clack of the returning coffeepot, boiling up +the hill at an unwonted speed. And she waved her hand to Wes as he +came past; but he was bent over the wheel and did not even look round +for her, only banged the little car round to the back furiously. +Something in his attitude warned her, and she felt the old +almost-forgotten devil of her fear leap to clutch her heart. + +Presently he came round the house, and she hardly dared to look at +him; she could not ask. But there was no need. He flung his hat on the +ground before her with a gesture of frantic violence. When he spoke +the words came in a ferment of fury: + +"That skunk of a Harrison says he won't bring the thresher up here +this year; claims the road's too rough and bridges are too weak for +the engine." + +"Oh, Wes--what'll you do?" + +"Do! I'm not going to do anything! I'm not going to haul my wheat down +to him--I'll see him in hell and back again before I will." + +"But our wheat!" + +"The wheat can rot in the fields! I won't be bossed and blackguarded +by any dirty little runt that thinks because he owns the only +threshing outfit in the neighbourhood that he can run my affairs." + +He raged up and down, adding invective, vituperation. + +"But you can't, Wes--you can't let the wheat go to waste." For Annie +had absorbed the sound creed of the country, that to waste foodstuff +is a crime as heinous as murder. + +"Can't I? Well, we'll see about that!" + +She recognized from his tone that she had been wrong to protest; she +had confirmed him in his purpose. She picked up her sewing and tried +with unsteady fingers to go on with it, but she could not see the +stitches for her tears. He couldn't mean it--and yet, what if he +should? She looked up and out toward those still fields of precious +ore, dimming under the purple shadows of twilight, and saw them a +black tangle of wanton desolation. The story Aunt Dolcey had told her +about the potatoes of last year was ominous in her mind. + +He was sitting opposite her now, his head in his hands, brooding, +sullen, the implacable vein in his forehead swollen with triumph, +something brutish and hard dimming his clean and gallant youth. + +"That's the way he's going to look as he gets older," thought Annie +with a touch of prescience. "He's going to change into somebody +else--little by little. This is the worst spell he's ever had. And all +this mean blood's going to live again in my child. It goes on and on +and on." + +She leaned against the porch seat and struggled against the sickness +of it. + +"I might stand it for myself," she thought. "I might stand it for +myself; but I'm not going to stand it for my baby. I'll do +something--I'll take him away." + +Her thoughts ran on hysterically, round and round in a coil that had +no end and no beginning. + +The silent fit was on Wes now. Presently, she knew, he would get up +and stalk away to bed without a word. And in the morning---- + +It was as she expected. Without a word to her he got up and went +inside, and she heard him going up the stairs. She sat then a little +longer, for the night was still and warm and beautiful, the stars very +near, and the soft hush-h of the country solitude comforting to her +distress. + +Then she heard Unc' Zenas and Dolcey talking at the kitchen door, +their voices a faint cadenced murmur; and this reminded her that she +was not quite alone. She slipped round to them. + +"Unc' Zenas, Wes says he's not going to cut the wheat; he'll let it +rot in the fields. Seems Harrison won't send his thresher up this far; +wants us to haul to him instead." + +"Marse Wes say he ain' gwine cut dat good wheat? Oh, no Miss Annie, he +cain' mean dat, sholy, sholy!" + +"He said it. He's got an awful spell this time. Unc' +Zenas--look--couldn't you ride the reaper if he wouldn't? Couldn't +you? Once the wheat gets cut there's some chance." + +"Befo' my God, Miss Annie, wid deseyer wuffless ole han's I cain' +ha'dly hol' one hawss, let alone three. Oh, if I had back my stren'th +lak I useter!" + +The three fell into hopeless silence. + +"Are the bridges so bad? Is it too hard to get the thresher up here?" +asked Annie at last. "Or was that just Harrison's excuse?" + +"No, ma'am; he's got de rights. Dem ole bridges might go down mos' any +time. An' dishyer road up yere, it mighty hard to navigate foh er +grea' big hebby contraption lak er threshin' machine en er engine. +Mos' eve'y year he gits stuck. Las' year tuk er day en er ha'f to git +him out. No'm; he's got de rights." + +"Yes, but, Unc' Zenas, that wheat mustn't be left go to waste." + +Aunt Dolcey spoke up. "Miss Annie, honey, go git your res'--mawnin' +brings light. Maybe Marse Wes'll come to his solid senses een de +mawnin'. You cain' do nuffin' ternight noway." + +"No, that's so." She sighed hopelessly. "Unc' Zenas, maybe we could +hire somebody else to cut the wheat if he won't." + +"Miss Annie, honey, eve'ybody busy wid his own wheat--an', moreover, +Marse Wes ain' gwi' let any stranger come on dis place an' cut his +wheat--you know he ain'." + +There seemed nothing more to say. In the darkness tears were slowly +trickling down Annie's cheeks, and she could not stop them. + +"Well--good-night." + +"Good-night, my lamb, good-night. I gwi' name you en your tribulations +in my prayers dis night." + +She had never felt so abandoned, so alone. She could not even make the +effort to force herself to believe that Wes would not commit this +crime against all Nature; instead, she had a vivid and complete +certainty that he would. She went over it and over it, lying in +stubborn troubled wakefulness. She put it in clear if simple terms. If +Wes persisted in his petty childish anger and wasted this wheat, it +meant that they could not save the money that they had intended for +the child that was coming. They would have, in fact, hardly more than +their bare living left them. The ridiculous futility of it swept her +from one mood to another, from courage to utter hopelessness. She +remembered the first time that she had seen Wes angry, and how she had +lain awake then and wondered, and dreaded. She remembered how, later, +she had planned to manage him, to control him. And she had done +nothing. Now it had come to this, that her child would be born in +needless impoverishment; and, worse, born with the Dean curse full +upon him. She clenched and unclenched her hands. The poverty she might +bear, but the other was beyond her power to endure. Sleep came to her +at last as a blessed anodyne. + +In the first moment of the sunlit morning she forgot her trouble, but +instantly she remembered, and she dressed in an agony of apprehension +and wonder. Wes was gone, as was usual, for he got up before she did, +to feed his cattle. She hurried into her clothes and came down, to +find him stamping in to breakfast, and with the first glance at him +her hope fell like a plummet. + +He did mean it--he did! He did not mean to cut that wheat. She watched +him as he ate, and that fine-spun desperation that comes when courage +alone is not enough, that purpose that does the impossible, took hold +of her. + +When he had finished his silent meal he went leisurely out to the +little front porch and sat down. She followed him. "Wes Dean, you +going to cut that wheat?" she demanded; and she did not know the sound +of her own voice, so high and shrill it was. + +The vein in his forehead leered at her. What was she to pit her +strength against a mood like this? He did not answer, did not even +look at her. + +"Do you mean to say you'd be so wicked--such a fool?" she went on. + +Now he looked up at her with furious, threatening eyes. + +"Shut your mouth and go in!" he said. + +She did not move. "If you ain't going to cut it--then I am!" + +She turned and started through the house, and he leaped up and +followed her. In the kitchen he overtook her. + +"You stay where you are! You don't go out of this house this day!" He +laid a rough, restraining hand on her shoulder. + +At that touch--the first harshness she had ever felt from +him--something hot and flaming leaped through her. She whirled away +from him and caught up Aunt Dolcey's big sharp butcher knife lying on +the table; lifted it. + +"You put your hands on me like that again and I'll kill you!" Her +voice was not high and shrill now; she did not even raise it. "You and +your getting mad! You and your rotten, filthy temper! You'd waste that +wheat because you haven't got enough sense to see what a big fool you +are." + +She dropped the knife and walked past him, out of the kitchen, to the +barn. + +"Unc' Zenas," she called, "you hitch up the horses to the reaper. I'm +going to cut that near field to-day myself." + +"But, Miss Annie----" began the old man. + +"You hitch up that team," she said. "If there ain't any men round this +place, I don't know's it makes so much difference." + +She waited while the three big horses were brought out and hitched to +the reaper, and then she mounted grimly to the seat. She did not even +look around to see if Wes might be watching. She did not answer when +Unc' Zenas offered a word of direction. + +"Let dat nigh horse swing round de cornahs by hisse'f, Miss Annie. He +knows. An' look--here's how you drop de knife. I'll let down de bars +an' foller you." + +Behind her back he made frantic gestures to Dolcey to come to him, +and she ran, shuffling, shaken. Together they followed the little +figure in the blue calico dress, perched high on the rattling, +clacking reaper. Her hair shone in the sun like the wheat. + +The near horse knew the game, knew how to lead the others. That was +Annie's salvation. As she swung into the field she had a struggle with +the knife, but it dropped into place, and the first of the golden +harvest fell before it squarely, cleanly; the stubble was even behind +it. She watched the broad backs of her team, a woman in a dream. She +did not know how she drove them; the lines were heavy in her hands, +dragged at her arms. It was hot, and sweat rolled down her forehead. +She wished vaguely that she had remembered to put on her sunbonnet. + +Behind her came Unc' Zenas and Aunt Dolcey, setting the sheaves into +compact, well-capped stocks, little rough golden castles to dot this +field of amazing conflict. + +And now the reaper had come to the corner. Unc' Zenas straightened +himself and watched anxiously. But his faith in the near horse was +justified--the team turned smoothly, Annie lifted the blade and +dropped it, and they started again, only half visible now across the +tall grain. + +Annie's wrists and back ached unbearably, the sweat got in her eyes, +but she drove on. She thought a little of Wes, and how he had looked +when she picked up that butcher knife. She thought of his heavy hand +on her shoulder, and her flesh burned where he had grasped it. + +"I'm going to cut this wheat if it kills me." she said over and over +to herself in a queer refrain. "I'm going to cut this wheat if it +kills me!" She thought probably it would. But she drove on. + +She made her second corner successfully, and now the sun was at her +back, and that gave her a little ease. This wheat was going to be cut, +and hauled to the thresher, and sold in the market, if she did every +bit of the work herself. She would show Wes Dean! Let him try to stop +her--if he dared! + +And there would be money enough for everything the baby might want or +might need. Her child should not be born to poverty and skimping. If +only the sun didn't beat so hard on the back of her neck! If only her +arms didn't ache so! + +After countless hours of time she overtook Dolcey and Zenas, and the +old woman divined her chief discomfort. She snatched the sunbonnet off +her own head and handed it up to her. + +"Marster in hebben, ef I only had my stren'th!" muttered Zenas as she +went on. + +"Angels b'arin' dat chile up wid deir wings," chanted Aunt Dolcey. +Then, descending to more mundane matters, she added a delighted +chuckle: "I knowed she'd rise en shine one dese days. Holler at Marse +Wes she did, name him names, plenty. Yessuh--laid him out!" + +"What you s'pose he up to now?" asked Zenas, looking over his +shoulder. + +"I dunno--but I bet you he plumb da'nted. Zenas, lak I tol' you--man +may hab plenty debbilment, rip en t'ar, but he'll stan' back whenas a +ooman meks up her min' she stood enough." And Aunt Dolcey had never +heard of Rudyard Kipling's famous line. + +"Dat chile might kill he'se'f." + +"When yo' mad yo' kin 'complish de onpossible, en it doan' hurt yo'," +replied Dolcey, thus going Kipling one better. + +But she watched Annie anxiously. + +The girl held out, though the jolting and shaking racked her +excruciatingly and the pull of the reins seemed to drag the very flesh +from her bones. Now and then the golden field swam dark before her +eyes, the backs of the horses swelled to giant size and blotted out +the sun. But she kept on long after her physical strength was gone; +her endurance held her. Slowly, carefully, the machine went round and +round the field, and the two bent old figures followed. + +And so they came to mid-morning. They had long since ceased to look or +care for any sign of the young master of the land. None of them +noticed him, coming slowly, slowly from the stables, coming slowly, +slowly to the field's edge and standing there, watching with +unbelieving, sullen eyes the progress of the reaper, the wavering arms +that guided the horses, the little shaken blue figure that sat high in +the driver's seat. But he was there. + +It is said of criminals that a confession can often be extracted by +the endless repetition of one question alone; they cannot bear the +pressure of its monotony. Perhaps it was the monotony of the measured +rattle and clack of the machine going on so steadily that finally +impelled Wes Dean, after his long frowning survey of the scene, to +vault the low stone wall and approach it. + +Annie did not check the horses when she saw him; she did not even look +at him. But he looked at her, and in her white face, with the dreary +circles of utter fatigue shadowing her eyes, his defeat was completed. +He put his hand on the bit of the nearest horse and stopped the team. + +Then she looked at him, as one looks at a loathsome stranger. + +"What you want?" she asked coldly. + +He swallowed hard. "Annie--I'll--I'll cut the wheat, le'me lift you +down off there." He held out his arms. + +She did not budge. "You going to cut it all--and haul it down to the +thresher?" + +"Yes--yes, I will. Gee, you look near dead--get down, honey. You go in +the house and lay down--I'm afraid you'll kill yourself. I'm afraid +you'll hurt--him some way." + +Still she did not move. "I'd ruther be dead than live with a man that +acts like you do," she said. "Grown up, and can't handle his temper." + +Something in her quiet, cold scorn struck through to him and cut away +forever his childish satisfaction with himself. A new manhood came +into his face; his twitching, sinister vein was still. Surrender +choked him, but he managed to get it out: + +"I know I acted like a fool. But I can't let you do this. I'll--I'll +try to----" + +The words died on his lips and he leaped forward in time to catch her +as she swayed and fell, fainting. + +An hour later Annie lay on the lounge in the sitting room, still +aching with terrible weariness, but divinely content. Far away she +could hear the steady susurrus of the reaper, driven against the +golden wheat, and the sound was a promise and a song to her ears. She +looked up now and then at the pictured face of Wes's father, frowning +and passionate, and the faint smile of a conqueror curved her tired +mouth. For she had found and proved the strongest thing in the world, +and she would never again know fear. + + + +THE TRIBUTE + +By HARRY ANABLE KNIFFIN + +From _Brief Stories_ + + +The Little Chap reached up a chubby hand to the doorknob. A few +persistent tugs and twists and it turned in his grasp. Slowly pushing +the door open, he stood hesitating on the threshold of the studio. + +The Big Chap looked up from his easel by the window. His gray eyes +kindled into a kindly smile, its welcoming effect offset by an +admonitory headshake. "Not now, Son," he said. "I'm busy." + +"Can't I stay a little while, Daddy?" The sturdy little legs carried +their owner across the floor as he spoke. "I'll be quiet, like--like I +was asleep." + +The Big Chap hesitated, looking first at his canvas and then at the +small replica of himself standing before him. + +"I got on my new pants," the youngster was saying, conversationally +easing the embarrassment of a possible capitulation. "Mummy says I +ought to be proud of them, and because I'm five years old." + +The artist looked gravely down at him. "Proud, Son?" he asked, in the +peculiar way he had of reasoning with the Little Chap. "Have you +reached the age of five because of anything you have done? Or did you +acquire the trousers with money you earned?" + +The Little Chap looked up at him questioningly. He had inherited his +father's wide gray eyes, and at present their expression was troubled. +Then, evidently seeking a more easily comprehended topic, his eyes +left his father's and sought the canvas on which was depicted a court +scene of mediaeval times. "Who is that, Daddy?" His small index finger +pointed to the most prominent figure in the painting. + +His father continued to regard him thoughtfully. "One of England's +proud kings, Son." + +"And what did _he_ do to be proud of?" came quickly from the youthful +inquisitioner. + +A hearty laugh escaped the artist. "Bully for you, Son! That's a +poser! Aside from taxing the poor and having enemies beheaded, I'm +puzzled to know what he really did do to earn his high position." + +The Little Chap squirmed himself between his father's knees and +started to scale the heights to his lap, where he finally settled down +with a sigh of comfort. "Tell me a story about him," he said eagerly. +"A story with castles, 'n' wars, 'n' everything." + +The artist's gaze rested on the kingly figure in the picture, then +wandered away to the window through which he seemed to lose himself in +scenes of a far-distant time. + +"I'll tell you a story, Son," he began, slowly and ruminatingly, "of +how Loyalty and Service stormed the Stronghold of Honour and +Splendour. This proud king you see in the picture lived part of the +time in the great castle of Windsor, and the balance of the year in +Saint James's Palace in London." + +"It must have cost him a lot for rent," wisely interpolated the Little +Chap. + +"No, the people paid the rent, Son. Some of them were glad to do it, +for they looked upon their king as a superior being. Among this class +of loyal subjects was an old hatter, very poor and humble." + +"What was his name?" asked the Little Chap, apparently greatly +interested. + +"He had no name. People in those olden days were known by their trade +or calling. So he was simply called 'the hatter'." + +"And did he make nice hats?" + +"I've no doubt he did, Son. But you mustn't interrupt. Well, the +hatter paid his tithes, or taxes, after which, I dare say, he had +little enough left to live on. But he appeared not to mind. And +whenever the King and Queen rode through the streets in their gilded +coach of state, his cracked old voice would cheer lustily, and his +hoary head would be bared in deepest reverence." + +"Didn't he ever catch cold?" + +"Hush, Son, I'm telling a story! As the hatter grew older he lost his +wits and became quite crazy on the subject of his king. He yearned to +do something to prove his loyalty. And whenever England engaged in a +war, and a proclamation was issued calling for men to fight for King +and country, he would be one of the first to volunteer. But they never +accepted him, of course, because he was so old. + +"With the passing of the years the Queen died, and the King decided to +marry again. Great preparations for the ceremony were begun at +Westminster Abbey, where the wedding was to take place. The old hatter +became greatly excited when he heard the news. His addled wits +presently hit upon a wonderful scheme by which he could both honour +and serve his sovereign: _He would make the King a hat to wear at his +wedding_!" + +"I guess he must 've been a good hatter, after all," the Little Chap +murmured, in a tone of conviction. + +"Perhaps, in his time," his father conceded. "But you must remember he +now was old and foolish. His materials were merely such odds and ends +as he could gather together, and the result was very +disreputable-looking. But in his rheumy old eyes it was the most +wonderful hat ever designed for a monarch. He carefully wrapped it in +a soiled old cloth and started out to present it to the King. At the +palace gates the guards refused him admittance, and cruelly laughed in +his face. He tried every means he could think of to have the hat reach +its destination. Once he stopped the Court Chamberlain on the street, +only to be rebuked for his pains. Another time he waylaid a peer, as +he left the House of Lords, and was threatened with arrest. Foiled in +all his attempts, the cracked-brained old fellow impatiently awaited +the wedding ceremony. At last the great day arrived. All the bells of +old London were ringing blithely as the gilded coach, drawn by ten +white horses, deposited the King at Westminster Abbey. In the +forefront of the vast throng surrounding the entrance stood the +hatter." + +"And did he have the hat with him?" asked the Little Chap. + +"Yes, Son, he had it with him. And when the King entered the portals +of the ancient Abbey, the hatter somehow broke through the line of +guards and ran after him crying 'Your Majesty! Your Majesty! Deign to +accept this token of a loyal subject's regard!' + +"The King turned in surprise And when he saw the ragged old fellow +tending him the ridiculous-looking hat, he flew into a great rage and +cried angrily: 'How comes this varlet here, interrupting his +Sovereign's nuptials and desecrating our Tomb of Kings? Away with him +to prison, and let him repent his insolence as he rots in a dungeon!'" + +"Why did he do that, Daddy?" + +"The Sovereign, Son, was a very proud king, while the hatter was both +poor and humble. And at his words the guards hurried forward and +hustled the old man out of the Abbey, where his presence was an insult +to the Great. In the struggle the hat rolled into the gutter, and one +of the King's white horses put his hoof through it. The hatter cried +like a child when he saw the work of his loving hands thus ruined. But +they carried him off to prison and kept him shut up there until he +died and paid the penalty for his crime of desecrating the Abbey." + +"Oh, the poor old hatter! But is that the end of the story, Daddy?" +The Little Chap's disappointment was markedly pronounced. + +"No, Son, there is a little more to come. I meant to tell you that the +hatter had reared a large family of boys. His sons all married and, in +turn, raised large families. These numerous relatives or kin took the +name of Hatterskin. In course of time that became shortened to +Hatkins, and so remained until the British habit of dropping their H's +reduced it to Atkins. + +"At last the proud King died and was buried with great ceremony in the +Abbey. Year followed year, and century succeeded century. England, +although blessed with a Royal pair both humane and good, was ruled by +an even wiser monarch--the Sovereign People. + +"Then came an August day when the black thunder-cloud of war darkened +her smiling horizon. Four bloody, terrible years the conflict lasted. +And when at last an armistice was signed, the stricken people went +wild with joy." + +The Big Chap's gaze returned to the canvas with its scene of mediaeval +splendour. A mystic light smouldered in his eyes as, unconscious of +his surroundings and his youthful auditor, he continued: "On the +second anniversary of that happy day an unprecedented thing happened. +Before the ancient Abbey a gun carriage, bearing the flag-draped +casket of an unidentified warrior, came to rest on the very spot where +the gilded coach of the proud King once had stopped. Again the square +was crowded, as on that day in the long ago when the poor hatter +foolishly tried to honour his sovereign. The traditions of centuries +toppled when the body of the unknown soldier passed through those +storied portals followed by the King of England as chief mourner. In +the dim, historic chapel the king stood, in advance of princes, prime +ministers, and the famous leaders of both army and navy. Like the +humble hatter of old his royal head was reverently bared as the +nameless hero was laid among the silent company of England's +illustrious dead. 'The Boast of Heraldry and the Pomp of Power' bowed +in silent homage before the remains of a once common soldier. Thus +Loyalty and Service eventually stormed the Stronghold of Honour and +Splendour!" + +For a moment there was an impressive, brooding silence, broken +presently by the Little Chap. "And what was the soldier's name, +Daddy?" + +Recalled from his revery, the father answered: + +"_He was known, Son, as Tommy Atkins_." + +The Little Chap's brow was puckered in thought. At last he laughed +delightedly and clapped his hands. "Was the soldier, Daddy, one of the +hatter's family--the poor old hatter who was thrown out of the Abbey?" + +The Big Chap lifted the child from his lap and placed him on his feet. +Then he picked up a brush and turned to his painting. + +"I like to think so, Son. But only God knows." + + + +THE GETAWAY + +By O.F. LEWIS + +From _Red Book_ + + +Old Man Anderson, the lifer, and Detroit Jim, the best second-story +man east of the Mississippi, lay panting side by side in the +pitch-dark dugout, six feet beneath the surface of the prison yard. +They knew their exact position to be twenty feet south of the north +wall, and, therefore, thirty feet south of the slate sidewalk outside +the north wall. + +It had taken the twain three months and twenty-one days to achieve the +dugout. Although there was always a guard somewhere on the north wall, +the particular spot where the dugout had come into being was sheltered +from the wall-guard's observation by a small tool-house. Also whenever +the pair were able to dig, which was only at intervals, a bunch of +convicts was always perched on the heap of dirt from various +legitimate excavations within the yard, which Fate had piled up at +that precise spot. The earth from the dugout and the earth from these +other diggings mixed admirably. + +Nor, likewise because of the dirt-pile, could any one detect the job +from the south end of the yard. If a guard appeared from around the +mat-shop or coming out of the Principal Keeper's office, the convicts +sunning themselves on the dirt-pile in the free hour of noon, or late +in the afternoon, after the shops had closed, spoke with motionless +lips to the two diggers. Plenty of time was thus afforded to shove a +couple of boards over the aperture, kick dirt over the boards, and +even push a barrow over the dugout's entrance--and there you were! + +One minute before this narrative opens, on July 17th, a third convict +had dropped the boards over the hole into which Old Man Anderson, the +lifer, and Detroit Jim, had crawled. This convict had then frantically +kicked dirt over the boards, had clawed down still more dirt, to make +sure nothing could be seen of the hole--had made the thing look just +like part of the big dirt-pile indeed--and then had legged it to the +ball-game now in progress on this midsummer Saturday afternoon, at the +extreme south end of the yard, behind the mat-shop. + +Dirt trickled down upon the gray hair of Old Man Anderson in the dark +and stuffy hole he shared with his younger companion. But the darkness +and the stuffiness and the filtering dirt were unsensed. Something far +more momentous was in the minds of both. How soon would Slattery, the +prison guard, whom they knew to be lying dead in the alley between the +foundry and the tool-shop, be found? For years Slattery had been a +fairly good friend to Old Man Anderson, but what did that count in the +face of his becoming, for all his friendship, a last-minute and +totally unexpected impediment to the get-away? He had turned into the +alley just when Old Man Anderson and Detroit Jim were crouching for +the final jump to the dugout! A blow--a thud--that was all.... + +Anderson lay now, staring wide-eyed into the black nothing of the +hole. For the second time he had killed a man, and God knew he hadn't +intended to--either time! Fourteen years ago a man had tried to get +his wife away from him, while he was serving a one-year bit in the +county jail. Both men had had guns, and Old Man Anderson had killed +the other or he would have been killed himself. So that was no murder +at all! And as for Slattery--big, heavy, slow-moving, red-faced +Slattery--Old Man Anderson would even have gone out of his way to do +the guard a favour, under ordinary circumstances. But as between +Slattery and the chance to escape--that was different. + +Old Man Anderson rubbed his right hand in the dirt and held it before +his eyes in the blackness. He knew that the moisture on it was +Slattery's blood. The iron pipe in Old Man Anderson's hands had struck +Slattery on the head just once, but once was enough. + +Old Man Anderson burst into hiccoughing sobs. The younger convict +punched him in the ribs, and swore at him in muffled tones. Anderson +stifled his sobs then, but continued to sniffle and shiver. This time +it would absolutely be The Chair for him--if they got him! In a few +minutes they couldn't help discovering Slattery. Anderson never could +give himself up now, however this business of the dugout and the +hoped-for old sewer conduit should finally turn out. In the beginning +he had counted on crawling out, if worst came to worst, and +surrendering. But to crawl out now meant but one thing--The Chair! + +In all his fourteen years behind the walls the vision of The Chair had +terrorized the old man. When they had sent him to prison his first +cell had been in the death-house, separated from The Chair only by a +corridor that, they told him, was about twenty feet long, and took no +more than five seconds to traverse--with the priest. Until they +changed his cell, the gaunt, terrible Thing in the next room edged +every day nearer, nearer, nearer, looming, growing, broadening before +his morbid vision until it seemed to have cut off from his sight +everything else in the world--closer, closer until it was only seven +incredible hours away! Then had come the commutation of his sentence +from death to life! + +The next day Old Man Anderson, gray-haired even then, went out from +the death-house among his gray-clad fellows, but straight into the +prison hospital, where for three months be lay a victim of chair-shock +just as surely as was ever a man shell-shocked on the Flanders front. +And never since had the hands of the man wholly ceased to quiver and +to shake. + +Now he was a murderer for the second time! In the blackness he +stretched out his hand, and ran it over a stack of tin cans. Detroit +Jim had been mighty clever! Canned food from the storehouse, enough to +last perhaps two weeks! Detroit Jim had had a storehouse job. Twice a +day, during the last ten days, the wiry little ferret-faced +second-story man had got away with at least one can from the prison +commissary. Also he had provided matches, candles, and even a cranky +little flashlight. Only chewing tobacco, because you can smell smoke a +long way when you are hunting escaped convicts. And a can of water +half the size of an ash can! + +Despair fastened upon Old Man Anderson, and a wave of sickness swept +over him. All the food in the world wouldn't bring Slattery back to +life. And again that Thing in the death-house rose before his mind's +eyes. Throughout all the years he had carried a kind of dread that +sometime a governor might come along who would put back his sentence +where it had been at first--and then all his good behaviour in these +endless years would count for nothing. Until Detroit Jim had told him +about the long-forgotten sewer conduit, he had never even thought to +disobey the prison rules. + +The old man's teeth chattered. Detroit Jim's thin fingers tugged at +his sleeve. That meant getting busy, and digging with the pick with +the sawed-off handle. So Anderson wriggled into the horizontal +chamber, which was just large enough to permit his body and arms to +function. + +As he hacked away at the damp earth, he could see in the pitch +darkness the dirty sheet of paper, now in Detroit Jim's pocket, upon +which their very life depended. It was a tracing made by a discharged +convict from a dusty leather-covered book in the public library in New +York, sent in by the underground to Jim. The book had contained the +report of some forgotten architect, back in the fifties of the last +century, and the diagram in his report showed the water and sewage +conduit--in use! It ran from the prison building, right down across +the yard, six feet under ground, and out under the north wall, under +the street outside, and finally into the river. Built of brick, four +feet wide, four feet high. A ready-made tunnel to freedom! + +Old Man Anderson could hear Detroit Jim's hoarse whisper now, as he +chopped away at the dirt, which he shoved back under his stomach, to +where Jim's fingers caught it and thrust it farther back. + +"We're only a couple of feet from that old conduit right now. Dig, you +son of a gun, dig! Can the snifflin'! You dig, and then I'll dig!" + +They were saving their matches and candles against necessity. +Mechanically the old man chopped and hacked at the wall of earth in +front of him. Now and then the pick would encounter a stone or some +other hard substance. In the last few days they had come upon frequent +pieces of old brick. Detroit Jim had rejoiced over these signs. For +the old man every falling clod of earth seemed to bring him nearer to +freedom. They also took his mind off Slattery. + +So he chopped away, how long he did not know. Suddenly his pick struck +an obstacle again. He hacked at it. It gave slightly. A third time he +struck it, and it seemed to recede. An odour of mouldy air filled his +nostrils. In that little aperture his pick touched nothing now! He +heard something fall! Then he knew! There was a hollow place in front +of them! The abandoned conduit? He stifled a shout. + +From somewhere, muffled at first, but ultimately faintly strident, +rose a prolonged wail that seemed to issue from the very earth. The +sound rose, and fell, and rose again. Frantically the pick of Old Man +Anderson hacked away at the dirt, and then at whatever was in front of +him. Detroit Jim snapped the feeble flashlight then. It was a +wall--the conduit wall! + +Meantime, the prison siren shrieked out to the countryside the news of +an escape. + +What time it was--whether night or day or what day, neither Jim nor +Old Man Anderson knew. They had slept, of course, and Jim had +forgotten to wind his watch. Had one week or two weeks passed? If two +weeks had slipped by and if the prison officers ran true to form they +would by now have ceased searching inside the prison walls. + +Old Man Anderson and Detroit Jim huddled close to each other in the +darkness of the conduit. A hundred times they had crawled from one end +to the other of their vaultlike trap! In their desperate and fruitless +search for an outlet to the conduit they had burned many matches and +several candles. Besides, Old Man Anderson had required light in which +to fight off his attacks of nerves, and the last of the candles had +gone for that. Now total darkness enveloped them. + +The conduit was blocked! By earth at one end, and by a brick wall at +the other! All along the winding hundred feet of vault they had hacked +out brick after brick only to encounter solid earth behind. Only a few +tins of food remained and the water was wholly gone; the liquid from +the food cans only served to increase their thirst. + +Old Man Anderson had grown to loathe Detroit Jim. Every word he +murmured, every movement he made, intensified the loathing. He had +made up his mind that Jim was planning to desert him the next time he +should fall asleep; perhaps would kill him and leave him there--in the +dark. The two had practically ceased speaking to each other. In his +mental confusion Old Man Anderson kept revolving in his mind, with +satisfaction, a new plan he had evolved. The next time Jim should fall +asleep he would crawl back through the aperture in the conduit wall, +pry up the boards over the opening into the prison yard, wriggle out, +and take his chances in getting over the wall somehow! Better even be +shot by a guard than die like a rat in this unspeakable place, as he +was doing, where he couldn't stand up and dared not lie down on +account of the things that were forever crawling through the place! +His contemplation of his plan was broken in upon by his companion +clutching him spasmodically by the arm. The old man's cry died in his +throat. + +Footsteps! Dull and distant they were, and somewhere above +them--momentarily more distinct--receding--gone! + +Detroit Jim pulled Andersen's head toward him, and whispered: + +"Sidewalk! People going by! We've never sat right here before! We +wouldn't hear them if they weren't walking on stone, or slate, or +something hard!" + +The old man's heart pounded like a trip-hammer. Detroit Jim seized the +pick and began to pry the bricks loose from the arched roof of the +conduit. They worked like mad, picking, hacking, pulling, piling the +bricks softly down on the conduit floor. + +Once, for an instant, Jim stopped working. "How far from the hole we +came in through, do you think we are?" he whispered. + +"'Bout a hundred feet, I guess," answered the old man. "Why?" + +Without replying Detroit Jim resumed his picking, picking, at the +bricks. A hundred feet from where they had entered would not be under +the sidewalk. Finally, he understood. This conduit wound around a good +deal; it would take a hundred winding feet to cover thirty +straightaway. + +Finally, also, Detroit Jim turned the pick over to the old man, who, +feeling in the blackness with his hands, discovered the span as wide +as his outstretched arms, from which Detroit Jim had removed the +bricks. It was a span of yielding earth into which the old man now dug +his pick. As he worked, the loosened dirt fell upon him, upon his +head, into his eyes and nose and ears.... + +Abruptly the old man's pick struck the flagging above them! Detroit +Jim mounted upon the pile of bricks and shoved Anderson aside. + +Jim felt along the edges of the stone clear around. It seemed to +measure about three feet by two, and to be of slate, and probably held +in place only by its contact with other stones, or by cement between +the stones. No light appeared through the crevices. Detroit Jim took +from his pocket a huge pocket-knife and with the longest blade poked +up between the main stone and the one adjoining. The blade met +resistance. + +Ultimately, and abruptly, however, the blade shot through to the hilt +of the knife. Jim drew it back instantly. No light came through the +crevice. + +"I smell good air," he whispered, "but I can't see a thing. It must be +night!" + +They knew now what to do. The flagging must be removed at once, before +any one should go by! The hole would be big enough to let them out! +Old Man Andersen's heart leaped. It was over. They had won. Trust him +to go where they'd never get him for the Slattery business! As for +Detroit Jim, he already knew the next big trick that he would pull +off--out in Cleveland! + +Ultimately, as Detroit Jim worked upon it, the stone began to sag. An +edge caught upon the adjacent flagging. The two men, perched upon the +wobbly bricks, manipulated the stone, working it loose, until, +finally, it came crashing down. + +The stone had made noise enough, it seemed, to wake the dead; yet +above them there was no sound. Swiftly they raised the flagging and +set it securely upon the heap of bricks. When Detroit Jim stood upon +this improvised platform his head was level with the aperture they had +made. He could see no sky, no stars, could feel no wind, discover no +light such as pervades even the darkest night. + +"Good God!" he breathed. His fingers went out over the flagging. His +knife dropped. The tinkle echoed dully down the conduit. He stooped to +where Old Man Anderson stood, breathing hard. + +"It's a--a room!" he whispered. + +"A--a room?" repeated Old Man Anderson dully. + +"Come! After me! Up! I'll pull you up!" + +Detroit Jim, being wiry, swung himself up, and then bent down, groping +for the old man's hands. Winded, panting, exhausted, the two men stood +at last in this new blackness, clutching each other, their ears +strained to catch the slightest sound. + +"For God's sake, don't fall down that hole now!" hissed Detroit Jim. +"Listen. We'll both crawl together till we get to a wall. Then you +feel along one way, and whisper to me what you find, and I'll crawl +the other. Look for a window or a door--some way out! We'll come +together finally. Are you ready?" + +"I'm--I'm afraid," whined the old man. + +Detroit Jim's fingers dug into the other's arm, and he pulled the +latter along. Their groping hands touched a wall--a wall of wood. +Detroit Jim stood up and pulled Anderson beside him. He felt the old +man shiver. He shoved him gently in to the left and himself moved +cautiously to the right, slowly, catlike. + +Finally, Jim came to a door. He could perceive no light through the +chinks in the door. Sensing the increasing uncanniness of a room +without windows, without furniture, with flagging for a floor, he +turned the knob of the door gently, and it gave under his touch. + +Just then there came to him a hoarse whisper from across the room. It +made him jump. "I've--I've found some wires," the old man was saying, +"in a cable running along the floor----" + +"See where they lead!" Detroit Jim was breathless, in anticipation. + +And then, shattering the overwhelming tension of the moment, shrilled, +suddenly, a horrible, prolonged, piercing shriek ending in a gasp and +the sound of a heavy body falling to the floor! What, in God's name, +had happened to the old man? And that yell was enough to awaken the +entire world! + +Detroit Jim groped his way across the room. He could hear now no +further sound from the old man.... Steps outside! He sank upon his +knees, his hands outstretched. He heard a lock turn; then following +upon a click the whole universe went white, and dazzling and +scorching! + +He raised one arm to his blinking, throbbing eyes. A rough voice +shouted: "Hands up!" + +There was a rush of feet, the rough clutch of hands at his +shoulders.... Presently he found himself blinking down upon the +fear-contorted face of Old Man Anderson dirt-streaked, bearded, gaunt, +dead! + +Slowly his eyes crawled beyond the body on the floor.... Before him, +its empty arms stretched toward him, its straps and wires twisting +snakily in front of him, was The Chair! + + + +"AURORE" + +By ETHEL WATTS MUMFORD + +From _Pictorial Review_ + + +"Your name!--_Votre nom_?" Crossman added, for in the North Country +not many of the habitants are bilingual. + +She looked at him and smiled slowly, her teeth white against +cardinal-flower lips. + +"Ma name? Aurore," she answered in a voice as mystically slow as her +smile, while the mystery of her eyes changed and deepened. + +Crossman watched her, fascinated. She was like no woman he had ever +seen, radiating a personality individual and strange. "Aurore," he +repeated. "You're not the dawn, you know; not a bit like it." He did +not expect her to own to any knowledge of the legend of her name, but +she nodded her head understandingly. + +"It was the Curé name' me so," she explained. "But the Curé and me," +she shrugged, "never could--how you say?--see--hear--one the +other--so, I would not be a blonde just for spite to him--I am a very +black dawn, _n'est-ce pas_?" + +"A black dawn," he repeated. Her words unleashed his fancy--her heavy +brows and lashes, her satiny raven hair, her slow voice that seemed +made of silence, her eyes that changed in expression so rapidly that +they dizzied one with a sense of space. "Black Dawn!" He stared at her +long, which in no wise disconcerted her. + +"Will you want, then, Antoine and me?" she asked at length. + +He woke from his dream with a savage realization that, most surely, he +wanted her. "Yes. Of course--you--and Antoine. Wait, _attendez_, don't +go yet." + +"_Why_ not?" she smiled. "I have what I came for." + +Her hand was on the door-latch. The radiance from the opened door of +the square, old-fashioned stove shimmered over her fur cap and +intensified the broad scarlet stripes of her mackinaw. In black +corduroy trousers, full and bagging as a moujik's, she stood at ease, +her feet small and dainty even in the heavy caribou-hide boots. + +"_Bon soir, monsieur_," she said. "In two days we go with you to +camp--me--_and_ Antoine." + +"Wait!" he cried, but she had opened the door. He rose with a start, +and, ignoring the intense cold, followed her till the stinging breath +of the North stabbed him with the recollection of its immutable power. +All about him the night was radiant. Of a sudden the sky was hung with +banners--banners that rippled and folded and unfolded, banners of +rainbows, long, shaking loops of red and silver, ghosts of lost +emeralds and sapphires, oriflammes that fluttered in the heavens, +swaying across the world in mysterious majesty. Immensity, Silence, +Mystery--The Northern Lights! "Aurora!" he called into the night, +"Aurora--Borealis!" + +The Curé of Portage Dernier drove up to the log-cabin office and shook +himself from his blankets; his _soutane_ was rolled up around his +waist and secured with safety-pins; his solid legs were encased in the +heaviest of woollen trousers and innumerable long stockings. His +appearance was singularly divided--clerical above, under the long +wool-lined cape, and "lay" below. Though the thermometer showed a +shockingly depressed figure, the stillness and the warmth of the sun, +busy at diamond-making in the snow, gave the feeling of spring. + +The sky was inconceivably blue. The hard-frozen world was one +immaculate glitter, the giant evergreens standing black against its +brightness. The sonorous ring of axes on wood, the gnawing of saws, +the crunching of runners, the crackling crash of distant trees falling +to the woodsmen's onslaughts--Bijou Falls logging-camp was a vital +centre of joyous activity. + +The Curé grinned and rubbed his mittened hands. "H--Hola!" he called. + +At his desk in the north window Crossman heard the hail, and went to +the door. At sight of the singular padded figure his face lifted in a +grin. "Come in, Father," he exclaimed; "be welcome." + +"Ah," said the Priest, his pink face shining with benevolence, "I +thank you. Where is my friend, that good Jakapa? I am on my monthly +circuit, and I thought to see what happens at the Falls of the Bijou." +He stepped inside the cabin and advanced to the stove with +outstretched hands. "I have not the pleasure," he said tentatively. + +"My name is Crossman," the other answered. "I am new to the North." + +"Ah, so? I am the Curé of Portage Dernier, but, as you see, I must +wander after my lambs--very great goats are they, many of them, and +the winter brings the logging. So I, too, take to the timber. My +team," he waved an introducing hand at the two great cross-bred +sled-dogs that unhooked from their traces had followed him in and now +sat gravely on their haunches, staring at the fire. "You are an +overseer for the company?" suggested the Curé, politely curious--"or +perhaps you cruise?" + +Crossman shook his head. "No, _mon père_. I came up here to get well." + +"Ah," said the Curé, sympathetically tapping his lung. "In this air of +the evergreens and the new wood, in the clean cold--it is the world's +sanatorium--you will soon be yourself again." + +Crossman smiled painfully. "Perhaps _here_"--he laid a long, slender +finger on his broad chest--"but I heal not easily of the great world +sickness--the War. It has left its mark! The War, the great malady of +the world." + +"You are right." Meditatively the Priest threw aside his cape and +began unfastening the safety-pins that held up his cassock. "You say +well. It strikes at the _heart_." + +Crossman nodded. + +"Yet it passes, my son, and Nature heals; as long as the hurt be in +Nature, Nature will take care. And you have come where Nature and God +work together. In this great living North Country, for sick bodies and +sick souls, the good God has His good sun and His clean winds." He +nodded reassurance, and Crossman's dark face cleared of its brooding. + +"Sit down, Father." He advanced a chair. + +"So," murmured the Curé, continuing his thought as he sank into the +embrace of thong and withe. "So you were in the War, and did you take +hurt there, my son?" + +Crossman nodded. "Trench pneumonia, and then the rat at the lung; but +of shock, something also. But I think it was not concussion, as the +doctors said, but _soul_-shock. It has left me, Father, like +Mohammed's coffin, suspended. I think I have lost my grip on the +world--and not found my hold on another." + +"Shock of the soul," the Priest ruminated. "Your soul is bruised, my +son. We must take care of it." His voice trailed off. There was +silence in the little office broken only by the yawn and snuffle of +the sled-dogs. + +Suddenly the door swung open. In the embrasure stood Aurore in her red +mackinaw and corduroy trousers. A pair of snowshoes hung over her +back, and her hand gripped a short-handled broad axe. Her great eyes +turned from Crossman to the Curé, and across her crimson mouth crept +her slow smile. The Curé sprang to his feet at sight of her, his face +went white, and the lines from nose to lips seemed to draw in. + +"Aurore!" he exclaimed; "Aurore!" + +"_Oui, mon père_," she drawled. "It is Aurore." She struck a +provocative pose, her hand on her hip, her head thrown back, while her +eyes changed colour as alexandrite in the sun. + +The Curé turned on Crossman. "What is this woman to you?" + +Her eyes defied him. "Tell him," she jeered. "What _am_ I to you?" + +"She is here with Antoine Marceau, the log-brander," Crossman answered +unsteadily. "She takes care of our cabin, Jakapa's and mine." + +"Is that _all_?" the Priest demanded. + +Her eyes challenged him. What, indeed, was she to him? +What _was_ she? From the moment he had followed her into the boreal +night, with its streaming lights of mystery and promise, she had held +his imagination and his thoughts. + +"Is that _all_?" the Priest insisted. + +"You insult both this girl and me," Crossman retorted, stung to sudden +anger. + +"_Dieu merci_!" the Curé made the sign of the cross as he spoke. "As +for this woman, send her away. She is _not_ the wife of Antoine +Marceau; she is not married--she _will_ not be." + +In spite of himself a savage joy burned in Crossman's veins. She was +the wife of no man; she was a free being, whatever else she was. + +"I do not have to marry," she jeered. "That is for the women that only +one man desires--or perhaps two--like some in your parish, _mon +père_." + +"She is evil," the Priest continued, paying no attention to her +sneering comment. "I know not what she is, nor who. One night, in +autumn, in the dark of the hour before morning, she was brought to me +by some Indians. They had found her, a baby, wrapped in furs, in an +empty canoe, rocking almost under the Grande Falls. But I tell you, +and to my sorrow, I _know_, she is evil. She knows not God, nor God +her. You, whose soul is sick, flee her as you would the devil! Aurore, +the Dawn! I named her, because she came so near the morning. Aurore! +Ah, God! She should be named after the blackest hour of a witch's +Sabbath!" + +She laughed. It was the first time Crossman had heard her laugh--a +deep, slow, far-away sound, more like an eerie echo. + +"_He_ has a better name for me," she said, casting Crossman a look +whose intimacy made his blood run hot within him. "'The Black +Dawn'--_n'est-ce-pas?_ Though I _have_ heard him call me in the +night--by another name," with which equivocal statement she swung the +axe into the curve of her arm, turned on her heel, and softly closed +the door between them. + +The Priest turned on him. "My son," his eyes searched Crossman's, "you +have not lied to me?" + +"No," he answered steadily. "Once I called her the Aurora +Borealis--that is all. To me she seems mysterious and changing, and +coloured, like the Northern Lights." + +"She is mysterious and changing and beautiful, but it is not the +lights of the North and of Heaven. She is the _feu follet_, the +will-o'-the-wisp that hovers over what is rotten, and dead. Send her +away, my son; send her away. Oh, she has left her trail of blood and +hatred and malice in my parish, I know. She has bred feuds; she has +sent strong men to the devil, and broken the hearts of good women. But +_you_ will not believe me. It is to Jakapa I must talk. _Mon Dieu_! +how is it that he let her come! You are a stranger, but he----" + +"Jakapa wished for Antoine, and she was with him," explained Crossman +uneasily, yet resentful of the Priest's vehemence. + +"I can not wait." The Curé rose and began repinning his clerical +garments. "Where is Jakapa? Have you a pair of snowshoes to lend me? +You must forgive my agitation, Monsieur, but you do not +understand--I--which way?" + +"He should be at Mile End, just above the Bijou. Sit still, Father; I +will send for him. The wind sets right. I'll call him in." Slipping on +his beaver jacket, he stepped outside and struck two blows on the +great iron ring, a bent rail, that swung from its gibbet like a +Chinese gong. A singing roar, like a metal bellow, sprang into the +clear, unresisting air, leaped and echoed, kissed the crags of the +Bijou and recoiled again, sending a shiver of sound and vibration +through snow-laden trees, on, till the echoes sighed into silence. +Crossman's over-sensitive ear clung to the last burring whisper as it +answered, going north, north, to the House of Silence, drawn there by +the magnet of Silence, as water seeks the sea. For a moment he had +almost forgotten the reason for the smitten clamour, hypnotized by the +mystery of sound. Then he turned, to see Aurore, a distant figure of +scarlet and black at the edge of the wood road, shuffling northward on +her long snowshoes, northward, as if in pursuit of the sound that had +gone before. She raised a mittened hand to him in ironic salutation. +She seemed to beckon, north--north--into the Silence. Crossman shook +himself. What was this miasma in his heart? He inhaled the vital air +and felt the rush of his blood in answer, realizing the splendour of +this beautiful, intensely living world of white and green, of sparkle +and prismatic brilliance. Its elemental power like the urge of the +world's youth. + +But Aurore? His brain still heard the echo of her laugh. He cursed +savagely under his breath, and turned his back upon the Curé, unable +to face the scrutiny of those kind, troubled eyes. + +"Jakapa will be here presently," he said over his shoulder. "That gong +carries ten miles if there's no wind. One ring, that's for the Boss; +two, call in for the whole gang; three, alarm--good as a telegraph or +the telephone as far as it goes. Meanwhile, if you'll excuse me, I'll +have a look at the larder." + +Without a doubt, he reasoned, Aurore would have left their mid-day +meal ready. She would not return, he knew, until the guest had gone. +In the little overheated cook-house he found the meal set out. All was +in order. Then his eye caught a singular decoration fastened to the +door, a paper silhouette, blackened with charcoal, the shape of a +cassocked priest. The little cut-out paper doll figure was pinned to +the wood by a short, sharp kitchen knife driven viciously deep, and +the handle, quivering with the closing of the door, gave the illusion +that the hand that had delivered the blow must have only at that +instant been withdrawn. + +Crossman shivered. He knew that world-old formula of hate; he knew of +its almost innocent use in many a white caban, but its older, deeper +meaning of demoniacal incantation rushed to his mind, somehow blending +with the wizardry with which he surrounded his thoughts of the strange +woman. + +A step outside crunching in the snow. The door opened, revealing +Antoine Marceau. The huge form of the log-brander towered above him. +He could not read the expression of the eyes behind the square-cupped +snow spectacles. + +"She tell me, Aurore," he rumbled, "that I am to come. We have the +company." + +"Yes, the Curé of Portage Dernier." Crossman watched him narrowly. + +Antoine took off the protecting wooden blinders and thrust them in his +pocket. + +Crossman stood aside, hesitating. Antoine drew off his mittens with +businesslike precision, and placed a huge, capable hand on a pot-lid, +lifted it, and eyed the contents of the saucepan. + +"The Curé, he like ptarmigan," he observed, "but," he added in a +matter-of-fact voice, "the Curé like not Aurore--he have tell you, +_hein_? Ah, well, why not? For him such as Aurore _are_ not--_voilà _." + +"The Curé says she is a devil." Crossman marvelled at his temerity, +yet he hung on the answer. + +"Why not? For him, as I have say, she _is_ not--for _me_, for _you_, +ma frien', _that_ is different." Antoine turned on him eyes as +impersonal as those of Fate; where Crossman had expected to see +animosity there was none, only a strange brotherhood of pitying +understanding. + +"For who shall forbid that the dawn she shall break--_hein_?" he +continued. "The Curé? Not mooch. When the Dawn she come, she come; not +with his hand can he hold her back. For me, now comes perhaps the +sunset; perhaps the dawn for you. But what would you? Who can put the +dog-harness on the wind, or put the bit in the teeth of the waterfall +to hold him up?" + +"Or who with his hand can draw the Borealis from heaven?" Crossman cut +in. He spoke unconsciously. He had not wished to say that, he had not +wanted to speak at all, but his subconscious mind had welded the +thought of her so fast to the great mystery of the Northern Lights +that without volition he had voiced it. + +Antoine Marceau nodded quietly. The strangely aloof acknowledgment of +Crossman's possible relation to this woman, _his_ woman, who yet was +not his or any man's, somehow shocked Crossman. His blood flamed at +the thought, and yet he felt her intangible, unreal. He had but to +look into her shifting, glittering eyes, and there were silence and +playing lights. Suddenly his vision of her changed, became human and +vital. He saw before him the sinuous movement of her strong young +body. He realized the living perfume of her, clean and fresh, faintly +aromatic as of pine in the sunlight, and violets in the shadow. + +Antoine Marceau busied himself about the cook-house. He did not speak +of Aurore again, not even when his eye rested on the paper doll +skewered to the door by the deep-driven knife. He frowned, made the +sign of the cross, jerked out the knife, and thrust its point in the +purifying blaze of the charcoal fire. But he made no comment. + +Crossman turned on his heel and entered the office-building. Through +the south window he saw Jakapa snowshoeing swiftly up the short +incline to the door; beside him walked the Curé, pleading and anxious. +He could follow the words as his lips framed them. In the present mood +Crossman did not wish to hear the Curé's denunciation. It was +sufficient to see that the Foreman had, evidently, no intention of +acting on the advice proffered. + +As he softly closed the door between the main office and the living +room at the rear, he heard the men enter on a quick word of reproof in +the Curé's rich bass. + +"She does her work sufficiently well, and I shall not order her from +the camp," Jakapa snapped in reply. "She is with Marceau; if he keeps +her in hand, what do I care? She leave him, that _his_ affair, _mon +Dieu, mon père_." + +"She has bewitched you, too, Jakapa. She has bewitched that other, the +young man who is here for the healing of his soul. What an irony, to +heal his soul, and she comes to poison it!" + +"Heal his soul?" Jakapa laughed harshly. "He's had the weak lung, +shell-shock, and he's a friend of the owner. _Mon père_, if he is here +for the good of his soul, that is _your_ province--but me?--I am here +to boss one job, and I boss him, that's all. I hope only you have not +driven the cook away, or the _pot-au-feu_, she will be thin." He tried +to speak the latter part of his sentence lightly, but his voice +betrayed his irritation. + +Crossman opened the door and entered. "Antoine will be here in a +minute," he announced. "Aurore sent him back to feed the animals." He +took down the enamelled tin dishes and cups and set their places. +Jakapa eyed him covertly, with a half-sneering venom he had never +before shown. + +It was a silent meal. The Curé sighed and shook his head at intervals, +and the Boss grumbled a few comments in answer to an occasional +question concerning his lumberjacks. Crossman sat in a dream. Could he +have understood aright when Antoine had spoken of the dawn? + +Jakapa dropped a plate with a curse and a clatter. The sudden sound +ripped the sick man's nerves like an exploding bomb. White to the +lips, he jumped from his chair to meet the Boss's sneering eyes. The +Curé laid a gentle hand on his arm, and he settled back shamefacedly. + +"Your pardon, _mon père_--my nerves are on edge--excuse me--an +inheritance of the trenches." + +"Emotion is bad for you, my son, and you should not emotion yourself," +said the Priest gently. + +"Do you travel far when you leave us now?" Crossman asked +self-consciously, anxious to change the subject. + +"To the camp at the Chaumière Noire, a matter of ten kilometres. It is +no hardship, my rounds, not at all, with the ground like a white +tablecloth, and this good sun, to me like to my dogs, it is but play." +He rose from the table, glad of the excuse to hasten his going, and +with scant courtesy Jakapa sped his guest's departure. + +As the sled disappeared among the trees, bearing the queerly bundled +figure of the Priest, the Boss unhooked his snowshoes from the wall. +He seemed to have forgotten Crossman's presence, but as he turned, his +smouldering eyes lighted on him. He straightened with a jerk. "What +did he mean when he say, _she_ have bewitch _you_?" As always, when +excited, his somewhat precise English slipped back into the idiom of +the habitant. "By Gar! Boss or no Boss, I pack you out if I catch you. +We make no jealousies for any one, not where I am. You come here for +your health--_hein?_ Well, better you keep this place healthy for +you." + +As if further to complicate the situation, the door opened to admit +the woman herself. She closed it, leaned against the wall, looking +from one to the other with mocking eyes. + +"Well, do I leave? Am I to pack? Have you wash the hand of me to +please the Curé, yes?" + +Jakapa turned on her brutally. "Get to the cook-house! Wash your dish! +Did I give orders to Antoine to leave hees work? By Gar! I feel like I +take you and break you in two!" He moved his knotted hands with a +gesture of destruction. There was something so sinister in the action +that, involuntarily, Crossman cried out a startled warning. Her laugh +tinkled across it. + +"Bah!" she shrugged. "If you wish to kill, why do you not kill those +who make the interferre? Are you a man? What is it, a cassock, that it +so protect a man? But me, because I do not wear a woman's skirt, you +will break me, hey? _Me!_ Nevair mind, I prefer this man. He at least +make no big talk." She slipped her arm through Crossman's, letting her +fingers play down from his wrist to his finger-tips--and the thrill of +it left him tongue-tied and helpless. + +Jakapa cursed and crouched low. He seemed about to hurl himself upon +the pair before him. Again she laughed, and her tingling, searching +fingers stole slowly over his throbbing pulses. + +She released Crossman's arm with a jerk, and snapped the fingers that +had just caressed him in the face of the furious lumberman. "_Allons!_ +Must I forever have no better revenge but to knife one paper doll? Am +I to be hounded like a beast, and threatened wherever I go? I am tired +of this dead camp. I think I go me down the river." She paused a +moment in her vehemence. Her next words came almost in a whisper: +"_Unless you can cross the trail to Chaumière Noire--then_, maybe, I +stay with you--I say--maybe." With a single swooping movement of her +strong young arm she swept the door open, and came face to face with +Antoine Marceau. "What, thou?" she said airily. + +He nodded. "Shall I go back, or do you want that I go to the other +side?" he asked the Foreman. + +"Go to the devil!" growled Jakapa, and slinging his snowshoes over his +arm, he stamped out. + +"_Tiens_!" said Antoine. "He is mad, the Boss." + +"I think we are all mad," said Crossman. + +"Maybe," said Antoine. Quietly he gathered together his axe, mittens, +and cap, and shrugging his huge shoulders into his mackinaw, looked +out at the glorious brightness of the stainless world and frowned. +"Come, Aurore," he said quietly. + +A little later, as Crossman rose to replenish the dwindling fire, he +saw him, followed by Aurore, enter the northern end of the timber +limit. Were they leaving, Crossman wondered. Had the silent woodsman +asserted his power over the woman? Crossman took down the +field-glasses from the nail on the wall. They were the sole reminder, +here in the North Country, of his years of war service. He followed +the two figures until the thickening timber hid them. Idly he swept +the horizon of black-green trees, blue shadows, and sparkling snow. A +speck moved--a mackinaw-clad figure passed swiftly across the clearing +above the Little Bijou--only a glimpse--the man took to cover in the +burned timber, where the head-high brush made a tangle of brown above +which the gaunt, white, black-smeared arms of dead trees flung +agonized branches to the sky.--"The short-cut trail to Chaumière +Noire"--"Shall I forever have no better revenge but to stab one paper +doll?" Her words echoed in his ears. + +_Jakapa was on the short cut to the Chaumière Noire_! Only Crossman's +accidental use of the field-glasses had betrayed his going. For an +instant Crossman's impulse was to rush out and ring the alarm on the +shrieking steel gong, but the next instant he laughed at himself. Yes, +surely, he was a sick man of many imaginings. The gang boss was gone +about his business. The log-brander had called upon his woman to +accompany him. That was all. Her angry words were mere threats--best +forgotten. + +With nervous haste he bundled into his heavy garments and ran from +himself and his imaginings into the dazzling embrace of the sun. + +He tramped to the gang at work above the Little Bijou Chute, where +they raced the logs to the iron-hard ice of the river's surface far +below. He even took a hand with the axe, was laughed at, and watched +the precision and power of the Jacks as they clove, swung, and lopped. +From the cliff he looked down at the long bunk-house, saw the blue +smoke rising straight, curled at the top like the uncoiling frond of a +new fern-leaf. Saw the Chinese cook, in his wadded coat of blue, +disappear into the snow-covered mound that hid the provision shack, +and watched the bounding pups refusing to be broken into harness by +Siwash George. It was all very simple, very real, and the twists of +his tired mind relaxed; his nervous hands came to rest in the warm +depths of his mackinaw pockets. The peace of sunned spaces and +flowing, clean air soothed his mind and heart. + +The blue shadows lengthened. The gang knocked off work. The last log +was rushed down the satin ice of the chute to leap over its fellows at +the foot. The smell of bacon sifted through the odours of evergreen +branches and new-cut wood. Crossman declined a cordial invitation to +join the gang at chuck. He must be getting back, he explained, "for +chow at the Boss's." + +Whistling, he entered the office, stirred up the fire, and crossed to +the cook-house. It was empty. The charcoal fire was out. Shivering, he +rebuilt it, looked through the larder, and hacked off a ragged slice +of jerked venison. A film of fear rose in his soul. What if they were +_really_ gone? What if Antoine _had_ taken her? It looked like it. His +heart sank. Not to see her again! Not to feel her strange, thrilling +presence! Not to sense that indomitable, insolent soul, throwing its +challenge before it as it walked through the world! + +Crossman came out, returned to the office, busied himself in tidying +the living room and solving the disorder of his desk. The twilight +sifted over wood and hill, crept from under the forest arches, and +spread across the snow of the open. He lit the lamps and waited. The +silence was complete. It seemed as if the night had come and closed +the world, locking it away out of the reach even of God. + +The meal Crossman had bunglingly prepared lay untouched on the table. +Now and then the crash of an avalanche of snow from the overburdened +branches emphasized the stillness. Dreading he knew not what, Crossman +waited--and loneliness is not good for a sick soul. + +Thoughts began crowding, nudging one another; happenings that he had +dismissed as casual took on new and sinister meanings. "Two and two +together" became at once a huge sum, leaping to terrifying +conclusions. Then with the silence and the tense nerve-draw of waiting +came the sense of things finished--done forever. A vast, all-embracing +finality--"_Néant_"--the habitant expression for the uttermost +nothing, the word seemed to push at his lips. He wanted to say it, but +a premonition warned him that to utter it was to make it real. + +Should he call upon the name of the Void, the Void would answer. He +feared it--it meant that She would be swallowed also in the great +gaping hollow of nothingness. He strained his ears for sounds of the +living world--the spit of the fire, the fall of clinkers in the grate, +the whisper of the wind stirring at the door. He tried to analyse his +growing uneasiness. He was sure now that she had followed Antoine's +bidding--forgetting him, if, indeed, her desires had ever reached +toward him. + +Now she seemed the only thing that mattered. He must find her; he must +follow. Wherever she was, there only was the world of reality. Where +she was, was life. And to find her, he must find Antoine--and then, +without warning, the door gaped--and Antoine stood before him, like a +coloured figure pasted on the black ground of the night. Then he +entered, quiet and matter-of-fact. He nodded, closed the door against +the biting cold, pulled off his cap, and stood respectfully. + +"It is no use to wait for the Boss; he will not come," said the +log-brander. "I came to tell Monsieur, before I go on, that le Curé is +safe at Chaumière Noire. Yes, he is safe, and Monsieur Jakapa have +turn back, when I catch up with him and tell him----" + +"What?" gasped Crossman. + +"It was to do," the giant twisted his cap slowly, "but it was harder +than I think. It was not for jealousy, I beg you to know. That she +would go if she want--to who she want, she can. I have no right to +stop her. But she would have had the Curé knifed to death. She made +the wish, and she put her wish in the heart of a man. If it had not +been this time--then surely some other time. She always find a hand to +do her will--even this of mine--once. I heard her tell to Jakapa. +Therefore, Jakapa he has gone back to watch with her body. I told him +where. Me I go. There are for me no more dawns. You love her, too, +Monsieur, therefore, I come to tell you the end. _Bon soir, +Monsieur_." + +He was gone. Again there was silence. Crossman sat rigid. What had +happened? His mind refused to understand. Then he visioned her, lying +on the white snow, scarlet under her breast, redder than her mackinaw, +redder than her woollen mittens, redder than the cardinal-flower of +her mouth--cardinal no more! "No, no!" he shrieked, springing to his +feet. His words echoed in the empty room. "No--no!--He couldn't kill +her!" He clung to the table. "No--no! No!" he screamed. Then he saw +her eyes; she was looking in through the window--yes, they were her +eyes--changing and glowing, eyes of mystery, of magic, eyes that made +the silence, eyes that called and shifted and glowed. He laughed. +Fools, fools! to think her dead! He staggered to the door and threw it +wide. Hatless, coatless, he plunged headlong into the dark--the Dark? +No! for she was there--on high, wide-flung, the banners of the Aurora +Borealis blazed and swung, banners that rippled and ran, banners of +rainbows, the souls of amethysts and emeralds, they fluttered in the +heavens, they swayed across the world, streamed like amber wine poured +from an unseen chalice, dropped fold on fold, like the fluttering +raiment of the gods. + +In the north a great sapphire curtain trembled as if about to part and +reveal the unknown Beyond; it grew brighter, dazzling, radiant. + +"Aurore!" he called. "Aurore!" The grip of ice clutched his heart. +Cold seized on him with unseen numbing hands. He was struggling, +struggling with his body of lead--for one step--just a step nearer the +great curtain, that now glowed warm--red--red as the ghost of her +cardinal-flower lips--pillars of light, as of the halls of heaven. +"Aurore!--Aurore!" + + + +MR. DOWNEY SITS DOWN + +By L.H. ROBBINS + +From _Everybody's_ + + +I + +Jacob Downey waited in line at the meat shop. A footsore little man +was he. All day long, six days a week for twenty-two years, he had +stood on his feet, trotted on them, climbed on them, in the hardware +department of Wilbram, Prescot & Co., and still they would not +toughen; still they would hurt; still to sustain his spirit after +three o'clock he had to invoke a vision of slippers, a warm radiator, +the _Evening Bee_, and the sympathy of Mrs. Downey and the youngsters. +To the picture this evening he had added pork chops. + +The woman next in line ahead of him named her meat. Said the butcher, +with a side glance at the clock, "A crown roast takes quite a while, +lady. Could I send it in the morning?" + +No, the lady wished to see it prepared. Expressly for that purpose had +she come out in the rain. To-morrow she gave a luncheon. + +"First come first served," thought Jacob Downey, and bode his time in +patience, feeling less pity for his aching feet than for Butcher +Myers. Where was the charity in asking a hurried man at five minutes +to six o'clock to frill up a roast that would not see the inside of +the oven before noon next day? + +Now, crown roasts are one thing to him who waits on fallen arches, and +telephone calls are another. Scarcely had Downey's opening come to +speak for pork chops cut medium when off went the bell and off rushed +Butcher Myers. + +Sharply he warned the unknown that this was Myers's Meat Shop. Blandly +he smiled into the transmitter upon learning that his caller was Mrs. +A. Lincoln Wilbram. + +By the audience in front of the counter the following social +intelligence was presently inferred: + +That Mr. and Mrs. Wilbram had just returned from Florida; that they +had enjoyed themselves ever so much; that they hoped Mr. Myers's +little girl was better; that they were taking their meals at the +Clarendon pending the mobilization of their house-servants; that they +expected to dine with the Mortimer Trevelyans this evening; that food +for the dog may with propriety be brought home from a hotel, but not +from the Mortimer Trevelyans; that there was utterly nothing in the +icebox for poor Mudge's supper; that Mudge was a chow dog purchased by +a friend of Mr. Wilbram's in Hongkong at so much a pound, just as Mr. +Myers purchased live fowls; that Mudge now existed not to become chow, +but to consume chow, and would feel grateful in his dog heart if Mr. +Myers would, at this admittedly late hour, send him two pounds of +bologna and a good bone; and that Mrs. Wilbram would consider herself +under deep and lasting obligation to Mr. Myers for this act of +kindness. + +Mr. Myers assured Mrs. Wilbram that it would mean no trouble at all; +he would send up the order as soon as his boy came back from +delivering a beefsteak to the Mortimer Trevelyans. + +He filled out a slip and stuck it on the hook. + +"Now, Mr. Downey," he said briskly. + +But Jacob Downey gave him one tremendous look and limped out of the +shop. + + +II + +It was evening in the home of Miss Angelina Lance. Twenty-seven hours +had passed since Jacob Downey's exasperated exit from Myers's Meat +Shop. The eyes of Miss Angelina were bright behind her not-unbecoming +spectacles as she watched the face of the solemn young man in the +Morris chair near the reading lamp. + +In his hand the solemn young man held three sheets of school +composition paper. As he read the pencil writing on page one he lost +his gravity. Over page two he smiled broadly. At the end of the last +page he said: + +"D.K.T. couldn't have done better. May I show it to him?" + +In the office of the Ashland (N.J.) _Bee_ the solemn young man was +known as Mr. Sloan. At Miss Lance's he was Sam. The mentioned D.K.T. +conducted the celebrated "Bee-Stings" column on the editorial page of +Mr. Sloan's journal, his levity being offset by the sobriety of Mr. +Sloan, who was assistant city-editor. + +On two evenings a week Mr. Sloan fled the cares of the Fourth Estate +and became Sam in the soul-refreshing presence of Miss Angelina. He +was by no means her only male admirer. In the Sixth Grade at the +Hilldale Public School she had thirty others; among these Willie +Downey, whose name appeared on every page of the composition Mr. Sloan +had read. + +With a host of other sixth-graders throughout the city Willie had +striven that day for a prize of ten dollars in gold offered by the +public-spirited A. Lincoln Wilbram, of Wilbram, Prescott & Co., for +the best schoolboy essay on Moral Principles. + +"Moral principles, gentlemen; that is what we need in Ashland. How +many men do you know who stand up for their convictions--or have any +to stand up for?" + +If the head of a department store is a bit thunderous at times, think +what a Jovian position he occupies. In his cloud-girt, +mahogany-panelled throne-room on the eighth floor he rules over a +thousand mortals, down to the little Jacob Downeys in the basement, +who, if they do not quite weep with delight when he gives them a +smile, tremble, at least, at his frown. When a large body of popular +opinion accords him greatness, were he not undemocratic to affect +humility and speak small? + +"I speak of common men," said Mr. Wilbram (this was at a Chamber of +Commerce banquet); "of men whose living depends upon the pleasure of +their superiors. How few there are with fearless eye!" + +He scarcely heard the laughter from a group of building contractors at +a side table, who had not seen a servile eye among their workmen in +many moons; for a worthy project had popped into his mind at that +instant. How was the moral backbone of our yeomanry to be stiffened +save through education? Why not a prize contest to stimulate the +interest of the rising generation in this obsolete subject? + +In many an Ashland home where bicycles, roller-skates, wireless +outfits, and other such extravagances were strongly desired, the +question had since been asked: "Pa, what are Moral Principles?" While +some of the resulting essays indicated a haziness in paternal minds, +not so the production that Mr. Sloan read in Miss Lance's parlour. + +"But I couldn't let you print it," said Miss Angelina. "I wouldn't +have Willie shamed for anything. He may be weak in grammar, but he is +captain of every athletic team in the school. He has told me in +confidence that he means to spend the prize money for a genuine +horse-hide catching-mitt." + +"If I cross out his name, or give him a _nom de plume_?" + +On that condition Miss Lance consented. + + +III + +At the office next morning Sloan found the essay in his pocket and +looked around the city-room for D.K.T. The staff poet-clown was no +daylight saver; professing to burn the midnight oil in the interest of +his employer, he seldom drifted in before half-past nine. + +"See me. S.S." wrote Sloan, and dropped Willie's manuscript on +D.K.T.'s desk. + +Then he jumped and gasped, and copy-readers and office-boys jumped and +gasped, and the religious editor dashed frantically for the stairs, +outrunning the entire staff down the hall, though he had farther to go +than any other man or woman there. A huge, heart-stopping shock had +rocked the building, set the windows to clattering and the lights to +swinging, and brought down in a cloud the accumulated dust of a +quarter-century. + +Within two minutes by the clock Sloan and five reporters had started +for the scene of the Rutland disaster, fifteen miles away, where +enough giant powder had gone up in one terrific blast to raze +Gibraltar. A thriving town lay in ruins; hundreds of families were +homeless; a steamship was sunk at her dock; a passenger train blown +from the rails. + +At eleven o'clock on the night following that pitiful day Sloan +journeyed homeward to Ashland in an inter-urban trolley-car in company +with a crowd of refugees. A copy of the last edition of the _Bee_ +comforted his weary soul. + +The first page was a triumph. Count on the office to back up its men +in the field! There was the whole story, the whole horror and +heartbreak, finely displayed. There were his photographs of the +wreckage; there, in a "box" was his interview with the superintendent +of the Rutland Company; there was a map of the devastated area. +Perhaps someone had found time even to do an editorial; in that case +the clean-up would be complete. + +Opening the paper to the sixth page, he groaned; for the first thing +that caught his eye was Willie Downey's essay, at the top of D.K.T.'s +column, with Willie's name below the headline. + +MOREL PRINSAPLES + +BY WILLIE DOWNEY + +AGE 12 + +Morel Prinsaples is when you have a nerve to stick up for some thing. + +Like last night my Father went in Mires meet shop & stood in line 15 +or twenty min. wateing his tirn & when his tirn come he says to mr. +Mires Ile have 6 porc chops. + +at that inst. the telaphone wrang & mr. Mires slidd for it like it was +2nd base. + +Hold on Mires says Pa, who got here 1st, me or that bell wringer. +Igscuse me just 1 min. says Mr. mires. + +No I be ding if Ile igscuse you says Pa, 1st come 1st served is the +rool of bizness all over. + +But Mr. mires wyped his hands on his apern & ansered the wring & it +was mrs. Will Brum, she was going to eat out at a frends so she wanted +2 lbs, bolony & a dog bone. + +So then Pa give him hale columbus. + +Here I bin wateing ½ an our he said, yet when some lazy lofer of a +woman who has been reading a novvle or a sleep all after noon pfhones +you to rush her up some dog meet in youre Autto with gass 36 cts. & +charge it to her acct. & may be you wont get youre munny for three 4 +munths, wy you run to wate on her while I stand & shovle my feet in +youre saw dust like a ding mexican pea own or some thing. + +What says Pa is there about a cusstamer who takes the trubble to come +for his meet & pay cash for it & deliwers it him self that maiks him +so Meen & Lo that he hass to be pushed one side for some body that has +not got Gumpshun enoughf to order her dog bones before the rush our? + +Do you think that people with a telapfhone's munny is any better than +mine, do you think because I walk in here on my hine leggs that I am a +piker & a cheep skait, becuase if so I will bring along my telapfhone +contract nex time & show you & then may be you will reckonnize me as a +free born amerrican who dont haff to traid where I haff to play 2d +fiddle to a chow pupp. Its agenst my morel prinsaples says Pa. + +With theas wirds he walks out in the rane althogh his feet hurt him +clear down to Washington St. to the nex meet store, but by that time +they were all cloased up so we had prinsaples for supper insted of +porc chops. + +Pa says if he run a store & had a pfhone & no body to anser it & do +nothing else he would ring it's neck, becuase while the telaphone is +the gratest blesing of the aige, but a pfhone with out an opperater is +like a ham ommalet with the ham let out. He says the reazon the Chane +Stores have such a pull with the public is becuase the man behine the +counter is not all the time jilting you in the middle of your order & +chacing off to be sweet to some sosciety dame with a dog 4 miles away. + +Ma says she dont kno why we have a pfhone any how becuase every time +she is youseing it a woman buts in & jiggles the hook & says will you +pleas hang up so I can call a Dr. & when Ma hangs up & then lissens in +to see who is sick, wy this woman calls up a lady f rend & they nock +Ma back & 4th over the wyre for ours & some times they say I bet she +is lisening in on us dont you. + +So as I say let us all stick up for our Morel Prinsaples like my +Father come what may. + + +IV + +Bright were Miss Angelina's eyes but not with mirth. It was +unspeakable, this thing that Mr. Sloan had done. Thrice before bedtime +she called his lodgings. Mr. Sloan was not in. + +Before the last call, she donned her wraps and went out to Plume +Street. Courageously she pulled the bell at Number Nine. Willie's +mother opened the door and cried, surprised, "Why! Miss Lance." + +"Is Willie here? Have you seen the paper? Will you let me tell him how +it happened, and how sorry I am?" + +Willie was not receiving callers this evening. He had been sent to bed +without supper. The explosion at Rutland had been as nothing, it +seemed, to the outburst in the Downey home. + +Slowly the extent of the harm dawned upon Miss Angelina. + +"It was Mrs. A. Lincoln Wilbram wanted the dog bone," said Mrs. Downey +tearfully. "Everybody will recognize her; and what Mr. Wilbram will do +to us we don't need to be told. Poor Jake is so upset he has gone out +to roam in the dark. He couldn't stay in the house." + +New jobs were scarce for men at his time of life, and with his feet. +Dora and Jennie might have to leave high school. + +"I'm sure you meant us no wrong, Miss Lance; I'm sure there was a +mistake. But think how dreadful it is, after twenty-two years of +having Mr. Wilbram's pay, then to turn around and backbite his wife +like that, right out in print!" + +Doubly troubled now, Miss Lance departed. Attracted by a quick +gathering of loiterers in the avenue, she witnessed a controversy that +might easily have become a police matter. + +"You're a liar if you say you said all that to me!" shouted the burly +Butcher Myers. "You never opened your head, you shrimp! Bawling me out +in the papers and losing me my best customers! Whaddye mean?" + +Back came the retort from Jacob Downey with the snarl of a little +creature at bay. + +"If I didn't say it to you then, you big lobster, I say it to you now. +All that the paper says I said I say. What'll you do about it?" + +"Hah! You!" Myers snapped his fingers in Downey's fiery face and +turned away. + +Miss Lance's path to the Hilldale School next morning took her past +three post-boxes. Into the third she dropped a note that she had +carried from home. Mr. Sloan would find her message exceedingly brief, +although (or, perhaps, because) she had spent hours in composing it. + +DEAR SIR: + +I regret to discover that you lack moral principles. + + ANGELINA LANCE. + +Just before the last bell the janitor brought in a prisoner for her +custody. Willie Downey's head was bloody but unbowed; three +seventh-graders he had vanquished in one round. "They guyed me," said +he. "They called me a Nawthour." + +Morning prayer and song waited while teacher and pupil spoke earnestly +of many things; while the teacher's eyes filled with tears, and the +pupil's heart filled with high resolve to bring home the baseball +championship of the Ashland Public School League and lay it at Miss +Angelina's feet, or perish in the attempt. + + +V + +The A. Lincoln Wilbram prize went to a small boy named Aaron Levinsky +whose English was 99 per cent. pure. Little Aaron's essay was printed +as the centre-piece in Wilbram, Prescott & Co.'s page in the _Bee_; +little Aaron invested his gold in thrift-stamps, and the tumult and +the shouting died. + +Miss Angelina Lance sat alone every evening of the week. True, Mr. +Sloan had tried to right the wrong; he had called Miss Angelina on the +telephone, which he should have known was an inadequate thing to do; +he had also sent a ten-dollar bank-note to Willie, in care of Miss +Lance at the Hilldale School, together with his warm felicitations +upon Willie's success as a _littérateur_. Did Willie know that his +fine first effort had been reprinted, with proper credit, in the great +New York _Planet_? + +True, too, the illustrious D.K.T. had written Miss Angelina an abject +apology, most witty and poetic, taking all the blame to himself and +more than exonerating his high-principled friend Mr. Sloan. + +But the bank-note went back to its donor without even a rejection +slip; and D.K.T.'s humour was fatal to his client's cause. Ghastly are +they who jest in the shadow of tragedy. Mr. Sloan and D.K.T. did not +know, of course--Miss Angelina had not thought it of any use to tell +them--of the sword which they had hung up by a thread above the heads +of the Downeys. + +As for Jacob Downey, he limped about amid his hardware in the basement +at Wilbram, Prescott & Co.s, careworn, haunted of eye, expecting the +house to crash about his ears at any moment. One does not with +impunity publish the wife of one's employer as a lazy loafer. + +The A. Lincoln Wilbrams had servants again, and dined at home. To Mr. +Wilbram said Mrs. Wilbram one evening: + +"It is the strangest thing. In the last month I've met scarcely a soul +who hasn't asked me silly questions about Mudge and his diet. Mrs. +Trevelyan and everybody. And they always look so queer." + +Mr. Wilbram was reminded that while coming home that evening with a +package in his hand he had met Trevelyan, and Trevelyan had inquired: +"What's that? A bone for the dog?" + +"To-morrow," said A. Lincoln, "I'll ask him what he was driving at." + +"What was the package?" queried his wife. + +He fetched it from the hall. It had come to him at the store that day +by registered mail. + +"From Hildegarde," said Mrs. Wilbram, noting the Los Angeles postmark. +Hildegarde was honeymooning among the orange groves. Wrote the happy +bride: + +Dear Aunt and Uncle: + +Charles and I see by the paper that Mudge is hungry, so we are sending +him a little present. + +"What can the child mean, Abe?" + +"Don't ask me," he answered. "Undo the present and see." + +They loosened blue ribbons and wrappings of soft paper, and disclosed +a link of bologna sausage. + +Maddening? It might have been, if Hildegarde had not thought to +inclose a page from the _Daily Southern Californian_, upon which, +ringed with pencil marks, was a bit of miscellany headed, "Morel +Prinsaples." + +They read it through to the conclusion: + +So as I say let us all stick up for our Morel Prinsaples like my +Father come what may.--Willie Downey in Ashland (N.J.) _Bee_. + +"Why!--why!--it's--it's me!" cried Mrs. Wilbram. "I did telephone to +Mr. Myers for two pounds of bologna and a dog bone--on the night we +dined at the Trevelyans'!" + +"It comes mighty close to libel," fumed Wilbram. + +"How do they dare! You must see Worthington Oakes about this, Abe." + +"I certainly will," he vowed. + + +VI + +He certainly did, as Mr. Worthington Oakes, the publisher of the +_Bee_, will testify. In the front office on the editorial floor he saw +Mr. Oakes for a bad half-hour, and demanded a public retraction of the +insult. + +At about the same time a dapper stranger who had come up in the +elevator with Mr. Wilbram held speech with Assistant City-Editor Sloan +in the local room at the other end of the hall. + +"Yonder's your bird," said Mr. Sloan, pointing to a poetic-looking +young man at a desk in a corner. + +Crossing to the poet, who was absorbed in his day' poesy and talking +to himself as he versified, the stranger smiled and spoke. + +"Am I addressing the celebrated D.K.T.?" + +"Am, cam, dam, damn, ham, jam, lamb----" + +The far-away look of genius faded out of the poet's eyes. + +"Not buying," said he. "My pay-envelope is mortgaged to you +book-agents for ten years to come. Ma'am, ram, Sam, cram, clam, gram, +slam----" + +"Books are not my line," said the dapper one briskly. "I represent the +Jones-Nonpareil Newspaper Syndicate. In fact, I am Jones. I have a +proposition to make to you, Mr. D.K.T., that may enable you to buy +more books than you can ever read. You know, of course, what the +Jones-Nonpareil service is. We reach the leading dailies of the United +States and Canada----" + +"Have a chair, Mr. Jones." + +"Thank you. We handle some very successful writers. Malcomb Hardy, you +may have heard, takes his little five hundred a week out of us; and +poor Larry Bonner pulled down eleven hundred as long as he had health. +His Chinese-laundryman sketches might be selling yet." + +"Suspense is cruel," spoke D.K.T. eagerly. "Let the glad news come." + +"Some time ago," said the syndicate man, "you printed in your column +an essay in imitation of a schoolboy's. You called it 'Moral +Principles'." + +D.K.T. sank back with a low moan. + +"If you can write six of those a week for a year," continued the +visitor, "you won't ever need to slave any more. You can burn your pen +and devote the rest of your life to golf and good works." + +The poet closed his eyes. "Sham, swam, diagram," he murmured. + +"Does a minimum guarantee of fifteen thousand a year look like +anything to you? There will, of course, be the book rights and the +movie rights in addition." + +"Anagram, epigram, telegram, flimflam--aha!" cried D.K.T. "Siam!" He +wrote it down. + +"That little skit of yours," pursued the caller, "has swept the +country. You have created a nation-wide demand. My ringer is on the +journalistic pulse, and I know. Can you repeat?" + +He drew a paper from his pocketbook. + +"Here is a list of subjects your imaginary Willie Downey might start +with: The Monetary System; the Cost of Living; the League of Nations; +Capital and Labour----" + +Over the stranger's head an office-boy whispered significantly: "Front +office." + +"Excuse me," said the poet, and hurried away. + +With the publisher, in the front office, sat A. Lincoln Wilbram, quite +purple in the cheeks. They had a file of the _Bee_ before them. + +"Diedrick," said Mr. Oakes, "on March eighteenth you printed this +thing"--his finger on Willie's essay--"why did you do it?" + +"What's the matter with it?" replied D.K.T. + +"The matter with it," spoke Mr. Wilbram terribly, "is that it slanders +my wife. It makes her out to eat dog bones. Friends of ours as far +away as California have seen it and recognized her portrait, drawn by +your scurrilous pen. The worst of it is, the slander is founded on +fact. By what right do you air my domestic affairs before the public +in this outrageous fashion?" + +With agonized eyes the funny-man read the essay as far as the fateful +line, "It was Mrs. Will Brum." + +"My gosh!" he cried. + +"How did you come to write such a thing?" Mr. Oakes demanded. + +"Me write that thing? If I only had!" + +The facts were recalled; the sending of Mr. Sloan and many reporters +to Rutland; the need of extra hands at the copy-table that day. + +"I found this contribution on my desk. It looked safe. In the rush of +the morning I sent it up and never gave it another thought." + +"So it is really a boy's essay, and not some of your own fooling?" +asked Oakes. + +"A boy's essay, yes; entered in Mr. Wilbram's prize contest, +eliminated by the boy's teacher and shown by her to Mr. Sloan, who +brought it to the shop. I know now that Sloan meant me to change the +author's name to save the kid from ridicule. If there were actual +persons in it, I'm as amazed as Mrs. Wilbram." + +"I wonder, Oakes," said Wilbram, "that a dignified newspaper like +yours would print such trash, in the first place." + +Worthington Oakes looked down his nose. D.K.T. took up the challenge. + +"Trash, sir? If it's trash, why has the Ashland Telephone asked +permission to reprint it on the front cover of their next directory?" + +"Have they asked that?" + +"They have; they say they will put a little moral principle into the +telephone hogs in this town. And didn't a Fifth Avenue minister preach +a sermon on it last Sunday? Doesn't the _Literary Review_ give it half +a page this week? Hasn't it been scissored by almost every exchange +editor in the land? Isn't there a man in the city-room now offering me +fifteen thousand a year to write a daily screed like it?" + +"You can see, Wilbram," said Mr. Oakes, "that there was no intention +to injure or annoy. We are very sorry; but how can we print an apology +to Mrs. Wilbram without making the matter worse?" + +"Who is this Willie Downey?" demanded Wilbram. "And who is the school +teacher?" + +"I don't believe my moral principles will let me tell you," replied +D.K.T. "I'm positive Mr. Sloan's won't let him. We received the essay +in confidence." + +"Enough said," Mr. Wilbram exclaimed, rising. "Good day to you. I +don't need your help, anyway. I'll find out from the butcher." + + +VII + +It seemed necessary that Mr. Sloan should call at the Lance home that +evening. Whatever Miss Angelina might think of him, it was his duty to +take counsel with her for the welfare of Willie. + +He began with the least important of the grave matters upon his mind. + +"Do you suppose your _protégé_ could write some essays like the one we +printed?" + +"Why, Mr. Sloan?" + +If Miss Angelina had responded, "Why, you hyena?" she would not have +cut him more deeply than with her simple, "Why, Mr. Sloan?" + +"A newspaper syndicate," he explained, "has offered D.K.T. a fortune +for a series of them." + +"Poor Willie!" she sighed. "He flunked his English exam, to-day. I'm +afraid I shall have him another year." + +"He is a lucky boy," said Sloan. + +"Do you think so?" + +Clearly her meaning was, "Do you think he is lucky when a powerful +newspaper goes out of its way to crush him?" + +"There is no use approaching him with a literary contract?" + +"Not with the baseball season just opening. His team beat the +Watersides yesterday, sixteen nothing. He has more important business +on hand than writing for newspapers." + +Since Sloan wrote for a newspaper, this was rather a dig. +Nevertheless, he persevered. + +"A. Lincoln Wilbram is on his trail. Do you know that Willie libelled +Mrs. Wilbram?" + +"Oh! Sam. Surely I know about the libel. But is--is Mr. Wilbram +really----Has he discovered?" + +"He came to the office to-day. We gave him no information; but he has +other sources. He is bound to identify his enemy before he quits." + +"I didn't know about the so-called slander at first," said she, "when +I--when you----" + +"When I promised to change Willie's name?" + +"I found out when I went to them, on the night it came out in the +paper. They were woefully frightened. They are frightened still. Mr. +Downey has worked for Mr. Wilbram since he was a boy. They think of +Mr. Wilbram almost as a god. It's--it's a tragedy, Sam, to them." + +"Would it do any good to warn them?" + +"They need no warning," said Miss Angelina. "Don't add to their +terrors." + +"I am more sorry than I can say. May I hope to be forgiven some day?" + +"There's nothing to forgive, Sam. It was an accident. But don't you +see what a dangerous weapon a newspaper is?' + +"Worse than a car or a gun," he agreed. + +As he strolled homeward along a stately avenue, wondering what he +could do to avert the retribution that moved toward the Downeys, and +finding that his assistant city-editor's resourcefulness availed him +naught, he heard the scamper of feet behind him and whirled about with +cane upraised in time to bring a snarling chow dog to a stand. + +"Beat it, you brute!" he growled. + +"Yeowp!" responded the chow dog, and leaped in air. + +"Don't be alarmed," spoke a voice out of the gloom of the nearest +lawn. "When he sees a man with a stick, he wants to play." + +Sloan peered at the speaker's face. "Isn't this Mr. Wilbram? You were +at the _Bee_ office to-day, sir. May I have a word with you about the +Willie Downey matter?" + +"Come in," said Mr. Wilbram. + + +VIII + +On the first pay-day in May the impending sword cut its thread. Said a +messenger to Jacob Downey: "They want you on the eighth floor." Downey +set his jaws and followed. + +In the mahogany-panelled room A. Lincoln Wilbram turned from the +window and transfixed his servitor with eyes that bored like steel +bits. + +"Downey, I understand you have a literary son." + +Jacob held his breath, eyed his accuser steadily, and assured himself +that it would soon be over now. + +"How about it, Downey?" + +"I know what you mean, sir." + +"Did you say the things printed there?" + +The little man wasted no time in examining the newspaper clipping. + +"Yes, sir, I did. If it has come to your lady's ears what I called +her, I beg her pardon. But what I said I'll stick to. If I stand +fifteen minutes in line in a meat store or any other kind of store, +I've got a right to be waited on ahead of anybody that rings up, I +don't give a ding who she is." + +"Good for you, Downey. Let me see, how long have you worked for us?" + +"Twenty-three years next January, sir." + +"Floor salesman all the while?" + +"Since 1900. Before that I was a wrapper." + +"How many men have been promoted over your head?" + +"Three." + +"Four," Wilbram corrected. "First was Miggins." + +"I don't count him, sir. Him and I started together." + +"Miggins was a failure. Then Farisell; now in prison. Next, McCardy; +he ran off to Simonds & Co. the minute they crooked a finger at him. +Last, young Prescott, who is now to come up here with his father. +Could you run the department if you had it?" + +"Between you and I," replied Jacob Downey, sick, dizzy, trembling, "I +been running the department these fifteen years." + +"How'd you like to run it from now as manager? When I find a man with +convictions and courage I advance him. The man who stands up is the +man to sit down. That's evolution. If you could stand up to a big +butcher like Myers and talk Dutch to him the way you did, I guess we +need you at a desk. What do you say?" + +A desk! A chance to rest his feet! Jacob Downey stiffened. + +"Mr. Wilbram, I--I got to tell the truth. I never said those things to +Myers. I just walked out." + +"But you said them. You acknowledge it." + +"I said 'em, yes--after I got home. To the family I said 'em. When I +was in the meat shop I only thought 'em." + +"So Myers has told me," said Jove, smiling. "Downey, my man, you've +got more than moral courage. You've got common sense to go with it. +Tell young Prescott to give you his keys." + + + +THE MARRIAGE IN KAIRWAN + +By WILBUR DANIEL STEELE + +From _Harper's_ + + +Kairwan the Holy lay asleep, pent in its thick walls. The moon had +sunk at midnight, but the chill light seemed scarcely to have +diminished; only the limewashed city had become a marble city, and all +the towers turned fabulous in the fierce, dry, needle rain of the +stars that burn over the desert of mid-Tunisia. + +In the street Bab Djedid the nailed boots of the watch passed from +west to east. When their thin racket had turned out and died in the +dust of the market, Habib ben Habib emerged from the shadow of a door +arch and, putting a foot on the tiled ledge of Bou-Kedj's fry shop, +swung up by cranny and gutter till he stood on the plain of the +housetops. + +Now he looked about him, for on this dim tableland he walked with his +life in his hands. He looked to the west, toward the gate, to the +south, to the northeast through the ghostly wood of minarets. Then, +perceiving nothing that stirred, he went on moving without sound in +the camel-skin slippers he had taken from his father's court. + +In the uncertain light, but for those slippers and the long-tasselled +_chechia_ on his head, one would not have taken him for anything but a +European and a stranger. And one would have been right, almost. In the +city of his birth and rearing, and of the birth and rearing of his +Arab fathers generations dead, Habib ben Habib bel-Kalfate looked upon +himself in the rebellious, romantic light of a prisoner in +exile--exile from the streets of Paris where, in his four years, he +had tasted the strange delights of the Christian--exile from the +university where he had dabbled with his keen, light-ballasted mind in +the learning of the conqueror. + +Sometimes, in the month since he had come home, he had shaken himself +and wondered aloud, "Where am I?" with the least little hint, perhaps, +of melodrama. Sometimes in the French café outside the walls, among +the officers of the garrison, a bantering perversity drove him on to +chant the old glories of Islam, the poets of Andalusia, and the +bombastic histories of the saints; and in the midst of it, his face +pink with the Frenchmen's wine and his own bitter, half-frightened +mockery, he would break off suddenly, "_Voilà , Messieurs!_ you will +see that I am the best of Mussulmans!" He would laugh then in a key so +high and restless that the commandant, shaking his head, would murmur +to the lieutenant beside him, "One day, Genet, we must be on the alert +for a dagger in that quarter there, eh?" + +And Genet, who knew almost as much of the character of the university +Arab as the commandant himself, would nod his head. + +When Habib had laughed for a moment he would grow silent. Presently he +would go out into the ugly dark of the foreign quarter, followed very +often by Raoul Genet. He had known Raoul most casually in Paris. Here +in the Tunisian _bled_, when Raoul held out his hand to say good-night +under the gate lamp at the Bab Djelladin, the troubled fellow clung to +it. The smell of the African city, coming under the great brick arch, +reached out and closed around him like a hand--a hand bigger than +Raoul's. + +"You are my brother: not they. I am not of these people, Raoul!" + +But then he would go in, under the black arch and the black shade of +the false-pepper trees. In the darkness he felt the trees, centuries +old, and all the blank houses watching him.... + +To-night, stealing across the sleeping roofs, he felt the star-lit +mosque towers watching him in secret, the pale, silent espionage of +them who could wait. The hush of the desert troubled him. Youth +troubled him. His lips were dry. + +He had come to an arbour covered with a vine. Whose it was, on what +house-holder's roof it was reared, he had never known. He entered. + +"She is not here." He moistened his lips with his tongue. + +He sat down on the stone divan to wait, watching toward the west +through the doorway across which hung a loop of vine, like a snake. + +He saw her a long way off, approaching by swift darts and intervals of +immobility, when her whiteness grew a part of the whiteness of the +terrace. It was so he had seen her moving on that first night when, +half tipsy with wine and strangeness, he had pursued, caught her, and +uncovered her face. + +To-night she uncovered it herself. She put back the hooded fold of her +_haik_, showing him her face, her scarlet mouth, her wide eyes, long +at the outer corners, her hair aflame with henna. + +The hush of a thousand empty miles lay over the city. For an hour +nothing lived but the universe, the bright dust in the sky.... + +That hush was disrupted. The single long crash of a human throat! +Rolling down over the plain of the housetops! + +"_La illah il Allah, Mohammed rassoul'lah! Allah Akbar!_ God is +great!" + +One by one the dim towers took it up. The call to prayer rolled +between the stars and the town. It searched the white runways. It +penetrated the vine-bowered arbour. Little by little, tower by tower, +it died. In a _fondouk_ outside the gate a waking camel lifted a +gargling wail. A jackal dog barked in the Oued Zaroud two miles away. +And again the silence of the desert came up over the city walls. + +Under the vine Habib whispered: "No, I don't care anything about thy +name. A name is such a little thing. I'll call thee 'Nedjma,' because +we are under the stars." + +"_Ai, Nedjmetek_--'Thy Star'!" The girl's lips moved drowsily. In the +dark her eyes shone with a dull, steady lustre, unblinking, +unquestioning, always unquestioning. + +That slumberous acquiescence, taken from all her Arab mothers, began +to touch his nerves with the old uneasiness. He took her shoulders +between his hands and shook her roughly, crying in a whisper: + +"Why dost thou do nothing but repeat my words? Talk! Say things to me! +Thou art like the rest; thou wouldst try to make me seem like these +Arab men, who wish for nothing in a woman but the shadow of +themselves. And I am not like that!" + +"No, _sidi_, no." + +"But talk! Tell me things about thyself, thy life, thy world. Talk! In +Paris, now, a man and a woman can talk together--yes--as if they were +two friends met in a coffeehouse. And those women can talk! Ah! in +Paris I have known women--" + +The girl stirred now. Her eyes narrowed; the dark line of her lips +thinned. At last something comprehensible had touched her mind. + +"Thou hast known many women, then, _sidi_! Thou hast come here but to +tell me that? Me, who am of little beauty in a man's eyes!" + +Habib laughed under his breath. He shook her again. He kissed her and +kissed her again on her red lips. + +"Thou art jealous, then! But thou canst not comprehend. Canst thou +comprehend this, that thou art more beautiful by many times than any +other woman I have ever seen? Thou art a heaven of loveliness, and I +cannot live without thee. That is true ... Nedjma. I am going to take +thee for my wife, because I cannot live without thine eyes, thy lips, +the fragrance of thy hair.... Yes, I am going to marry thee, my star. +It is written! It is written!" + +For the first time he could not see her eyes. She had turned them +away. Once again something had come in contact with the smooth, heavy +substance of her mind. He pulled at her. + +"Say! Say, Nedjmà !... It is written!" + +"It is not written, _sidi_." The same ungroping acquiescence was in +her whisper. "I have been promised, _sidi_, to another than thee." + +Habib's arms let go; her weight sank away in the dark under the vine. +The silence of the dead night crept in and lay between them. + +"And in the night of thy marriage, then, thy husband--or thy father, +if thou hast a father--will kill thee." + +"_In-cha-'llah_. If it be the will of God." + +Again the silence came and lay heavy between them. A minute and +another minute went away. Habib's wrists were shaking. His breast +began to heave. With a sudden roughness he took her back, to devour +her lips and eyes and hair with the violence of his kisses. + +"No, no! I'll not have it! No! Thou art too beautiful for any other +man than I even to look upon! No, no, no!" + + * * * * * + +Habib ben Habib walked out of the gate Djelladin. The day had come; +the dawn made a crimson flame in the false-pepper trees. The life of +the gate was already at full tide of sound and colour, braying, +gargling, quarrelling--nomads wading in their flocks, Djlass +countrymen, Singalese soldiers, Jewish pack-peddlers, Bedouin women +bent double under their stacks of desert fire-grass streaming inward, +dust white, dust yellow, and all red in the dawn under the red wall. + +The flood ran against him. It tried to suck him back into the maw of +the city. He fought against it with his shoulders and his knees. He +tried now to run. It sucked him back. A wandering _Aissaoua_ plucked +at his sleeve and held under his nose a desert viper that gave off +metallic rose glints in its slow, pained constrictions. + +"To the glory of Sidna Aissa, master, two sous." + +He kept tugging at Habib's sleeve, holding him back, sucking him back +with his twisting reptile into the city of the faithful. + +"In the name of Jesus, master, two copper sous!" + +Habib's nerves snapped. He struck off the holy mendicant with his +fist. "That the devil grill thee!" he chattered. He ran. He bumped +into beasts. He bumped into a blue tunic. He halted, blinked, and +passed a hand over his hot-lidded eyes. He stammered: + +"My friend! I have been looking for you! _Hamdou lillah! El +hamdou'llah_!" + +Raoul Genet, studying the flushed, bright-eyed, unsteady youth, put up +a hand to cover a little smile, half ironic, half pitying. + +"So, Habib ben Habib, you revert! Camel-driver's talk in your mouth +and camel's-hide slippers on your feet. Already you revert! Eh?" + +"No, that is not the truth. But I am in need of a friend." + +"You look like a ghost, Habib." The faint smile still twisted Raoul's +lips. "Or a drunken angel. You have not slept." + +"That's of no importance. I tell you I am in need--" + +"You've not had coffee, Habib. When you've had coffee--" + +"Coffee! My God! Raoul, that you go on talking of coffee when life and +death are in the balance! For I can't live without--Listen, now! +Strictly! I have need to-night--to-morrow night--one night when it is +dark--I have need of the garrison car." + +The other made a blowing sound. "I'm the commandant, am I, overnight? +_Zut_! The garrison car!" Habib took hold of his arm and held it +tight. "If not the car, two horses, then. And I call you my friend." + +"_Two_ horses! Ah! So! I begin to perceive. Youth! Youth!" + +"Don't jibe, Raoul! I have need of two horses--two horses that are +fast and strong." + +"Are the horses in thy father's stable, then, of no swiftness and of +no strength?" + +It was said in the _patois_, the bastard Arabic of the Tunisian +_bled_. A shadow had fallen across them; the voice came from above. +From the height of his crimson saddle Si Habib bel-Kalfate awaited the +answer of his son. His brown, unlined, black-bearded face, shadowed in +the hood of his creamy burnoose, remained serene, benign, urbanely +attendant. But if an Arab knows when to wait, he knows also when not +to wait. And now it was as if nothing had been said before. + +"Greeting, my son. I have been seeking thee. Thy couch was not slept +upon last night." + +Habib's face was sullen to stupidity. "Last night, sire, I slept at +the _caserne_, at the invitation of my friend, Lieutenant Genet, whom +you see beside me." + +The Arab, turning in his saddle, appeared to notice the Christian for +the first time. His lids drooped; his head inclined an inch. + +"Greeting to thee, oh, master!" + +"To thee, greeting!" + +"Thou art in well-being?" + +"There is no ill. And thou?" + +"There is no ill. That the praise be to God, and the prayer!" + +Bel-Kalfate cleared his throat and lifted the reins from the neck of +his mare. + +"Rest in well-being!" he pronounced. + +Raoul shrugged his shoulders a little and murmured: "May God multiply +thy days!... And yours, too," he added to Habib in French. He bowed +and took his leave. + +Bel-Kalfate watched him away through the thinning crowd, sitting his +saddle stolidly, in an attitude of rumination. When the blue cap had +vanished behind the blazing corner of the wool dyers, he threw the +reins to his Sudanese stirrup boy and got down to the ground. He took +his son's hand. So, palm in palm, at a grave pace, they walked back +under the arch into the city. The market-going stream was nearly done. +The tide, against which at its flood Habib had fought and won ground, +carried him down again with its last shallow wash--so easily! + +His nerves had gone slack. He walked in a heavy white dream. The city +drew him deeper into its murmurous heart. The walls pressed closer and +hid him away. The _souks_ swallowed him under their shadowy arcades. +The breath of the bazaar, fetor of offal, stench of raw leather, and +all the creeping perfumes of Barbary, attar of roses, chypre and amber +and musk, clogged his senses like the drug of some abominable +seduction. He was weary, weary, weary. And in a strange, troubling way +he was at rest. + +"_Mektoub_! It is written! It is written in the book of the destiny of +man!" + +With a kind of hypnotic fascination, out of the corners of his eyes, +he took stock of the face beside him, the face of the strange being +that was his father--the broad, moist, unmarked brow; the large eyes, +heavy-lidded, serene; the full-fleshed cheeks from which the beard +sprang soft and rank, and against which a hyacinth, pendent over the +ear, showed with a startling purity of pallor; and the mobile, +deep-coloured, humid lips--the lips of the voluptuary, the eyes of the +dreamer, the brow of the man of never-troubled faith. + +"Am I like that?" And then, "What can that one be to me?" + +As if in answer, bel-Kalfate's gaze came to his son. + +"I love thee," he said, and he kissed Habib's temple with his lips. +"Thou art my son," he went on, "and my eyes were thirsty to drink of +the sight of thee. It is _el jammaa_." [Friday, the Mohammedan +Sabbath.] "It is time we should go to the prayer. We shall go with +Hadji Daoud to-day, for afterward, there at the mosque, I have +rendezvous with his friends, in the matter of the dowry. It is the +day, thou rememberest, that he appointed." + +Habib wanted to stop. He wanted to think. He wanted time. But the +serene, warm pressure of his father's hand carried him on. + +Stammering words fell from his mouth. + +"My mother--I remember--my mother, it is true, said something--but I +did not altogether comprehend--and--Oh! my sire ----" + +"Thou shalt be content. Thou art a man now. The days of thy learning +are accomplished. Thou hast suffered exile; now is thy reward +prepared. And the daughter of the notary, thy betrothed, is as lovely +as a palm tree in the morning and as mild as sweet milk, beauteous as +a pearl, Habib, a milk-white pearl. See!" + +Drawing from his burnoose a sack of Moroccan lambskin, he opened it +and lifted out a pearl. His fingers, even at rest, seemed to caress +it. They slid back among the treasure in the sack, the bargaining +price for the first wife of the only son of a man blessed by God. And +now they brought forth also a red stone, cut in the fashion of Tunis. + +"A milk-white sea pearl, look thou; to wed in a jewel with the +blood-red ruby that is the son of my breast. Ah, Habib, my Habib, but +thou shalt be content!" + +They stood in the sunlight before the green door of a mosque. As the +hand of the city had reached out for Habib through the city gate, so +now the prayer, throbbing like a tide across the pillared mystery of +the court, reached out through the doorway in the blaze.... And he +heard his own voice, strange in his mouth, shallow as a bleat: + +"Why, then, sire--why, oh! why, then, hast thou allowed me to make of +those others the friends of my spirit, the companions of my mind?" + +"They are neither companions nor friends of thine, for God is God!" + +"And why hast thou sent me to learn the teaching of the French?" + +"When thou settest thy horse against an enemy it is well to have two +lances to thy hand--thine own and his. And it is written, Habib, son +of Habib, that thou shalt be content.... Put off thy shoes now and +come. It is time we were at prayer." + +Summer died. Autumn grew. With the approach of winter an obscure +nervousness spread over the land. In the dust of its eight months' +drought, from one day to another, from one glass-dry night to another, +the desert waited for the coming of the rains. The earth cracked. A +cloud sailing lone and high from the coast of Sousse passed under the +moon and everywhere men stirred in their sleep, woke, looked out--from +their tents on the cactus steppes, from _fondouks_ on the camel tracks +of the west, from marble courts of Kairwan.... The cloud passed on and +vanished in the sky. On the plain the earth cracks crept and ramified. +Gaunt beasts tugged at their heel ropes and would not be still. The +jackals came closer to the tents. The city slept again, but in its +sleep it seemed to mutter and twitch.... + +In the serpent-spotted light under the vine on the housetop Habib +muttered, too, and twitched a little. It was as if the arid months had +got in under his skin and peeled off the coverings of his nerves. The +girl's eyes widened with a gradual, phlegmatic wonder of pain under +the pinch of his blue fingers on her arms. His face was the colour of +the moon. + +"Am I a child of three years, that my father should lead me here or +lead me there by the hand? Am I that?" + +"Nay, _sidi_, nay." + +"Am I a sheep between two wells, that the herder's stick should tell +me, 'Here, and not there, thou shalt drink'? Am I a sheep?" + +"Thou art neither child nor sheep, _sidi_, but a lion!" + +"Yes, a lion!" A sudden thin exaltation shook him like a fever chill. +"I am more than a lion, Nedjma, I am a man--just as the _Roumi_" +[Romans--_i.e_., Christians.] "are men--men who decide--men who +undertake--agitate--accomplish ... and now, for the last time, I have +decided. A fate has given thy loveliness to me, and no man shall take +it away from me to enjoy. I will take it away from them instead! From +all the men of this Africa, conquered by the French. Hark! I will come +and take thee away in the night, to the land beyond the sea, where +thou mayest be always near me, and neither God nor man say yes or no!" + +"And there, _sidi_, beyond the sea, I may talk unveiled with other +men? As thou hast told me, in France ----" + +"Yes, yes, as I have told thee, there thou mayest--thou ----" + +He broke off, lost in thought, staring down at the dim oval of her +face. Again he twitched a little. Again his fingers tightened on her +arms. He twisted her around with a kind of violence of confrontation. + +"But wouldst thou rather talk with other men than with me? Dost thou +no longer love me, then?" + +"_Ai_, master, I love thee. I wish to see no other man than thee." + +"Ah, my star, I know!" He drew her close and covered her face with his +kisses. + +And in her ear he whispered: "And when I come for thee in the night, +thou wilt go with me? Say!" + +"I will go, _sidi. In-cha-'llah_! If God will!" + +At that he shook her again, even more roughly than before. + +"Don't say that! Not, 'If God will!' Say to me, 'If _thou_ wilt.'" + +"_Ai--Ai_ ----" + +There was a silence. + +"But let it be quickly," he heard her whispering, after a while. Under +his hand he felt a slow shiver moving over her arms. "_Nekaf_!" she +breathed, so low that he could hardly hear. "I am afraid." + +It was another night when the air was electric and men stirred in +their sleep. Lieutenant Genet turned over in bed and stared at the +moonlight streaming in through the window from the court of the +_caserne_. In the moonlight stood Habib. + +"What do you want?" Genet demanded, gruff with sleep. + +"I came to you because you are my friend." + +The other rubbed his eyes and peered through the window to mark the +Sudanese sentry standing awake beside his box at the gate. + +"How did you get in?" + +"I got in as I shall get out, not only from here, but from Kairwan, +from Africa--because I am a man of decision." + +"You are also, Habib, a skeleton. The moon shows through you. What +have you been doing these weeks, these months, that you should be so +shivery and so thin? Is it Old Africa gnawing at your bones? Or are +you, perhaps, in love?" + +"I am in love. Yes.... _Ai, ai_, Raoul _habiby_, if but thou couldst +see her--the lotus bloom opening at dawn--the palm tree in a land of +streams ----" + +"Talk French!" Genet got his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. +He passed a hand through his hair. "You are in love, then ... and +again I tell, you, for perhaps the twentieth time, Habib, that between +a man and a woman in Islam there is no such thing as love." + +"But I am not in Islam. I am not in anything! And if you could but see +her ----" + +"Lust!" + +"What do you mean by 'lust'?" + +"Lust is the thing you find where you don't find trust. Lust is a +priceless perfume that a man has in a crystal vial, and he is the +miser of its fragrance. He closes the windows when he takes the +stopper out of that bottle to drink its breath, and he puts the +stopper back quickly again, so that it will not evaporate--not too +soon." + +"But that, Raoul, is love! All men know that for love. The priceless +perfume in a crystal beyond price." + +"Yes, love, too, is the perfume in the vial. But the man who has that +vial opens the windows and throws the stopper away, and all the air is +sweet forever. The perfume evaporates, forever. And this, Habib, is +the miracle. The vial is never any emptier than when it began." + +"Yes, yes--I know--perhaps--but to-night I have no time ----" + +The moon _did_ shine through him. He was but a rag blown in the dark +wind. He had been torn to pieces too long. + +"I have no time!" he repeated, with a feverish force. "Listen, Raoul, +my dear friend. To-day the price was paid in the presence of the +_cadi_, Ben Iskhar. Three days from now they lead me to marriage with +the daughter of the notary. What, to me, is the daughter of the +notary? They lead me like a sheep to kill at a tomb.... Raoul, for the +sake of our friendship, give me hold of your hand. To-morrow +night--the car! Or, if you say you haven't the disposal of the car, +bring me horses." And again the shaking of his nerves got the better +of him; again he tumbled back into the country tongue. "For the sake +of God, bring me two horses! By Sidna Aissa! by the Three Hairs from +the Head of the Prophet I swear it! My first-born shall be named for +thee, Raoul. Only bring thou horses! Raoul! Raoul!" + +It was the whine of the beggar of Barbary. Genet lay back, his hands +behind his head, staring into shadows under the ceiling. + +"Better the car. I'll manage it with some lies. To-morrow night at +moonset I'll have the car outside the gate Djedid." After a moment he +added, under his breath, "But I know your kind too well, Habib ben +Habib, and I know that you will not be there." + +Habib was not there. From moonset till half-past three, well over two +hours, Genet waited, sitting on the stone in the shadow of the gate, +prowling the little square inside. He smoked twenty cigarettes. He +yawned three times twenty times. At last he went out got into the car +and drove away. + +As the throb of the engine grew faint a figure in European clothes and +a long-tasselled _chechia_ crept out from the dark of a door arch +along the street. It advanced toward the gate. It started back at a +sound. It rallied again, a figure bedeviled by vacillation. It came as +far as the well in the centre of the little square. + +On the horizon toward the coast of Sousse rested a low black wall of +cloud. Lightning came out of it from time to time and ran up the sky, +soundless, glimmering.... The cry of the morning muezzin rolled down +over the town. The lightning showed the figure sprawled face down on +the cool stone of the coping of the well.... + +The court of the house of bel-Kalfate swam in the glow of candles. A +striped awning shut out the night sky, heavy with clouds, and the +women, crowding for stolen peeps on the flat roof. A confusion of +voices, raillery, laughter, eddied around the arcaded walls, and thin +music bound it together with a monotonous count of notes. + +Through the doorway from the marble _entresol_ where he stood Habib +could see his father, cross-legged on a dais, with the notary. They +sat hand in hand like big children, conversing gravely. With them was +the _caid_ of Kairwan, the _cadi_, ben Iskhar, and a dark-skinned +cousin from the oases of the Djerid in the south. Their garments +shone; there was perfume in their beards. On a rostrum beyond and +above the crowded heads the musicians swayed at their work--_tabouka_ +players with strong, nervous thumbs; an oily, gross lutist; an +organist, watching everything with the lizard eyes of the hashish +taker. Among them, behind a taborette piled with bait of food and +drink, the Jewish dancing woman from Algiers lolled in her cushions, a +drift of white disdain.... + +He saw it all through a kind of mist. It was as if time had halted, +and he was still at the steaming _hammam_ of the afternoon, his spirit +and his flesh undone, and all about him in the perfumed vapour of the +bath the white bodies of his boyhood comrades glimmering luminous and +opalescent. + +His flesh was still asleep, and so was his soul. The hand of his +father city had come closer about him, and for a moment it seemed that +he was too weary, or too lazy, to push it away. For a little while he +drifted with the warm and perfumed cloud of the hours. + +Hands turned him around. It was Houseen Abdelkader, the _caid's_ son, +the comrade of long ago--Houseen in silk of wine and silver, hyacinths +pendent on his cheeks, a light of festival in his eyes. + +"_Es-selam alekoum, ya Habib habiby_!" It was the salutation in the +plural--to Habib, and to the angels that walk, one at either shoulder +of every son of God. And as he spoke he threw a new white burnoose +over Habib's head, so that it hung down straight and covered him like +a bridal veil. + +"_Alekoum selam, ya Seenou_!" It was the name of boyhood, Seenou, the +diminutive, that fell from Habib's lips. And he could not call it +back. + +"Come thou now." He felt the gentle push of Houseen's hands. He found +himself moving toward the door that stood open into the street. The +light of an outer conflagration was in his eyes. The thin music of +lute and tabouka in the court behind him grew thinner; the boom of +drums and voices in the street grew big. He had crossed the threshold. +A hundred candles, carried in horizontal banks on laths by little +boys, came around him on three sides, like footlights. And beyond the +glare, in the flaming mist, he saw the street Dar-el-Bey massed with +men. All their faces were toward him, hot yellow spots in which the +black spots of their mouths gaped and vanished. + +"That the marriage of Habib be blessed! Blessed be the marriage of +Habib!" + +The riot of sound began to take form. It began to emerge in a measure, +a _boom-boom-boom_ of tambours and big goatskin drums. A bamboo fife +struck into a high, quavering note. The singing club of Sidibou-Sa d +joined voice. + +The footlights were moving forward toward the street of the market. +Habib moved with them a few slow paces without effort or will. Again +they had all stopped. It could not be more than two hundred yards to +the house of the notary and his waiting bride, but by the ancient +tradition of Kairwan an hour must be consumed on the way. + +An hour! An eternity! Panic came over Habib. He turned his hooded eyes +for some path of escape. To the right, Houseen! To the left, close at +his shoulder, Mohammed Sherif--Mohammed the laughing and the +well-beloved--Mohammed, with whom in the long, white days he used to +chase lizards by the pool of the Aglabides ... in the long, white, +happy days, while beyond the veil of palms the swaying camel +palanquins of women, like huge bright blooms, went northward up the +Tunis road.... + +What made him think of that? + +"_Boom-boom-boom-boom_!" And around the drums beyond the candles he +heard them singing: + + _On the day of the going away of my Love, + When the litters, carrying the women of the tribe, + Traversed the valley of Dad, like a sea, mirage, + They were like ships, great ships, the work of the children of + Adoul, + Or like the boats of Yamen's sons...._ + +"_Boom-boom_!" The monotonous pulse, the slow minor slide of sixteenth +tones, the stark rests--he felt the hypnotic pulse of the old music +tampering with the pulse of his blood. It gave him a queer creeping +fright. He shut his eyes, as if that would keep it out. And in the +glow of his lids he saw the tents on the naked desert; he saw the +forms of veiled women; he saw the horses of warriors coming like a +breaker over the sand--the horses of the warriors of God! + +He pulled the burnoose over his lids to make them dark. And even in +the dark he could see. He saw two eyes gazing at his, untroubled, +untroubling, out of the desert night. And they were the eyes of any +woman--the eyes of his bride, of his sister, his mother, the eyes of +his mothers a thousand years dead. + +"Master!" they said. + +They were pushing him forward by the elbows, Mohammed and Houseen. He +opened his eyes. The crowd swam before him through the yellow glow. +Something had made an odd breach in his soul, and through the breach +came memories. + +Memories! There at his left was the smoky shelf of blind Moulay's +café--black-faced, white-eyed old Moulay. Moulay was dead now many +years, but the men still sat in the same attitudes, holding the same +cups, smoking the same _chibouk_ with the same gulping of bubbles as +in the happy days. And there between the café and the _souk_ gate was +the same whitewashed niche where three lads used to sit with their +feet tucked under their little _kashabias_, their _chechias_ awry on +their shaven polls, and their lips pursed to spit after the leather +legs of the infidel conquerors passing by. The _Roumi_, the French +blasphemers, the defilers of the mosque! Spit on the dogs! Spit! + +Behind his reverie the drums boomed, the voices chanted. The lament of +drums and voices beat at the back of his brain--while he remembered +the three lads sitting in the niche, waiting from one white day to +another for the coming of Moulay Saa, the Messiah; watching for the +Holy War to begin. + +"And I shall ride in the front rank of the horsemen, please God!" + +"And I, I shall ride at Moulay Saa's right hand, please God, and I +shall cut the necks of _Roumi_ with my sword, like barley straw!" + +Habib advanced in the spotlight of the candles. Under the burnoose his +face, half shadowed, looked green and white, as if he were sick to his +death. Or, perhaps, as if he were being born again. + +The minutes passed, and they were hours. The music went on, +interminable. + +"_Boom-boom-boom-boom_ ----" But now Habib himself was the instrument, +and now the old song of his race played its will on him. + +Pinkness began to creep over the green-white cheeks. The cadence of +the chanting had changed. It grew ardent, melting, voluptuous. + +_... And conquests I have made among the fair ones, perfume inundated, +Beauties ravishing; that sway in an air of musk and saffron, Bearing +still on their white necks the traces of kisses...._ + +It hung under the pepper trees, drunk with the beauty of flesh, +fainting with passion. Above the trees mute lightning played in the +cloud. Habib ben Habib was born again. Again, after exile, he came +back into the heritage. He saw the heaven of the men of his race. He +saw Paradise in a walking dream. He saw women forever young and +forever lovely in a land of streams, women forever changing, forever +virgin, forever new; strangers intimate and tender. The angels of a +creed of love--or of lust! + +"Lust is the thing you find where you don't find trust." + +A thin echo of the Frenchman's diatribe flickered through his memory, +and he smiled. He smiled because his eyes were open now. He seemed to +see this Christian fellow sitting on his bed, bare-footed, +rumple-haired, talking dogmatically of perfumes and vials and stoppers +thrown away, talking of faith in women. And that was the jest. For he +seemed to see the women, over there in Paris, that the brothers of +that naive fellow trusted--trusted alone with a handsome young +university student from Tunisia. Ha-ha-ha! Now he remembered. He +wanted to laugh out loud at a race of men that could be as simple as +that. He wanted to laugh at the bursting of the iridescent bubble of +faith in the virtue of beautiful women. The Arab knew! + +A colour of health was on his face; his step had grown confident. Of a +sudden, and very quietly, all the mixed past was blotted out. He heard +only the chanting voices and the beating drums. + +_Once I came into the tent of a young beauty on a day of rain.... +Beauty blinding.... Charms that ravished and made drunkards of the +eyes...._ + +His blood ran with the song, pulse and pulse. The mute lightning came +down through the trees and bathed his soul. And, shivering a little, +he let his thoughts go for the first time to the strange and virgin +creature that awaited his coming there, somewhere, behind some blind +house wall, so near. + +"Thou hast suffered exile. Now is thy reward prepared." + +What a fool! What a fool he had been! + +He wanted to run now. The lassitude of months was gone from his limbs. +He wanted to fling aside that clogging crowd, run, leap, arrive. How +long was this hour? Where was he? He tried to see the housetops to +know, but the glow was in his eyes. He felt the hands of his comrades +on his arms. + +But now there was another sound in the air. His ears, strained to the +alert, caught it above the drums and voices--a thin, high ululation. +It came from behind high walls and hung among the leaves of the trees, +a phantom yodeling, the welcoming "_you-you-you-you_" of the women of +Islam. + +Before him he saw that the crowd had vanished. Even the candles went +away. There was a door, and the door was open. + +He entered, and no one followed. He penetrated alone into an empty +house of silence, and all around him the emptiness moved and the +silence rustled. + +He traversed a court and came into a chamber where there was a light. +He saw a negress, a Sudanese duenna, crouching in a corner and staring +at him with white eyes. He turned toward the other side of the room. + +She sat on a high divan, like a throne, her hands palms together, her +legs crossed. In the completeness of her immobility she might have +been a doll or a corpse. After the strict fashion of brides, her +eyebrows were painted in thick black arches, her lips drawn in +scarlet, her cheeks splashed with rose. Her face was a mask, and +jewels in a crust hid the flame of her hair. Under the stiff kohl of +their lids her eyes turned neither to the left nor to the right. She +seemed not to breathe. It is a dishonour for a maid to look or to +breathe in the moment when her naked face suffers for the first time +the gaze of the lord whom she has never seen. + +A minute passed away. + +"This is the thing that is mine!" A blinding exultation ran through +his brain and flesh. "Better this than the 'trust' of fools and +infidels! No question here of 'faith.' _Here I know_! I know that this +thing that is mine has not been bandied about by the eyes of all the +men in the world. I know that this perfume has never been breathed by +the passers in the street. I know that it has been treasured from the +beginning in a secret place--against this moment--for me. This bud has +come to its opening in a hidden garden; no man has ever looked upon +it; no man will ever look upon it. None but I." + +He roused himself. He moved nearer, consumed with the craving and +exquisite curiosity of the new. He stood before the dais and gazed +into the unwavering eyes. As he gazed, as his sight forgot the +grotesque doll painting of the face around those eyes, something queer +began to come over him. A confusion. Something bothering. A kind of +fright. + +"Thou!" he breathed. + +Her icy stillness endured. Not once did her dilated pupils waver from +the straight line. Not once did her bosom lift with breath. + +"_Thou_! It is _thou_, then, O runner on the housetops by night!" + +The fright of his soul grew deeper, and suddenly it went out. And in +its place there came a black calm. The eyes before him remained +transfixed in the space beyond his shoulder. But by and by the painted +lips stirred once. + +"_Nekaf_!... I am afraid!" + +Habib turned away and went out of the house. + +In the house of bel-Kalfate the Jewess danced, still, even in +voluptuous motion, a white drift of disdain. The music eddied under +the rayed awning. Raillery and laughter were magnified. More than a +little _bokha_, the forbidden liquor distilled of figs, had been +consumed in secret. Eyes gleamed; lips hung.... Alone in the thronged +court on the dais, the host and the notary, the _caid_, the _cadi_, +and the cousin from the south continued to converse in measured tones, +holding their coffee cups in their palms. + +"It comes to me, on thought," pronounced bel-Kalfate, inclining his +head toward the notary with an air of courtly deprecation--"it comes +to me that thou hast been defrauded. For what is a trifle of ten +thousand _douros_ of silver as against the rarest jewel (I am certain, +_sidi_) that has ever crowned the sex which thou mayest perhaps +forgive me for mentioning?" + +And in the same tone, with the same gesture, Hadji Daoud replied: +"Nay, master and friend, by the Beard of the Prophet, but I should +repay thee the half. For that is a treasure for a sultan's daughter, +and this _fillette_ of mine (forgive me) is of no great beauty or +worth ----" + +"In saying that, Sidi Hadji, thou sayest a thing which is at odds with +half the truth." + +They were startled at the voice of Habib coming from behind their +backs. + +"For thy daughter, Sidi Hadji, thy Zina, is surely as lovely as the +full moon sinking in the west in the hour before the dawn." + +The words were fair. But bel-Kalfate was looking at his son's face. + +"Where are thy comrades?" he asked, in a low voice. "How hast thou +come?" Then, with a hint of haste: "The dance is admirable. It would +be well that we should remain quiet, Habib, my son." + +But the notary continued to face the young man. He set his cup down +and clasped his hands about his knee. The knuckles were a little +white. + +"May I beg thee, Habib ben Habib, that thou shouldst speak the thing +which is in thy mind?" + +"There is only this, _sidi_, a little thing: When thou hast another +bird to vend in the market of hearts, it would perhaps be well to +examine with care the cage in which thou hast kept that bird. + +"Thy daughter," he added, after a moment of silence--"thy daughter, +Sidi Hadji, is with child." + +That was all that was said. Hadji Daoud lifted his cup and drained it, +sucking politely at the dregs. The _cadi_ coughed. The _cadi_ raised +his eyes to the awning and appeared to listen. Then he observed, +"To-night, _in-cha-'llah_, it will rain." The notary pulled his +burnoose over his shoulders, groped down with his toes for his +slippers, and got to his feet. + +"Rest in well-being!" he said. Then, without haste, he went out. + +Habib followed him tardily as far as the outer door. In the darkness +of the empty street he saw the loom of the man's figure moving off +toward his own house, still without any haste. + +"And in the night of thy marriage thy husband, or thy father, if thou +hast a father ----" + +Habib did not finish with the memory. He turned and walked a few steps +along the street. He could still hear the music and the clank of the +Jewess's silver in his father's court.... + +"_In-cha-'llah_!" she had said, that night. + +And after all, it _had_ been the will of God.... + +A miracle had happened. All the dry pain had gone out of the air. Just +now the months of waiting for the winter rains were done. All about +him the big, cool drops were spattering on the invisible stones. The +rain bathed his face. His soul was washed with the waters of the +merciful God of Arab men. + +For, after all, from the beginning, it had been written. All written! + +"_Mektoub_!" + + + +GRIT + +By TRISTRAM TUPPER + +From _Metropolitan Magazine_ + + +Grit was dead. There was no mistake about that. And on the very day of +his burial temptation came to his widow. + +Grit's widow was "Great" Taylor, whose inadequate first name was +Nell--a young, immaculate creature whose body was splendid even if her +vision and spirit were small. She never had understood Grit. + +Returning from the long, wearisome ride, she climbed the circular iron +staircase--up through parallels of garlic-scented tenement gloom--to +her three-room flat, neat as a pin; but not even then did she give way +to tears. Tears! No man could make Great Taylor weep! + +However, drawing the pins from her straw hat, dyed black for the +occasion, she admitted, "It ain't right." Grit had left her nothing, +absolutely nothing, but an unpleasant memory of himself--his grimy +face and hands, his crooked nose and baggy breeches.... And Great +Taylor was willing that every thought of him should leave her forever. +"Grit's gone," she told herself. "I ain't going to think of him any +more." + +Determinedly Great Taylor put some things to soak and, closing down +the top of the stationary washtubs, went to the window. The view was +not intriguing, and yet she hung there: roofs and more roofs, a +countless number reached out toward infinity, with pebbles and pieces +of broken glass glittering in the sunlight; chimneys sharply outlined +by shadow; and on every roof, except one, clothes-lines, from which +white cotton and linen flapped in the wind at the side of faded +overalls and red woollen shirts. They formed a kind of flag--these +red, white, and blue garments flying in the breeze high above a nation +of toilers. But Great Taylor's only thought was, "It's Monday." + +One roof, unlike the rest, displayed no such flag--a somewhat +notorious "garden" and dance hall just around the corner. + +And adjacent to this house was a vacant lot on which Great Taylor +could see a junk-cart waiting, and perhaps wondering what had become +of its master. + +She turned her eyes away. "I ain't going to think of him." Steadying +her chin in the palms of her hands, elbows on the window-sill, Nell +peered down upon a triangular segment of chaotic street. Massed +humanity overflowed the sidewalks and seemed to bend beneath the +weight of sunlight upon their heads and shoulders. A truck ploughed a +furrow through push-carts that rolled back to the curb like a wave +crested with crude yellow, red, green, and orange merchandise. She +caught the hum of voices, many tongues mingling, while the odours of +vegetables and fruit and human beings came faintly to her nostrils. +She was looking down upon one of the busiest streets of the city that +people sometimes call the Devil's Own. + +Grit had wrested an existence from the débris of this city. Others +have waded ankle-deep in the crowd; but he, a grimy, infinitesimal +molecule, had been at the bottom wholly submerged, where the light of +idealism is not supposed to penetrate. Grit had been a junkman; his +business address--a vacant lot; his only asset--a junk-cart across the +top of which he had strung a belt of jingling, jangling bells that had +called through the cavernous streets more plainly than Grit himself: +"Rags, old iron, bottles, and ra-ags." + +This had been Grit's song; perhaps the only one he had known, for he +had shoved that blest cart of his since a boy of thirteen; he had worn +himself as threadbare as the clothes on his back, and at last the +threads had snapped. He had died of old age--in his thirties. And his +junk-cart, with its bells, stood, silent and unmanned, upon the vacant +lot just around the corner. + +Great Taylor had seen Grit pass along this narrow segment of street, +visible from her window; but his flight had always been swift--pushing +steadily with head bent, never looking up. And so it was not during +his hours of toil that she had known him.... + +Nell closed the window. She was not going to think of him any more. +"Ain't worth a thought." But everything in the room reminded her of +the man. He had furnished it from his junk-pile. The drawer was +missing from the centre table, the door of the kitchen stove was wired +at the hinges; even the black marble clock, with its headless gilt +figure, and the brown tin boxes marked "Coffee," "Bread," and +"Sugar"--all were junk. And these were the things that Grit, not +without a show of pride, had brought home to her! + +Nell sank into a large armchair (with one rung gone) and glowered at +an earthen jug on the shelf. Grit had loved molasses. Every night he +had spilt amber drops of it on the table, and his plate had always +been hard to wash. "Won't have that to do any more," sighed Nell. Back +of the molasses jug, just visible, were the tattered pages of a +coverless book. This had come to Grit together with fifty pounds of +waste paper in gunny-sacks; and though Nell had never undergone the +mental torture of informing herself as to its contents, she had dubbed +the book "Grit's Bible," for he had pawed over it, spelling out the +words, every night for years. It was one thing from which she could +not wash Grit's grimy fingermarks, and so she disliked it even more +than the sticky molasses jug. "Him and his book and his brown molasses +jug!" One was gone forever, and soon she would get rid of the other +two. + +And yet, even as she thought this, her eyes moved slowly to the door, +and she could not help visualizing Grit as he had appeared every +evening at dusk. His baggy breeches had seemed always to precede him +into the room. The rest of him would follow--his thin shoulders, from +which there hung a greenish coat, frayed at the sleeves; above this, +his long, collarless neck, his pointed chin and broken nose, that +leaned toward the hollow and smudges of his cheek. + +He would lock the door quickly and stand there, looking at Nell. + +"Why did he always lock the door?" mused Great Taylor. "Nothing here +to steal! Why'd he stand there like that?" Every night she had +expected him to say something, but he never did. Instead, he would +take a long breath, almost like a sigh, and, after closing his eyes +for a moment, he would move into the room and light the screeching +gas-jet. "Never thought of turning down the gas." This, particularly, +was a sore point with Great Taylor. "Never thought of anything. Just +dropped into the best chair." + +"It's a good chair, Nell," he would say, "only one rung missing." And +he would remain silent, drooping there, wrists crossed in his lap, +palms turned upward, fingers curled, until supper had been placed +before him on the table. "Fingers bent like claws," muttered Great +Taylor, "and doing nothing while I set the table." + +Sometimes he would eat enormously, which irritated Nell; sometimes he +would eat nothing except bread and molasses, which irritated Nell even +more. "A good molasses jug," he would say; "got it for a dime. Once I +set a price I'm a stone wall; never give in." This was his one boast, +his stock phrase. After using it he would look up at his wife for a +word of approval; and as the word of approval was never forthcoming, +he would repeat: "Nell, I'm a stone wall; never give in." + +After supper he would ask what she had been doing all day. A weary, +almost voiceless, man, he had told her nothing. But Great Taylor while +washing the dishes would rattle off everything that had happened since +that morning. She seldom omitted any important detail, for she knew by +experience that Grit would sit there, silent, wrists crossed and palms +turned up, waiting. He had always seemed to know when she had left +anything out, and she always ended by telling him. Then he would take +a long breath, eyes closed, and, after fumbling back of the molasses +jug, would soon be seated again beneath the streaming gas-jet spelling +to himself the words of his coverless book. + +So vivid was the picture, the personality and routine of Grit, that +Great Taylor felt the awe with which he, at times, had inspired her. +She had been afraid of Grit--afraid to do anything she could not tell +him about; afraid not to tell him about everything she had done. But +now she determined: "I'll do what I please." And the first thing it +pleased Great Taylor to do was to get rid of the odious molasses jug. + +She plucked it from the shelf, holding the sticky handle between two +fingers, and dropped it into the peach crate that served as a +waste-basket. The noise when the jug struck the bottom of the crate +startled her. Great Taylor stood there--listening. Someone was slowly +ascending the circular staircase. The woman could hear a footfall on +the iron steps. + +"Grit's gone," she reassured herself. "I'll do what I please." + +She reached for the grimy book, "Grit's Bible," the most offensive +article in the room, and with sudden determination tore the book in +two, and was about to throw the defaced volume into the basket along +with the earthen jug when fear arrested the motion of her hands. Her +lips parted. She was afraid to turn her head. The door back of her had +opened. + +Great Taylor was only ordinarily superstitious. She had buried Grit +that morning. It was still broad daylight--early afternoon. And yet +when she turned, clutching the torn book, she fully expected to see a +pair of baggy breeches preceding a collarless, long-necked man with a +broken nose, and smudges in the hollows of his cheeks. + +Instead, she wheeled to see a pair of fastidiously pressed blue serge +trousers, an immaculate white collar, a straight nose and ruddy +complexion. In fact, the man seemed the exact opposite of Grit. Nell +glanced at the open door, back at the man, exhaled tremulously with +relief, and breathed: "Why didn't you knock?" + +"Sorry if I startled you," puffed the man, entirely winded by the six +flights. "Must have pushed the wrong button in the vestibule. No great +harm done." + +"Who are you? What you want?" + +"Junk. That's one of the things I came to see about--the junk in back +of my place. I suppose it's for sale." He thrust his white hands into +the side pockets of his coat, pulling the coat snugly around his waist +and hips, and smiled amiably at Great Taylor's patent surprise. + +"You!.... Buy Grit's junk business!" What did _he_ want with junk? He +was clean! From head to foot he was clean! His hair was parted. It was +not only parted, it was brushed into a wave, with ends pointing +stiffly up over his temples (a coiffure affected by bartenders of that +day); and Nell even detected the pleasant fragrance of pomade. "You +ain't a junkman." + +The man laughed. "I don't know about that." + +He studied her a moment in silence. Nell was leaning back against the +washtubs, her sleeves rolled up, her head tilted quizzically, lips +parted, while tints of colour ebbed and flowed in her throat and +cheeks. She had attained the ripeness of womanhood and very nearly +animal perfection. The man's attitude might have told her this. One of +his eyes, beneath a permanently cocked eyebrow, blinked like the +shutter of a camera and seemed to take intimate photographs of all +parts of her person. The other eye looked at her steadily from under a +drooping lid. "No," he said, after the pause of a moment, "I'm not +going into the junk business." But he wanted to get the rubbish away +from the back of his place. "I'll buy it and have it carted away. It's +too near the 'Garden.'" He rocked up on his toes and clicked his heels +gently. "I own the house just around the corner." + +"I knew it," Nell murmured fatuously. The man was vaguely familiar, +even though she could not remember having seen him before. + +"Set your price." He turned away, and Nell imagined that his +camera-like eye was taking instantaneous photographs of all the broken +and mended things in the immaculate room. A wave of hot blood made her +back prickle and dyed her throat crimson. + +"I don't like rubbish," said the man. "I don't like junk." + +"Who does?" stammered Great Taylor. + +"You dislike junk, and yet there was your husband, a junkman." He +watched her narrowly from beneath his drooping eyelid. + +Great Taylor was not of the noblesse, nor did she know the meaning of +noblesse oblige; and had she been a man, perhaps she would have denied +her former lord and master--once, twice, or even thrice--it has been +done; but being a woman, she said: "Leave Grit out of it." + +This seemed to please the man from around the corner. "I think we are +going to get on," he said significantly. "But you must remember that +Grit can't take care of you any longer." + +"Grit's gone," assented Nell; "gone for good." + +"Uhm." The man allowed his singular eyes to move over her. "I think we +can arrange something. I've seen you pass my place, looking in; and I +had something in mind when I started up here--something aside from +junk. I could make a place over there--matron or cashier. How would +you like that--cashier at the Garden?" He rocked up on his toes and +clicked his heels quite audibly. + +"I don't know anything about it." + +"You'll soon learn," he was confident. He mentioned the salary, and +that a former cashier was now half owner of an uptown place. And for +half an hour Great Taylor's saturnine mind followed in the wake of his +smoothly flowing words. + +Why couldn't Grit have talked like that? she kept asking herself. Grit +never said anything. Why couldn't he been clean like that, with hair +brushed into a curl that sat up like that? ... The man's words +gradually slipped far beyond her, and only his pleasant voice +accompanied her own thoughts. No reason why she shouldn't be cashier +at the Garden. Only one reason, anyway, and that wasn't any reason at +all.... + +On an afternoon more than a year ago she had gone to the place around +the corner. She had told Grit all about it, and Grit had said in his +weary voice, "Don't never go again, Nell." She had argued with Grit. +The Garden wasn't wicked; nothing the matter with it; other people +went there of an afternoon; she liked the music.... And Grit had +listened, drooping in his chair, wrists crossed and palms turned +upward. Finally, when Nell had finished, he had repeated, "Don't go +again." He had not argued, for Grit never argued; he was always too +weary. But this had been one of his longest speeches. He had ended: +"The Devil himself owns that place. I ought to know, my junkyard's +right back of it." And he had closed his eyes and taken a long, deep +breath. "When I say a thing, Nell, I'm a stone wall. You can't go +there again--now or never." And that had settled it, for Great Taylor +had been afraid of Grit. But now Grit was dead; gone for good. She +would do as she pleased.... + +When she looked up the man had stopped talking. He glanced at the +clock. + +"What time?" murmured Great Taylor. + +"Five," said the man from just around the corner. + +Nell nodded her head and watched as the man's fastidiously pressed +trousers and polished shoes cleared the closing door. Nell immediately +went to the looking-glass--a cracked little mirror that hung by the +mantelpiece--and studied the reflection of herself with newly awakened +interest. She had never seemed so radiant--her smooth hair, her +lineless face, her large gray eyes and perfect throat. "I ain't so bad +looking," she admitted. Grit had never made her feel this way. And +again she asked herself why he could not have been clean like the man +from around the corner. + +She rehearsed all that had been said. She thought of the salary the +man had mentioned, and made calculations. It was more than Grit had +averaged for the two of them to live on. With prodigal fancy she spent +the money and with new-born thrift she placed it in bank. Limited only +by her small knowledge of such things, she revelled in a dream of +affluence and luxury which was only dissipated when gradually she +became conscious that throughout the past hour she had been clinging +to a grimy, coverless book. + +Damp finger-prints were upon the outer leaves, and the pages adhered +to her moistened hand. She loosened her grip, and the book opened to a +particularly soiled page on which a line had been underscored with a +thick red mark. Dully, Great Taylor read the line, spelling out the +words; but it conveyed nothing to her intellect. It was the fighting +phrase of a famous soldier: "_I have drawn the sword and thrown away +the scabbard_." + +"What does that mean?" she mumbled. Her eyes wandered to the top of +the page, where in larger type was the title: "Life of 'STONEWALL' +JACKSON." "Stonewall," repeated Nell. "Stonewall!" The word had the +potency to bring vividly before her Grit's drooping, grimy form. Her +ears rang with his ridiculous boast. His voice seemed no longer low +and weary. "When I say a thing ... stone wall. Can't go there +again--now or never." Great Taylor mumbled disparagingly, "He got it +from a book!" And again she read the fighting phrase of Grit's hero: +"_I have drawn the sword and thrown away the scabbard_." "Can't mean +Grit," she mused. "He never threw away anything...." And she tossed +his desecrated Bible toward the peach crate; but missing its aim, the +book slid along the floor with a slight rustle, almost like a sigh, +and struck the chair-board behind the washtubs, where it lay limp and +forgotten. + +Back of Nell the clock struck the half hour, and she turned quickly, +her heart thumping with the fear of being late. But the hour was only +three thirty. "Plenty time." She gazed at the broken clock. "A good +clock," Grit used to say; "keeps time and only cost a quarter." "Stone +wall!... Humph!..." + +Nell transformed the washtubs into a bath by the removal of the centre +partition, and within an hour was bathed and dressed. Sticking the +pins through her straw hat, dyed black, she took from the bottom +drawer of the cupboard a patent-leather hand-bag with colourful +worsted fruit embroidered upon its shining sides. She thought of the +night Grit had brought it home to her, his pride--he had bought it at +a store. But a glance around the room obliterated this memory, and she +mumbled, "Wish I warn't never, _never_ going to see this place again! +Wait till I get money...." She glared at the broken furniture, each +piece of which brought back some memory of the man. She could see him +drooping in the armchair, with his wrists crossed, fingers curled. She +glared at the shelf and imagined him fumbling for something that was +not there. She started for the door, then, turning back, reached into +the peach crate. "There! Keep your old molasses jug!" she said, in a +dry voice, and, replacing the jug on the shelf, she went out into the +hall. + +Winding down through the tenement-house gloom, Great Taylor was not +without fear. Her footfall on the uncarpeted landings and iron treads +sounded hollow and strangely loud. The odours that in the past had +greeted her familiarly, making known absorbing domestic details of her +neighbours, caused her neither to pause nor to sniff. She reached the +narrow entrance hall, dark and deserted, and, hurrying down its +length, fumbled with the knob and pulled open the street door. +Dazzling sunlight, a blast of warm air and the confused clatter of the +sidewalk engulfed her. She stood vacillating in the doorway, thinly +panoplied for the struggle of existence. Her body was splendid, it is +true, but her spirit was small. Despite the sunlight and warmth she +was trembling. And yet, for years she had gone down into this street +confident of herself, mingling on equal terms with its wayfarers, her +ear catching and translating the sounds that, converging, caused this +babel. Now, suddenly, all of it was meaningless, the peddlers with +whom she had bickered and bargained in a loud voice with gestures, +breast to breast, were strangers and the street an alien land. Many +things seemed to have passed backward out of her life. She was no +longer Grit's wife, no longer the Great Taylor of yesterday. She was +something new-born, free of will; all the old ties had been clipped. +She could do as she pleased. No one could stop her. And she pleased to +become a denizen of a world which, though just around the corner, was +unrelated to the sphere in which she had moved. + +"What's the matter with me?" she asked herself. "Nothing to be afraid +of. He's gone. I'll do as I please." With such assertions she +bolstered her courage, but nevertheless she was trembling.... + +Glossy-haired women jostled her with their baskets. Taller by a head, +Nell pushed her way oblivious of the crowd. At the corner she paused. +"I ain't going to be early." A clock across the avenue, visible +beneath the reverberating ironwork of the elevated, seemed to have +stopped at the half hour. It was four thirty. She watched the long +hand until it moved jerkily. A policeman, half dragging a shrieking +woman and followed by a jostling, silent crowd, swept Great Taylor +aside and put in a call for the wagon. + +She hurriedly rounded the corner and passed a window that displayed a +pyramid of varnished kegs backed by a mirror with a ram's head painted +on it in colours. Beyond was the side entrance. Over the door hung a +glass sign, one word in large red letters: "DANCING." She caught the +odour of cheap wine and stale beer. Again she said, "I ain't going to +be early," and moved away aimlessly. + +Beyond the end of this building was a vacant lot and Great Taylor +moved more swiftly with head averted. She had passed nearly to the +next building before she stopped and wheeled around defiantly. "I +ain't afraid to look," she said to herself and gazed across at Grit's +junk-cart, with its string of bells, partly concealed back against the +fence. It was standing in the shadow, silent, unmanned. She walked on +for a few steps and turned again. The cart was standing as before, +silent, unmanned. She stood there, hands on her hips, trying to +visualize Grit drooping over the handle--his collarless neck, his +grimy face and baggy breeches; but her imagination would not paint the +picture. "Grit's gone for good," she said. "Why couldn't he been clean +like other people, like the man that owns the Garden? No excuse for +being dirty and always tired like that. Anybody could push it and keep +clean, too--half clean, anyway." She slipped a glance at the clock. It +stood at twenty minutes before the hour of her appointment. "A baby +could push it...." + +She picked her way across the vacant lot to the junk-cart and laid her +hand upon the grimy handle. The thing moved. The strings of bells set +up a familiar jingle. "Easy as a baby carriage!" And Great Taylor +laughed. The cart reached the sidewalk, bumped down over the curb and +pulling Great Taylor with it went beyond the centre of the street. She +tried to turn back but a clanging trolley car cut in between her and +the curb, a wheel of the junk-cart caught in the smooth steel track +and skidded as if it were alive with a stupid will of its own. "It +ain't so easy," she admitted. With a wrench she extracted the wheel, +narrowly avoided an elevated post and crashed head on into a +push-cart, laden with green bananas resting on straw. An Italian swore +in two languages and separated the locked wheels. + +Hurriedly Great Taylor shoved away from the fruit man and became +pocketed in the traffic. Two heavy-hoofed horses straining against wet +leather collars crowded her toward the curb and shortly the traffic +became blocked. She looked for a means of escape and had succeeded in +getting one wheel over the curb when a man touched her on the arm. +"Someone is calling from the window up there," he said in a low weary +voice like Grit's. Nell swung around, gasping, but the man had moved +away down the sidewalk and a woman was calling to her from a +second-story window. + +"How much?" called the woman, waving a tin object that glinted in the +sunlight. Great Taylor stared stupidly. "Clothes boiler," yelled the +woman. "Fifty cents.... Just needs soldering." "What?" stammered Nell. +"Fifty cents," shouted the woman in the window. And something prompted +Great Taylor to reply, "Give you a dime." + +"Quarter," insisted the woman. "Dime ... Ten cents," repeated Great +Taylor, somewhat red in the face. "Once I set a price I'm a ..." But +the woman's head had disappeared and her whole angular person soon +slid out through the doorway. Entirely befogged, Great Taylor fumbled +in her patent-leather bag with its worsted fruit, discovered two +nickels, and placed the leaky boiler beside the rusty scales on the +junk-cart. + +"Ain't I got enough junk without that?" she grumbled. But the traffic +of the Devil's Own city was moving again and Great Taylor was moving +with it. She passed a corner where a clock in a drug store told her +the time--ten minutes of the hour. "I got to get back," she told +herself, and heading her cart determinedly for an opening succeeded in +crossing to the opposite side of the congested avenue. There, a child, +attracted by the jingling of the bells, ran out of a house with a +bundle of rags tied in a torn blue apron. The child placed the bundle +on the scales and watched with solemn wide eyes. Great Taylor again +fumbled in the bag and extracted a coin which transformed the little +girl into an India-rubber thing that bounced up and down on one foot +at the side of the junk-cart. "Grit never gave me only a penny a +pound," she cried. + +"Grit is dead," said Great Taylor. + +"Dead!" echoed the child, clinging motionless to the wheel. "_Grit_ is +dead?" She turned suddenly and ran toward the house, calling: "Mamma, +poor old Grit is dead." + +Great Taylor put her weight against the handle of the cart. She pushed +on desperately. Something had taken hold of her throat. "What's the +matter with me?" she choked. "Didn't I know he was dead before this? +Didn't I know it all along? I ain't going to cry over no man ... not +in the street, anyway." She hurriedly shoved her cart around a corner +into a less-congested thoroughfare and there a mammoth gilded clock at +the edge of the sidewalk confronted her. The long hand moved with a +sardonic jerk and indicated the hour--the hour of her appointment. But +Great Taylor turned her eyes away. "Pushing a junk-cart ain't so +easy," she said, and for a moment she stood there huddled over the +handle; then, taking a long, deep breath, like Grit used to do, she +straightened herself and sang out, clear and loud, above the noises of +the cavernous street: "Rags ... old iron ... bottles and ra-ags." + +The city that people call the Devil's Own lost its sharp outline and +melted into neutral tints, gray and blue and lavender, that blended +like an old, old tapestry. It was dusk. Great Taylor strode slowly +with laborious long strides, her breast rising and falling, her body +lengthening against the load, her hands gripping the handle of the +cart, freighted with rusty, twisted, and broken things. At crossings +she paused until the murmuring river of human beings divided to let +her pass. Night settled upon the high roofs and dropped its shadow +into the streets and alleys, and the windows began to glow. Light +leaped out and streaked the sidewalks while at each corner it ran +silently down from high globes like full moons and spattered over the +curb into the gutter and out as far as the glistening car tracks. She +passed blocks solid with human beings and blocks without a human soul. +Cataracts of sound crashed down into the street now and again from +passing elevated trains, and the noise, soon dissipated, left +trembling silence like pools of sinister black water. She passed +through stagnant odours and little eddies of perfume. She lifted her +drooping head and saw a door open--the darkness was cut by a rectangle +of soft yellow light, two figures were silhouetted, then the door +closed. A gasolene torch flared above a fruit stand hard against the +towering black windowless wall of a warehouse and a woman squatted in +the shadow turning a handle. Nell pushed on past a cross street that +glittered and flared from sidewalk to cornice, and at the next corner +a single flickering gas-jet revealed a dingy vestibule with rows of +tarnished speaking tubes.... + +The air became thick with noise and odours and the sidewalks swayed +with people. Great Taylor slowly rounded a familiar corner, slackened +the momentum of the junk-cart, and brought up squarely against the +curb. Dragging the wheels, she gained the sidewalk and, beyond, the +rims of the cart cut into soft earth. She crossed the vacant lot. A +city's supercilious moon alone gave its half-light to the junkyard of +Grit and here the woman unloaded the cart, carrying heavy unyielding +things against her breast. She did not linger. She was trembling from +fatigue and from emotions even more novel to her. She closed the gate +without looking back at the weird crêpe-like shadows that draped +themselves among the moonlit piles of twisted things. Nearing the +corner, she glanced with dull eyes at a glaring red sign: "Dancing." +Voices, laughter, and music after a kind came from the doorway, A man +was singing. Great Taylor recognized the voice but did not pause. She +was not to see the man from just around the corner again for many +years. + +Hurrying, without knowing why she hurried, Nell climbed the circular +iron staircase up through parallels of odorous gloom and, entering her +flat, closed the door and quickly locked it against the world +outside--the toil, the bickering, the sneers, the insults and curses +flung from alley gates and down upon her in the traffic of the Devil's +Own city. She closed her eyes and took a long deep breath almost like +a sigh. She was home. It was good to be home, but she lacked the words +and was far too weary to express her emotions. + +Lighting the gas she sank into a chair. What did it matter if the gas +was screeching? She drooped there, hands in her lap, wrists crossed, +palms turned upward and fingers curled stiffly like claws--from +holding to the jarring handle of the junk-cart. + +Presently she raised her eyes and glanced across at the shelf with its +row of tin boxes marked "Bread," "Coffee," "Sugar." On the next shelf +was Grit's molasses jug. She arose and fumbled behind this, but +nothing was there--Grit's Bible was gone. Then she remembered, and +striking a match placed her cheek to the floor and found the grimy +book beneath the stationary washtubs. "Stone wall," she murmured, +"Grit was a stone wall." At the mantelpiece she caught a glimpse of +herself in the cracked little mirror, but she was too weary to care +what she looked like, too weary to notice that her hair was matted, +that grime and smudges made hollows in her cheeks, and that even her +nose seemed crooked. + +She sank again into the chair beneath the screeching gas-jet. "Grit," +she repeated dully, "was a stone wall." And between very honest, +tired, and lonely tears she began slowly to spell out the words of the +coverless book, having gained within the past few hours some +understanding of what it means in the battle of life to draw the sword +and throw away the scabbard. + +There came another afternoon, another evening, another year, and still +another; but this narrative covers merely a part of two days--Great +Taylor's first and last as a junk-woman. The latter came nearly ten +years after the burial of Grit. For almost a decade Nell followed in +his grimy footprints and the polyglot people of the lower East Side, +looking down from their windows as she passed through the congested +streets pushing steadily with head bent, thought of her either as an +infinitesimal molecule at the bottom of the mass where the light of +idealism seldom penetrates or else as a female Colossus striding from +end to end of the Devil's Own city only ankle-deep in the débris from +which she wrested an existence. But to Great Taylor it seemed not to +matter what people thought. She sang her song through the cavernous +streets, the only song she knew: "Rags, old iron, bottles, and +ra-ags." She pounded with a huge, determined fist on alley gates, she +learned expertly to thread the traffic and to laugh at the teamsters, +their oaths, their curses. "They ain't so bad." And, finally, +bickering and bargaining with men of all classes, she came to wonder +why people called this the Devil's Own city. In all those years of +toil she did not once see him in the eyes of men. But there came the +day when she said, "I'm done." + +On this day Great Taylor lifted the end of a huge kitchen range +against two struggling members of the other sex. A pain shot through +her breast, but she carried her part of the dead weight, saying +nothing, and, at high noon, pushed her jingling, jangling cart through +streets sharply outlined with sunlight and shadow to a dilapidated +brick warehouse that, long since, had taken the place of Grit's +junk-yard. + +There, in the interior gloom of the shabby old building, could be seen +piles of broken, twisted, and rusty things--twisted iron rods, broken +cam-shafts, cog wheels with missing teeth, springs that had lost their +elasticity--a miniature mountain of scrap iron each piece of which at +some time had been a part of some smoothly working machine. In another +pile were discarded household utensils--old pots and pans and +burnt-out kettles, old stoves through the linings of which the flames +had eaten and the rust had gnawed. There were other hillocks and +mountains with shadowy valleys between--a mountain of waste paper, +partly baled, partly stuffed into bursting bags of burlap, partly +loose and scattered over the grimy floor; a hill of rags, all colours +fading into sombre shadows.... And in the midst of these mountains and +valleys of junk sat Great Taylor upon her dilapidated throne. + +She drooped there over an old coverless book, spelling out the words +and trying to forget the pain that was no longer confined to her +breast. From shoulder to hip molten slag pulsed slowly through her +veins and great drops of sweat moved from her temples and made +white-bottomed rivulets among the smudges of her cheeks. "I'm done," +she mumbled, closing Grit's book. "I got a right to quit. I got a +right to be idle like other people...." + +Raising her head she appraised the piles that surrounded her. "All +this stuff!" It had to be disposed of. She lifted herself from the +creaking chair and, finding a pot of black paint and a board, laboured +over this latter for a time. "I could get rid of it in a week," she +mused. But she was done--done for good. "I ain't going to lay a hand +on the cart again!" She studied the sign she had painted, and spelled +out the crooked letters: "M A n WAnTeD." It would take a man a month, +maybe more, she reckoned, adding: "Grit could done it in no time." She +moved to the arched door of the warehouse and hung the sign outside in +the sunlight against an iron shutter and for a moment stood there +blinking. Despite the sunlight and warmth she was trembling, the +familiar noises were a babel to her ears; the peddlers with their +carts piled high with fruits and vegetables and colourful merchandise +seemed like strangers; the glossy-haired women with baskets seemed to +be passing backward out of her life, and the street was suddenly an +alien land. "What's the matter with me?" she asked herself. + +Returning to the interior gloom of the warehouse, she looked down upon +the old junk-cart. The string of bells was the only part of it that +had not been renewed twice, thrice, a number of times since Grit had +left it standing on the vacant lot. "Guess I'll save the bells," she +decided. + +The rest she would destroy. Nobody else was going to use it--nobody. +She cast about for an adequate instrument of destruction, an axe or +sledge, and remembering a piece of furnace grate upon the farther pile +of junk, made her way slowly into the deepening shadows. + +There, at the foot of the rusty mountain of scrap iron, Great Taylor +stood irresolute, straining her eyes to pierce the gloom. She had not +seen any one enter; and yet, standing beyond the pile with white hands +stabbing the bottom of his pockets, was a man. She could not remember +having seen him before, and yet he was vaguely familiar. One eye +looked at her steadily from beneath a drooping lid, the other blinked +like the shutter of a camera and seemed to take intimate photographs +of all parts of her grimy person. His sleek hair was curled over his +temples with ends pointing up, and she caught, or imagined, the +fragrance of pomade. + +"What do you want?" she breathed, allowing the heavy piece of iron to +sink slowly to her side. + +"Sit down," said the man. "Let's talk things over." + +Great Taylor sank into a broken armchair, her huge calloused hands +rested in her lap, wrists crossed, palms turned upward, fingers +stiffly curled. "I know who you are," she mumbled, leaning forward and +peering through the half-light. "What do you want?" + +"You hung out a sign...." + +"You ain't the man I expected." + +"No?" He rocked up on his toes and made a gesture that indicated the +piles of junk. "You're done." + +"I'm done," assented Great Taylor. "I ain't going to lay a hand on the +cart again. Ten years...." + +"Uhm. You have a right to the things that other women have. But...." +He glanced around the dingy warehouse. "Is this all you have for your +ten years?" + +Great Taylor made no reply. + +"It isn't much," said the man. + +"It's something," said Great Taylor. + +"Not enough to live on." + +"Not enough to live on," she echoed. "But I can't go on working. I +can't go on alone. The cart's too heavy to push alone. I'm done." She +drooped there. + +"I think we can arrange something." For a moment the man was silent, +his queer eyes moving over her body. "I had something in mind when I +entered--something aside from junk. I could make a place for you. I'll +do better than that. With this rubbish you buy a half share in one of +my places and sit all day with your hands folded. You can make more in +a week than you ever made in a year...." His voice flowed smoothly on +until Great Taylor raised her head. + +"I didn't come ten years ago." + +The man laughed. "Who cares how you make your money? Do you know what +people say when they hear you calling through the streets? They say, +'It's nothing, it's only Great Taylor.' And do you know what they +think when they look down upon you and your junk-cart? They think of +you just as you used to think of Grit...." + +She staggered to her feet. "You leave Grit out of it!" For ten years a +sentence had been pulsing through her mind. "Get out!" she cried, +"_Grit warn't dirty underneath_!" The pain in her breast choked her +and stopped her short as she moved threateningly toward him. The piece +of iron fell heavily to the floor. + +"Who sees underneath?" came the voice of the man. + +"Grit," she moaned, "Grit sees underneath." And she hurled her +tortured body forward, striking at him with her fists. She fell upon +the pile of scrap iron. Each heave of her breast was a sob. She +struggled to her feet and glared around her. But the man was not +there. + +Moaning, she sank into the armchair. "What's the matter with me? There +warn't nobody here! _He_ warn't here. No man could stay the same for +ten years." The piles of junk seemed slowly to revolve around her. +"What's the matter with me?" she asked again. "Ain't I got a +right?..." + +"Of course you have a right to the things you want." From the top of +the hill of rags came his voice. It brought Great Taylor to her feet, +sobbing. But the pain in her side, more fearful than ever, held her +motionless. + +"Wash away the ugly grime of toil," said the voice. "You're less than +forty. You're a woman. You can have the things that other women have." + +"I got more than some women," she cried. "I'm clean--I'm clean +underneath." She stumbled toward him but again sank to the floor. She +tried to spring up. Her will sprang up, for her spirit at last was +splendid even if her body was weak. It dragged her up from the floor. +And now she could see him all around her--on top the hill of rags, on +top the mountain of iron, amid the bursting bags of waste +paper--blinking down as he sat enthroned upon the débris--the twisted, +broken, discarded things of the city that people call the Devil's Own. +"These are mine!" he called. "And you belong to the débris. You are +one of the broken, useless things." From all points he moved toward +her. She could no longer fight him off. There was no escape. "Grit," +she cried, "Grit, you can stop him. You ... you was a stone wall...." + +Stumbling back, her hand struck a familiar object. There was a tinkle +of bells. She wheeled around, and there in the shadows of the +dilapidated old warehouse someone was drooping over the handle of the +junk-cart--a collarless man with baggy breeches and a nose that leaned +toward the smudges and hollows of his cheek. He was striving to move +the cart. "Not alone," cried Great Taylor. "You can't do it alone! But +we can do it together!" She took hold of the handle. The thing moved. +"Easy as a baby carriage," she laughed. "We should always done it +together...." + +Out of the gloom, through the arched doorway into the sunlight moved +the cart with its jingling, jangling bells. Glossy-haired women with +their baskets made way for it and the cart bumped down over the curb. +Teamsters drew aside their heavy-hoofed horses. Peddlers rolled their +push-carts back to the curb. + +"The street opens when we work together," laughed Great Taylor. + +"Who is she talking to?" asked the people. + +"Talking to herself," the ignorant replied. + +"And why is she looking up like that?" + +"Looking for junk." + +"And why does she laugh?" they asked. + +"Who knows? Who knows? Perhaps she's happy." + +A song burst from her throat: "Rags," she sang, "old iron ... bottles, +and ra-ags...." + +People inside their houses heard her song and the bells of her cart. +"It's nothing," they laughed, "it's only Great Taylor." A woman came +to a window and waved an object that glinted in the sunlight. "How +much?" she called down. But Great Taylor seemed not to hear. A child +ran out with a bundle in her arms. "Rags," called the child, then +stepped back out of the way, wondering. Great Taylor was passing on. +An elevated train sent down a cataract of noise, but her song rose +above it: "Rags ... old iron...." And when she reached the avenue a +policeman with a yellow emblematic wheel embroidered on his sleeve +held up his hand and stopped the traffic of the Devil's Own city to +let Great Taylor pass. + +And so, like a female Colossus, she strode slowly across the city, her +head tilted, her eyes looking up from the cavernous streets--up beyond +the lofty roofs of houses, her voice becoming fainter and fainter: +"Rags ... old iron ... bottles and ra-ags ..." until the God of those +who fall fighting in the battle of life reached down and, drawing the +sword, threw away the scabbard. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories +of 1921, by Various + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11512 *** diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..06c4f2e --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #11512 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11512) diff --git a/old/11512-8.txt b/old/11512-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ade2605 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11512-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,14775 @@ +Project Gutenberg's O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921, by Various + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 + +Author: Various + +Release Date: March 8, 2004 [EBook #11512] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRIZE STORIES OF 1921 *** + + + + +Produced by Stan Goodman, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team + + + + + +_O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD PRIZE STORIES of 1921_ + + +CHOSEN BY THE SOCIETY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES + +WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS + +1922 + + + +CONTENTS + + +THE HEART OF LITTLE SHIKARA. By Edison Marshall + +THE MAN WHO CURSED THE LILIES. By Charles Tenney Jackson + +THE URGE. By Maryland Allen + +MUMMERY. By Thomas Beer + +THE VICTIM OF HIS VISION. By Gerald Chittenden + +MARTIN GERRITY GETS EVEN. By Courtney Ryley Cooper and Leo F. Creagan + +STRANGER THINGS. By Mildred Cram + +COMET. By Samuel A. Derieux + +FIFTY-TWO WEEKS FOR FLORETTE. By Elizabeth Alexander Heermann + +WILD EARTH. By Sophie Kerr + +THE TRIBUTE. By Harry Anable Kniffin + +THE GET-AWAY. By O.F. Lewis + +"AURORE." By Ethel Watts Mumford + +MR. DOWNEY SITS DOWN. By L.H. Robbins + +THE MARRIAGE IN KAIRWAN. By Wilbur Daniel Steele + +GRIT. By Tristram Tupper + + + +FOUNDER OF THE O. HENRY MEMORIAL COMMITTEE + +The plan for the creation of the O. Henry Memorial Committee was +conceived and the work of the Committee inaugurated in the year 1918 +by the late John F. Tucker, LL.M., then Directing Manager of the +Society of Arts and Sciences. The Society promptly approved the plan +and appropriated the sum necessary to inaugurate its work and to make +the award. + +The Committee is, therefore, in a sense, a memorial to Mr. Tucker, as +well as to O. Henry. Up to the time of his death Mr. Tucker was a +constant adviser of the Committee and an attendant at most of its +meetings. + +Born in New York City in 1871 and educated for the law, Mr. Tucker's +inclinations quickly swept him into a much wider stream of +intellectual development, literary, artistic, and sociological. He +joined others in reviving the Twilight Club (now the Society of Arts +and Sciences), for the broad discussion of public questions, and to +the genius he developed for such a task the success of the Society up +to the time of his death was chiefly due. The remarkable series of +dinner discussions conducted under his management, for many years, in +New York City, have helped to mould public opinion along liberal +lines, to educate and inspire. Nothing he did gave him greater pride +than the inception of the O. Henry Memorial Committee, and that his +name should be associated with that work perpetually this tribute is +hereby printed at the request of the Society of Arts and Sciences. +E.J.W. + + + +INTRODUCTION + +In 1918 the Society of Arts and Sciences established, through its +Managing Director, John F. Tucker, the O. Henry Memorial. Since that +year the nature of the annual prize and the work of the Committee +awarding it have become familiar to writer, editor, and reader of +short stories. To the best short story written by an American and +published in America the sum of $500 is awarded; to the second best, +the sum of $250. In 1919 the prize winning story was Margaret Prescott +Montague's "England to America"; in 1920 it was Maxwell Struthers +Hurt's "Each in His Generation." Second winners were: 1919, Wilbur +Daniel Steele's "For They Know Not What They Do," and, 1920, Frances +Noyes Hart's "Contact!" [The prizes were delivered on June 2, 1920, +and on March 14, 1921, at the annual memorial dinner, Hotel Astor.] + + +In 1921 the Committee of Award consisted of these members: + + BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS, Ph. D., Chairman + EDWARD J. WHEELER, Litt. D. + ETHEL WATTS MUMFORD + FRANCES GILCHRIST WOOD + GROVE E. WILSON + +And the Committee of Administration: + + JOHN F. TUCKER, [Deceased, February 27, 1921.], Founder of the O. + Henry Memorial + EDWARD J. WHEELER, Litt.D. + GLENN FRANK, Editor of _The Century Magazine_ + GEORGE C. HOWARD, Attorney. + +As in previous years each member of the Committee of Award held +himself responsible for reviewing the brief fiction of certain +magazines and for circulating such stories as warranted reading by +other members. + +Results in 1921 differ in a number of respects from those of 1919 and +1920. In the earlier half year, January excepted, every reader +reported a low average of current fiction, so low as to excite +apprehension lest the art of the short story was rapidly declining. +The latter six months, however, marked a reaction, with a higher +percentage of values in November and December. Explanation of the low +level lies in the financial depression which forced a number of +editors to buy fewer stories, to buy cheaply, or to search their +vaults for remnant of purchases made in happier days. Improvement +began with the return to better financial conditions. + +The several members of the Committee have seldom agreed on the +comparative excellence of stories, few being of sufficient superiority +in the opinion of the Committee as a whole to justify setting them +aside for future consideration. The following three dozen candidates, +more or less, average highest: + +Addington, Sarah, Another Cactus Blooms (_Smart Set_, December). + +Alexander, Elizabeth, Fifty-Two Weeks for Florette [Reprinted as by + Elizabeth Alexander Heermann.] (_Saturday Evening Post_, August 13). + +Allen, Maryland, The Urge (_Everybody's_, September). + +Arbuckle, Mary, Wasted (_Midland_, May). + +Beer, Thomas, Mummery (_Saturday Evening Post_, July 30). + +Burt, Maxwell Struthers, Buchanan Hears the Wind (_Harper's_, August). + +Byrne, Donn, Reynardine (_McClure's_, May). + +Chittenden, Gerald, The Victim of His Vision (_Scribner's_, May). + +Comfort, Will Levington, and Dost, Zamin Ki, The Deadly Karait + (_Asia_, August). + +Cooper, Courtney Ryley, and Creagan, Leo F. Martin, Gerrity Gets Even + (_American_, July). + +Cooper, Courtney Ryley, Old Scarface (_Pictorial Review_, April). + +Cram, Mildred, Stranger Things--(_Metropolitan_, January). + +Derieux, Samuel A., Comet (_American_, December). + +Hull Helen R., Waiting (_Touchstone_, February). + +Jackson, Charles Tenney, The Man who Cursed the Lilies (_Short + Stories_, December 10). + +Kerr, Sophie, Wild Earth (_Saturday Evening Post_, April 2). + +Kniffin, Harry Anable, The Tribute (_Brief Stories_, September). + +Lewis, O.F., The Get-A way (_Red Book_, February); The Day of Judgment + (_Red Book_, October). + +Mahoney, James, Wilfrid Reginald and the Dark Horse (_Century_, + August). + +Marshall, Edison, The Heart of Little Shikara (_Everybody's_, + January). + +Morris, Gouverneur, Groot's Macaw (_Cosmopolitan_, November); Just One + Thing More (_Cosmopolitan_, December). + +Mumford, Ethel Watts, "Aurore" (_Pictorial Review_, February); The + Crowned Dead (_Short Stories_, July); Funeral Frank (_Detective + Stories_, October 29). + +Robbins, L.H., Mr. Downey Sits Down (_Everybody's_, June). + +Steele, Wilbur Daniel, 'Toinette of Maissonnoir (_Pictorial Review_, + July); The Marriage in Kairwan (_Harper's_, December). + +Street, Julian, A Voice in the Hall (_Harper's_, September). + +Stringer, Arthur, A Lion Must Eat (_McClure's_, March). + +Tupper, Tristram, Grit (_Metropolitan_, March). + +Vorse, Mary Heaton, The Halfway House (_Harper's_, October). + +Wolff, William Almon, Thalassa! Thalassa! (_Everybody's_, July). + + * * * * * + +The following stories rank high with a majority of the Committee: + +Anthony, Joseph, A Cask of Ale for Columban (_Century_, March). + +Baker, Karle Wilson, The Porch Swing (_Century_, April). + +Balmer, Edwin, "Settled Down" (_Everybody's_, February). + +Beer, Thomas, Addio (_Saturday Evening Post_, October 29); The Lily + Pond (_Saturday Evening Post_, April 16). + +Biggs, John, Jr., Corkran of the Clamstretch (_Scribner's_, December). + +Boulton, Agnes, The Snob (_Smart Set_, June). + +Boyle, Jack, The Heart of the Lily (_Red Book_, February); The Little + Lord of All the Earth (_Red Book_, March). + +Byrne, Donn, The Keeper of the Bridge (_McClure's_, April). + +Canfield, Dorothy, Pamela's Shawl (_Century_, August). + +Connell, Richard, The Man in the Cape (_Metropolitan_, July). + +Cooper, Courtney Ryley, The Fiend (_Cosmopolitan_, March); Love (_Red + Book_, June). + +Cram, Mildred, Anna (_McCatt's_, March); The Bridge (_Harper's + Bazaar_, April). + +Derieux, Samuel A., Figgers Can't Lie (_Delineator_, April); The + Bolter (_American_, November). + +Dreiser, Theodore, Phantom Gold (_Live Stories_, March). + +Ellerbe, Alma and Paul, When the Ice Went Out (_Everybody's_, May). + +England, George Allan, Test Tubes (_Short Stories_, March). + +Erickson, Howard, The Debt (_Munsey's_, February). + +Fraenkel, H. E., The Yellow Quilt (_Liberator_, December). + +Ginger, Bonnie, The Decoy (_Century_, October). + +Hart, Frances Noyes, The American (_Pictorial Review_, November). + +Hergesheimer, Joseph, Juju (_Saturday Evening Post_, July 30); The + Token (_Saturday Evening Post_, October 22). + +Hopper, Elsie Van de Water, The Flight of the Herons (_Scribner's_, + November). + +Hughes, Rupert, When Crossroads Cross Again (_Collier's_, January 29). + +Hurst, Fannie, She Walks in Beauty (_Cosmopolitan_, August). + +Irwin, Inez Haynes, For Value Received (_Cosmopolitan_, November). + +Irwin, Wallace, The Old School (_Pictorial Review_, April). + +Kabler, Hugh MacNair, Like a Tree (_Saturday Evening Post_) January + 22). + +Lanier, Henry Wysham, Circumstantial (_Collier's_, October 15). + +Lewis, Sinclair, Number Seven (_American_, May). + +Mahoney, James, Taxis of Fate (_Century_, November). + +Mason, Grace Sartwell, Glory (_Harper's_, April). + +Moore, Frederick, The Picture (_Adventure_, September 10). + +Mouat, Helen, Aftermath (_Good Housekeeping_, September). + +Natteford, J. F., A Glimpse of the Heights (_Photoplay_, April). + +Neidig, William F, The Firebug (_Everybody's_, April). + +Pitt, Chart, Debt of the Snows (_Sunset_, April). + +Post, Melville Davisson, The Mottled Butterfly (_Red Book_, August); + The Great Cipher (_Red Book_, November). + +Read, Marion Pugh, Everlasting Grace (_Atlantic Monthly_, March). + +Rhodes, Harrison, Night Life and Thomas Robinson (_Saturday Evening + Post_, June 4). + +Rouse, William Merriam, Arms of Judgment (_Argosy-All-Story Weekly_, + March 12). + +Shore, Viola Brothers, The Heritage (_Saturday Evening Post_, February + 5). + +Singmaster, Elsie, The Magic Mirror (_Pictorial Review_, November). + +Springer, Fleta Campbell, The Mountain of Jehovah (_Harper's_, March). + +Tarkington, Booth, Jeannette (_Red Book_, May). + +Titus, Harold, The Courage of Number Two (_Metropolitan_, June). + +Train, Arthur, The Crooked Fairy (_McCall's_, July). + +Watson, Marion Elizabeth, Bottle Stoppers (_Pictorial Review_, June). + +Wormser, G. Ranger, Gossamer (_Pictorial Review_, March). + +The following stories are regarded the best of the year by the judges +whose names are respectively indicated: + +1. The Marriage in Kairwan, by Wilbur Daniel Steele (_Harper's_, + December). Ethel Watts Mumford. + +2. A Life, by Wilbur Daniel Steele (_Pictorial Review_, August). + Edward J. Wheeler. + +3. Wisdom Buildeth Her House, by Donn Byrne (_Century_, December). + Blanche Colton Williams. + +4. Waiting, by Helen R. Hull (_Touchstone_, February). Grove E. + Wilson. + +5. The Poppies of Wu Fong, by Lee Foster Hartman (_Harper's_, + November). Frances Gilchrist Wood. + +Out of the first list sixteen stories were requested for republication +in this volume. The significance of the third list lies in the fact +that only one story was selected from it, the others meeting +objections from the remainder of the Committee. + +Since no first choice story won the prize, the Committee resorted, as +in former years, to the point system, according to which the leader is +"The Heart of Little Shikara," by Edison Marshall. To Mr. Marshall, +therefore, goes the first prize of $500. In like manner, the second +prize, of $250, is awarded to "The Man Who Cursed the Lilies," by +Charles Tenney Jackson. + +In discussing "A Life," "The Marriage in Kairwan," and "'Toinette of +Maissonnoir," all published by Wilbur Daniel Steele in 1921, in +remarking upon the high merit of his brief fiction in other years, and +in recalling that he alone is represented in the first three volumes +of O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories, the Committee intimated the +wish to express in some tangible fashion its appreciation of this +author's services to American fiction. On the motion of Doctor +Wheeler, therefore, the Committee voted to ask an appropriation from +the Society of Arts and Sciences as a prize to be awarded on account +of general excellence in the short story in 1919, 1920, and 1921. This +sum of $500 was granted by the Society, through the proper +authorities, and is accordingly awarded to Wilbur Daniel Steele. + +Two characteristics of stories published in 1921 reveal editorial +policies that cannot but be harmful to the quality of this art. These +ear-marks are complementary and, yet, paradoxically antipodal. In +order to draw out the torso and tail of a story through Procrustean +lengths of advertising pages, some editors place, or seem to place, a +premium upon length. The writer, with an eye to acceptance by these +editors, consciously or unconsciously pads his matter, giving a +semblance of substance where substance is not. Many stories fall below +first rank in the opinion of the Committee through failure to achieve +by artistic economy the desired end. The comment "Overwritten" +appeared again and again on the margins of such stories. The reverse +of this policy, as practised by other editors, is that of chopping the +tail or, worse, of cutting out sections from the body of the +narrative, then roughly piecing together the parts to fit a smaller +space determined by some expediency. Under the observation of the +Committee have fallen a number of stories patently cut for space +accommodation. Too free use of editorial blue pencil and scissors has +furnished occasion for protest among authors and for comment by the +press. For example, in _The Literary Review_ of _The New York Post_, +September 3, the leading article remarks, after granting it is a rare +script that cannot be improved by good editing, and after making +allowance for the physical law of limitation by space: "Surgery, +however, must not become decapitation or such a trimming of long ears +and projecting toes as savage tribes practise. It seems very probable +that by ruthless reshaping and hampering specifications in our +magazines, stories and articles have been seriously affected." +Further, "the passion for editorial cutting" is graphically +illustrated in The _Authors' League Bulletin_ for December (page 8) by +a mutilation of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. + +Although, by the terms of the Memorial, the Committee were at liberty +to consider only stories by American authors, they could not but +observe the increasing number of races represented through authorship. +Some of the following names will be recognized from preceding years, +some of them are new: Blasco Ibáñez, W. Somerset Maugham, May +Sinclair, Mrs. Henry Dudeney, Mary Butts, Frank Swinnerton, Georges +Clemenceau, Johan Bojer, H. Söderberg, Seumas Macmanus, R. Sabatini, +Demetra Vaka, Achmed Abdullah, Rabindranath Tagore, A. Remizov, Konrad +Bercovici, Anzia Yezierska, and--daughter of an English mother and +Italian father who met in China, she herself having been born in San +Francisco--Adriana Spadoni. Nor do these represent all the nations +whose sons and daughters practise the one indigenous American art on +its native soil. Let the list stand, without completion, sufficient to +the point. + +The note of democracy is sounded, as a sequence, in the subject +matter. East Side Italian and Jew brush shoulders in Miss Spadoni's +tales; Englishman, Dane, and South Sea Islander shake hands on the +same page of W. Somerset Maugham's "The Trembling of a Leaf"; +Norwegian, Frenchman, and Spaniard are among us, as before; +Bercovici's gypsies from the Roumanian Danube, now collected in +"Ghitza," flash colourful and foreign from the Dobrudja Mountains and +the Black Sea. In one remarkable piece of melodrama, "Rra Boloi," by +the Englishman Crosbie Garstin (_Adventure_), and the African witch +doctor of the Chwene Kopjes enters short-story literature. + +The Oriental had been exploited to what appeared the ultimate; but +continued interest in the Eastern problem brings tidal waves of +Japanese and Chinese stories. Disarmament Conferences may or may not +effect the ideal envisioned by the Victorian, a time "when the war +drums throb no longer, and the battle-flags are furled in the +Parliament of Man"; but the short story follows the gleam, merely by +virtue of authorship and by reflecting the peoples of the earth. + +When Lee Foster Hartman created his Chinese hero in "The Poppies of Wu +Fong," dramatized Oriental inscrutability with Occidental suavity and +sureness, and set off the Oriental gentleman in American surroundings, +he brought together the nations in a new vision of the brotherhood of +man. This story was preferred, for the reasons implied, by Frances +Gilchrist Wood, who sees in Wu Fong's garden the subtle urge of acres +of flowers, asleep under the stars, pitted against the greed of +profiteers; who sees in answer to Western fume and fret the wisdom of +Confucius, "Come out and see my poppies." The story was rejected by +other members who, while applauding the author's motivation of +character, his theme, and his general treatment, yet felt a lack of +emotion and a faltering at the dramatic climax. + +Wilbur Daniel Steele's "The Marriage in Kairwan" presents an appalling +tragedy which, if it be typical, may befall any Tunisian lady who +elects for herself man's standard of morality--for himself. Such a +story is possible when the seeing eye and the understanding heart of +an American grasps the situation in Kairwan and through the +technician's art develops it, transforms it, and bears it into the +fourth dimension of literature. The thread of narrative runs thinly, +perhaps, through the stiffly embroidered fabric, heavy as cloth of +gold; the end may be discerned too soon. But who can fail of being +shocked at the actual denouement? The story may be, as Ethel Watts +Mumford admits, caviar. "But if so," she adds, "it is Beluga +Imperial." + +Donn Bryne's "Wisdom Buildeth Her House," is constructed on a +historic foundation, the visit that Balkis, Queen of Sheba, made to +Solomon, King of the Jews. Mr. Bryne has not only built a cunning +mosaic, plunging into the stream of Scriptural narrative for his +tessellations and drawing gems out of The Song of Solomon, but he has +also recalled by virtue of exercising a vigorous imagination, the +glory of the royalty that was Sheba's and the grandeur of her domain +in pictures as gorgeously splendid as those from an Arabian Night. He +has elaborated the Talmud story with mighty conviction from a novel +point of view and has whetted his theme on the story of a love the +King lacked wisdom to accept. The Chairman of the Committee prefers +this story; but other members assert that it lacks novelty and +vitality, nor can they find that it adds anything new to the Song of +Songs. + +These three first choice stories, then, are strong in Oriental +flavour, characters, and setting. + +Again, democracy (in the etymological sense of the word, always, +rather than the political) is exemplified in the fiction of 1921, in +that the humblest life as well as the highest offers matter for +romance. More than in former years, writers seek out the romance that +lies in the lives of the average man or woman. Having learned that the +Russian story of realism, with emphasis too frequently placed upon the +naturalistic and the sordid, is not a vehicle easily adapted to +conveying the American product, the American author of sincerity and +belief in the possibility of realistic material has begun to treat it +in romantic fashion, always the approved fashion of the short story in +this country. So Harry Anable Kniffin's "The Tribute" weaves in 1,700 +words a legend about the Unknown Soldier and makes emotionally vivid +the burial of Tommy Atkins. Commonplace types regarded in the past as +insufficiently drab, on the one hand, and insufficiently picturesque +on the other are reflected in this new romantic treatment. Sarah +Addington's "Another Cactus Blooms" prophesies colour in that hard and +prickly plant the provincial teacher at Columbia for a term of +graduate work. Humorously and sardonically the college professor is +served up in "The Better Recipe," by George Boas (_Atlantic Monthly_, +March); the doctorate degree method is satirized so bitterly, by +Sinclair Lewis, in "The Post Mortem Murder" (_Century_, May), as to +challenge wonder, though so subtly as to escape all save the +initiated. + +Sophie Kerr's "Wild Earth" makes capital in like legitimate manner of +the little shop girl and her farmer husband. Wesley Dean is as far +removed from the Down Easterner of a Mary Wilkins farm as his wife, +Anita, is remote from the Sallies and Nannies of the farmhouse. Of the +soil this story bears the fragrance in a happier manner; its theme of +wild passion belongs to the characters, as it might belong, also, to +the man and woman of another setting. "Here is a romance of the farm," +the author seems to say; not sordid realistic portrayal of earth +grubbers. So, too, Tristram Tupper's "Grit" reveals the inspiration +that flashed from the life of a junkman. So Cooper and Creagan evoke +the drama of the railroad man's world: glare of headlight, crash of +wreckage and voice of the born leader mingle in unwonted +orchestration. "Martin Gerrity Gets Even" is reprinted as their best +story of this _genre_. + +The stories of Ethel Watts Mumford declare her cosmopolitan ability +and her willingness to deal with lives widely diverse. At least three +rank high in the estimation of her fellow-committeemen. "Aurore," by +its terseness and poignant interpretation of the character of the +woman under the Northern Lights touches poetry and is akin to music in +its creative flight. The Committee voted to include it in Volume III, +under the author's protest and under her express stipulation that it +should not be regarded as a candidate for either prize. That another +of her stories might have found place in the collection is indicated +best by the following letter: + +The Players +16 Gramercy Park +New York City + +November 16th + +Re. O. HENRY MEMORIAL PRIZE. + +To Dr. B.C. Williams, +605 West 113 Street, +New York City. + +My Dear Doctor Williams, + +I mailed to you yesterday a copy of a story by Ethel Watts Mumford, +entitled "Funeral Frank," published in the _Detective Story Magazine_ +two weeks ago--for your consideration in awarding the O. Henry +Memorial prize. + +I think it is the best short story I have read in a long time both for +originality of subject and technical construction. + +The choice on the author's part of such an unsuspected (by the reader) +and seemingly insignificant agent for the working of Nemesis, I think +shows great skill. I say _seemingly_ insignificant because a little +dog seems such a small and unlikely thing to act the leading part in a +criminal's judgment and suggested regeneration--and yet all lovers of +animals know what such a tie of affection may mean, especially to one +who has no human friends--and even while it works, the victim of +Nemesis as the author says "is wholly unconscious of the irony of the +situation." + +Apart from this I think the tale is exceedingly well told in good +English and with the greatest possible economy of space. + +Yours very truly, +Oliver Herford. + + +"Waiting," by Helen R. Hull, stands first on the list of Grove E. +Wilson, who thinks its handling of everyday characters, its simplicity +of theme and its high artistry most nearly fulfil, among the stories +of the year, his ideal of short story requirements. Though admired as +literature by the Committee, it seemed to one or two members to +present a character study rather than a story. Certainly, in no other +work of the period have relations between a given mother and daughter +been psychologized with greater deftness and skill. + +Other members of society reflected in the year are preachers, judges, +criminals, actors, and actresses. For some years, it is true, actor +and actress have been treated increasingly as human beings, less as +puppets who walk about on the stage. This volume contains two stories +illustrating the statement: "The Urge," by Maryland Allen, which +marshalls the grimly ironic reasons for the success of the heroine who +is the most famous comedienne of her day; "Fifty-Two Weeks for +Florette," which touches with a pathos that gave the story instant +recognition the lives of vaudeville Florette and her son. It is not +without significance that these stories are the first their respective +authors have published. + +0.F. Lewis brings the judge to his own bar in "The Day of Judgment," +but had difficulty in finding a denouement commensurate with his +antecedent material. The Committee Preferred his "The Get-Away" and +its criminals, who are Presented objectively, without prejudice, save +as their own acts invoke it. Viciously criminal is Tedge, of "The Man +Who Cursed the Lilies," by Charles Tenney Jackson. The Committee value +this narrative for the power and intensity of its subject matter, for +its novel theme, for its familiar yet seldom-used setting, for its +poetic justice and for its fulfilment of short story structural laws. + +"The Victim of His Vision," by Gerald Chittenden, dramatizes the +missionary's reverse, unusual in fiction, and presents a convincing +demonstration of the powers of voodoo. Readers who care for +manifestations of the superstitious and the magical will appreciate +the reality of this story as they will that of "Rra Boloi," mentioned +above. They may also be interested in comparing these with Joseph +Hergesheimer's "Juju." Mr. Hergesheimer's story, however, fails to +maintain in the outcome the high level of the initial concept and the +execution of the earlier stages. + +A number of 1921 stories centre about a historic character. F. Scott +Fitzgerald's "Tarquin of Cheapside" (_Smart Set_, February) offers in +episode form the motivation of Shakespeare's "Rape of Lucrece"; Mary +Raymond Shipman Andrews parallels her "The Perfect Tribute" and eulogy +of Lincoln with "His Soul Goes Marching On" and warm reminiscence of +Roosevelt; Fleta Campbell Springer's "The Role of Madame Ravelles" is +apparently a tapestry in weaving the stately figure of Georgette +LeBlanc. Ranking highest among these personal narratives, however, is +Mildred Cram's "Stranger Things--" Besides calling up, under the name +of Cecil Grimshaw, the irresistible figure of Oscar Wilde, the author +has created a supernatural tale of challenging intricacy and +imaginative genius. The only other stories of the supernatural to find +place in the Committee's first list are Maxwell Struthers Burt's +"Buchanan Hears the Wind" and Mary Heaton Vorse's "The Halfway House." +In all of these, suggestion, delicately managed, is the potent element +of success. + +Animals figure in vaster numbers and under intensive psychological +study. That a race-horse owner goes nowadays to the astrologer for a +horoscope of his racer is a fact that insinuatingly elevates the beast +to the plane of his master. In the short story of 1921, the monkey, +the tiger, the elephant, the dog and all their kind are treated from +an anthropomorphic point of view. Courtney Ryley Cooper's +titles--"Love" and "Vengeance," for example--covering stories +dominated by the animal character, betray the author's ascription of +human attributes to his hero or villain. "Reynardine," by Donn Byrne, +retails with haunting charm the friendship between the Fitzpauls and +the fox, in an instance that tests the friendship. Foxes, for Morgan +of the story, "took on for him now a strange, sinister entity.... They +had become to him a quasi-human, hypernormal race.... They had tabus +as strict as a Maori's. Strange, mystical laws."--"Corkran of the +Clamstretch" uniquely portrays the ugly and heroic "R.T.C." throughout +as a gentleman, "who met triumph with boredom," and "defeat, as a +great gentleman should, with quiet courtesy and good humour." Samuel +A. Derieux adds "Comet" to his list of superintelligent dogs in a +story the Committee regard as one of his best. It should be compared +with R.G. Kirk's "Gun-Shy" (_Saturday Evening Post_, October 22). +Similar in theme, in sympathy and in the struggle--that of a trainer +to overcome a noble dog's fear of the powder roar--the stories diverge +in the matter of workmanship. Yet "Gun-Shy" is based on a plot +superior to that of "Comet." Oddly enough, the Committee preferred not +one of the humanized-beast stories, but Edison Marshall's "The Heart +of Little Shikara." The preference was because of a number of counts, +however; moreover, the man eater takes second place beside Little +Shikara, whose bravery and loyalty motivate the thrilling climax of +the narrative. And it is just this: a superb story, with underscoring +for "story." + +Anthropomorphism is found at its height in "A Life," by Wilbur Daniel +Steele. Dr. Edward J. Wheeler places this story first of the year's +brief fiction, on the score of originality, power, and satisfactory +evolution of the struggle, with its triumphant dramatic reverse. Other +members of the Committee, though sensible of its claim to high +distinction, believe it is a novelette, not to be classed as a short +story, and therefore barred from consideration. Its spirit, one +affirms, lacks something of the vigour which made of "Guiablesse" +(_Harper's_, 1919) so convincing a work of art. Another member finds +its value somewhat decreased in that its theme had been used similarly +in John Masefield's "The Wanderer." + +The child's place in the democracy of the short story was assured +years ago. No remarkably outstanding examples have come from the pen +of Booth Tarkington, amusing as are his adolescents and children of +the _Red Book_ tales. The best combinations of humour and childhood +appeared to the Committee to be "Wilfrid Reginald and the Dark Horse," +by James Mahoney, and "Mr. Downey Sits Down," by L.H. Robbins. For +laughter the reader is recommended to each of these, the latter of +which is reprinted in this volume. For humour plus a trifle more of +excitement, "Mummery," by Thomas Beer, is included. Mr. Beer has +succeeded in handling Mrs. Egg as Miss Addington manages Miss +Titwiler, the "Cactus"; that is, as the equal of author and reader, +but also--and still without condescension--as reason for twinkles and +smiles. + +Apart from consideration of impulses dominating the short story of +1921, impulses here summarized under the general idea of democracy, +the story is different in several particulars. First, its method of +referring to drink, strong drink, marks it of the present year. The +setting is frequently that of a foreign country, where prohibition is +not yet known; the date of the action may be prior to 1919; or the +apology for presence of intoxicating liquors is forthcoming in such +statement as "My cellar is not yet exhausted, you see." + +Second, the war is no longer tabu; witness "The Tribute," and "His +Soul Goes Marching On." Touched by the patina of time and mellowed +through the mellifluence of age, the war now makes an appeal +dissimilar to that which caused readers two or three years ago to +declare they were "fed up." + +Third, Freudian theories have found organic place in the substance of +the story. They have not yet found incorporation in many narratives +that preserve short story structure, however--although it is within +conceivability that the influence may finally burst the mould and +create a new--and the Committee agree in demanding both substance and +structure as short story essentials. + +Finally, the story reflects the changing ideals of a constantly +changing age. Not only are these ideals changing because of +cross-currents that have their many sources in racial springs far +asunder, not only because of contact or conflict between the ideals +and cosmic forces dimly apprehended; also they are changing because of +the undeniable influence of what Emerson called the Oversoul. The +youth of the time is different, as youth is always different. But now +and then a sharp cleavage separates the succeeding generations and it +separates them now. The youth of England has found interpretation in +Clemence Dane's play, "A Bill of Divorcement." In America, the +interpretation is only half articulate; but when the incoherent sounds +are wholly intelligible, the literature of the short story will have +entered, in definite respects, upon a new era. + +The Committee of Award wish once again to thank the authors, editors, +and publishers whose cooperation makes possible this annual volume and +the O. Henry Memorial Prizes. + +Blanche Colton Williams. + +New York City +January 10, 1922 + + + +_O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD PRIZE STORIES of 1921_ + + + +THE HEART OF LITTLE SHIKARA + +By EDISON MARSHALL + +From _Everybody's_ + + +I + +If it hadn't been for a purple moon that came peering up above the +dark jungle just at nightfall, it would have been impossible to tell +that Little Shikara was at his watch. He was really just the colour of +the shadows--a rather pleasant brown--he was very little indeed, and +besides, he was standing very, very still. If he was trembling at all, +from anticipation and excitement, it was no more than Nahar the tiger +trembles as he crouches in ambush. But the moon did show him--peering +down through the leaf-clusters of the heavy vines--and shone very +softly in his wide-open dark eyes. + +And it was a purple moon--no other colour that man could name. It +looked almost unreal, like a paper moon painted very badly by a clumsy +stage-hand. The jungle-moon quite often has that peculiar purplish +tint, most travellers know, but few of them indeed ever try to tell +what causes it. This particular moon probed down here and there +between the tall bamboos, transformed the jungle--just now +waking--into a mystery and a fairyland, glinted on a hard-packed +elephant trail that wound away into the thickets, and always came back +to shine on the coal-black Oriental eyes of the little boy beside the +village gate. It showed him standing very straight and just as tall as +his small stature would permit, and looked oddly silvery and strange +on his long, dark hair. Little Shikara, son of Khoda Dunnoo, was +waiting for the return of a certain idol and demigod who was even now +riding home in his _howdah_ from the tiger hunt. + +Other of the villagers would be down to meet Warwick Sahib as soon as +they heard the shouts of his beaters--but Little Shikara had been +waiting almost an hour. Likely, if they had known about it, they would +have commented on his badness, because he was notoriously bad, if +indeed--as the villagers told each other--he was not actually cursed +with evil spirits. + +In the first place, he was almost valueless as a herder of buffalo. +Three times, when he had been sent with the other boys to watch the +herds in their wallows, he had left his post and crept away into the +fringe of jungle on what was unquestionably some mission of +witchcraft. For small naked brown boys, as a rule, do not go alone and +unarmed into the thick bamboos. Too many things can happen to prevent +them ever coming out again; too many brown silent ribbons crawl in the +grass, or too many yellow, striped creatures, no less lithe, lurk in +the thickets. But the strangest thing of all--and the surest sign of +witchcraft--was that he had always come safely out again, yet with +never any satisfactory explanations as to why he had gone. He had +always looked some way very joyful and tremulous--and perhaps even +pale if from the nature of things a brown boy ever can look pale. But +it was the kind of paleness that one has after a particularly +exquisite experience. It was not the dumb, teeth-chattering paleness +of fear. + +"I saw the sergeant of the jungle," Little Shikara said after one of +these excursions. And this made no sense at all. + +"There are none of the King's soldiers here," the brown village folk +replied to him. "Either thou liest to us, or thine eyes lied to thee. +And didst thou also see the chevron that told his rank?" + +"That was the way I knew him. It was the black bear, and he wore the +pale chevron low on his throat." + +This was Little Shikara all over. Of course he referred to the black +Himalayan bear which all men know wears a yellowish patch, of chevron +shape, just in front of his fore legs; but why he should call him a +jungle-sergeant was quite beyond the wit of the village folk to say. +Their imagination did not run in that direction. It never even +occurred to them that Little Shikara might be a born jungle creature, +expatriated by the accident of birth--one of that free, strange breed +that can never find peace in the villages of men. + +"But remember the name we gave him," his mother would say. "Perhaps he +is only living up to his name." + +For there are certain native hunters in India that are known, far and +wide, as the Shikaris; and possibly she meant in her tolerance that +her little son was merely a born huntsman. But in reality Little +Shikara was not named for these men at all. Rather it was for a +certain fleet-winged little hawk, a hunter of sparrows, that is one of +the most free spirits in all the jungle. + +And it was almost like taking part in some great hunt himself--to be +waiting at the gate for the return of Warwick Sahib. Even now, the +elephant came striding out of the shadows; and Little Shikara could +see the trophy. The hunt had indeed been successful, and the boy's +glowing eyes beheld--even in the shadows--the largest, most beautiful +tiger-skin he had ever seen. It was the great Nahar, the royal tiger, +who had killed one hundred cattle from near-by fields. + +Warwick Sahib rode in his _howdah_, and he did not seem to see the +village people that came out to meet him. In truth, he seemed half +asleep, his muscles limp, his gray eyes full of thoughts. He made no +answer to the triumphant shouts of the village folk. Little Shikara +glanced once at the lean, bronzed face, the limp, white, thin hands, +and something like a shiver of ecstasy went clear to his ten toes. For +like many other small boys, all over the broad world, he was a +hero-worshipper to the last hair of his head; and this quiet man on +the elephant was to him beyond all measure the most wonderful living +creature on the earth. + +He didn't cry out, as the others did. He simply stood in mute worship, +his little body tingling with glory. Warwick Sahib had looked up now, +and his slow eyes were sweeping the line of brown faces. But still he +did not seem to see them. And then--wonder of wonders--his eyes rested +full on the eyes of his little worshipper beside the gate. + +But it was quite the way of Warwick Sahib to sweep his gray, tired-out +eyes over a scene and seemingly perceive nothing; yet in reality +absorbing every detail with the accuracy of a photographic plate. And +his seeming indifference was not a pose with him, either. He was just +a great sportsman who was also an English gentleman, and he had +learned certain lessons of impassiveness from the wild. Only one of +the brown faces he beheld was worth a lingering glance. And when he +met that one his eyes halted in their sweeping survey--and Warwick +Sahib smiled. + +That face was the brown, eager visage of Little Shikara. And the blood +of the boy flowed to the skin, and he glowed red all over through the +brown. + +It was only the faintest of quiet, tolerant smiles; but it meant more +to him than almost any kind of an honour could have meant to the +prematurely gray man in the _howdah_. The latter passed on to his +estate, and some of the villagers went back to their women and their +thatch huts. But still Little Shikara stood motionless--and it wasn't +until the thought suddenly came to him that possibly the beaters had +already gathered and were telling the story of the kill that with +startling suddenness he raced back through the gates to the village. + +Yes, the beaters had assembled in a circle under a tree, and most of +the villagers had gathered to hear the story. He slipped in among +them, and listened with both outstanding little ears. Warwick Sahib +had dismounted from his elephant as usual, the beaters said, and with +but one attendant had advanced up the bed of a dry creek. This was +quite like Warwick Sahib, and Little Shikara felt himself tingling +again. Other hunters, particularly many of the rich sahibs from across +the sea, shot their tigers from the security of the _howdah_; but this +wasn't Warwick's way of doing. The male tiger had risen snarling from +his lair, and had been felled at the first shot. + +Most of the villagers had supposed that the story would end at this +point. Warwick Sahib's tiger hunts were usually just such simple and +expeditious affairs. The gun would lift to his shoulder, the quiet +eyes would glance along the barrel--and the tiger, whether charging or +standing still--would speedily die. But to-day there had been a +curious epilogue. Just as the beaters had started toward the fallen +animal, and the white Heaven-born's cigarette-case was open in his +hand, Nahara, Nahar's great, tawny mate, had suddenly sprung forth +from the bamboo thickets. + +She drove straight to the nearest of the beaters. There was no time +whatever for Warwick to take aim. His rifle leaped, like a live thing, +in his arms, but not one of the horrified beaters had seen his eyes +lower to the sights. Yet the bullet went home--they could tell by the +way the tiger flashed to her breast in the grass. + +Yet she was only wounded. One of the beaters, starting, had permitted +a bough of a tree to whip Warwick in the face, and the blow had +disturbed what little aim he had. It was almost a miracle that he had +hit the great cat at all. At once the thickets had closed around her, +and the beaters had been unable to drive her forth again. + +The circle was silent thereafter. They seemed to be waiting for +Khusru, one of the head men of the village, to give his opinion. He +knew more about the wild animals than any mature native in the +assembly, and his comments on the hunting stories were usually worth +hearing. + +"We will not be in the honoured service of the Protector of the Poor +at this time a year from now," he said. + +They all waited tensely. Shikara shivered. "Speak, Khusru," they urged +him. + +"Warwick Sahib will go again to the jungles--and Nahara will be +waiting. She owes two debts. One is the killing of her mate--and ye +know that these two tigers have been long and faithful mates. Do ye +think she will let that debt go unpaid? She will also avenge her own +wound." + +"Perhaps she will die of bleeding," one of the others suggested. + +"Nay, or ye would have found her this afternoon. Ye know that it is +the wounded tiger that is most to be feared. One day, and he will go +forth in pursuit of her again; and then ye will not see him riding +back so grandly on his elephant. Perhaps she will come here, to carry +away _our_ children." + +Again Shikara tingled--hoping that Nahara would at least come close +enough to cause excitement. And that night, too happy to keep silent, +he told his mother of Warwick Sahib's smile. "And some time I--I, +thine own son," he said as sleepiness came upon him, "will be a killer +of tigers, even as Warwick Sahib." + +"Little sparrow-hawk," his mother laughed at him. "Little one of +mighty words, only the great sahibs that come from afar, and Warwick +Sahib himself, may hunt the tiger, so how canst thou, little +worthless?" + +"I will soon be grown," he persisted, "and I--I, too--will some time +return with such a tiger-skin as the great Heaven-born brought this +afternoon." Little Shikara was very sleepy, and he was telling his +dreams much more frankly than was his wont. "And the village folk will +come out to meet me with shoutings, and I will tell them of the +shot--in the circle under the tree." + +"And where, little hawk, wilt thou procure thine elephants, and such +rupees as are needed?" + +"Warwick Sahib shoots from the ground--and so will I. And sometimes he +goes forth with only one attendant--and I will not need even one. And +who can say--perhaps he will find me even a bolder man than Gunga +Singhai; and he will take me in his place on the hunts in the +jungles." + +For Gunga Singhai was Warwick Sahib's own personal attendant and +gun-carrier--the native that the Protector of the Poor could trust in +the tightest places. So it was only to be expected that Little +Shikara's mother should laugh at him. The idea of her son being an +attendant of Warwick Sahib, not to mention a hunter of tigers, was +only a tale to tell her husband when the boy's bright eyes were closed +in sleep. + +"Nay, little man," she told him. "Would I want thee torn to pieces in +Nahara's claws? Would I want thee smelling of the jungle again, as +thou didst after chasing the water-buck through the bamboos? Nay--thou +wilt be a herdsman, like thy father--and perhaps gather many rupees." + +But Little Shikara did not want to think of rupees. Even now, as sleep +came to him, his childish spirit had left the circle of thatch roofs, +and had gone on tremulous expeditions into the jungle. Far away, the +trumpet-call of a wild tusker trembled through the moist, hot night; +and great bell-shaped flowers made the air pungent and heavy with +perfume. A tigress skulked somewhere in a thicket licking an injured +leg with her rough tongue, pausing to listen to every sound the night +gave forth. Little Shikara whispered in his sleep. + +A half mile distant, in his richly furnished bungalow, Warwick Sahib +dozed over his after-dinner cigar. He was in evening clothes, and +crystal and silver glittered on his board. But his gray eyes were half +closed; and the gleam from his plate could not pass the long, dark +lashes. For his spirit was far distant, too--on the jungle trails with +that of Little Shikara. + + +II + +One sunlit morning, perhaps a month after the skin of Nahar was +brought in from the jungle, Warwick Sahib's mail was late. It was an +unheard-of thing. Always before, just as the clock struck eight, he +would hear the cheerful tinkle of the postman's bells. At first he +considered complaining; but as morning drew to early afternoon he +began to believe that investigation would be the wiser course. + +The postman's route carried him along an old elephant trail through a +patch of thick jungle beside one of the tributaries of the Manipur. +When natives went out to look, he was neither on the path nor drowned +in the creek, nor yet in his thatched hut at the other end of his +route. The truth was that this particular postman's bells would never +be heard by human ears again. And there was enough evidence in the wet +mould of the trail to know what had occurred. + +That night the circle under the tree was silent and shivering. "Who is +next?" they asked of one another. The jungle night came down, +breathless and mysterious, and now and then a twig was cracked by a +heavy foot at the edge of the thickets. In Warwick's house, the great +Protector of the Poor took his rifles from their cases and fitted them +together. + +"To-morrow," he told Gunga Singhai, "we will settle for that postman's +death." Singhai breathed deeply, but said nothing. Perhaps his dark +eyes brightened. The tiger-hunts were nearly as great a delight to him +as they were to Warwick himself. + +But while Nahara, lame from Warwick's bullet, could no longer overtake +cattle, she did with great skilfulness avoid the onrush of the +beaters. Again Little Shikara waited at the village gate for his hero +to return; but the beaters walked silently to-night. Nor were there +any tales to be told under the tree. + +Nahara, a fairly respectable cattle-killer before, had become in a +single night one of the worst terrors of India. Of course she was +still a coward, but she had learned, by virtue of a chance meeting +with a postman on a trail after a week of heart-devouring starvation, +two or three extremely portentous lessons. One of them was that not +even the little deer, drinking beside the Manipur, died half so easily +as these tall, forked forms of which she had previously been so +afraid. She found out also that they could neither run swiftly nor +walk silently, and they could be approached easily even by a tiger +that cracked a twig with every step. It simplified the problem of +living immensely; and just as any other feline would have done, she +took the line of least resistance. If there had been plenty of carrion +in the jungle, Nahara might never have hunted men. But the kites and +the jackals looked after the carrion; and they were much swifter and +keener-eyed than a lame tiger. + +She knew enough not to confine herself to one village; and it is +rather hard to explain how any lower creature, that obviously cannot +reason, could have possessed this knowledge. Perhaps it was because +she had learned that a determined hunt, with many beaters and men on +elephants, invariably followed her killings. It was always well to +travel just as far as possible from the scene. She found out also +that, just as a doe is easier felled than a horned buck, certain of +this new kind of game were more easily taken than the others. +Sometimes children played at the door of their huts, and sometimes old +men were afflicted with such maladies that they could not flee at all. +All these things Nahara learned; and in learning them she caused a +certain civil office of the British Empire to put an exceedingly large +price on her head. + +Gradually the fact dawned on her that unlike the deer and the buffalo, +this new game was more easily hunted in the daylight--particularly in +that tired-out, careless twilight hour when the herders and the +plantation hands came in from their work. At night the village folk +kept in their huts, and such wood-cutters and gipsies as slept without +wakened every hour to tend their fires. Nahara was deathly afraid of +fire. Night after night she would creep round and round a gipsy camp, +her eyes like two pale blue moons in the darkness, and would never +dare attack. + +And because she was taking her living in a manner forbidden by the +laws of the jungle, the glory and beauty of her youth quickly departed +from her. There are no prisons for those that break the jungle laws, +no courts and no appointed officers, but because these are laws that +go down to the roots of life, punishment is always swift and +inevitable. "Thou shall not kill men," is the first law of the wild +creatures; and everyone knows that any animal or breed of animals that +breaks this law has sooner or later been hunted down and slain--just +like any other murderer. The mange came upon her, and she lost flesh, +and certain of her teeth began to come out. She was no longer the +beautiful female of her species, to be sung to by the weaver-birds as +she passed beneath. She was a hag and a vampire, hatred of whom lay +deep in every human heart in her hunting range. + +Often the hunting was poor, and sometimes she went many days in a +stretch without making a single kill. And in all beasts, high and low, +this is the last step to the worst degeneracy of all. It instils a +curious, terrible kind of blood-lust--to kill, not once, but as many +times as possible in the same hunt; to be content not with one death, +but to slay and slay until the whole herd is destroyed. It is the +instinct that makes a little weasel kill all the chickens in a coop, +when one was all it could possibly carry away, and that will cause a +wolf to leap from sheep to sheep in a fold until every one is dead. +Nahara didn't get a chance to kill every day; so when the opportunity +did come, like a certain pitiable kind of human hunter who comes from +afar to hunt small game, she killed as many times as she could in +quick succession. And the British Empire raised the price on her head. + +One afternoon found her within a half mile of Warwick's bungalow, and +for five days she had gone without food. One would not have thought of +her as a royal tigress, the queen of the felines and one of the most +beautiful of all living things. And since she was still tawny and +graceful, it would be hard to understand why she no longer gave the +impression of beauty. It was simply gone, as a flame goes, and her +queenliness was wholly departed, too. In some vague way she had become +a poisonous, a ghastly thing, to be named with such outcasts as the +jackals or hyenas. + +Excessive hunger, in most of the flesh-eating animals, is really a +first cousin to madness. It brings bad dreams and visions, and, worst +of all, it induces an insubordination to all the forest laws of man +and beast. A well-fed wolf-pack will run in stark panic from a human +being; but even the wisest of mountaineers do not care to meet the +same gray band in the starving times of winter. Starvation brings +recklessness, a desperate frenzied courage that is likely to upset all +of one's preconceived notions as to the behaviour of animals. It also +brings, so that all men may be aware of its presence, a peculiar lurid +glow to the balls of the eyes. + +In fact, the two pale circles of fire were the most noticeable +characteristics of the long, tawny cat that crept through the bamboos. +Except for them, she would hardly have been discernible at all. The +yellow grass made a perfect background, her black stripes looked like +the streaks of shadow between the stalks of bamboo, and for one that +is lame she crept with an astounding silence. One couldn't have +believed that such a great creature could lie so close to the earth +and be so utterly invisible in the low thickets. + +A little peninsula of dwarf bamboos and tall jungle grass extended out +into the pasture before the village and Nahara crept out clear to its +point. She didn't seem to be moving. One couldn't catch the stir and +draw of muscles. And yet she slowly glided to the end; then began her +wait. Her head sunk low, her body grew tense, her tail whipped softly +back and forth, with as easy a motion as the swaying of a serpent. The +light flamed and died and flamed and died again in her pale eyes. + +Soon a villager who had been working in Warwick's fields came trotting +in Oriental fashion across the meadow. His eyes were only human, and +he did not see the tawny shape in the tall grass. If any one had told +him that a full-grown tigress could have crept to such a place and +still remained invisible, he would have laughed. He was going to his +thatched hut, to brown wife and babies, and it was no wonder that he +trotted swiftly. The muscles of the great cat bunched, and now the +whipping tail began to have a little vertical motion that is the final +warning of a spring. + +The man was already in leaping range; but the tiger had learned, in +many experiences, always to make sure. Still she crouched--a single +instant in which the trotting native came two paces nearer. Then the +man drew up with a gasp of fright. + +For just as the clear outlines of an object that has long been +concealed in a maze of light and shadow will often leap, with sudden +vividness, to the eyes, the native suddenly perceived the tiger. + +He caught the whole dread picture--the crouching form, the terrible +blue lights of the eyes, the whipping tail. The gasp he uttered from +his closing throat seemed to act like the fall of a firing-pin against +a shell on the bunched muscles of the animal; and she left her covert +in a streak of tawny light. + +But Nahara's leaps had never been quite accurate since she had been +wounded by Warwick's bullet, months before. They were usually straight +enough for the general purposes of hunting, but they missed by a long +way the "theoretical centre of impact" of which artillery officers +speak. Her lame paw always seemed to disturb her balance. By +remembering it, she could usually partly overcome the disadvantage; +but to-day, in the madness of her hunger, she had been unable to +remember anything except the terrible rapture of killing. This +circumstance alone, however, would not have saved the native's life. +Even though her fangs missed his throat, the power of the blow and her +rending talons would have certainly snatched away his life as a storm +snatches a leaf. But there was one other determining factor. The +Burman had seen the tiger just before she leaped; and although there +had been no time for conscious thought, his guardian reflexes had +flung him to one side in a single frenzied effort to miss the full +force of the spring. + +The result of both these things was that he received only an awkward, +sprawling blow from the animal's shoulder. Of course he was hurled to +the ground; for no human body in the world is built to withstand the +ton or so of shocking power of a three-hundred-pound cat leaping +through the air. The tigress sprawled down also, and because she +lighted on her wounded paw, she squealed with pain. It was possibly +three seconds before she had forgotten the stabbing pain in her paw +and had gathered herself to spring on the unconscious form of the +native. And that three seconds gave Warwick Sahib, sitting at the +window of his study, an opportunity to seize his rifle and fire. + +Warwick knew tigers, and he had kept the rifle always ready for just +such a need as this. The distance was nearly five hundred yards, and +the bullet went wide of its mark. Nevertheless, it saved the native's +life. The great cat remembered this same far-off explosion from +another day, in a dry creek-bed of months before, and the sing of the +bullet was a remembered thing, too. Although it would speedily return +to her, her courage fled and she turned and faced into the bamboos. + +In an instant, Warwick was on his great veranda, calling his beaters. +Gunga Singhai, his faithful gun-carrier, slipped shells into the +magazine of his master's high-calibered close-range tiger-rifle. "The +elephant, Sahib?" he asked swiftly. + +"Nay, this will be on foot. Make the beaters circle about the fringe +of bamboos. Thou and I will cross the eastern fields and shoot at her +as she breaks through." + +But there was really no time to plan a complete campaign. Even now, +the first gray of twilight was blurring the sharp outlines of the +jungle, and the soft jungle night was hovering, ready to descend. +Warwick's plan was to cut through to a certain little creek that +flowed into the river and with Singhai to continue on to the edge of +the bamboos that overlooked a wide field. The beaters would prevent +the tigress from turning back beyond the village, and it was at least +possible that he would get a shot at her as she burst from the jungle +and crossed the field to the heavier thickets beyond. + +"Warwick Sahib walks into the teeth of his enemy," Khusru, the hunter, +told a little group that watched from the village gate. "Nahara will +collect her debts." + +A little brown boy shivered at his words and wondered if the beaters +would turn and kick him, as they had always done before, if he should +attempt to follow them. It was the tiger-hunt, in view of his own +village, and he sat down, tremulous with rapture, in the grass to +watch. It was almost as if his dream--that he himself should be a +hunter of tigers--was coming true. He wondered why the beaters seemed +to move so slowly and with so little heart. + +He would have known if he could have looked into their eyes. Each +black pupil was framed with white. Human hearts grow shaken and +bloodless from such sights as this they had just seen, and only the +heart of a jungle creature--the heart of the eagle that the jungle +gods, by some unheard-of fortune, had put in the breast of Little +Shikara--could prevail against them. Besides, the superstitious +Burmans thought that Warwick was walking straight to death--that the +time had come for Nahara to collect her debts. + + +III + +Warwick Sahib and Singhai disappeared at once into the fringe of +jungle, and silence immediately fell upon them. The cries of the +beaters at once seemed curiously dim. It was as if no sound could live +in the great silences under the arching trees. Soon it was as if they +were alone. + +They walked side by side, Warwick with his rifle held ready. He had no +false ideas in regard to this tiger-hunt. He knew that his prey was +desperate with hunger, that she had many old debts to pay, and that +she would charge on sight. + +The self-rage that is felt on missing some particularly fortunate +chance is not confined to human beings alone. There is an old saying +in the forest that a feline that has missed his stroke is like a +jackal in dog-days--and that means that it is not safe to be anywhere +in the region with him. He simply goes rabid and is quite likely to +leap at the first living thing that stirs. Warwick knew that Nahara +had just been cheated out of her kill and someone in the jungle would +pay for it. + +The gaudy birds that looked down from the tree-branches could scarcely +recognize this prematurely gray man as a hunter. He walked rather +quietly, yet with no conscious effort toward stealth. The rifle rested +easily in his arms, his gray eyes were quiet and thoughtful as always. +Singularly, his splendid features were quite in repose. The Burman, +however, had more of the outer signs of alertness; and yet there was +none of the blind terror upon him that marked the beaters. + +"Where are the men?" Warwick asked quietly. "It is strange that we do +not hear them shouting." + +"They are afraid, Sahib," Singhai replied. "The forest pigs have left +us to do our own hunting." + +Warwick corrected him with a smile. "Forest pigs are brave enough," he +answered. "They are sheep--just sheep--sheep of the plains." + +The broad trail divided, like a three-tined candlestick, into narrow +trails. Warwick halted beside the centre of the three that led to the +creek they were obliged to cross. Just for an instant he stood +watching, gazing into the deep-blue dusk of the deeper jungle. +Twilight was falling softly. The trails soon vanished into +shadow--patches of deep gloom, relieved here and there by a bright +leaf that reflected the last twilight rays. A living creature coughed +and rustled away in the thickets beside him. + +"There is little use of going on," he said. "It is growing too dark. +But there will be killings before the dawn if we don't get her first." + +The servant stood still, waiting. It was not his place to advise his +master. + +"If we leave her, she'll come again before the dawn. Many of the +herders haven't returned--she'll get one of them sure. At least we may +cross the creek and get a view of the great fields. She is certain to +cross them if she has heard the beaters." + +In utter silence they went on. One hundred yards farther they came to +the creek, and both strode in together to ford. + +The water was only knee-deep, but Warwick's boots sank three inches in +the mud of the bottom. And at that instant the gods of the jungle, +always waiting with drawn scimitar for the unsuspecting, turned +against them. + +Singhai suddenly splashed down into the water, on his hands and knees. +He did not cry out. If he made any sound at all, it was just a +shivering gasp that the splash of water wholly obscured. But the thing +that brought home the truth to Warwick was the pain that flashed, +vivid as lightning, across his dark face; and the horror of death that +left its shadow. Something churned and writhed in the mud; and then +Warwick fired. + +Both of them had forgotten Mugger, the crocodile, that so loves to +wait in the mud of a ford. He had seized Singhai's foot, and had +already snatched him down into the water when Warwick fired. No living +flesh can withstand the terrible, rending shock of a high-powered +sporting rifle at close range. Mugger had plates of armour, but even +these could not have availed against it if he had been exposed to the +fire. As it was, several inches of water stood between, a more +effective armour than a two-inch steel plate on a battleship. Of +course the shock carried through, a smashing blow that caused the +reptile to release his hold on Singhai's leg; but before the native +could get to his feet he had struck again. The next instant both men +were fighting for their lives. + +They fought with their hands, and Warwick fought with his rifle, and +the native slashed again and again with the long knife that he carried +at his belt. To a casual glance, a crocodile is wholly incapable of +quick action. These two found him a slashing, darting, wolf-like +thing, lunging with astounding speed through the muddied water, +knocking them from their feet and striking at them as they fell. + +The reptile was only half grown, but in the water they had none of the +usual advantages that man has over the beasts with which he does +battle. Warwick could not find a target for his rifle. But even human +bodies, usually so weak, find themselves possessed of an amazing +reserve strength and agility in the moment of need. These men realized +perfectly that their lives were the stakes for which they fought, and +they gave every ounce of strength and energy they had. Their aim was +to hold the mugger off until they could reach the shore. + +At last, by a lucky stroke, Singhai's knife blinded one of the lurid +reptile eyes. He was prone in the water when he administered it, and +it went home just as the savage teeth were snapping at his throat. For +an instant the great reptile flopped in an impotent half-circle, +partly reared out of the water. It gave Warwick a chance to shoot, a +single instant in which the rifle seemed to whirl about in his arms, +drive to his shoulder, and blaze in the deepening twilight. And the +shot went true. It pierced the mugger from beneath, tearing upward +through the brain. And then the agitated waters of the ford slowly +grew quiet. + +The last echo of the report was dying when Singhai stretched his +bleeding arms about Warwick's body, caught up the rifle and dragged +them forty feet up on the shore. It was an effort that cost the last +of his strength. And as the stars popped out of the sky, one by one, +through the gray of dusk, the two men lay silent, side by side, on the +grassy bank. + +Warwick was the first to regain consciousness. At first he didn't +understand the lashing pain in his wrists, the strange numbness in one +of his legs, the darkness with the great white Indian stars shining +through. Then he remembered. And he tried to stretch his arm to the +prone form beside him. + +The attempt was an absolute failure. The cool brain dispatched the +message, it flew along the telegraph-wires of the nerves, but the +muscles refused to react. He remembered that the teeth of the mugger +had met in one of the muscles of his upper arm, but before +unconsciousness had come upon him he had been able to lift the gun to +shoot. Possibly infection from the bite had in some manner temporarily +paralyzed the arm. He turned, wracked with pain, on his side and +lifted his left arm. In doing so his hand crossed before his eyes--and +then he smiled wanly in the darkness. + +It was quite like Warwick, sportsman and English gentleman, to smile +at a time like this. Even in the gray darkness of the jungle night he +could see the hand quite plainly. It no longer looked slim and white. +And he remembered that the mugger had caught his fingers in one of its +last rushes. + +He paused only for one glance at the mutilated member. He knew that +his first work was to see how Singhai had fared. In that glance he was +boundlessly relieved to see that the hand could unquestionably be +saved. The fingers were torn, yet their bones did not seem to be +severed. Temporarily at least, however, the hand was utterly useless. +The fingers felt strange and detached. + +He reached out to the still form beside him, touching the dark skin +first with his fingers, and then, because they had ceased to function, +with the flesh of his wrist. He expected to find it cold. Singhai was +alive, however, and his warm blood beat close to the dark skin. + +But he was deeply unconscious, and it was possible that one foot was +hopelessly mutilated. + +For a moment Warwick lay quite still, looking his situation squarely +in the face. He did not believe that either he or his attendant was +mortally or even very seriously hurt. True, one of his arms had +suffered paralysis, but there was no reason for thinking it had been +permanently injured. His hand would be badly scarred, but soon as good +as ever. The real question that faced them was that of getting back to +the bungalow. + +Walking was out of the question. His whole body was bruised and +lacerated, and he was already dangerously weak from loss of blood. It +would take all his energy, these first few hours, to keep his +consciousness. Besides, it was perfectly obvious that Singhai could +not walk. And English gentlemen do not desert their servants at a time +like this. The real mystery lay in the fact that the beaters had not +already found and rescued them. + +He wore a watch with luminous dial on his left wrist, and he managed +to get it before his eyes. And then understanding came to him. A full +hour had passed since he and his servant had fought the mugger in the +ford. And the utter silence of early night had come down over the +jungle. + +There was only one thing to believe. The beaters had evidently heard +him shoot, sought in vain for him in the thickets, possibly passed +within a few hundred feet of him, and because he had been unconscious +he had not heard them or called to them, and now they had given him up +for lost. He remembered with bitterness how all of them had been sure +that an encounter with Nahara would cost him his life, and would thus +be all the more quick to believe he had died in her talons. Nahara had +her mate and her own lameness to avenge, they had said, attributing in +their superstition human emotions to the brute natures of animals. It +would have been quite useless for Warwick to attempt to tell them that +the male tiger, in the mind of her wicked mate, was no longer even a +memory, and that premeditated vengeance is an emotion almost unknown +in the animal world. Without leaders or encouragement, and terribly +frightened by the scene they had beheld before the village, they had +quickly given up any attempt to find his body. There had been none +among them coolheaded enough to reason out which trail he had likely +taken, and thus look for him by the ford. Likely they were already +huddled in their thatched huts, waiting till daylight. + +Then he called in the darkness. A heavy body brushed through the +creepers, and stepping falsely, broke a twig. He thought at first that +it might be one of the villagers, coming to look for him. But at once +the step was silenced. + +Warwick had a disturbing thought that the creature that had broken the +twig had not gone away, but was crouching down, in a curious manner, +in the deep shadows. Nahara had returned to her hunting. + + +IV + +"Some time I, too, will be a hunter of tigers," Little Shikara told +his mother when the beaters began to circle through the bamboos. "To +carry a gun beside Warwick Sahib--and to be honoured in the circle +under the tree!" + +But his mother hardly listened. She was quivering with fright. She had +seen the last part of the drama in front of the village; and she was +too frightened even to notice the curious imperturbability of her +little son. But there was no orderly retreat after Little Shikara had +heard the two reports of the rifle. At first there were only the +shouts of the beaters, singularly high-pitched, much running back and +forth in the shadows, and then a pell-mell scurry to the shelter of +the villages. + +For a few minutes there was wild excitement at the village gates. +Warwick Sahib was dead, they said--they had heard the shots and run to +the place of firing, and beat up and down through the bamboos; and +Warwick Sahib had surely been killed and carried off by the tigress. +This dreadful story told, most of the villagers went to hide at once +in their huts; only a little circle of the bravest men hovered at the +gate. They watched with drawn faces the growing darkness. + +But there was one among them who was not yet a man grown; a boy so +small that he could hover, unnoticed, in the very smallest of the +terrible shadow-patches. He was Little Shikara, and he was shocked to +the very depths of his worshipping heart. For Warwick had been his +hero, the greatest man of all time, and he felt himself burning with +indignation that the beaters should return so soon. And it was a +curious fact that he had not as yet been infected with the contagion +of terror that was being passed from man to man among the villagers. +Perhaps his indignation was too absorbing an emotion to leave room for +terror, and perhaps, far down in his childish spirit, he was made of +different stuff. He was a child of the jungle, and perhaps he had +shared of that great imperturbability and impassiveness that is the +eternal trait of the wildernesses. + +He went up to one of the younger beaters who had told and retold a +story of catching a glimpse of Nahara in the thickets until no one was +left to tell it to. He was standing silent, and Little Shikara thought +it possible that he might reach his ears. + +"Give ear, Puran," he pleaded. "Didst thou look for his body beside +the ford over Tarai stream?" + +"Nay, little one--though I passed within one hundred paces." + +"Dost thou not know that he and Singhai would of a certainty cross at +the ford to reach the fringe of jungle from which he might watch the +eastern field? Some of you looked on the trail beside the ford, but +none looked at the ford itself. And the sound of the rifle seemed to +come from thence." + +"But why did he not call out?" + +"Dead men could not call, but at least ye might have frightened Nahara +from the body. But perhaps he is wounded, unable to speak, and lies +there still--" + +But Puran had found another listener for his story, and speedily +forgot the boy. He hurried over to another of the villagers, Khusru +the hunter. + +"Did no one look by the ford?" he asked, almost sobbing. "For that is +the place he had gone." + +The native's eyes seemed to light. "_Hai_, little one, thou hast +thought of what thy elders had forgotten. There is level land there, +and clear. And I shall go at the first ray of dawn--" + +"But not to-night, Khusru--?" + +"Nay, little sinner! Wouldst thou have me torn to pieces?" + +Lastly Little Shikara went to his own father, and they had a moment's +talk at the outskirts of the throng. But the answer was nay--just the +same. Even his brave father would not go to look for the body until +daylight came. The boy felt his skin prickling all over. + +"But perhaps he is only wounded--and left to die. If I go and return +with word that he is there, wilt thou take others and go out and bring +him in?" + +"_Thou_ goest!" His father broke forth in a great roar of laughter. +"Why, thou little hawk! One would think that thou wert a hunter of +tigers thyself!" + +Little Shikara blushed beneath the laughter. For he was a very boyish +little boy in most ways. But it seemed to him that his sturdy young +heart was about to break open from bitterness. All of them agreed that +Warwick Sahib, perhaps wounded and dying, might be lying by the ford, +but none of them would venture forth to see. Unknowing, he was +beholding the expression of a certain age-old trait of human nature. +Men do not fight ably in the dark. They need their eyes, and they +particularly require a definite object to give them determination. If +these villagers knew for certain that the Protector of the Poor lay +wounded or even dead beside the ford, they would have rallied bravely, +encouraged one another with words and oaths, and gone forth to rescue +him; but they wholly lacked the courage to venture again into the +jungle on any such blind quest as Little Shikara suggested. + +But the boy's father should not have laughed. He should have +remembered the few past occasions when his straight little son had +gone into the jungle alone; and that remembrance should have silenced +him. The difficulty lay in the fact that he supposed his boy and he +were of the same flesh, and that Little Shikara shared his own great +dread of the night-curtained jungle. In this he was very badly +mistaken. Little Shikara had an inborn understanding and love of the +jungle; and except for such material dangers as that of Nahara, he was +not afraid of it at all. He had no superstitions in regard to it. +Perhaps he was too young. But the main thing that the laugh did was to +set off, as a match sets off powder, a whole heartful of unexploded +indignation in Shikara's breast. These villagers not only had deserted +their patron and protector, but also they had laughed at the thought +of rescue! His own father had laughed at him. + +Little Shikara silently left the circle of villagers and turned into +the darkness. + +At once the jungle silence closed round him. He hadn't dreamed that +the noise of the villagers would die so quickly. Although he could +still see the flame of the fire at the village gate behind him, it was +almost as if he had at once dropped off into another world. Great +flowers poured perfume down upon him, and at seemingly a great +distance he heard the faint murmur of the wind. + +At first, deep down in his heart, he had really not intended to go all +the way. He had expected to steal clear to the outer edge of the +firelight; and then stand listening to the darkness for such +impressions as the jungle would choose to give him. But there had been +no threshold, no interlude of preparation. The jungle in all its +mystery had folded about him at once. + +He trotted softly down the elephant trail, a dim, fleet shadow that +even the keen eyes of Nahara could scarcely have seen. At first he was +too happy to be afraid. He was always happy when the jungle closed +round him. Besides, if Nahara had killed, she would be full-fed by now +and not to be feared. Little Shikara hastened on, trembling all over +with a joyous sort of excitement. + +If a single bird had flapped its wings in the branches, if one little +rodent had stirred in the underbrush, Little Shikara would likely have +turned back. But the jungle-gods, knowing their son, stilled all the +forest voices. He crept on, still looking now and again over his +shoulder to see the village fire. It still made a bright yellow +triangle in the dusk behind him. He didn't stop to think that he was +doing a thing most grown natives and many white men would not have +dared to do--to follow a jungle trail unarmed at night. If he had +stopped to think at all he simply would have been unable to go on. He +was only following his instincts, voices that such forces as maturity +and grown-up intelligence and self-consciousness obscure in older +men--and the terror of the jungle could not touch him. He went +straight to do what service he could for the white sahib that was one +of his lesser gods. + +Time after time he halted, but always he pushed on a few more feet. +Now he was over halfway to the ford, clear to the forks in the trail. +And then he turned about with a little gasp of fear. + +The light from the village had gone out. The thick foliage of the +jungle had come between. + +He was really frightened now. It wasn't that he was afraid he couldn't +get back. The trail was broad and hard and quite gray in the +moonlight. But those far-off beams of light had been a solace to his +spirit, a reminder that he had not yet broken all ties with the +village. He halted, intending to turn back. + +Then a thrill began at his scalp and went clear to his bare toes. +Faint through the jungle silences he heard Warwick Sahib calling to +his faithless beaters. The voice had an unmistakable quality of +distress. + +Certain of the villagers--a very few of them--said afterward that +Little Shikara continued on because he was afraid to go back. They +said that he looked upon the Heaven-born sahib as a source of all +power, in whose protection no harm could befall him, and he sped +toward him because the distance was shorter than back to the haven of +fire at the village. But those who could look deeper into Little +Shikara's soul knew different. In some degree at least he hastened on +down that jungle trail of peril because he knew that his idol was in +distress, and by laws that went deep he knew he must go to his aid. + + +V + +The first few minutes after Warwick had heard a living step in the +thickets he spent in trying to reload his rifle. He carried other +cartridges in the right-hand trousers pocket, but after a few minutes +of futile effort it became perfectly evident that he was not able to +reach them. His right arm was useless, and the fingers of his left, +lacerated by the mugger's bite, refused to take hold. + +He had, however, three of the five shells the rifle held still in his +gun. The single question that remained was whether or not they would +be of use to him. + +The rifle lay half under him, its stock protruding from beneath his +body. With the elbow of his left arm he was able to work it out. +Considering the difficulties under which he worked, he made amazingly +few false motions; and yet he worked with swiftness. Warwick was a man +who had been schooled and trained by many dangers; he had learned to +face them with open eyes and steady hands, to judge with unclouded +thought the exact percentage of his chances. He knew now that he must +work swiftly. The shape in the shadow was not going to wait all night. + +But at that moment the hope of preserving his life that he had clung +to until now broke like a bubble in the sunlight. He could not lift +the gun to swing and aim it at a shape in the darkness. With his +mutilated hands he could not cock the strong-springed hammer. And if +he could do both these things with his fumbling, bleeding, lacerated +fingers, his right hand could not be made to pull the trigger. Warwick +Sahib knew at last just where he stood. Yet if human sight could have +penetrated that dusk, it would have beheld no change of expression in +the lean face. + +An English gentleman lay at the frontier of death. But that occasioned +neither fawning nor a loss of his rigid self-control. + +Two things remained, however, that he might do. One was to call and +continue to call, as long as life lasted in his body. He knew +perfectly that more than once in the history of India a tiger had been +kept at a distance, at least for a short period of time, by shouts +alone. In that interlude, perhaps help might come from the village. +The second thing was almost as impossible as raising and firing the +rifle; but by the luck of the gods he might achieve it. He wanted to +find Singhai's knife and hold it compressed in his palm. + +It wasn't that he had any vain hopes of repelling the tiger's attack +with a single knife-blade that would be practically impossible for his +mutilated hand to hold. Nahara had five or so knife-blades in every +paw and a whole set of them in her mouth. She could stand on four legs +and fight, and Warwick could not lift himself on one elbow and yet +wield the blade. But there were other things to be done with blades, +even held loosely in the palm, at a time like this. + +He knew rather too much of the way of tigers. They do not always kill +swiftly. It is the tiger way to tease, long moments, with half-bared +talons; to let the prey crawl away a few feet for the rapture of +leaping at it again; to fondle with an exquisite cruelty for moments +that seem endless to its prey. A knife, on the other hand, kills +quickly. Warwick much preferred the latter death. + +And even as he called, again and again, he began to feel about in the +grass with his lacerated hand for the hilt of the knife. Nahara was +steadily stealing toward him through the shadows. + +The great tigress was at the height of her hunting madness. The +earlier adventure of the evening when she had missed her stroke, the +stir and tumult of the beaters in the wood, her many days of hunger, +had all combined to intensify her passion. And finally there had come +the knowledge, in subtle ways, that two of her own kind of game were +lying wounded and helpless beside the ford. + +But even the royal tiger never forgets some small measure of its +caution. She did not charge at once. The game looked so easy that it +was in some way suggestive of a trap. She crept forward, a few feet at +a time. The wild blood began to leap through the great veins. The hair +went stiff on the neck muscles. + +But Warwick shouted; and the sound for an instant appalled her. She +lurked in the shadows. And then, as she made a false step, Warwick +heard her for the first time. + +Again she crept forward, to pause when Warwick raised his voice the +second time. The man knew enough to call at intervals rather than +continuously. A long, continued outcry would very likely stretch the +tiger's nerves to a breaking point and hurl her into a frenzy that +would probably result in a death-dealing charge. Every few seconds he +called again. In the intervals between the tiger crept forward. Her +excitement grew upon her. She crouched lower. Her sinewy tail had +whipped softly at first; now it was lashing almost to her sides. And +finally it began to have a slight vertical movement that Warwick, +fortunately for his spirit, could not see. + +Then the little light that the moon poured down was suddenly reflected +in Nahara's eyes. All at once they burned out of the dusk; two +blue-green circles of fire fifty feet distant in the darkness. At that +Warwick gasped--for the first time. In another moment the great cat +would be in range--and he had not yet found the knife. Nothing +remained to believe but that it was lost in the mud of the ford, fifty +feet distant, and that the last dread avenue of escape was cut off. + +But at that instant the gasp gave way to a whispered oath of wonder. +Some living creature was running lightly down the trail toward +him--soft, light feet that came with amazing swiftness. For once in +his life Warwick did not know where he stood. For once he was the +chief figure of a situation he did not entirely understand. He tried +to probe into the darkness with his tired eyes. + +"Here I am!" he called. The tiger, starting to creep forward once +more, halted at the voice. A small straight figure sped like an arrow +out of the thickets and halted at his side. + +It was such an astounding appearance as for an instant completely +paralyzes the mental faculties. Warwick's first emotion was simply a +great and hopeless astonishment. Long inured to the mystery of the +jungle, he thought he had passed the point where any earthly happening +could actually bewilder him. But in spite of it, in spite of the +fire-eyed peril in the darkness, he was quite himself when he spoke. +The voice that came out of the silence was wholly steady--a kindly, +almost amused voice of one who knows life as it is and who has +mastered his own destiny. + +"Who in the world?" he asked in the vernacular. + +"It is I--Little Shikara," a tremulous voice answered. Except for the +tremor he could not keep from his tone, he spoke as one man to +another. + +Warwick knew at once that Little Shikara was not yet aware of the +presence of the tiger fifty feet distant in the shadows. But he knew +nothing else. The whole situation was beyond his ken. + +But his instincts were manly and true. "Then run speedily, little +one," he whispered, "back to the village. There is danger here in the +dark." + +Little Shikara tried to speak, and he swallowed painfully. A lump had +come in his throat that at first would not let him talk. "Nay, +Protector of the Poor!" he answered. "I--I came alone. And I--I am thy +servant." + +Warwick's heart bounded. Not since his youth had left him to a gray +world had his strong heart leaped in just this way before. "Merciful +God!" he whispered in English. "Has a child come to save me?" Then he +whipped again into the vernacular and spoke swiftly; for no further +seconds were to be wasted. "Little Shikara, have you ever fired a +gun?" + +"No, Sahib--" + +"Then lift it up and rest it across my body. Thou knowest how it is +held--" + +Little Shikara didn't know exactly, but he rested the gun on Warwick's +body; and he had seen enough target practice to crook his finger about +the trigger. And together, the strangest pair of huntsmen that the +Indian stars ever looked down upon, they waited. + +"It is Nahara," Warwick explained softly. For he had decided to be +frank with Little Shikara, trusting all to the courage of a child. "It +all depends on thee. Pull back the hammer with thy thumb." + +Little Shikara obeyed. He drew it back until it clicked and did not, +as Warwick had feared, let it slip through his fingers back against +the breach. "Yes, Sahib," he whispered breathlessly. His little brave +heart seemed about to explode in his breast. But it was the test, and +he knew he must not waver in the sahib's eyes. + +"It is Nahara, and thou art a man," Warwick said again. "And now thou +must wait until thou seest her eyes." + +So they strained into the darkness; and in an instant more they saw +again the two circles of greenish, smouldering fire. They were quite +near now--Nahara was almost in leaping range. + +"Thou wilt look through the little hole at the rear and then along the +barrel," Warwick ordered swiftly, "and thou must see the two eyes +along the little notch in front." + +"I see, Sahib--and between the eyes," came the same breathless +whisper. The little brown body held quite still. Warwick could not +even feel it trembling against his own. For the moment, by virtue of +some strange prank of Shiv, the jungle-gods were giving their own +strength to this little brown son of theirs beside the ford. + +"Thou wilt not jerk or move?" + +"Nay, Sahib." And he spoke true. The world might break to pieces or +blink out, but he would not throw off his aim by any terror motions. +They could see the tiger's outline now--the lithe, low-hung body, the +tail that twitched up and down. + +"Then pull the trigger," Warwick whispered. + +The whole jungle world rocked and trembled from the violence of the +report. + +When the villagers, aroused by the roar of the rifle and led by Khusru +and Puran and Little Shikara's father, rushed down with their +firebrands to the ford, their first thought was that they had come +only to the presence of the dead. Three human beings lay very still +beside the stream, and fifty feet in the shadows something else, that +obviously was _not_ a human being, lay very still, too. But they were +not to have any such horror story to tell their wives. Only one of the +three by the ford, Singhai, the gun-bearer, was even really +unconscious; Little Shikara, the rifle still held lovingly in his +arms, had gone into a half-faint from fear and nervous exhaustion, and +Warwick Sahib had merely closed his eyes to the darting light of the +firebrands. The only death that had occurred was that of Nahara the +tigress--and she had a neat hole bored completely through her neck. To +all evidence, she had never stirred after Little Shikara's bullet had +gone home. + +After much confusion and shouting and falling over one another, and +gazing at Little Shikara as if he were some new kind of a ghost, the +villagers got a stretcher each for Singhai and the Protector of the +Poor. And when they got them well loaded into them, and Little Shikara +had quite come to himself and was standing with some bewilderment in a +circle of staring townspeople, a clear, commanding voice ordered that +they all be silent. Warwick Sahib was going to make what was the +nearest approach to a speech that he had made since various of his +friends had decoyed him to a dinner in London some years before. + +The words that he said, the short vernacular words that have a way of +coming straight to the point, established Little Shikara as a legend +through all that corner of British India. It was Little Shikara who +had come alone through the jungle, said he; it was Little Shikara's +shining eyes that had gazed along the barrel, and it was his own brown +finger that had pulled the trigger. Thus, said Warwick, he would get +the bounty that the British Government offered--British rupees that to +a child's eyes would be past counting. Thus in time, with Warwick's +influence, his would be a great voice through all of India. For small +as he was, and not yet grown, he was of the true breed. + +After the shouting was done, Warwick turned to Little Shikara to see +how he thought upon all these things. "Thou shalt have training for +the army, little one, where thy good nerve will be of use, and thou +shalt be a native officer, along with the sons of princes. I, myself, +will see to it, for I do not hold my life so cheap that I will forget +the thing that thou hast done to-night." + +And he meant what he said. The villagers stood still when they saw his +earnest face. "And what, little hawk, wilt thou have more?" he asked. + +Little Shikara trembled and raised his eyes. "Only sometimes to ride +with thee, in thy _howdah_, as thy servant, when thou again seekest +the tiger." + +The whole circle laughed at this. They were just human, after all. +Their firebrands were held high, and gleamed on Little Shikara's dusky +face, and made a lustre in his dark eyes. The circle, roaring with +laughter, did not hear the sahib's reply, but they did see him nod his +head. + +"I would not dare go without thee now," Warwick told him. + +And thus Little Shikara's dreams came true--to be known through many +villages as a hunter of tigers, and a brave follower and comrade of +the forest trails. And thus he came into his own--in those far-off +glades of Burma, in the jungles of the Manipur. + + + +THE MAN WHO CURSED THE LILIES + +By CHARLES TENNEY JACKSON + +From _Short Stories_ + + +Tedge looked from the pilot-house at the sweating deckhand who stood +on the stubby bow of the _Marie Louise_ heaving vainly on the pole +thrust into the barrier of crushed water hyacinths across the channel. + +Crump, the engineer, shot a sullen look at the master ere he turned +back to the crude oil motor whose mad pounding rattled the old bayou +stern-wheeler from keel to hogchains. + +"She's full ahead now!" grunted Crump. And then, with a covert glance +at the single passenger sitting on the fore-deck cattle pens, the +engineman repeated his warning, "Yeh'll lose the cows, Tedge, if you +keep on fightin' the flowers. They're bad f'r feed and water--they +can't stand another day o' sun!" + +Tedge knew it. But he continued to shake his hairy fist at the +deckhand and roar his anathemas upon the flower-choked bayou. He knew +his crew was grinning evilly, for they remembered Bill Tedge's +year-long feud with the lilies. Crump had bluntly told the skipper he +was a fool for trying to push up this little-frequented bayou from +Cote Blanche Bay to the higher land of the west Louisiana coast, where +he had planned to unload his cattle. + +Tedge had bought the cargo himself near Beaumont from a beggared +ranchman whose stock had to go on the market because, for seven +months, there had been no rain in eastern Texas, and the short-grass +range was gone. + +Tedge knew where there was feed for the starving animals, and the +_Marie Louise_ was coming back light. By the Intercoastal Canal and +the shallow string of bays along the Texas-Louisiana line, the bayou +boat could crawl safely back to the grassy swamp lands that fringe the +sugar plantations of Bayou Teche. Tedge had bought his living cargo so +ridiculously cheap that if half of them stood the journey he would +profit. And they would cost him nothing for winter ranging up in the +swamp lands. In the spring he would round up what steers had lived and +sell them, grass-fat, in New Orleans. He'd land them there with his +flap-paddle bayou boat, too, for the _Marie Louise_ ranged up and down +the Inter-coastal Canal and the uncharted swamp lakes and bays +adjoining, trading and thieving and serving the skipper's obscure +ends. + +Only now, when he turned up Cote Blanche Bay, some hundred miles west +of the Mississippi passes, to make the last twenty miles of swamp +channel to his landing, he faced his old problem. Summer long the +water hyacinths were a pest to navigation on the coastal bayous, but +this June they were worse than Tedge had ever seen. He knew the +reason: the mighty Mississippi was at high flood, and as always then, +a third of its yellow waters were sweeping down the Atchafalaya River +on a "short cut" to the Mexican Gulf. And somewhere above, on its west +bank, the Atchafalaya levees had broken and the flood waters were all +through the coastal swamp channels. + +Tedge grimly knew what it meant. He'd have to go farther inland to +find his free range, but now, worst of all, the floating gardens of +the coast swamps were coming out of the numberless channels on the +_crevasse_ water. + +He expected to fight them as he had done for twenty years with his +dirty bayou boat. He'd fight and curse and struggle through the _les +flotantes_, and denounce the Federal Government, because it did not +destroy the lilies in the obscure bayous where he traded, as it did on +Bayou Teche and Terrebonne, with its pump-boats which sprayed the +hyacinths with a mixture of oil and soda until the tops shrivelled and +the trailing roots then dragged the flowers to the bottom. + +"Yeh'll not see open water till the river cleans the swamps of +lilies," growled Crump. "I never seen the beat of 'em! The high +water's liftin' 'em from ponds where they never been touched by a +boat's wheel and they're out in the channels now. If yeh make the +plantations yeh'll have to keep eastard and then up the Atchafalaya +and buck the main flood water, Tedge!" + +Tedge knew that, too. But he suddenly broke into curses upon his +engineer, his boat, the sea and sky and man. But mostly the lilies. He +could see a mile up the bayou between cypress-grown banks, and not a +foot of water showed. A solid field of green, waxy leaves and upright +purple spikes, jammed tight and moving. That was what made the master +rage. They were moving--a flower glacier slipping imperceptibly to the +gulf bays. They were moving slowly but inexorably, and his dirty +cattle boat, frantically driving into the blockade, was moving +backward--stern first! + +He hated them with the implacable fury of a man whose fists had lorded +his world. A water hyacinth--what was it? He could stamp one to a +smear on his deck, but a river of them no man could fight. He swore +the lilies had ruined his whisky-running years ago to the Atchafalaya +lumber camps; they blocked Grand River when he went to log-towing; +they had cost him thousands of dollars for repairs and lost time in +his swamp ventures. + +Bareheaded under the semi-tropic sun, he glowered at the lily-drift. +Then he snarled at Crump to reverse the motor. Tedge would retreat +again! + +"I'll drive the boat clean around Southwest Pass to get shut of 'em! +No feed, huh, for these cows! They'll feed sharks, they will! Huh, Mr. +Cowman, the blisterin' lilies cost me five hundred dollars already!" + +The lone passenger smoked idly and watched the gaunt cattle +staggering, penned in the flat, dead heat of the foredeck. Tedge +cursed him, too, under his breath. Milt Rogers had asked to make the +coast run from Beaumont on Tedge's boat. Tedge remembered what Rogers +said--he was going to see a girl who lived up Bayou Boeuf above +Tedge's destination. Tedge remembered that girl--a Cajan girl whom he +once heard singing in the floating gardens while Tedge was battling +and cursing to pass the blockade. + +He hated her for loving the lilies, and the man for loving her. He +burst out again with his volcanic fury at the green and purple horde. + +"They're a fine sight to see," mused the other, "after a man's eyes +been burned out ridin' the dry range; no rain in nine months up +there--nothin' green or pretty in----" + +"Pretty!" Tedge seemed to menace with his little shifty eyes. "I wish +all them lilies had one neck and I could twist it! Jest one head, and +me stompin' it! Yeh!--and all the damned flowers in the world with it! +Yeh! And me watchin' 'em die!" + +The man from the dry lands smoked idly under the awning. His serenity +evoked all the savagery of Tedge's feud with the lilies. Pretty! A man +who dealt with cows seeing beauty in anything! Well, the girl did +it--that swamp angel this Rogers was going to visit. That Aurelie +Frenet who sang in the flower-starred river--that was it! Tedge +glowered on the Texan--he hated him, too, because this loveliness gave +him peace, while the master of the _Marie Louise_ must fume about his +wheelhouse, a perspiring madman. + +It took an hour for the _Marie_ even to retreat and find steerage-way +easterly off across a shallow lake, mirroring the marsh shores in the +sunset. Across it the bayou boat wheezed and thumped drearily, +drowning the bellowing of the dying steers. Once the deckhand stirred +and pointed. + +"Lilies, Cap'n--pourin' from all the swamps, and dead ahead there +now!" + +Scowling, Tedge held to the starboard. Yes, there they were--a phalanx +of flowers in the dusk. He broke into wild curses at them, his boat, +the staggering cattle. + +"I'll drive to the open gulf to get rid of 'em! Outside, to sea! Yeh! +Stranger, yeh'll see salt water, and lilies drownin' in it! I'll show +yeh 'em dead and dried on the sands like dead men's dried bones! +Yeh'll see yer pretty flowers a-dyin'!" + +The lone cowman ignored the sneer. "You better get the animals to feed +and water. Another mornin' of heat and crowdin'--" + +"Let 'em rot! Yer pretty flowers done it--pretty flowers--spit o' +hell! I knowed 'em--I fought 'em--I'll fight 'em to the death of 'em!" + +His little red-rimmed eyes hardly veiled his contempt for Milt Rogers. +A cowman, sailing this dusky purple bay to see a girl! A girl who sang +in the lily drift--a-sailing on this dirty, reeking bumboat, with +cattle dying jammed in the pens! Suddenly Tedge realized a vast +malevolent pleasure--he couldn't hope to gain from his perishing +cargo; and he began to gloat at the agony spread below his wheelhouse +window, and the cattleman's futile pity for them. + +"They'll rot on Point Au Fer! We'll heave the stink of them, dead and +alive, to the sharks of Au Fer Pass! Drownin' cows in dyin' lilies--" + +And the small craft of his brain suddenly awakened coolly above his +heat. Why, yes! Why hadn't he thought of it? He swung the stubby nose +of the _Marie_ more easterly in the hot, windless dusk. After a while +the black deckhand looked questioningly up at the master. + +"We're takin' round," Tedge grunted, "outside Au Fer!" + +The black stretched on the cattle-pen frame. Tedge was a master-hand +among the reefs and shoals, even if the flappaddle _Marie_ had no +business outside. But the sea was nothing but a star-set velvet ribbon +on which she crawled like a dirty insect. And no man questioned +Tedge's will. + +Only, an hour later, the engineman came up and forward to stare into +the faster-flowing water. Even now he pointed to a hyacinth clump. + +"Yeh!" the master growled. "I'll show yeh, Rogers! Worlds o' flowers! +Out o' the swamps and the tide'll send 'em back again on the reefs. +I'll show yeh 'em--dead, dried white like men's bones." Then he began +to whisper huskily to his engineer: "It's time fer it. Five hundred +fer yeh, Crump--a hundred fer the nigger, or I knock his head in. She +brushes the bar, and yer oil tank goes--yeh understand?" He watched a +red star in the south. + +Crump looked about. No sail or light or coast guard about Au Fer--at +low tide not even a skiff could find the passages. He nodded +cunningly: + +"She's old and fire-fitten. Tedge, I knowed yer mind--I was always +waitin' fer the word. It's a place fer it--and yeh say yeh carry seven +hundred on them cows? Boat an' cargo--three thousand seven hundred--" + +"They'll be that singed and washed in the sands off Au Fer that +nobody'll know what they died of!" retorted Tedge thickly. "Yeh, go +down, Crump, and lay yer waste and oil right. I trust yeh, Crump--the +nigger'll get his, too. She'll ride high and burn flat, hoggin' in the +sand----" + +"She's soaked with oil plumb for'ard to the pens now," grunted Crump. +"She's fitten to go like a match all along when she bumps--" + +He vanished, and the master cunningly watched the ember star +southeasterly. + +He was holding above it now, to port and landward. The white, hard +sands must be shoaling fast under the cattle-freighted _Marie_. It +little mattered about the course now; she would grind her nose in the +quiet reef shortly. + +Tedge merely stared, expectantly awaiting the blow. And when it came +he was malevolently disappointed. A mere slithering along over the +sand, a creak, a slight jar, and she lay dead in the flat, calm +sea--it was ridiculous that that smooth beaching would break an oil +tank, that the engine spark would flare the machine waste, leap to the +greasy beams and floors. + +The wheezy exhaust coughed on; the belt flapped as the paddle wheel +kept on its dead shove of the _Marie's_ keel into the sand. Hogjaw had +shouted and run forward. He was staring into the phosphorescent water +circling about the bow when Crump raised his cry: + +"Fire--amidships!" + +Tedge ran down the after-stairs. Sulphurously he began cursing at the +trickle of smoke under the motor frame. It was nothing--a child could +have put it out with a bucket of sand. But upon it fell Tedge and the +engineer, stamping, shouting, shoving oil-soaked waste upon it, and +covertly blocking off the astounded black deckman when he rushed to +aid. + +"Water, Hogjaw!" roared the master. "She's gainin' on us--she's under +the bilge floor now!" He hurled a bucket viciously at his helper. And +as they pretended to fight the fire, Crump suddenly began laughing and +stood up. The deckman was grinning also. The master watched him +narrowly. + +"Kick the stuff into the waste under the stairs," he grunted. "Hogjaw, +this here boat's goin'--yeh understand? We take the skiff and pull to +the shrimp camps, and she hogs down and burns--" + +The black man was laughing. Then he stopped curiously. "The cows--" + +"Damn the cows! I'll git my money back on 'em! Yeh go lower away on +the skiff davits. Yeh don't ask me nothin'--yeh don't know nothin'!" + +"Sho', boss! I don't know nothin', or see nothin'!" + +He swung out of the smoke already drifting greasily up from the foul +waist of the _Marie Louise_. A little glare of red was beginning to +reflect from the mirrored sea. The ripples of the beaching had +vanished; obscurely, undramatically as she had lived, the _Marie +Louise_ sat on the bar to choke in her own fetid fumes. + +Tedge clambered to the upper deck and hurried to his bunk in the +wheelhouse. There were papers there he must save--the master's +license, the insurance policy, and a few other things. The smell of +burning wood and grease was thickening; and suddenly now, through it, +he saw the quiet, questioning face of the stranger. + +He had forgotten him completely. Tedge's small brain had room but for +one idea at a time: first his rage at the lilies, and then the +wrecking of the _Marie_. And this man knew. He had been staring down +the after-companionway. He had seen and heard. He had seen the master +and crew laughing while the fire mounted. + +Tedge came to him. "We're quittin' ship," he growled. + +"Yes, but the cattle--" The other looked stupefiedly at him. + +"We got to pull inside afore the sea comes up--" + +"Well, break the pens, can't you? Give 'em a chance to swim for a bar. +I'm a cowman myself--I cain't let dumb brutes burn and not lift a +hand--" + +The fire in the waist was beginning to roar. A plume of smoke streamed +straight up in the starlight. The glare showed the younger man's +startled eyes. He shifted them to look over the foredeck rail down to +the cattle. Sparks were falling among them, the fire veered slightly +forward; and the survivors were crowding uneasily over the fallen +ones, catching that curious sense of danger which forewarns creatures +of the wild before the Northers, a burning forest, or creeping flood, +to move on. + +"You cain't leave 'em so," muttered the stranger. "No; I seen you--" + +He did not finish. Tedge had been setting himself for what he knew he +should do. The smaller man had his jaw turned as he stared at the +suffering brutes. And Tedge's mighty fist struck him full on the +temple. The master leaned over the low rail to watch quietly. + +The man who wished to save the cattle was there among them. A little +flurry of sparks drove over the spot he fell upon, and then a maddened +surge of gaunt steers. Tedge wondered if he should go finish the job. +No; there was little use. He had crashed his fist into the face of a +shrimp-seine hauler once, and the fellow's neck had shifted on his +spine--and once he had maced a woman up-river in a shantyboat drinking +bout--Tedge had got away both times. Now and then, boasting about the +shrimp camps, he hinted mysteriously at his two killings, and showed +his freckled, hairy right hand. + +"If they find anything of him--he got hurt in the wreck," the master +grinned. He couldn't see the body, for a black longhorn had fallen +upon his victim, it appeared. Anyhow, the cattle were milling +desperately around in the pen; the stranger who said his name was Milt +Rogers would be a lacerated lump of flesh in that mad stampede long +ere the fire reached him. Tedge got his tin document box and went aft. + +Crump and Hogjaw were already in the flat-bottomed bayou skiff, +holding it off the _Marie Louise's_ port runway, and the master +stepped into it. The heat was singeing their faces by now. + +"Pull off," grunted the skipper, "around east'ard. This bar sticks +clean out o' water off there, and you lay around it, Hogjaw. They +won't be no sea 'til the breeze lifts at sunup." + +The big black heaved on the short oars. The skiff was a hundred yards +out on the glassy sea when Crump spoke cunningly, "I knowed +something----" + +"Yeh?" Tedge turned from his bow seat to look past the oarsman's head +at the engineman. "Yeh knowed----" + +"This Rogers, he was tryin' to get off the burnin' wreck and he fell, +somehow or----" + +"The oil tank blew, and a piece o' pipe took him," grunted Tedge. "I +tried to drag him out o' the fire--Gawd knows I did, didn't I, Crump?" + +Crump nodded scaredly. The black oarsman's eyes narrowed and he +crouched dumbly as he rowed. Tedge was behind him--Tedge of the _Marie +Louise_ who could kill with his fists. No, Hogjaw knew nothing--he +never would know anything. + +"I jest took him on out o' kindness," mumbled Tedge. "I got no license +fer passenger business. Jest a bum I took on to go and see his swamp +girl up Des Amoureaux. Well, it ain't no use sayin' anything, is it +now?" + +A mile away the wreck of the _Marie Louise_ appeared as a yellow-red +rent in the curtain of night. Red, too, was the flat, calm sea, save +northerly where a sand ridge gleamed. Tedge turned to search for its +outlying point. There was a pass here beyond which the reefs began +once more and stretched on, a barrier to the shoal inside waters. When +the skiff had drawn about the sand spit, the reflecting waters around +the _Marie_ had vanished, and the fire appeared as a fallen meteor +burning on the flat, black belt of encircling reef. + +Tedge's murderous little eyes watched easterly. They must find the +other side of the tidal pass and go up it to strike off for the +distant shrimp camps with their story of the end of the _Marie +Louise_--boat and cargo a total loss on Au Fer sands. + +Upon the utter sea silence there came a sound--a faint bawling of +dying cattle, of trampled, choked cattle in the fume and flames. It +was very far off now; and to-morrow's tide and wind would find nothing +but a blackened timber, a swollen, floating carcass or two--nothing +more. + +But the black man could see the funeral pyre; the distant glare of it +was showing the whites of his eyes faintly to the master, when +suddenly he stopped rowing. A drag, the soft sibilance of a moving +thing, was on his oar blade. He jerked it free, staring. + +"Lilies, boss--makin' out dis pass, too, lilies--" + +"I see 'em--drop below 'em!" Tedge felt the glow of an unappeasable +anger mount to his temples. "Damn 'em--I see 'em!" + +There they were, upright, tranquil, immense hyacinths--their +spear-points three feet above the water, their feathery streamers +drifting six feet below; the broad, waxy leaves floating above their +bulbous surface mats--they came on silently under the stars; they +vanished under the stars seaward to their death. + +"Yeh!" roared Tedge. "Sun and sea to-morry--they'll be back on Au Fer +like dried bones o' dead men in the sand! Bear east'ard off of 'em!" + +The oarsman struggled in the deeper pass water. The skiff bow suddenly +plunged into a wall of green-and-purple bloom. The points brushed +Tedge's cheek. He cursed and smote them, tore them from the low bow +and flung them. But the engineman stood up and peered into the +starlight. + +"Yeh'll not make it. Better keep up the port shore. I cain't see +nothin' but lilies east'ard--worlds o'flowers comin' with the +_crevasse_ water behind 'em." He dipped a finger to the water, tasted +of it, and grumbled on: "It ain't hardly salt, the big rivers are +pourin' such a flood out o' the swamps. Worlds o' flowers comin' out +the passes--" + +"Damn the flowers!" Tedge arose, shaking his fist at them. "Back out +o' 'em! Pull up the Au Fer side, and we'll break through 'em in the +bay!" + +Against the ebb tide close along Au Fer reef, the oarsman toiled until +Crump, the lookout, grumbled again. + +"The shoal's blocked wi' 'em! They're stranded on the ebb. Tedge, +yeh'll have to wait for more water to pass this bar inside 'em. Yeh +try to cross the pass, and the lilies 'll have us all to sea in this +crazy skiff when the wind lifts wi' the sun." + +"I'm clean wore out," the black man muttered. "Yeh can wait fer day +and tide on the sand, boss." + +"Well, drive her in, then!" raged the skipper. "The in-tide'll set +before daylight. We'll take it up the bay." + +He rolled over the bow, knee-deep in the warm inlet water, and dragged +the skiff through the shoals. Crump jammed an oar in the sand; and +warping the headline to this, the three trudged on to the white dry +ridge. Tedge flung himself by the first stubby grass clump. + +"Clean beat," he muttered. "By day we'll pass 'em. Damn 'em--and I'll +see 'em dyin' in the sun--lilies like dried, dead weeds on the +sand--that's what they'll be in a couple o' days--he said they was +pretty, that fello' back there--" Lying with his head on his arm, he +lifted a thumb to point over his shoulder. He couldn't see the distant +blotch of fire against the low stars--he didn't want to. He couldn't +mark the silent drift of the sea gardens in the pass, but he gloated +in the thought that they were riding to their death. The pitiless sun, +the salt tides drunk up to their spongy bulbs, and their glory +passed--they would be matted refuse on the shores and a man could +trample them. Yes, the sea was with Tedge, and the rivers, too; the +flood waters were lifting the lilies from their immemorable +strongholds and forcing them out to their last pageant of death. + +The three castaways slept in the warm sand. It was an hour later that +some other living thing stirred at the far end of Au Fer reef. A +scorched and weakened steer came on through salt pools to stagger and +fall. Presently another, and then a slow line of them. They crossed +the higher ridge to huddle about a sink that might have made them +remember the dry drinking holes of their arid home plains. Tired, +gaunt cattle mooing lonesomely, when the man came about them to dig +with his bloody fingers in the sand. + +He tried another place, and another--he didn't know--he was a man of +the short-grass country, not a coaster; perhaps a sandy sink might +mean fresh water. But after each effort the damp feeling on his hands +was from his gashed and battered head and not life-giving water. He +wiped the blood from his eyes and stood up in the starlight. + +"Twenty-one of 'em--alive--and me," he muttered. "I got 'em off--they +trampled me and beat me down, but I got their pens open. Twenty-one +livin'--and me on the sands!" + +He wondered stupidly how he had done it. The stern of the _Marie +Louise_ had burned off and sogged down in deep water, but her bow hung +to the reef, and in smoke and flame he had fought the cattle over it. +They clustered now in the false water-hole, silent, listless, as if +they knew the uselessness of the urge of life on Au Fer reef. + +And after a while the man went on eastward. Where and how far the sand +ridge stretched he did not know. Vaguely he knew of the tides and sun +to-morrow. From the highest point he looked back. The wreck was a dull +red glow, the stars above it cleared now of smoke. The sea, too, +seemed to have gone back to its infinite peace, as if it had washed +itself daintily after this greasy morsel it must hide in its depths. + +A half hour the man walked wearily, and then before him stretched +water again. He turned up past the tide flowing down the pass--perhaps +that was all of Au Fer. A narrow spit of white sand at high tide, and +even over that, the sea breeze freshening, the surf would curl? + +"Ships never come in close, they said," he mused tiredly, "and miles +o' shoals to the land--and then just swamp for miles. Dumb brutes o' +cows, and me on this--and no water nor feed, nor shade from the sun." + +He stumbled on through the shallows, noticing apathetically that the +water was running here. Nearly to his waist he waded, peering into the +starlight. He was a cowman and he couldn't swim; he had never seen +anything but the dry ranges until he said he would go find the girl he +had met once on the upper Brazos--a girl who told him of sea and +sunken forests, of islands of flowers drifting in lonely swamp +lakes--he had wanted to see that land, but mostly the Cajan girl of +Bayou Des Amoureaux. + +He wouldn't see her now; he would die among dying cattle, but maybe it +was fit for a cattleman to go that way--a Texas man and Texas cows. + +Then he saw a moving thing. It rode out of the dark and brushed him. +It touched him with soft fingers and he drew them to him. A water +hyacinth, and its purple spike topped his head as he stood waist-deep. +So cool its leaves, and the dripping bulbs that he pressed them to his +bloody cheek. He sank his teeth into them for that coolness on his +parched tongue. The spongy bulb was sweet; it exhaled odorous +moisture. He seized it ravenously. It carried sweet water, redolent of +green forest swamps! + +He dragged at another floating lily, sought under the leaves for the +buoyant bulb. A drop or two of the fresh water a man could press from +each! + +Like a starving animal he moved in the shoals, seeing more drifting +garden clumps. And then a dark object that did not drift. He felt for +it slowly, and then straightened up, staring about. + +A flat-bottomed bayou skiff, and in it the oars, a riverman's +blanket-roll of greasy clothes, and a tin box! He knew the box. On one +end, in faded gilt, was the name "B. Tedge." Rogers had seen it on the +grimy shelf in the pilothouse on the _Marie Louise_. He felt for the +rope; the skiff was barely scraping bottom. Yes, they had moored it +here--they must be camped on the sands of Au Fer, awaiting the dawn. + +A boat? He didn't know what a Texas cowman could do with a boat on an +alien and unknown shore, but he slipped into it, raised an oar, and +shoved back from the sandy spit. At least he could drift off Au Fer's +waterless desolation. Tedge would kill him to-morrow when he found him +there; because he knew Tedge had fired the _Marie_ for the insurance. + +So he poled slowly off. The skiff drifted now. Rogers tried to turn to +the oar athwart, and awkwardly he stumbled. The oar seemed like a roll +of thunder when it struck the gunwale. + +And instantly a hoarse shout arose behind him. Tedge's voice--Tedge +had not slept well. The gaunt cattle burning or choking in the salt +tide, or perhaps the lilies of Bayou Boeuf--anyhow, he was up with a +cry and dashing for the skiff. In a moment Rogers saw him. + +The Texas man began driving desperately on the oars. He heard the +heavy rush of the skipper's feet in the deepening water. Tedge's voice +became a bull-like roar as the depth began to check him. To his waist, +and the slow skiff was but ten yards away; to his great shoulders, and +the clumsy oarsman was but five. + +And with a yell of triumph Tedge lunged out swimming. Whoever the +fugitive, he was hopeless with the oars. The skiff swung this way and +that, and a strong man at its stern could hurl it and its occupant +bottom-side up in Au Fer Pass. Tedge, swimming in Au Fer Pass, his +fingers to the throat of this unknown marauder! There'd be another one +go--and nothing but his hands--Bill Tedge's hands that the shrimp +camps feared. + +Just hold him under--that was all. Tread water, and hold the throat +beneath until its throbbing ceased. Tedge could; he feared no man. +Another overhand stroke, and he just missed the wobbling stern of the +light skiff. + +He saw the man start up and raise an oar as if to strike. Tedge +laughed triumphantly. Another plunge and his fingers touched the +gunwale. And then he dived; he would bring his back up against the +flat bottom and twist his enemy's footing from under him. Then in the +deep water Tedge lunged up for the flat keel, and slowly across his +brow an invisible hand seemed to caress him. + +He opened his eyes to see a necklace of opalescent jewels gathering +about his neck; he tore at it and the phosphorescent water gleamed all +about him with feathery pendants. And when his head thrust above +water, the moment's respite had allowed the skiff to straggle beyond +his reach. + +Tedge shouted savagely and lunged again--and about his legs came the +soft clasp of the drifting hyacinth roots. Higher, firmer; and he +turned to kick free of them. He saw the man in the boat poling +uncertainly in the tide not six feet beyond him. And now, in open +water, Tedge plunged on in fierce exultance. One stroke--and the stars +beyond the boatman became obscured; the swimmer struck the soft, +yielding barrier of the floating islands. This time he did not lose +time in drawing from them; he raised his mighty arms and strove to +beat them down, flailing the broad leaves until the spiked blossoms +fell about him. A circlet of them caressed his cheek. He lowered his +head and swam bull-like into the drift; and when he knew the pressure +ahead was tightening slowly to rubbery bands, forcing him gently from +his victim, Tedge raised his voice in wild curses. + +He fought and threshed the lilies, and they gave him cool, velvety +kisses in return. He dived and came up through them; and then, staring +upward, he saw the tall, purple spikes against the stars. And they +were drifting--they were sailing seaward to their death. He couldn't +see the boat now for the shadowy hosts; and for the first time fear +glutted his heart. It came as a paroxysm of new sensation--Tedge of +the _Marie Louise_ who had never feared. + +But this was different, this soft and moving web of silence. No, not +quite silence, for past his ear the splendid hyacinths drifted with a +musical creaking, leaf on leaf, the buoyant bulbs brushing each other. +The islets joined and parted; once he saw open water and plunged for +it--and over his shoulders there surged a soft coverlet. He turned and +beat it; he churned his bed into a furious welter, and the silken +curtain lowered. + +He shrank from it now, staring. The feathery roots matted across his +chest, the mass of them felt slimy like the hide of a drowned brute. + +"Drownin' cows"--he muttered thickly--"comin' on a man driftin' and +drownin'--no, no! Lilies, jest lilies--damn 'em!" + +The tall spiked flowers seemed nodding--yes, just lilies, drifting and +singing elfin music to the sea tide. Tedge roared once again his +hatred of them; he raised and battered his huge fists into their +beauty, and they seemed to smile in the starlight. Then, with a howl, +he dived. + +He would beat them--deep water was here in the pass, and he would swim +mightily far beneath the trailing roots--he would find the man with +the boat yet and hurl him to die in the hyacinth bloom. + +He opened his eyes in the deep, clear water and exulted. He, Tedge, +had outwitted the bannered argosies. With bursting lungs he charged +off across the current, thinking swiftly, coolly, now of the escape. +And as he neared the surface he twisted to glance upward. It was light +there--a light brighter than the stars, but softer, evanescent. Mullet +and squib were darting about or clinging to a feathery forest that +hung straight down upon him. Far and near there came little darts of +pale fire, gleaming and expiring with each stir in the phosphorescent +water. + +And he had to rise; a man could not hold the torturing air in his +lungs for ever. Yes, he would tear a path to the stars again and +breathe. His arms flailed into the first tenuous streamers, which +parted in pearly lace before his eyes. He breasted higher, and they +were all about him now; his struggles evoked glowing bubble-jewels +which drifted upward to expire. He grasped the soft roots and twisted +and sought to raise himself. He had a hand to the surface bulbs, but a +silken mesh seemed tightening about him. + +And it was drifting--everything was drifting in the deep pass of Au +Fer. He tried to howl in the hyacinth web, and choked--and then he +merely fought in his close-pressing cocoon, thrusting one hard fist to +grasp the broad leaves. He clung to them dumbly, his face so close to +the surface that the tall spiked flowers smiled down--but they drifted +inexorably with a faint, creaking music, leaf on leaf. + +Tedge opened his eyes to a flicker of myriad lights. The sound was a +roaring now--like the surf on the reefs in the hurricane month; or the +thunder of maddened steers above him across this flowery sea meadow. +Perhaps the man he had killed rode with this stampede? Tedge shrank +under the lilies--perhaps they could protect him now? Even the last +stroke of his hands made luminous beauty of the under-running tide. + +An outward-bound shrimp lugger saw the figures on Au Fer reef and came +to anchor beyond the shoals. The Cajan crew rowed up to where Milt +Rogers and Crump and the black deckhand were watching by a pool. The +shrimpers listened to the cowman, who had tied the sleeve of his shirt +about his bloody head. + +"You can get a barge down from Morgan City and take the cows off +before the sea comes high," said Rogers quietly. "They're eating the +lilies--and they find sweet water in 'em. Worlds o' lilies driftin' to +sea with sweet water in the bulbs!" And he added, watching Crump and +the black man who seemed in terror of him: "I want to get off, too. I +want to see the swamp country where worlds o' flowers come from!" + +He said no more. He did not even look in the pool where Crump pointed. +He was thinking of that girl of the swamps who had bid him come to +her. But all along the white surf line he could see the +green-and-purple plumes of the hyacinth warriors tossing in the +breeze--legion upon legion, coming to die gloriously on Au Fer's +sands. + +But first they sent a herald; for in Tedge's hand, as he lay in the +pool, one waxen-leafed banner with a purple spear-point glittered in +the sun. + + + +THE URGE + +By MARYLAND ALLEN + +From _Everybody's_ + + +She is now a woman ageless because she is famous. She is surrounded by +a swarm of lovers and possesses a great many beautiful things. She has +more than one Ming jar in the library at her country place; yards upon +yards of point de Venise in her top bureau-drawer. She is able to +employ a very pleasant, wholesome woman, whose sole duty it is to keep +her clothes in order. + +She wears superb clothes--the last word in richness and the elegance +of perfection--clothes that no man can declaim over, stimulating +himself the while with shot after shot of that most insidious of all +dope, self-pity. You see, she earns them all herself, along with the +Ming jars, the point de Venise, the country place, and countless other +things. She is the funniest woman in the world--not in her +press-agent's imagination, but in cold, sober fact. She can make +anybody laugh; she does make everybody. + +Night after night in the huge public theatres of the common people; in +the small private ones of the commoner rich; in Greek amphitheatres +where the laughter rolls away in thunderous waves to be echoed back by +distant blue hills; in institutions for the blind; in convalescent +wards; everywhere, every time, she makes them laugh. The day labourer, +sodden and desperate from too much class legislation, the ego in his +cosmos and the struggle for existence; the statesman, fearful of +losing votes, rendered blue and depressed by the unruliness of nations +and all the vast multitude of horrors that lie in between--all of +these, all of them, she makes laugh. She is queen of the profession +she has chosen--unusual for one of her sex. She is the funniest woman +in the world. + +When she is at home--which is seldom--she has many visitors and +strives, if possible, to see none of them. + +"You know, I entertain so much," she pleads in that vivid, whimsical +way of hers that holds as much of sadness as mirth. + +But this time, it being so early in the afternoon, she was caught +unawares. + +The girls--they were nothing but girls, three of them--found her out +upon the lawn, sitting on a seat where the velvety green turf fell +away in a steep hillside, and far beneath them they could see the +river moving whitely beyond the trees. They halted there before her, +happy but trembling, giggling but grave. They were gasping and +incoherent, full of apologies and absurd tremors. It had taken their +combined week's savings to bribe the gardener. And they only wanted to +know one thing: How had she achieved all this fame and splendour, by +what magic process had she become that rarest of all living creatures, +the funniest woman in the world? + +It was an easy enough question to ask and, to them, hovering +twittering upon high heels a trifle worn to one side, a simple one for +her to answer. She looked at them in that humorous, kindly way of +hers, looked at their silly, excited, made-up faces with noses +sticking out stark, like handles, from a too-heavy application of +purplish-white powder. Then her glance travelled down the velvety +green slope to the bright river glancing and leaping beyond the shady +trees. + +Did she think of that other girl? Sitting there with that strange +smile upon her face, the smile that is neither mirth nor sadness, but +a poignant, haunting compound of both, did she remember her and the +Urge that had always been upon her, racking her like actual pain, +driving her with a whip of scorpions, flaying her on and on with a far +more vivid sense of suffering than the actual beatings laid on by her +mother's heavy hand, the thing that found articulation in the words, +"I must be famous, I must!" + +She belonged in the rear of a batch of a dozen, and had never been +properly named. The wind was blowing from the stockyards on the dark +hour when she arrived. It penetrated even to the small airless chamber +where she struggled for her first breath--one of a "flat" in the +poorest tenement in the worst slum in Chicago. Huddled in smelly rags +by a hastily summoned neighbour from the floor above, the newcomer +raised her untried voice in a frail, reedy cry. Perhaps she did not +like the smell that oozed in around the tightly closed window to +combat the foul odours of the airless room. Whatever it was, this +protest availed her nothing, for the neighbour hurriedly departed, +having been unwilling from the first, and the mother turned away and +lay close against the stained, discoloured wall, too apathetic, too +utterly resigned to the fate life had meted out to her to accord this +most unwelcome baby further attention. This first moment of her life +might easily serve as the history of her babyhood. + +Her father was also indifferent. He brought home his money and gave it +to his wife--children were strictly none of his business. Her brothers +and sisters, each one busily and fiercely fending for himself, gave no +attention to her small affairs. + +Tossed by the careless hand of Fate into the dark sea of life to swim +or perish, she awoke to consciousness with but one thought--food; one +ruling passion--to get enough. And since, in her habitual half-starved +state, all food looked superlatively good to her, cake was the first +word she learned to speak. It formed her whole vocabulary for a +surprisingly long time, and Cake was the only name she was ever known +by in her family circle and on the street that to her ran on and on +and on as narrow and dirty, as crowded and as cruel as where it passed +the great dilapidated old rookery that held the four dark rooms that +she called home. + +Up to the age of ten her life was sketchy. A passionate scramble for +food, beatings, tears, slumber, a swift transition from one childish +ailment to another that kept her forever out of reach of the truant +officer. + +She lay upon the floor in a little dark room, and through the window +in the airless air-shaft, high up in one corner, she could see a +three-cornered spot of light. At first she wondered what it was, since +she lived in a tenement, not under the sky. Then it resolved itself +into a ball, white and luminous, that floated remote in that high +place and seemed to draw her, and was somehow akin to the queer, +gnawing pain that developed about that time beneath her breastbone. It +was all inarticulate, queer and confused. She did not think, she did +not know how. She only felt that queer gnawing beneath her breastbone, +distinct from all her other pains, and which she ascribed to hunger, +and saw the lovely, trembling globe of light. At first she felt it +only when she was ill and lay on the tumbled floor bed and looked up +through the dark window; afterward always in her dreams. + +After she passed her tenth birthday the confusion within her seemed to +settle as the queer pain increased, and she began to think, to wonder +what it could be. + +A year or two later her father died, and as she was the only child +over whom her mother could exercise any control, the report of her +death was successfully impressed upon the truant officer, so that she +might be put to work unhindered to help the family in its desperate +scramble for food, a scramble in which she took part with vivid +earnestness. She was hired to Maverick's to wash dishes. + +Maverick was a Greek and kept an open-all-night chop-house, a mean +hole in the wall two doors from the corner, where Cake's surpassing +thinness made her invaluable at the sink. Also the scraps she carried +home in her red, water-puckered hands helped out materially. Then her +mother took a boarder and rested in her endeavours, feeling she had +performed all things well. + +This boarder was a man with a past. And he had left it pretty far +behind, else he had never rented a room and meals from the mother of +Cake. In this boarder drink and debauchery had completely beaten out +of shape what had once been a very noble figure of a man. His body was +shrunken and trembling; the old, ragged clothes he wore flapped about +him like the vestments of a scarecrow. His cheeks had the bruised +congested look of the habitual drinker, his nose seemed a toadstool on +his face, and his red eyes were almost vanished behind puffy, purple, +pillow-like lids. His voice was husky and whispering, except when he +raised it. Then it was surprisingly resonant and mellow, with +something haunting in it like the echo of an echo of a very moving +sweetness. + +One night Cake, returning all weary and played-out from dish-washing +at Maverick's, heard him speaking in this loud voice of his, pushed +the door open a crack, and peeked in. He was standing in the middle of +the floor evidently speaking what the child called to herself "a +piece." Her big mouth crooked derisively in the beginning of what is +now her famous smile. The lodger went on speaking, being fairly well +stimulated at the time, and presently Cake pushed the door wider and +crept in to the dry-goods box, where her mother always kept a candle, +and sat down. + +The lodger talked on and on while Cake sat rapt, the flickering candle +in her hands throwing strange lights and shadows upon her gaunt face. +How was she to know she was the last audience of one of the greatest +Shakespearian actors the world had ever seen? + +It was a grave and wondering Cake that crept to her place to sleep +that night between her two older sisters. And while they ramped +against her and chewed and snorted in her ears, she listened all over +again to that wonderful voice and was awed by the colour and beauty of +the words that it had spoken. She slept, and saw before her the globe +of light, trembling and luminous, the one bright thing of beauty her +life had ever known, that seemed to draw her up from darkness slowly +and with great suffering. Trembling and weeping she awoke in the dawn, +and the strange pain that had tortured her so much and that she had +called hunger and sought to assuage with scraps from the plates that +came to the sink at Maverick's became articulate at last. With her +hands clasped hard against her breast she found relief in words. + +"I gotta be somebody," sobbed the child. "I mus' be famous, I mus'!" + +She arose to find life no longer a confused struggle for food, but a +battle and a march; a battle to get through one day to march on to the +next, and so on and on until, in that long line of days that stretched +out ahead of her like chambers waiting to be visited, she reached the +one where rested Fame, that trembling, luminous globe of beauty it was +so vitally necessary for her to achieve. "How come he c'n talk like +that?" she demanded of herself, musing on the lodger's wonderful +exhibition over the greasy dish-water at Maverick's. + +And that night she asked him, prefacing her question with the offering +of an almost perfect lamb-chop. Only one piece had been cut from it +since the purchaser, at that moment apprised by Maverick himself that +the arrival of the police was imminent, had taken a hasty departure. + +"Who learned you to talk that-a-way?" demanded Cake, licking a faint, +far-away flavour of the chop from her long, thin fingers. + +The lodger, for a moment, had changed places with the candle. That is +to say, he sat upon the dry-goods box, the candle burned upon the +floor. And, having been most unfortunate that day, the lodger was +tragically sober. He bit into the chop voraciously, like a dog, with +his broken, discoloured teeth. + +"A book 'learned' me," he said, "and practice and experience--and +something else." He broke off short. "They called it genius then," he +said bitterly. + +Cake took a short step forward. That thing beneath her prominent +breastbone pained her violently, forced her on to speak. + +"You learn me," she said. + +The lodger ceased to chew and stared, the chop bone uplifted in his +dirty hand. A pupil for him! + +"You want to do this perhaps," he began. "Pray do not mock me; I am a +very foolish, fond old man----" + +The disreputable, swollen-faced lodger with a nose like a poisoned +toadstool vanished. Cake saw an old white-haired man, crazy and +pitiful, yet bearing himself grandly. She gasped, the tears flew to +her eyes, blinding her. The lodger laughed disagreeably, he was +gnawing on the chop bone again. + +"I suppose you think because you've found me here it is likely I'll +teach you--you! You starved alley cat!" he snarled. + +Cake did not even blink. It is repetition that dulls, and she was +utterly familiar with abuse. + +"And suppose I did--'learn' you," he sneered, "what would _you_ do +with it?" + +"I would be famous," cried Cake. + +Then the lodger did laugh, looking at her with his head hanging down, +his swollen face all creased and purple, his hair sticking up rough +and unkempt. He laughed, sitting there a degraded, debauched ruin, +looking down from the height of his memories upon the gaunt, unlovely +child of the slums who was rendered even more unlovely by the very +courage that kept her waiting beside the broken door. + +"So you think I could learn you to be famous, hey?" Even the words of +this gutter filth he sought to construe into something nattering to +himself. + +Cake nodded. Really she had not thought of it that way at all. There +was no thinking connected with her decision. The dumb hours she had +spent staring up the air-shaft had resolved themselves with the +passing years into a strange, numb will to do. There was the light and +she must reach it. Indeed the Thing there behind the narrow walls of +her chest gave her no alternative. She did not think she wanted to be +an actress. It was a long time after that before she knew even what an +actress was. She did not know what the lodger had been. No. +Instinctively, groping and inarticulate, she recognized in him the +rags and shreds of greatness, knew him to be a one-time dweller in +that temple whither, willing or not, she was bound, to reach it or to +die. + +The lodger looked down at the naked chop bone in his hand. The juicy, +broiled meat was comforting to his outraged stomach. Meat. The word +stood out in his mind to be instantly followed by that other word +that, for him, had spelled ruin, made him a ragged panhandler, reduced +him to living among the poorest and most hopeless. Drink! He raised +his head and eyed Cake with crafty calculation. + +"What will you pay me for such teaching?" he demanded, and looked down +again at the bone. + +What he did in the end, Cake herself was satisfied came to him +afterward. At first he was actuated only by the desire to procure food +and drink--more especially the drink--at the cost of the least +possible effort to himself. + +Cake saw the look, and she knew. She even smiled a little in the +greatness of her relief. She saw she had been right to bring the chop, +and appreciated that her progress along road to fame would be as slow +or fast as she could procure food for him in lesser or larger +quantities. + +"I'll bring you eats," she said cunningly. "From Maverick's," she +added. By which she meant the eats would be "has-is"--distinctly +second class, quite possibly third. + +The lodger nodded. "And booze," he put in, watching her face. + +"And booze," Cake assented. + +So the bargain was struck in a way that worked the most cruel hardship +on the girl. Food she could steal and did, blithely enough, since she +had no monitor but the lure of brightness and that Thing within her +breast that hotly justified the theft and only urged her on. But booze +was a very different proposition. It was impossible to steal +booze--even a little. To secure booze she was forced to offer money. +Now what money Cake earned at Maverick's her mother snatched from her +hand before she was well within the door. If she held out even a dime, +she got a beating. And Cake's mother, in the later years of her life, +besides being a clever evader of the police and the truant officer, +developed into a beater of parts. Broken food the child offered in +abundance and piteous hope. But the lodger was brutally indifferent. + +"Food," he scoffed. "Why, it says in the Bible--you never heard of the +Bible, hey?" Cake shook her tangled head. + +"No? Well, it's quite a Book," commented the lodger. He had been +fortunate that day and was, for him, fairly intoxicated. "And it says +right in there--and some consider that Book an authority--man cannot +live by food alone. Drink--I drink when I have occasion, and sometimes +when I have no occasion--Don't you know what drink is, alley-cat? Very +well, then, wine is wont to show the mind of man, and you won't see +mine until you bring me booze. Get out!" + +And Cake got out. Also, being well versed in a very horrid wisdom, she +took the food with her. This was hardly what the lodger had expected, +and I think what respect he was capable of sprouted for her then. + +Behind a screen of barrels in the corner of the alley Cake ate the +broken meats herself, taking what comfort she could, and pondering the +while the awful problem of securing the booze, since she must be +taught, and since the lodger moved in her sphere as the only available +teacher. + +There was a rush up the alley past her hiding-place, a shout, and the +savage thud of blows. Very cautiously, as became one wise in the ways +of life in that place, Cake peered around a barrel. She saw Red Dan, +who sold papers in front of Jeer Dooley's place, thoroughly punishing +another and much larger boy. The bigger boy was crying. + +"Anybody c'n sell pipers," shouted Red Dan, pounding the information +home bloodily. "You hear me?--anybody!" + +Cake crept out of her hiding-place on the opposite side. + +She did not care what happened to the bigger boy, though she respected +Red Dan the more. She knew where the money was going to come from to +buy the lodger's booze. It meant longer hours for her; it meant care +to work only out of school hours; it meant harder knocks than even she +had experienced; it meant a fatigue there were no words to describe +even among the beautiful, wonderful, colourful ones the lodger taught +her. But she sold the papers and she purchased the booze. + +Her mother did not know where she spent this extra time. She did not +care since the money came in from Maverick's steadily each week. +Neither did the lodger care how the booze was procured; the big thing +to him was that it came. + +At first these lessons were fun for him; the big, gawky, half-starved, +overworked child seeing so vividly in pictures all that he told her in +words. Full-fed on the scraps from Maverick's--he was no longer +fastidious--well stimulated by the drink she brought, he took an ugly +sort of degraded pleasure in posturing before her, acting as he alone +could act those most wonderful of all plays, watching with hateful, +sardonic amusement the light and shadow of emotion upon her dirty +face. Oh, he was a magician, no doubt at all of that! Past master in +the rare art of a true genius, that of producing illusion. + +Then he would make Cake try, rave at her, curse her, strike her, kill +himself laughing, drink some more and put her at it again. + +Night after night, almost comatose from the fatigue of a day that +began while it was still dark, she carried a heaped-up plate and a +full bottle to the lodger's room and sat down upon the dry-goods box +with the candle beside her on the floor. And, having thus secured her +welcome, night after night she walked with him among that greatest of +all throngs of soldiers and lovers, kings and cardinals, queens, +prostitutes and thieves. + +If the liquor was short in the bottle a dime's worth, the lesson was +curtailed. At first Cake tried to coax him. "Aw, c'mon, yuh Romeo on +th' street in Mantua." + +But the lodger was never so drunk that he made the slightest +concession. + +"Yes, I'm Romeo all right--the lad's there, never fear, gutter-snipe. +But--the bottle is not full." + +After that she never attempted to change his ruling. She was letter +perfect in the bitter lesson, and if the sale of papers did not bring +in enough to fill the bottle, she accepted the hard fact with the calm +of great determination and did not go near the lodger's room, but went +to bed instead. + +Perhaps it was these rare occasions of rest that kept her alive. + +After the lodger had been teaching her for several years her mother +died and was buried in the potters' field. Cake managed to keep two +rooms of the wretched flat, and no word of his landlady's demise +reached the lodger's drink-dulled ears. Otherwise Cake feared he might +depart, taking with him her one big chance to reach the light. You +see, she did not know the lodger. Things might have been different if +she had. But he was never a human being to her, even after she knew +the truth; only a symbol, a means to the great end. + +Her brothers went away--to the penitentiary and other places. One by +one the flood of life caught her sisters and swept them out, she did +not know to what. She never even wondered. She had not been taught to +care. She had never been taught anything. The knowledge that she must +be famous danced through her dreams like a will-o'-the-wisp; had grown +within her in the shape of a great pain that never ceased; only eased +a little as she strove mightily toward the goal. + +So she still sold papers, a homely, gawky, long-legged girl in ragged +clothes much too small for her, and slaved at Maverick's for the +lodger's nightly dole that he might teach her and she be famous. + +At first he was keen on the meat and drink--more especially the drink. +Later, gradually, a change came over him. Only Cake did not notice +this change. She was too set on being taught so she could become +famous. At first the lodger was all oaths and blows with shouts of +fierce, derisive laughter intermingled. + +"My God!" he would cry. "If Noyes could only see this--if he only +could!" + +This Noyes, it appeared, was a man he furiously despised. When he was +in the third stage of drunkenness he would never teach Cake, but would +only abuse his enemies, and this Noyes invariably came in for a +fearful shower of epithets. It was he as Cake heard it, sitting +huddled on the old dry-goods box, the candle casting strange shadows +into her gaunt, unchildlike face, who was the cause of the lodger's +downfall. But for Noyes--with a blasting array of curses before the +name--he would now have what Cake so ardently strove for: Fame. But +for Noyes he would be acting in his own theatre, riding in his own +limousine, wearing his own diamonds, entertaining his own friends upon +his own gold plate. + +When he was still too sober to take a really vital interest in the +teaching, he was a misanthrope, bitter and brutal, with an astonishing +command of the most terrible words. At these times he made the gravest +charges against Noyes; charges for which the man should be made +accountable, even to such a one as the lodger. One evening Cake sat +watching him, waiting for this mood to pass so that the teaching might +begin. + +"If I was youse," she said at last, "and hated a guy like youse do +this Noyes, I'd fetch 'im a insult that'd get under his skin right. +I'd make evens wit' 'im, I would, not jes' talk about it." + +"Oh, you would!" remarked the lodger. He took a long pull at the +bottle. "You be _Queen Kathrine_, you alley-cat." + +So the nightly teaching began with the usual accompaniment of curses, +blows, and shouts of brutal laughter. But when it was over and the +lodger was sinking to the third stage that came inevitably with the +bottom of the bottle, he kept looking at his pupil queerly. + +"Oh, you would! Oh, you would, would you?" He said it over and over +again. "Oh, you would, would you?" + +And after that he was changed by the leaven of hate her suggestion had +started working in him. For one thing, he took a far greater interest +in the teaching for its own sake. Of that much the girl herself was +thankfully aware. And she thought, Cake did, that the dull husk of +self was wearing away from that part of her destined to be famous, +wearing away at last. The lodger's curses changed in tone as the +nights filed past, the blows diminished, the laughter became far more +frequent. + +Cake, as rapidly reaching the end of her girlhood as the lodger was +nearing the limits of his drink-sapped strength, redoubled her +efforts. It was very plain to her that he could not live much longer; +death in delirium tremens was inevitable. After that, she decided, +school would not keep, and she must try her fortune. + +Then one night in the midst of the potion scene when she felt herself +_Juliet_, soft, passionate, and beautiful, far away in the land of +tragic romance, she heard the lodger crying: + +"Stop--my God, stop! How do you get that way? Don't you know there's a +limit to human endurance, alley-cat?" + +He was fairly toppling from the dry-goods box. His eyes were popping +from his head, and in the flickering candlelight his face looked +strained and queer. In after life she became very familiar with that +expression; she saw it on all types of faces. In fact, she came to +expect to see it there. But she did not know how to analyze it then. +She glimpsed it only as a tribute to her performance, so immense that +she had to be halted in the middle, and felt correspondingly elated. +She was exactly right in her deduction. But Cake and the lodger +advanced along very different lines of thought. + +The next night he was shaky, came all too quickly to the teaching +period, and left it as speedily. Then he retired to the flock mattress +in the corner of the room and called Cake to bring the candle. + +"I've an idea I'm going to leave you, gutter-snipe," he said, "and I +doubt if I ever see you again. The end of life cancels all bands. And +the one that bound you to me, alley-cat, was very material, very +material indeed. The kind that runs easily in and out of a black +bottle." He laughed. + +"You Shakespearian actress!" He laughed again, longer this time. "But +I have not forgotten you," he resumed. "In addition to all that I have +taught you, I am going to leave you something. Here," he fumbled out a +square envelope and Cake took it between her hands. "Take that to the +address written on it," said the lodger, "and see what the gentleman +does." He began to laugh again. + +"Noyes----" he cried and broke off to curse feebly but volubly. Cake +did not even glance in his direction. She went away out of the room, +too utterly stunned with fatigue to look at the letter in her dingy +hand. + +The next morning the lodger was dead. He was buried in the potters' +field quite near his old landlady. + +This second funeral, such as it was, closed the shelter that Cake, for +want of a more fitting name, had called home. She decided to put all +her years of bitterly acquired learning to the test. And as she best +knew what she had bought and paid for it she felt she could not fail. +She unfolded from a scrap of newspaper the envelope presented her by +the lodger and carefully studied the address. + +Cake could both read and write, having acquired these arts from a +waiter at Maverick's, who also helped her steal the broken meats with +which she secured her artistic education. And, watching the steady +disappearance of the food, this waiter marvelled that she got no +fatter as she grew upward, hovering about in hope of becoming her +lover if she ever did. But even if that miracle had ever been +accomplished the helpful waiter would still have waited. Cake's +conception of a real lady was _Queen Katherine_; _Cleopatra_ her dream +of a dangerous, fascinating one. And what chance in the world for +either with a waiter? + +Cake read the name and address upon the envelope freely as the hopeful +bread-caster had taught her: Arthur Payson Noyes, National Theatre. +With the simplicity and dispatch that characterized her, she went to +that place. To the man reposing somnolently in the broken old chair +beside the door she said she had a letter for Mr. Noyes. The +doorkeeper saw it was a large, swanking envelope with very polite +writing. He straightened up in the chair long enough to pass her in, +and then slumped down again. + +Cake found herself in a queer, barnlike place, half room and half +hallway, feebly illumined by a single electric bulb suspended above +the door. Very composedly she looked about her. If Mr. Arthur Noyes +lived in this place, he was one of her own kind and there was no need +for any palpitation on her part. Anyway, she was looking solely for +her chance to become famous, and she brought to this second stage of +her search the same indifference to externals, the same calm, +unfaltering courage as she had to the first. + +"Now, then," said a voice briskly. "Say what you want. We have not +advertised for any extra people. At least--not this year." + +A short, stout man emerged from the shadows. He was very blond, with +his hair cut snapper, and his pale eyes popped perpetual astonishment. +She returned his look steadily and well. She knew she was born to be +famous, and fame has a certain beauty of dignity utterly lacking in +mere success. + +"I am not an extra person," she replied. "I have come to see Mr. +Noyes," and she displayed once more the large square envelope, her +legacy from the lodger, the knife with which she proposed to shuck +from its rough shell that oyster, the world. + +The man looked even more astonished, if the thing could have been +accomplished, and regarded her keenly--stared. + +"Come this way," he said. + +Cake followed him along a narrow passage that turned off to the right, +down five steps, across a narrow entry, up three more steps--although +it seems quite silly, she never in her life forgot the odd number of +those worn steps--and halted before a closed door. On this the fat man +knocked once and opened immediately without waiting. + +"Someone I think you'll see," he said, standing between Cake and the +interior. There came to her a murmur over his chunky shoulder. + +"She has a letter from----" The fat man dropped his voice and mumbled. +"Positive," he said, aloud, after a pause broken only by the vague +murmur within the room. "I'd know his fist anywhere. Yes." Then he +pushed the door open wide, stood aside, and looked at Cake. "Walk in," +he said. + +She did so. Beautifully. Poems have been written about her walk. Two +kinds. + +The room she entered was square, with concrete floor and rough walls. +But Cake did not notice the room for three reasons: The rug on the +floor, four pictures on the walls, and the man who looked at her as +she entered. + +They gazed at each other, Cake and this man, with sudden, intense +concentration. He was a genius in his line, she as surely one in hers. +And, instinctively, to that strange, bright flame each rendered +instant homage. What he saw he described long afterward when a million +voices were vociferously raised in a million different descriptions. +What she saw she likened in her mind to a dark sheath from which a +sword flashed gloriously. That sword was his soul. + +"He says your name is Plain Cake--is that true?" He referred to the +lodger's letter held open in his hand, and by that she knew he was +Arthur Noyes. And great. That last she had not needed any telling. + +"Yes," she replied. + +"He says you are the right Shakespearian actress for me," Noyes +referred to the letter again. "Do you know Shakespeare?" + +"All the way," said Cake. It was not quite the answer _Queen +Katherine_ might have made, perhaps, but her manner was perfect. + +"Come here"--he pointed to the centre of the rapturous rug--"and do +the potion scene for me." Cake stepped forward. + +Perhaps you have been so fortunate as to see her. If so you know that +to step forward is her only preparation. She was poised, she was gone. +Then suddenly she heard the lodger's voice crying: + +"Stop--my God, stop! How do you get that way? Don't you know there's a +limit to human endurance, alley-cat?" + +She broke off, staring confusedly into space just the height of his +debauched old figure crouching on the dry-goods box. Then with swift +realization of her surroundings, her vision cleared. It was the fat +man in the checked suit she saw leaning helplessly against the closed +door. His jaw sagged, his eyes were frightfully popped, his face wore +the same strained, queer look she had come to see so often on the +lodger's, and he made weak little flapping gestures with his hands. + +Cake looked then at Arthur Noyes. His face was white as the letter in +his hand, his dark eyes were dilated with a look of dreadful +suffering, the numb, unconscious reaction of one who has received a +mortal blow. + +"Come here, Crum," he cried as if there was no one else in the room. +And Crum fairly tottered forward. + +"What do you make of this?" asked Noyes, while Cake stood and +listened. + +"I--I--" stammered Crum exhaustedly. "My God," he groaned, "it's too +much for me. And training!" + +"Oh, trained," Cake heard Noyes say. "Such training as only he could +give. Years of it, that's plain. And then to send her to me. A +Shakespearean actress for me! To insult me like that--" + +"It's too much for me, Boss," said Crum again. "Still--Oh--oh, my!" +His back was turned, but Cake saw his whole body shake. + +"Telephone Meier," exclaimed Noyes suddenly. + +"Meier?" Crum became immediately composed, and Cake saw that he was +tremendously surprised. "You don't mean that you're going to--After +this? Why, she's in the know. Look at her. It's perfect!" + +And they both turned and looked at Cake standing unconscious and +serene on the other side of the room. You who have seen her know just +how perfect the pose was. + +"It _is_ perfect," Noyes said. "I'd be a pretty poor sport if I did +not acknowledge that." Then his voice dropped and Cake only caught +snatches here and there. "... such genius ... once in a century ... +get even with him in a way he least expects ... wipe off the slate +entirely ... no comeback to my play ... let him see that for himself. +Call Meier." Then he turned to Cake. + +"Sit down, please," he said courteously. "I have sent for a man who +may give you an engagement." + +She returned his gaze so quietly that he was puzzled. About her was +neither nervous anticipation nor flighty vivacity. The actions of her +audience of two left her in-curious and calm. You see, she was used to +the lodger. Also she had worked to be famous so long that all the +flowery borders of self were worn down to the keen edge of doing. Of +Plain Cake she thought not at all. But then, she never had. Only of +the light at the end of the passage that now loomed so bright to her +watching eyes. + +It seemed only a minute before Noyes spoke again: "This is Mr. Meier." +He regarded her shrewdly all the time. + +Cake bowed to Mr. Meier, a fat, gaudy gentleman with thick, hairy +hands. And Mr. Meier looked at Noyes and shook his head. She realized +they had already been talking together. + +"Never before," Mr. Meier said. + +"If you will repeat the potion scene," Arthur Noyes suggested. "This +time, I trust, you will not be interrupted," he added politely. + +And Cake stepped once more into that rich orgy of emotion. This time, +though dimly aware of noise and a confusion of shouting, she carried +the scene through to the end. "Romeo, I come! This do I drink to +thee." She lay for a moment where she had fallen close to the heavenly +colours of the rug. + +"Goo-hood Gaw-hud!" gasped Mr. Meier, and Cake sat up. + +She saw he was rather collapsed upon a chair near which he had been +standing up when she began. His fat face was purple, and tears stood +in his eyes. But Arthur Noyes had not changed. White, with that look +of mortal hurt, he still stood straight and slim against the table. + +"You cannot offer her less than two hundred a week to begin," he said +with the same air of being alone with Mr. Meier. + +"No, oh, no, no, no, no!" sighed Mr. Meier, wiping his eyes. + +He rose and bowed to Cake with the queerest respect, still wiping his +eyes with the back of his thick, hairy hands. It was a striking +commentary upon her years of training that both of these men, +successful from long and hard experience, paid her the compliment of +thinking her an old hand at the game. + +"Mine is the Imperial Theatre, Miss," said Meier. "You should be there +to-night by seven o'clock. It ain't necessary we should rehearse. No, +oh, no, no, no, no! And now, perhaps"--he looked her up and down, +oddly--"perhaps I can take you to your--hotel?" + +Cake looked him back, serene in her belief in what the lodger had +taught her. + +"I'll be there at seven," she said. "No, thank you." She walked out +and across into a small park where she sat until the appointed time. + +Then she went to the stage entrance of the Imperial Theatre, presented +the card Mr. Meier had given her, and entered. Once inside she was +taken to a dressing room by a fat, comfortable, middle-aged woman who +seemed to be waiting for her. After a very short and, to Cake, +tranquil period, Mr. Meier bustled in. + +"Of course, Miss, you know this is a Revue," he explained, rubbing his +hands with a deference that Cake shed utterly, because she did not +know it was there. + +She nodded, accepting his statement. "We make 'em laugh here," said +Mr. Meier. Again Cake nodded; she knew exactly as much about the show +as she did before. "You close the second act; it's the best place for +you. Leafy, here, will help you dress." + +Cake sat still while Leafy dressed her, very hushed and still. The +light blazed so near after all these hard, lean years of pursuit, +years in which the little affairs of life, like the business of +growing from a child to a woman, had simply passed her by. Of that +Urge to be famous she was even more burningly aware; herself she did +not know at all. + +Mr. Meier came and took her by the hand. His fat face was pale and +sweating, he seemed almost awestruck by Cake's calm. He drew her out +of the dressing room and through a crowd of people, men and women with +painted faces, some beautifully, some extravagantly and strangely +dressed. They all stared. One woman shook her head. A man said: +"Search me! I never saw _her_ before." + +Then Mr. Meier thrust her out in the face of a bright light. "Begin," +he said hoarsely. "Walk over there and begin." + +Quietly Cake obeyed. She had walked right into the bright light that +had drawn her so hard and so long. Of course it was time for her to +begin. And with this bright light in her face, which soon became to +her the candle in that dark room left so far behind, she fared away to +the magic land of beautiful make-believe. + +And only when _Juliet_, that precocious child, sank down poisoned did +she become aware of the uproar about her. The shouts of the lodger, +"Stop--my God, stop! How do you get that way?" augmented a million +times. It was this she heard. + +Slowly Cake lifted herself on her hands, dazedly she peered through +the heart of the great light that had caused her such suffering and +that she had followed faithfully so bitterly long. On the other side +she saw faces, rows and rows of them mounting up to the very roof. +Faces laughing; faces convulsed, streaming with tears; faces with eyes +fixed and wearing that same queer, strained look she had noticed +before; hundreds of faces topping each other in semicircular rows, all +different but all alike in that they were all laughing. + +She rose to her knees and rested there on all fours--staring. + +Laughter! A great clapping of hands rolled about her like thunder, +dying down and rising again to even greater volume. Cries of "Go on," +assailed her ears, mingled with, "Stop, stop! I can't bear it!" + +The curtain fell before her, blotting out the vision of those faces, +making the uproar slightly dimmer. Mr. Meier advanced and lifted her +to her feet. He moved weakly, exhausted with mirth. + +"Even Noyes," he gasped. "He--he can't help it. Oh, my goo-hood +Gaw-hud!" + +Cake looked away from him to the men and women that thronged about +her. The same faces that had turned to her such a short while ago; but +now, how different! + +"Oh, don't criticise," one woman cried. "Hand it to her! She can't be +beat. She's the one that comes once in a century to show the rest of +us what really can be done." + +"Meier," shouted a man. "Meier--she'll have to go back, Meier; she's +stopped the show." + +Quiet and very still, Cake drew away. + +It seemed to her only a moment later that Leafy touched her arm. + +"Mr. Meier has taken a suite for you here in this hotel," she said. +"Can't you eat a little, Miss?" + +Eat? She had never had enough to eat in her life. Her life? She had +spent her life securing food for the lodger that he might teach her to +be famous. Leafy lifted the spoon of hot soup to her lips and +immediately she drank--she who had never had enough to eat in her +life. Morsel by morsel from the bountifully filled table the kindly +dresser fed her. Obediently she ate, and the hot, rich food stimulated +her to swifter, more agonizing thought. + +Then, for the first time, she saw Arthur Noyes standing with his back +against a closed door. She read pity in his eyes, comprehension, great +wonder, and what she did not know then was the love that came to a +rare perfection between them and has never faded--and has no place in +this story. + +"Will you tell me," he said, "what your name is, where your home is, +and who are those that love you there?" + +Then he broke off and shrank a little against the door. "Oh, don't," +he protested. + +Yet she had only looked at him and smiled. But it came to her keenly +in her new awareness that his questions covered the whole of a woman's +life: Her name, her home, and the ones that loved her there. While +she--she had no name, she did not even know the lodger's name. She +looked down with strange astonishment at her grown-up figure, her +woman's hands. She saw herself a ragged, gaunt, bushy-headed child +moving on a tight rope above a dark abyss, intent only upon a luminous +globe floating just out of reach ahead of her, that she stretched out +for eagerly with both her hands. Suddenly the lovely bubble burst and +the child was a woman, falling and falling among rows of convulsed, +shining white faces to the sound of gargantuan laughter. + +"You tell me," Arthur Noyes pleaded gently. + +And she did so very simply and beautifully. She did know Shakespeare; +it was the only English that she had ever been taught. So Noyes heard +how she became an instrument in the hands of the man who hated him +mortally, and owed her debut and her terrible awakening to what he +considered the only sporting answer to that insult. While he listened +he pondered, awestruck, upon the fact that out of all this muck and +blackness, the degradation of hate by the lodger, the refinement of +hate by himself, had flowered that rarest of all human creatures--one +that could make the whole world laugh. + +"He always hated me," he said. "I told him he had traded his genius +for drink, and he never forgave me. Where is he now?" + +"Now?" Cake looked up at him in startled wonder. It came over her +suddenly that he counted upon the lodger's being in the Imperial +Theatre that night. + +"Now?" she repeated. "Why, he is dead." + +It took Noyes a minute to recover. "What will you do?" he asked her. +"Will you go on from this start, continue this--this sort of success?" +He felt it the basest cruelty, in the face of her story, to say it was +the only kind she was ever destined to make. He waited for her answer, +wondering, and a little awestruck. It seemed to him they had come to +the supreme test of her genius. + +And she looked up at him with such sadness and such mirth--such +tragic, humorous appreciation of the darkness in which she had been +born, the toilsome way she had travelled to the Great Light and what +it actually revealed when she arrived. + +"I will go on from this success," she said. Involuntarily she raised +her hand to her breast. "I must, since it is the only way for me. You +see," with a humour far more touching than the saddest tears, "I must +be famous." + +And she smiled that smile that hurt him, the smile the world loves and +will give anything to see. + +The most famous funmaker of her time looked away from the bright river +fleeting beyond the trees to her giggling, half-terrified visitors. + +"Fame," she said, "is a secret that cannot be told. It must be +discovered by the seeker. Let me offer you tea as a substitute." + + + +MUMMERY + +By THOMAS BEER + +From _Saturday Evening Post_ + + +On Monday Mrs. Egg put her husband on the east-bound express with many +orders. He was not to annoy Adam by kissing him when they met, if they +met in public. He was to let Adam alone in the choice of civil dress, +if Adam wanted to change his naval costume in New York. He was not to +get lost in Brooklyn, as he had done before. He was to visit the +largest moving-picture theatres and report the best films on his +return. She made sure that Egg had her written list of lesser commands +safe in his wallet, then folded him to her bosom, sniffed, and patted +him up the steps of the coach. + +A red-haired youth leaned through an open window and inquired, "Say, +lady, would you mind tellin' me just what you weigh?" + +"I ain't been on the scales in years, bub," said Mrs. Egg equably; +"not since about when you was born. Does your mamma ever wash out your +mouth with soap?" + +An immediate chorus of laughter broke from the platform loungers. The +train jerked forward. The youth pulled in his head. Mrs. Egg stood +puffing triumphantly with her hands on her hips. + +"It's a shame," the baggage-master told her, "that a lady can't be +kind of--kind of----" + +"Fat," said Mrs. Egg; "and bein' tall makes it worse. All the Packers +'ve always been tall. When we get fat we're holy shows. But if that +kid's mother's done her duty by him he'd keep his mouth shut." + +The dean of the loungers put in, "Your papa was always skinny, +Myrtle." + +"I can't remember him much," Mrs. Egg panted, "but he looks skinny in +his pictures. Well, I got to get home. There's a gentleman coming over +from Ashland to look at a bull." + +She trod the platform toward the motor at the hitching rails and +several loungers came along gallantly. Mrs. Egg cordially thanked them +as she sank into the driving seat, settled her black straw hat, and +drove off. + +Beholding two of her married daughters on the steps of the drug store, +she stopped the car and shouted: "Hey, girls, the fleet's gettin' in +to-morrow. Your papa's gone to meet Dammy. I just shoved him on the +train. By gee! I forgot to tell him he was to fetch home--no, I wrote +that down--well, you come out to supper Wednesday night." + +"But can Dammy get discharged all in one day?" a daughter asked. + +Mrs. Egg had no patience with such imbecility. She snapped, "Did you +think they'd discharge him a foot at a time, Susie?" and drove on up +the street, where horsechestnuts were ready to bloom, appropriately, +since Adam was fond of the blossoms. She stopped the car five times to +tell the boys that Adam would be discharged tomorrow, and made a sixth +stop at the candy shop, where a clerk brought out a chocolate ice +cream with walnut sauce. He did this mechanically. Mrs. Egg beamed at +him, although the fellow was a newcomer and didn't know Adam. + +"My boy'll be home Wednesday," she said, giving the dish back. + +"Been in the Navy three-four years, ain't he?" + +Mrs. Egg sighed. "April 14, 1917. He was twenty-one las' week, so he +gets discharged soon as the fleet hits New York. My gee, think of +Dammy being twenty-one!" + +She drove on, marvelling at time, and made her seventh stop at the +moving-picture theatre. The posters of the new feature film looked +dull. The heavily typed list of the current-events weekly took her +sharp eye. She read, "Rome Celebrates Anniversary--Fleet Sails from +Guantanamo," and chuckled. She must drive in to see the picture of the +fleet. She hadn't time to stop now, as lunch would be ready. +Anyhow, night was the time for movies. She drove on, and the brick +business buildings gave out into a dribble of small frame cottages, +mostly shabby. Edith Webb was coming out of her father's gate. + +Mrs. Egg made an eighth halt and yelled, "Hey, Edie, Dammy'll be home +Wednesday night," for the pleasure of seeing the pretty girl flush. +Adam had taken Edith to several dances at Christmas. Mrs. Egg chuckled +as the favoured virgin went red, fingering the top of the gatepost. +Edith would do. In fact, Edith was suitable, entirely. + +"Well, I'm glad," the girl said. "Oh, say, was it our house or the +next one you used to live in? Papa was wondering last night." + +"It was yours," Mrs. Egg declared; "and thank your stars you've got a +better father than I had, Edie. Yes, right here's where I lived when I +was your age and helped Mamma do sewin', and sometimes didn't get +enough to eat. I wonder if that's why--well, anyhow, it's a +solid-built house. I expect Dammy'll call you up Wednesday night." She +chuckled immensely and drove on again. + +From the edge of town she passed steadily a quarter of a mile between +her husband's fields. His cows were grazing in the pastures. His apple +trees were looking well. The red paint of his monstrous water tanks +soothed her by their brilliance. A farmhand helped her out of the car +and she took the shallow veranda steps one at a time, a little moody, +wishing that her mother was still alive to see Adam's glory. However, +there were six photographs of Adam about the green sitting room in +various uniforms, and these cheered her moment of sorrow. They weren't +altogether satisfactory. His hard size didn't show in single poses. He +looked merely beautiful. Mrs. Egg sniffled happily, patting the view +of Adam in white duck. The enlarged snapshot portrayed him sitting +astride a turret gun. It was the best of the lot, although he looked +taller in wrestling tights, but that picture worried her. She had +always been afraid that he might kill someone in a wrestling match. +She took the white-duck photograph to lunch and propped it against the +pitcher of iced milk. + +"It'll be awful gettin' him clothes," she told the cook; "except +shoes. Thank God, his feet ain't as big as the rest of him! Say, +remind me to make a coconut cake in the morning in the big pan. He +likes 'em better when they're two three days old so the icin's kind of +spread into the cake. I'd of sent a cake on with his papa, but Mr. Egg +always drops things so much. It does seem----" The doorbell rang. Mrs. +Egg wiped her mouth and complained, "Prob'ly that gentleman from +Ashland to look at that bull calf. It does seem a shame folks drop in +at mealtimes. Well, go let him in Sadie." + +The cook went out through the sitting room and down the hall. Mrs. Egg +patted her black hair, sighed at her third chop and got up. The cook's +voice mingled with a drawling man's tone. Mrs. Egg drank some milk and +waited an announcement. The cook came back into the dining room and +Mrs. Egg set down the milk glass swiftly, saying, "Why, Sadie!" + +"He--he says he's your father, Mis' Egg." + +After a moment Mrs. Egg said, "Stuff and rubbidge! My father ain't +been seen since 1882. What's the fool look like?" + +"Awful tall--kinda skinny--bald----" + +A tremor went down Mrs. Egg's back. She walked through the sitting +room and into the sunny hall. The front door was open. Against the +apple boughs appeared a black length, topped by a gleam. The sun +sparkled on the old man's baldness. A shivering memory recalled that +her father's hair had been thin. His dark face slid into a mass of +twisting furrows as Mrs. Egg approached him. + +He whispered, "I asked for Myrtle Packer down round the station. An +old feller said she was married to John Egg. You ain't Myrtle?" + +"I'm her," said Mrs. Egg. + +Terrible cold invaded her bulk. She laced her fingers across her +breast and gazed at the twisting face. + +The whisper continued: "They tell me your mamma's in the cem'tery, +Myrtle. I've come home to lay alongside of her. I'm grain for the grim +reaper's sickle. In death we sha'n't be divided; and I've walked half +the way from Texas. Don't expect you'd want to kiss me. You look awful +like her, Myrtle." + +Tears rolled out of his eyes down his hollowed cheeks, which seemed +almost black between the high bones. His pointed chin quivered. He +made a wavering gesture of both hands and sat down on the floor. +Behind Mrs. Egg the cook sobbed aloud. A farmhand stood on the grass +by the outer steps, looking in. Mrs. Egg shivered. The old man was +sobbing gently. His head oscillated and its polish repelled her. He +had abandoned her mother in 1882. + +"Mamma died back in 1910," she said. "I dunno--well----" + +The sobbing was thin and weak, like an ailing baby's murmur. It +pounded her breast. + +She stared at the ancient dusty suitcase on the porch and said, "Come +up from Texas, have you?" + +"There's no jobs lef for a man seventy-six years of age, Myrtle, +except dyin.' I run a saloon in San Antonio by the Plaza. Walked from +Greenville, Mississippi, to Little Rock. An old lady give me carfare, +there, when I told her I was goin' home to my wife that I'd treated so +bad. There's plenty Christians in Arkansaw. And they've pulled down +the old Presbyterian church your mamma and I was married in." + +"Yes; last year. Sadie, take Mr. Packer's bag up to the spare room. +Stop cryin', Papa." + +She spoke against her will. She could not let him sit on the floor +sobbing any longer. His gleaming head afflicted her. She had a queer +emotion. This seemed most unreal. The gray hall wavered like a +flashing view in a film. + +"The barn'd be a fitter place for me, daughter. I've been a----" + +"That's all right, Papa. You better go up and lie down, and Sadie'll +fetch you up some lunch." + +His hand was warm and lax. Mrs. Egg fumbled with it for a moment and +let it fall. He passed up the stairs, drooping his head. Mrs. Egg +heard the cook's sympathy explode above and leaned on the wall and +thought of Adam coming home Wednesday night. She had told him a +thousand times that he mustn't gamble or mistreat women or chew +tobacco "like your Grandfather Packer did." And here was Grandfather +Packer, ready to welcome Adam home! + +The farmhand strolled off, outside, taking the seed of this news. It +would be in town directly. + +"Oh, Dammy," she said, "and I wanted everything nice for you!" + +In the still hall her one sob sounded like a shout. Mrs. Egg marched +back to the dining room and drank a full glass of milk to calm +herself. + +"Says he can't eat nothin', Mis' Egg," the cook reported, "but he'd +like a cup of tea. It's real pitiful. He's sayin' the Twenty-third +Psalm to himself. Wasted to a shadder. Asked if Mr. Egg was as +Christian an' forbearin' as you. Mebbe he could eat some buttered +toast." + +"Try and see, Sadie; and don't bother me. I got to think." + +She thought steadily, eating cold rice with cream and apple jelly. Her +memory of Packer was slim. He had spanked her for spilling ink on his +diary. He had been a carpenter. His brothers were all dead. He had run +off with a handsome Swedish servant girl in 1882, leaving her mother +to sew for a living. What would the county say? Mrs. Egg writhed and +recoiled from duty. Perhaps she would get used to the glittering bald +head and the thin voice. It was all most unreal. Her mother had so +seldom talked of the runaway that Mrs. Egg had forgotten him as +possibly alive. And here he was! What did one do with a prodigal +father? With a jolt she remembered that there would be roast veal for +supper. + +At four, while she was showing the Ashland dairyman the bull calf, +child of Red Rover VII and Buttercup IV, Mrs. Egg saw her oldest +daughter's motor sliding across the lane from the turnpike. It held +all three of her female offspring. Mrs. Egg groaned, drawling +commonplaces to her visitor, but he stayed a full hour, admiring the +new milk shed and the cider press. When she waved him good-bye from +the veranda she found her daughters in a stalwart group by the +sitting-room fireplace, pink eyed and comfortably emotional. They +wanted to kiss her. Mrs. Egg dropped into her particular mission chair +and grunted, batting off embraces. + +"I suppose it's all over town? It'd travel fast. Well, what d'you +think of your grandpapa, girls?" + +"Don't talk so loud, Mamma," one daughter urged. + +Another said, "He's so tired he went off asleep while he was telling +us how he nearly got hung for shooting a man in San Antonio." + +Mrs. Egg reached for the glass urn full of chocolate wafers on the +table and put one in her mouth. She remarked, "I can see you've been +having a swell time, girls. A sinner that repenteth----" + +"Why, Mamma!" + +"Listen," said Mrs. Egg; "if there's going to be any forgiving done +around here, it's me that'll do it. You girls was raised with all the +comforts of home and then some. You never helped anybody do plain +sewin' at fifteen cents a hour nor had to borrow money to get a decent +dress to be married in. This thing of hearin' how he shot folks and +kept a saloon in Texas is good as a movie to you. It don't set so easy +on me. I'm old and tough. And I'll thank you to keep your mouths shut. +Here's Dammy comin' home Wednesday out of the Navy, and all this piled +up on me. I don't want every lazyjake in the country pilin' in here to +hear what a bad man he's been, and dirty the carpets up. Dammy likes +things clean. I'm a better Christian than a lot of folks I can think +of, but this looks to me like a good deal of a bread-and-butter +repentance. Been devourin' his substance in Texas and come home +to----" + +"Oh, Mamma, your own papa!" + +"That's as may be. My own mamma busted her eyesight and got heart +trouble for fifteen mortal years until your papa married me and gave +her a home for her old age, and never a whimper out of her, neither. +She's where she can't tell me what she thinks of him and I dunno what +to think. But I'll do my own thinkin' until Dammy and your papa gets +back and tell me what they think. This is your papa's place--and +Dammy's. It ain't a boardin' house for----" + +"Oh, Mamma!" + +"And it's time for my nap." + +Susan, the oldest daughter, made a tremulous protest. "He's +seventy-six years old, Mamma, and whatever he's done----" + +"For a young woman that talked pretty loud of leavin' her husband when +he came home kind of lit up from a club meetin'----" Mrs. Egg broke +in. Susan collapsed and drew her gloves on hastily. Mrs. Egg ate +another chocolate wafer and resumed: "This here's my business--and +your papa's and Dammy's. I've got it in my head that that movie weekly +picture they had of Buttercup Four with her price wrote out must have +been shown in San Antonio. And you'll recollect that your papa and me +stood alongside her while that fresh cameraman took the picture. If I +was needin' a meal and saw I'd got a well-off son-in-law----" + +"Mamma," said Susan, "you're perfectly cynical." + +Mrs. Egg pronounced, "I'm forty-five years of age," and got up. + +The daughters withdrew. Mrs. Egg covered the chocolate urn with a +click and went into the kitchen. Two elderly farmhands went out of the +porch door as she entered. + +Mrs. Egg told the cook: "Least said, soon'st mended, Sadie. Give me +the new cream. I guess I might's well make some spice cookies. Be +pretty busy Wednesday. Dammy likes 'em a little stale." + +"Mis' Egg," said the cook, "if this was Dammy that'd kind of strayed +off and come home sick in his old age----" + +"Give me the cream," Mrs. Egg commanded, and was surprised by the +fierceness of her own voice. "I don't need any help seein' my duty, +thanks!" + +At six o'clock her duty became highly involved. A friend telephoned +from town that the current-events weekly at the moving-picture theatre +showed Adam in the view of the dreadnoughts at Guantánamo. + +"Get out," said Adam's mother. "You're jokin'! ... Honest? Well, it's +about time! What's he doin'? ... Wrestlin'? My! Say, call up the +theatre and tell Mr. Rubenstein to save me a box for the evenin' +show." + +"I hear your father's come home," the friend insinuated. + +"Yes," Mrs. Egg drawled, "and ain't feelin' well and don't need +comp'ny. Be obliged if you'd tell folks that. He's kind of sickly. So +they've got Dammy in a picture. It's about time!" The tremor ran down +her back. She said "Good-night, dearie," and rang off. + +The old man was standing in the hall doorway, his head a vermilion +ball in the crossed light of the red sunset. + +"Feel better, Papa?" + +"As good as I'm likely to feel in this world again. You look real like +your mother settin' there, Myrtle." The whisper seemed likely to ripen +as a sob. + +Mrs. Egg answered, "Mamma had yellow hair and never weighed more'n a +hundred and fifty pounds to the day of her death. What'd you like for +supper?" + +He walked slowly along the room, his knees sagging, twitching from end +to end. She had forgotten how tall he was. His face constantly +wrinkled. It was hard to see his eyes under their long lashes. Mrs. +Egg felt the pity of all this in a cold way. + +She said, when he paused: "That's Adam, there, on the mantelpiece, +Papa. Six feet four and a half he is. It don't show in a picture." + +"The Navy's rough kind of life, Myrtle. I hope he ain't picked up bad +habits. The world's full of pitfalls." + +"Sure," said Mrs. Egg, shearing the whisper. "Only Dammy ain't got any +sense about cards. I tried to teach him pinochle, but he never could +remember none of it, and the hired men always clean him out shakin' +dice. He can't even beat his papa at checkers. And that's an awful +thing to say of a bright boy!" + +The old man stared at the photograph and his forehead smoothed for a +breath. Then he sighed and drooped his chin. + +"If I'd stayed by right principles when I was young----" + +"D'you still keep a diary, Papa?" + +"I did used to keep a diary, didn't I? I'd forgotten that. When you +come to my age, Myrtle, you'll find yourself forgettin' easy. If I +could remember any good things I ever did----" + +The tears dripped from his jaw to the limp breast of his coat. Mrs. +Egg felt that he must be horrible, naked, like a doll carved of +coconut bark Adam had sent home from Havana. He was darker than Adam +even. In the twilight the hollows of his face were sheer black. The +room was gray. Mrs. Egg wished that the film would hurry and show +something brightly lit. + +The dreary whisper mourned, "Grain for the grim reaper's sickle, +that's what I am. Tares mostly. When I'm gone you lay me alongside +your mamma and----" + +"Supper's ready, Mis' Egg," said the cook. + +Supper was odious. He sat crumbling bits of toast into a bowl of hot +milk and whispering feeble questions about dead folk or the business +of the vast dairy farm. The girls had been too kind, he said. + +"I couldn't help but feel that if they knew all about me----" + +"They're nice sociable girls," Mrs. Egg panted, dizzy with dislike of +her veal. She went on: "And they like a good cry, never havin' had +nothin' to cry for." + +His eyes opened wide in the lamplight, gray brilliance sparkled. Mrs. +Egg stiffened in her chair, meeting the look. + +He wailed, "I gave you plenty to cry for, daughter." The tears hurt +her, of course. + +"There's a picture of Dammy in the movies," she gasped. "I'm goin' in +to see it. You better come. It'll cheer you, Papa." + +She wanted to recall the offer too late. In the car she felt chilly. +He sank into a corner of the tonneau like a thrown laprobe. Mrs. Egg +talked loudly about Adam all the way to town and shouted directions to +the driving farmhand in order that the whisper might not start. The +manager of the theatre had saved a box for her and came to usher her +to its discomfort. But all her usual pleasure was gone. She nodded +miserably over the silver-gilt rail at friends. She knew that people +were craning from far seats. Her bulk and her shadow effaced the man +beside her. He seemed to cower a little. At eight the show began, and +Mrs. Egg felt darkness as a blessing, although the shimmer from the +screen ran like phosphorus over the bald head, and a flash of white +between two parts of the advertisement showed the dark wrinkles of his +brow. + +"Like the pictures, Papa?" + +"I don't see well enough to take much pleasure in 'em, Myrtle." + +A whirling globe announced the beginning of the weekly. Mrs. Egg +forgot her burdens. She was going to see Adam. She took a peppermint +from the bag in her hand and set her teeth in its softness, applauded +a view of the President and the arrival of an ambassador in New York. +Then the greenish letters declared: "The fleet leaves Guantánamo +training ground," and her eyes hurt with staring. The familiar lines +of anchored battleships appeared with a motion of men in white on the +gray decks. The screen showed a race of boats which melted without +warning to a mass of white uniforms packed about the raised square of +a roped-in Platform below guns and a turret clouded with men. Two +tanned giants in wrestling tights scrambled under the ropes. There was +a flutter of caps. + +"Oh!" said Mrs. Egg. "Oh!" + +She stood up. The view enlarged. Adam was plain as possible. He +grinned, too; straight from the screen at her. The audience murmured. +Applause broke out, Adam jerked his black head to his opponent--and +the view flicked off in some stupid business of admirals. Mrs. Egg sat +down and sobbed. + +"Was that Adam, daughter? The--the big feller with black hair?" + +"Yes," said Mrs. Egg; "yes." She was hot with rage against the makers +of pictures who'd taken him from her. It was a shame. She crammed four +peppermints into her mouth and groaned about them, "As if people +wouldn't rather look at some good wrestlin' than a lot of captains and +stuff!" + +"How long's the boy been in the Navy, Myrtle?" + +"April 14, 1917." + +The whisper restored her. Mrs. Egg yawned for an hour of nonsense +about a millionaire and his wife who was far too thin. Her father did +not speak, although he moved now and then. The show concluded. Mrs. +Egg lumbered wearily out to her car in the dull street and vaguely +listened to the whisper of old age. She couldn't pay attention. She +was going home to write the film company at length. This abuse of Adam +was intolerable. She told the driver so. The driver agreed. + +He reported, "I was settin' next to Miss Webb." + +"That's Dammy's girl, Papa. Go on, Sam. What did Edie say?" + +"Well," said the driver, "she liked seein' the kid. She cried, +anyhow." + +Mrs. Egg was charmed by the girl's good sense. The moon looked like a +quartered orange over the orchard. + +She sighed, "Well, he'll be home Wednesday night, anyhow. Edie ain't +old enough to get married yet. Hey, what's the house all lit up for? +Sadie ought to know better." + +She prepared a lecture for the cook. The motor shot up the drive into +a babble and halted at the steps. Someone immense rose from a chair +and leaped down the space in one stride. + +Adam said, "H'lo, Mamma," and opened the car door. + +Mrs. Egg squealed. The giant lifted her out of her seat and carried +her into the sitting room. The amazing muscles rose in the flat of his +back. She thought his overshirt ripped. The room spun. Adam fanned her +with his cap and grinned. + +"Worst of radiograms," he observed; "the boys say Papa went on to meet +me. Well, it'll give him a trip. Quit cryin', Mamma." + +"Oh, Dammy, and there ain't nothin' fit to eat in the house!" + +Adam grinned again. The farmhands dispersed at his nod. Mrs. Egg beat +down her sobs with both hands and decried the radio service that could +turn Sunday into Tuesday. Here was Adam, though, silently grinning, +his hands available, willing to eat anything she had in the pantry. +Mrs. Egg crowed her rapture in a dozen bursts. + +The whispering voice crept into a pause with, "You'll be wantin' to +talk to your boy, daughter. I'll go to bed, I guess." + +"Dammy," said Mrs. Egg, "this is----" + +Adam stopped rolling a cigarette and nodded to the shadow by the hall +door. He said, "How you? The boys told me you'd got here," and licked +the cigarette shut with a flash of his red tongue. He struck a match +on the blue coating of one lean thigh and lit the cigarette, then +stared at the shadow. Mrs. Egg hated the old man against reason as the +tears slid down the dark face. + +"Grain for the grim reaper's sickle, daughter. You'll be wantin' to +talk to your boy. I guess I'll say good-night." He faded into the +hall. + +"Well, come, let's see what there is to eat, Mamma," said Adam, and +pulled Mrs. Egg from her chair. + +He sat on the low ice chest in the pantry and ate chocolate cake. Mrs. +Egg uncorked pear cider and reached, panting, among apple-jelly +glasses. Adam seldom spoke. She didn't expect talk from him. He was +sufficient. He nodded and ate. The tanned surface of his throat +dimpled when he swallowed things. His small nose wrinkled when he +chewed. + +Mrs. Egg chattered confusedly. Adam grinned when she patted his smooth +hair and once said "Get out!" when she paused between two kisses to +assure him he was handsome. He had his father's doubts on the point +perhaps. He was not, she admitted, exactly beautiful. He was Adam, +perfect and hard as an oak trunk under his blue clothes. He finished +the chocolate cake and began to eat bread and apple jelly. + +He ate six slices and drank a mug of pear cider, then crossed his legs +and drawled, "Was a fellow on the _Nevada_ they called Frisco Cooley." + +"What about him, Dammy?" + +"Nothin'. He was as tall as me. Skinny, though. Used to imitate actors +in shows. Got discharged in 1919." + +"Was he a nice boy, Dammy?" + +"No," said Adam, and reached for the pear-cider bottle. He fell into +his usual calm and drank another mug of cider. Mrs. Egg talked of Edie +Webb. Adam grinned and kept his black eyes on the pantry ceiling. The +clock struck eleven. He said, "They called him Frisco Cooley 'cause he +came from San Francisco. He could wrinkle his face up like a monkey. +He worked in a gamblin' joint in San Francisco. That's him." Adam +jerked a thumb at the ceiling. + +"Dammy!" + +"That's him," said Adam. "It took me a time to think of him, but +that's him." + +Mrs. Egg fell back against the ice chest and squeaked: "You mean you +know this----" + +"Hush up, Mamma!" + +"But he walked part the way from San Antonio. He----" + +"He ain't your father," said Adam, "so don't cry. Is there any maple +sugar? The grub on the train was fierce." + +Mrs. Egg brought him the tin case of maple sugar. Adam selected a +chunk of the brown stuff and bit a lobe of it. He was silent. Mrs. Egg +marvelled at him. His sisters had hinted that he wasn't clever. She +stood in awe, although her legs ached. Adam finished the lump of maple +sugar and rose. He leaned on the shelves with his narrow waist curved +against them and studied a row of quince-preserve jars. His nose +wrinkled. + +He asked, "You been fumigatin'?" + +"Fumigatin'! Why, Dammy, there ain't been a disease in the house since +you had whoopin' cough." + +"Sulphur," Adam drawled. + +"Why, Dammy Egg! I never used sulphur for nothin' in my life!" + +He took a jar of preserves and ripped off the paraffin wafer that +covered the top. Then he set the jar aside and sat down on the floor. +Mrs. Egg watched him unlace his shoes. + +He commanded, "You sit still, Mamma. Be back in a minute." + +"Dammy, don't you go near that heathen!" + +"I ain't." + +He swung across the kitchen floor in two strides and bumped his head +on the top of the door. Mrs. Egg winced, but all her body seemed to +move after the boy. Shiverings tossed her. She lifted her skirts and +stepped after him. The veranda was empty. Adam had vanished, although +the moon covered the dooryard with silver. The woman stared and shook. +Then something slid down the nearest pillar and dropped like a black +column to the grass. Adam came up the steps and shoved Mrs. Egg back +to the pantry. + +He spread some quince preserve on a slab of bread and stated, "He's +sittin' up readin' a lot of old copybooks, kind of. Got oil all over +his head. It's hair remover. Sulphur in it." + +"How could you ever smell that far, Dammy?" + +"I wonder what's in those books?" Adam pondered. He sat cross-legged +on the ice chest and ate slowly for a time, then remarked, "You didn't +put up these quinces, Mamma." + +"No; they're Sadie's. Think of your noticin'!" + +"You got to teach Edie cookin'," he said. "She can't cook fit for a +Cuban. Lots of time, though. Now, Mamma, we can't let this goof stay +here all night. I guess he's a thief. I ain't goin' to let the folks +have a laugh on you. Didn't your father always keep a diary?" + +"Think of your rememberin' that, Dammy! Yes, always." + +"That's what Frisco's readin' up in. He's smart. Used to do im'tations +of actors and cry like a hose pipe. Spotted that. Where's the +strawb'ry jam?" + +"Right here, Dammy. Dammy, suppose he killed Papa somewheres off and +stole his diaries!" + +"Well," said Adam, beginning strawberry jam, "I thought of that. Mebbe +he did. I'd better find out. Y'oughtn't to kill folks even if they're +no good for nothin'." + +"I'll go down to the barn and wake some of the boys up," Mrs. Egg +hissed. + +"You won't neither, Mamma. This'd be a joke on you. I ain't goin' to +have folks sayin' you took this guy for your father. Fewer knows it, +the better. This is awful good jam." He grinned and pulled Mrs. Egg +down beside him on the chest. She forgot to be frightened, watching +the marvel eat. She must get larger jars for jam. He reflected: "You +always get enough to eat on a boat, but it ain't satisfyin'. Frisco +prob'ly uses walnut juice to paint his face with. It don't wash off. +Don't talkin' make a person thirsty?" + +"Wait till I get you some more cider, Dammy." + +Adam thoughtfully drank more pear cider and made a cigarette. +Wonderful ideas must be moving behind the blank brown of his forehead. +His mother adored him and planned a recital of his acts to Egg, who +had accused Adam of being slow witted. + +She wanted to justify herself, and muttered: "I just felt he wasn't +Papa all along. He was like one of those awful sorrowful persons in a +movie." + +"Sure," said Adam, patting her arm. "I wish Edie'd got as nice a +complexion as you, Mamma." + +"Mercy, Dammy!" his mother tittered and blushed. + +Adam finished a third mug of cider and got up to examine the shelves. +He scratched the rear of one calf with the other toe, and muscles +cavorted in both legs as he reached for a jar of grapefruit marmalade. +He peered through this at the lamp and put the jar back. Mrs. Egg felt +hurt. + +The paragon explained: "Too sour after strawb'ry, Mamma. I'd like some +for breakfast, though. Back in a minute." + +He trotted out through the kitchen and vanished on the veranda. She +shivered, being alone. + +Adam came back and nodded: "Light's out. Any key to that room?" + +"No." + +"I can always think better when I'm eatin'," he confessed, and lifted +down the plate of spiced cookies, rejected them as too fresh, and +pounced on a covered dish of apple sauce. + +This he absorbed in stillness, wriggling his toes on the oilcloth. +Mrs. Egg felt entirely comfortable and real. She could hear the cook +snoring. Behind her the curtain of the pantry window fluttered. The +cool breeze was pleasant on her neck. Adam licked the spoon and said, +"Back in a minute, Mamma," as he started for the veranda door. + +Mrs. Egg reposed on the ice chest thinking about Adam. He was like +Egg, in that nothing fattened him. She puzzled over to-morrow's lunch. +Baked ham and sweet potatoes, sugared; creamed asparagus; hot corn +muffins. Dessert perplexed her. Were there any brandied peaches left? +She feared not. They belonged on the upper shelf nearest the ice +chest. Anxiety chewed her. Mrs. Egg climbed the lid by the aid of the +window sill and reached up an arm to the shelf. + +Adam said, "Here y'are, Mamma." + +The pantry door shut. Mrs. Egg swung about. Adam stood behind a shape +in blue pajamas, a hand locked on either of its elbows. He grinned at +Mrs. Egg over the mummer's shoulder. As the woman panted sulphur +entered her throat. The lamp threw a glare into the dark face, which +seemed paler. + +"Go on, Frisco," said Adam, about the skull, "tell Mamma about her +father." + +A sharp voice answered, "Let go my arms. You're killin' me!" + +"Quit kiddin'," Adam growled. "Go on!" + +"He ran a joint in San Francisco and gave me a job after I got out the +Navy. Died last fall. I kind of nursed him. Told me to burn all these +books--diaries. I read 'em. He called himself Peterson. Left all his +money to a woman. She shut the joint. I looked some like him so I took +a chance. Leggo my arms, Egg!" + +"He'd ought to go to jail, Dammy," said Mrs. Egg. "It's just awful! I +bet the police are lookin' for him right now." + +"Mamma, if we put him in jail this'll be all over the county and +you'll never hear the end of it." + +She stared at the ape with loathing. There was a star tattooed on one +of his naked insteps. He looked no longer frail, but wiry and +snakelike. The pallor behind his dark tan showed the triangles of +black stain in his cheeks and eye sockets. + +"He's too smart to leave loose, Dammy." + +"It'll be an awful joke on you, Mamma." + +"I can't help it, Dammy. He----" + +The prisoner figure toppled back against Adam's breast and the mouth +opened hideously. The lean legs bent. + +"You squeezed him too tight, Dammy. He's fainted. Lay him down." + +Adam let the figure slide to the floor. It rose in a whirl of blue +linen. Mrs. Egg rocked on the chest. + +The man thrust something at Adam's middle and said in a rasp, "Get +your arms up!" + +Adam's face turned purple beyond the gleaming skull. His hands rose a +little and his fingers crisped. He drawled, + +"Fact. I ought have looked under your duds, you----" + +"Stick 'em up!" said the man. + +Mrs. Egg saw Adam's arms tremble. His lower lip drew down. He wasn't +going to put his arms up. The man would kill him. She could not +breathe. She fell forward from the ice chest and knew nothing. + +She roused with a sense of great cold and was sitting against the +shelves. Adam stopped rubbing her face with a lump of ice and grinned +at her. + +He cried, "By gee, you did that quick, Mamma! Knocked the wind clear +out of him." + +"Where is he, Dammy?" + +"Dunno. Took his gun and let him get dressed. He's gone. Say, that was +slick!" + +Mrs. Egg blushed and asked for a drink. Adam dropped the ice into a +mug of pear cider and squatted beside her with a shabby notebook. + +"Here's somethin' for October 10, 1919." He read: "'Talked to a man +from Ilium to-day in Palace Bar. Myrtle married to John Egg. Four +children. Egg worth a wad. Dairy and cider business. Going to build +new Presbyterian church.' That's it, Mamma. He doped it all out from +the diary." + +"The dirty dog!" said Mrs. Egg. She ached terribly and put her head on +Adam's shoulder. + +"I'll put all the diaries up in the attic. Kind of good readin.' Say, +it's after two. You better go to bed." + +In her dreams Mrs. Egg beheld a bronze menacing skeleton beside her +pillow. It whispered and rattled. She woke, gulping, in bright +sunlight, and the rattle changed to the noise of a motor halting on +the drive. She gave yesterday a fleet review, rubbing her blackened +elbows, but felt charitable toward Frisco Cooley by connotation; she +had once sat down on a collie pup. But her bedroom clock struck ten +times. Mrs. Egg groaned and rolled out of bed, reaching for a wrapper. +What had the cook given Adam for breakfast? She charged along the +upper hall into a smell of coffee, and heard Adam speaking below. His +sisters made some feeble united interjection. + +The hero said sharply: "Of course he was a fake! Mamma knew he was, +all along, but she didn't want to let on she did in front of folks. +That ain't dignified. She just flattened him out and he went away +quiet. You girls always talk like Mamma hadn't as much sense as you. +She's kind of used up this morning. Wait till I give her her +breakfast, and I'll come talk to you." + +A tray jingled. + +Mrs. Egg retreated into her bedroom, awed. Adam carried in her +breakfast and shut the door with a foot. + +He complained: "Went in to breakfast at Edie's. Of course she's only +sixteen, but I could make better biscuits myself. Lay down, Mamma." + +He began to butter slices of toast, in silence, expertly. Mrs. Egg +drank her coffee in rapture that rose toward ecstasy as Adam made +himself a sandwich of toast and marmalade and sat down at her feet to +consume it. + + + +THE VICTIM OF HIS VISION + +By GERALD CHITTENDEN + +From _Scribner's_ + + +I + +"There's no doubt about it," said the hardware drummer with the +pock-pitted cheeks. He seemed glad that there was no doubt--smacked +his lips over it and went on. "Obeah--that's black magic; and +voodoo--that's snake-worship. The island is rotten with 'em--rotten +with 'em." + +He looked sidelong over his empty glass at the Reverend Arthur +Simpson. Many human things were foreign to the clergyman: he was +uneasy about being in the _Arequipa's_ smoke-room at all, for +instance, and especially uneasy about sitting there with the drummer. + +"But--human sacrifice!" he protested. "You spoke of human sacrifice." + +"And cannibalism. _La chèvre sans cornes_--the goat without +horns--that means an unblemished child less than three years old. It's +frequently done. They string it up by its heels, cut its throat, and +drink the blood. Then they eat it. Regular ceremony--the _mamaloi_ +officiates." + +"Who officiates?" + +"The _mamaloi_--the priestess." + +Simpson jerked himself out of his chair and went on deck. Occasionally +his imagination worked loose from control and tormented him as it was +doing now. There was a grizzly vividness in the drummer's description. +It was well toward morning before Simpson grasped again his usual +certainty of purpose and grew able to thank God that he had been born +into a very wicked world. There was much for a missionary to do in +Hayti--he saw that before the night grew thin, and was glad. + +Between dawn and daylight the land leaped out of the sea, all clear +blues and purples, incomparably fresh and incomparably 111 wistful in +that one golden hour of the tropic day before the sun has risen very +high--the disembodied spirit of an island. It lay, vague as hope at +first, in a jewel-tinted sea; the ship steamed toward it as through +the mists of creation's third morning, and all good things seemed +possible. Thus had Simpson, reared in an unfriendly land, imagined it, +for beneath the dour Puritanism that had lapped him in its armour +there still stirred the power of wonder and surprise that has so often +through the ages changed Puritans to poets. That glimpse of Hayti +would remain with him, he thought, yet within the hour he was striving +desperately to hold it. For soon the ruffle of the breeze died from +off the sea, and it became gray glass through which the anchor sank +almost without a sound and was lost. + +"Sweet place, isn't it, Mr. Simpson?" said Bunsen, the purser, pausing +on his way to the gangway. + +"So that," Simpson rejoined slowly--and because it was a port of his +desire his voice shook on the words--"is Port au Prince!" + +"That," Bunsen spat into the sea, "is Port au Prince." + +He moved away. A dirty little launch full of uniforms was coming +alongside. Until the yellow flag--a polite symbol in that port--should +be hauled down Simpson would be left alone. The uniforms had climbed +to the deck and were chattering in a bastard patois behind him; now +and then the smell of the town struck across the smells of the sea and +the bush like the flick of a snake's tail. Simpson covered his eyes +for a moment, and immediately the vision of the island as he had seen +it at dawn swam in his mind. But he could not keep his eyes forever +shut--there was the necessity of living and of doing his work in the +world to be remembered always. He removed his hand. A bumboat was made +fast below the well of the deck, and a boy with an obscenely twisted +body and a twisted black face was selling pineapples to the sailors. +Simpson watched him for a while, and because his education had been +far too closely specialized he quoted the inevitable: + + "Where every prospect pleases, + And only man is vile" + +The verse uplifted him unreasonably. He went below to pack his +baggage. He said good-bye to the officers, painfully conscious that +they were grinning behind his back, and was rowed ashore by the +deformed boy. + +The boy said something in abominable French. He repeated it--Simpson +guessed at its meaning. + +"I shall stay a long time," he answered in the same language. "I am a +minister of the gospel--a missionary." + +The cripple, bent revoltingly over his oar, suddenly broke out into +laughter, soulless, without meaning. Simpson, stung sharply in his +stiff-necked pride, sprang up and took one step forward, his fist +raised. The boy dropped the oars and writhed to starboard, his neck +askew at an eldritch angle, his eyes glaring upward. But he did not +raise a hand to ward off the blow that he feared, and that was more +uncanny still. + +The blow never fell. Simpson's hand unclinched and shame reddened in +his face. + +"Give me the oars," he said. "_Pauvre garçon_--did you think that I +would strike you?" + +The boy surrendered the oars and sidled aft like a crab, his eyes +still rolling at his passenger. + +"Why should the maimed row the sound?" said Simpson. + +He rowed awkwardly. The boy watched him for a moment, then grinned +uncertainly; presently he lolled back in the stern-sheets, personating +dignity. A white man was doing his work--it was splendid, as it should +be, and comic in the extreme. He threw back his head and cackled at +the hot sky. + +"Stop that!" Simpson, his nerves raw, spoke in English, but the +laughter jarred to a blunt end. The boy huddled farther away from him, +watching him with unwinking eyes which showed white all around the +pupil. Simpson, labouring with the clumsy oars, tried to forget him. +It was hot--hotter than it had seemed at first; sweat ran into his +eyes and he grew a little dizzy. The quarantine launch with its load +of uniforms, among which the purser's white was conspicuous, passed, +giving them its wake; there was no sound from it, only a blaze of +teeth and eyeballs. Simpson glanced over his shoulder at it. The +purser was standing in the stern, clear of the awning, his head +quizzically on one side and a cigarette in his fingers. + +The rowboat came abreast of a worm-eaten jetty. + +"_Ici_," said the cripple. + +Simpson, inexpert, bumped into it bow on, and sculled the stern +around. The cripple, hideously agile, scrambled out and held the boat; +Simpson gathered up his bag and followed. + +A Roman priest, black as the top of a stove, strode down the jetty +toward them. + +"You--you!" he shouted to the cripple when he was yet ten strides +away. His voice rose as he approached. "You let the m'sieu' row you +ashore! You----" A square, heavy boot shot out from beneath his +cassock into the boy's stomach. "_Cochon_!" said the priest, turning +to Simpson. His manner became suddenly suave, grandiose. "These +swine!" he said. "One keeps them in their place. I am Father Antoine. +And you?" + +"Simpson--Arthur Simpson." He said his own name slowly as thought +there was magic in it, magic that would keep him in touch with his +beginnings. + +"Simpson?" The priest gave it the French sound; suspicion struggled +for expression on his black mask; his eyes took in the high-cut +waistcoat, the unmistakable clerical look. "You were sent?" + +"By the board of foreign missions." + +"I do not know it. Not by the archbishop?" + +"There is no archbishop in my Church." + +"In your Church?" Father Antoine's eyes sprang wide--wide as they had +been when he kicked the boatman. "In your Church? You are not of the +true faith, then?" + +Pride of race, unchastened because he had not till that moment been +conscious that it existed in him, swelled in Simpson. + +"Are you?" he asked. + +Father Antoine stared at him, not as an angry white man stares, but +with head thrown back and mouth partly open, in the manner of his +race. Then, with the unreasoned impetuousness of a charging bull, he +turned and flung shoreward down the pier. The cripple, groaning still, +crawled to Simpson's feet and sat there. + +"_Pauvre garçon_!" repeated Simpson dully. "_Pauvre garçon_!" + +Suddenly the boy stopped groaning, swung Simpson's kit-bag on his +shoulder, and sidled up the pier. His right leg bent outward at the +knee, and his left inward; his head, inclined away from his burden, +seemed curiously detached from his body; his gait was a halting sort +of shuffle; yet he got along with unexpected speed. Simpson, still +dazed, followed him into the Grand Rue--a street of smells and piled +filth, where gorged buzzards, reeking of the tomb, flapped upward +under his nose from the garbage and offal of their feast. Simpson +paused for a moment at the market-stalls, where negroes of all shades +looked out at him in a silence that seemed devoid of curiosity. The +cripple beckoned him and he hurried on. On the steps of the cathedral +he saw Father Antoine, but, although the priest must have seen him, he +gave no sign as he passed. He kept to what shade there was. Presently +his guide turned down a narrow alley, opened a dilapidated picket +gate, and stood waiting. + +"_Maman_!" he called. "_Oh! Maman_!" + +Simpson, his curiosity faintly stirring, accepted the invitation of +the open gate, and stepped into an untidy yard, where three or four +pigs and a dozen chickens rooted and scratched among the bayonets of +yucca that clustered without regularity on both sides of the path. The +house had some pretensions; there were two stories, and, although the +blue and red paint had mostly flaked away, the boarding looked sound. +In the yard there was less fetor than there had been outside. + +"_Maman_!" called the boy again. + +A pot-lid clashed inside the house, and a tall negress, dressed in a +blue-striped Mother Hubbard, came to the door. She stared at Simpson +and at the boy. + +"_Qui_?" was all she said. + +The boy sidled nearer her and dropped the bag on the threshold. + +"_Qui_?" she said again. + +Simpson waited in silence. His affairs had got beyond him somehow, and +he seemed to himself but the tool of circumstance. It did occur to +him, though dimly, that he was being introduced to native life rather +quickly. + +The cripple, squatting with his back against the bag, launched into a +stream of patois, of which Simpson could not understand a word. +Gestures explained somewhat; he was reënacting the scenes of the last +half hour. When he had finished, the negress, not so hostile as she +had been but by no means friendly, turned to Simpson and looked at him +a long time without speaking. He had all he could do not to fidget +under her gaze; finally, she stood aside from the door and said, +without enthusiasm: + +"_B'en venu. C'est vo' masson_." + +Simpson entered automatically. The kitchen, with its hard earth floor +and the sunlight drifting in through the bamboo sides, was not +unclean, and a savoury smell came from the stew-pot on the ramshackle +stove. In one of the bars of sunlight a mango-coloured child of two +years or so was playing with his toes--he was surprisingly clean and +perfectly formed. + +"_Aha, mon petit_!" exclaimed Simpson. He loved children. "He is +handsome," he added, addressing the woman. + +"Mine!" She turned the baby gently with her foot; he caught at the hem +of her dress, laughing. But she did not laugh. "Neither spot nor +blemish," she said, and then: "He is not yet three years old." + +Simpson shuddered, recalling the pock-marked drummer on the +_Arequipa_. That was momentary--a coincidence, he told himself. The +woman was looking down at the child, her eyes softer than they had +been, and the child was lying on its back and playing with her Mother +Hubbard. + +The woman lifted the lid from the pot and peered into it through the +sun-shot steam. + +"It is ready," she said. She lifted it from the stove and set it on +the earthen floor. The cripple placed a handful of knives and spoons +on the table and three tin plates; he thrust a long fork and a long +spoon into the pot and stood aside. + +"Seat yourself," said the woman, without looking at Simpson, "and +eat." + +She explored the pot with the fork, and stabbed it firmly--there was a +suggestion of ruthlessness about her action that made Simpson shudder +again--into a slab of meat, which she dropped on a plate, using a +callous thumb to disengage it from the tines. She covered it with +gravy and began to eat without further ceremony. The cripple followed +her example, slobbering the gravy noisily; some of it ran down his +chin. Neither of them paid any attention to Simpson. + +He took the remaining plate from the table and stood irresolute with +it in his hand. He was hungry, but his essential Puritan +fastidiousness, combined with that pride of race which he knew to be +un-Christian, rendered him reluctant to dip into the common pot or to +eat on equal terms with these people. Besides, the sun and his amazing +introduction to the island had given him a raging headache: he could +not think clearly nor rid himself of the sinister suggestion of the +town, of the house, of its three occupants in particular. + +The child touched a ringer to the hot lip of the pot, burned itself, +and began to cry. + +"_Taise_," said the woman. Her voice was low but curt, and she did not +raise her eyes from her plate. The child, its finger in its mouth, +stopped crying at once. + +Simpson shook himself; his normal point of view was beginning to +assert itself. He must not--must not hold himself superior to the +people he expected to convert; nothing, he insisted to himself, was to +be gained, and much might be lost by a refusal to meet the people "on +their own ground." Chance--he did not call it chance--had favoured him +incredibly thus far, and if he failed to follow the guidance that had +been vouchsafed him he would prove himself but an unworthy vessel. He +took up the long fork--it chattered against the pot as he seized +it--and, overcoming a momentary and inexplicable nausea, impaled the +first piece of meat that rolled to the surface. There were yams also +and a sort of dumpling made of manioc. When he had filled his plate he +rose and turned suddenly; the woman and the cripple had stopped eating +and were watching him. They did not take their eyes away at once but +gave him stare for stare. He sat down; without a word they began to +eat once again. + +The stew was good, and once he had begun Simpson ate heartily of it. +The tacit devilry fell away from his surroundings as his hunger grew +less, and his companions became no more than a middle-aged negress in +a turban, a black boy pitifully deformed, and a beautiful child. He +looked at his watch--he had not thought of the time for hours--and +found that it was a little after noon. It was time that he bestirred +himself and found lodgings. + +"Is there a hotel?" he asked cheerfully. He had noticed that the +islanders understood legitimate French, though they could not speak +it. + +"There is one," said the woman. She pushed away her plate and became +suddenly dourly communicative. "But I doubt if the _propriétaire_ +would find room for m'sieu'." + +"Has he so many guests, then?" + +"But no. M'sieu' has forgotten the priest." + +"The priest? What has he to do with it?" + +"My son tells me that m'sieu' offended him, and the _propriétaire_ is +a good Catholic. He will close his house to you." + +She shaved a splinter to a point with a table knife and picked her +teeth with it, both elbows on the table and her eyes on Simpson. +"There is nowhere else to stay," she said. "Unless--here." + +"I should prefer that," said Simpson--quickly, for reluctance and +distrust were rising in him again. "But have you a room?" + +She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at a door behind her. + +"There," she said. Simpson waited for her to move, saw that she had no +intention of doing so, and opened the door himself. + +The room was fairly large, with two windows screened but unglazed; a +canvas cot stood in one corner, a packing-box table and a decrepit +chair in another. Like the kitchen it was surprisingly clean. He +returned to his hostess, who showed no anxiety about his intentions. + +"How much by the week?" he asked. + +"Eight _gourdes_." + +"And you will feed me for how much?" + +"Fifteen _gourdes_." + +"I will take it." He forced himself to decision again; had he +hesitated he knew he would have gone elsewhere. The price also--less +than four dollars gold--attracted him, and he could doubtless buy some +furniture in the town. Moreover, experienced missionaries who had +talked before the board had always emphasized the value of living +among the natives. + +"_B'en_," said the negress. She rose and emptied the remains from her +plate into a tin pail, sponging the plate with a piece of bread. + +"I have a trunk on the steamer," said Simpson. "The boy--can he----" + +"He will go with you," the negress interrupted. + +The cripple slid from his chair, scraped his plate and Simpson's, put +on his battered straw hat, and shambled into the yard. Simpson +followed. + +He turned at the gate and looked back. The child had toddled to the +door and was standing there, holding on to the door-post. Inside, the +shadow of the woman flickered across the close bars of bamboo. + + +II + +Bunsen was standing on the jetty when they reached it talking +excitedly with a tall bowed man of fifty or so whose complexion showed +the stippled pallor of long residence in the tropics. + +"Here he is now!" Bunsen exclaimed as Simpson approached. "I was just +getting anxious about you. Stopped at the hotel--you hadn't been +there, they said. Port au Prince is a bad place to get lost in. +Oh--this gentleman is our consul. Mr. Witherbee--Mr. Simpson." + +Simpson shook hands. Witherbee's face was just a pair of dull eyes +behind a ragged moustache, but there was unusual vigour in his grip. + +"I'll see a lot of you, if you stay long," he said. He looked at +Simpson more closely. "At least, I hope so. But where have you been? I +was getting as anxious as Mr. Bunsen--afraid you'd been sacrificed to +the snake or something." + +Simpson raised a clerical hand, protesting. His amazing morning swept +before his mind like a moving-picture film; there were so many things +he could not explain even to himself, much less to these two Gentiles. + +"I found lodgings," he said. + +"Lodgings?" Witherbee and Bunsen chorused the word. "Where, for +heaven's sake?" + +"I don't know the name of the street," Simpson admitted. "I don't even +know the name of my hostess. That"--indicating the cripple--"is her +son." + +"Good God!" Witherbee exclaimed. "Madame Picard! The _mamaloi_!" + +"The--the what?" But Simpson had heard well enough. + +"The _mamaloi_--the _mamaloi_--high priestess of voodoo." + +"Her house is fairly clean," Simpson said. He was hardly aware of his +own inconsequence. It was his instinct to defend any one who was +attacked on moral grounds, whether they deserved the attack or not. + +"Ye-es," Witherbee drawled. "I dare say it is. It's her company that's +unsavoury. Especially for a parson. Eh? What's the matter now?" + +Simpson had flared up at his last words. His mouth set and his eyes +burned suddenly. Bunsen, watching him coolly, wondered that he could +kindle so; until that moment he had seemed but half alive. When he +spoke his words came hurriedly--were almost unintelligible; yet there +was some quality in his voice that compelled attention, affecting the +senses more than the mind. + +"Unsavoury company? That's best for a parson. 'I come not to bring the +righteous but sinners to repentance.' And who are you to brand the +woman as common or unclean? If she is a heathen priestess, yet she +worships a god of some sort. Do you?" He stopped suddenly; the +humility which men hated in him again blanketed his fanaticism. "It is +my task to give her a better god--the only true God--Christ." + +Bunsen, his legs wide apart, kept his eyes on the sea, for he did not +want to let Simpson see him smiling, and he was smiling. Witherbee, +who had no emotions of any sort, pulled his moustache farther down and +looked at the clergyman as though he were under glass--a curiosity. + +"So you're going to convert the whole island?" he said. + +"I hope to make a beginning in the Lord's vineyard." + +"Humph! The devil's game-preserve, you mean," Bunsen suddenly broke +in. + +"The devil's game-preserve, then!" Simpson was defiant. + +"The ship calls here every other Saturday," was all Bunsen said to +that. "You may need to know. I'll send your trunk ashore." + +He stepped into the cripple's boat and started for the ship. Witherbee +did not speak; Simpson, still raging, left him, strode to the end of +the pier, and stood there, leaning on a pile. + +His gust of emotion had left him; a not unfamiliar feeling of +exaltation had taken its place. It is often so with the extreme +Puritan type; control relaxed for however brief a moment sends their +slow blood whirling, and leaves them light-headed as those who breathe +thin air. From boyhood Simpson had been practised in control, until +repression had become a prime tenet of his faith. The cheerful and +generally innocent excursions of other men assumed in his mind the +proportions of crime, of sin against the stern disciplining of the +soul which he conceived to be the goal of life. Probably he had never +in all his days been so shocked as once when a young pagan had scorned +certain views of his, saying; "There's more education--soul education, +if you will have it--in five minutes of sheer joy than in a century of +sorrow." It was an appalling statement, that--more appalling because +he had tried to contradict it and had been unable to do so. He himself +had been too eager to find his work in life--his pre-ordained +work--ever to discover the deep truths that light-heartedness only can +reveal; even when he heard his call to foreign missions--to Hayti, in +particular--he felt no such felicity as a man should feel who has +climbed to his place in the scheme of things. His was rather the +sombre fury of the Covenanters--an intense conviction that his way was +the only way of grace--a conviction that transcended reason and took +flight into the realm of overmastering emotion--the only overmastering +emotion, by the way, that he had ever experienced. + +His choice, therefore, was in itself a loss of control and a dangerous +one, for nothing is more perilous to sanity than the certainty that +most other people in the world are wrong. Such conviction leads to a +Jesuitical contempt of means; in cases where the Puritan shell has +grown to be impregnable from the outside it sets up an internal +ferment which sometimes bursts shell and man and all into disastrous +fragments. Until old age kills them, the passions and emotions never +die in man; suppress them how we will, we can never ignore them; they +rise again to mock us when we think we are done with them forever. And +the man of Simpson's type suffers from them most of all, for he dams +against them all normal channels of expression. + +Simpson, standing at the pier-end, was suffering from them now. His +exaltation--a thing of a moment, as his fervour had been--had gone out +of him, leaving him limp, uncertain of his own powers, of his own +calling, even--the prey to the discouragement that precedes action, +which is the deepest discouragement of all. Except for himself and +Witherbee the pier was deserted; behind him the filthy town slept in +its filth. Four buzzards wheeled above it, gorged and slow; the +harbour lay before him like a green mirror, so still that the ship was +reflected in it down to the last rope-yarn. Over all, the sun, +colourless and furnace-hot, burned in a sky of steel. There was +insolence in the scorched slopes that shouldered up from the bay, a +threatening permanence in the saw-edged sky-line. The indifference of +it all, its rock-ribbed impenetrability to human influence, laid a +crushing weight on Simpson's soul, so that he almost sank to his knees +in sheer oppression of spirit. + +"Do you know much about Hayti?" asked Witherbee, coming up behind him. + +"As much as I could learn from books." Simpson wanted to be angry at +the consul--why he could not tell--but Witherbee's voice was so +carefully courteous that he yielded perforce to its persuasion and +swung around, facing him. Suddenly, because he was measuring himself +against man and not against Nature, his weakness left him, and +confidence in himself and his mission flooded back upon him. "As much +as I could get from books." He paused. "You have lived here long?" + +"Long enough," Witherbee answered. "Five years." + +"You know the natives, then?" + +"Can't help knowing them. There are quite a lot of them, you see, and +there's almost no one else. Do you know negroes at all?" + +"Very little." + +"You'd better study them a bit before you--before you do anything you +have it in mind to do--the Haytian negro in particular. They're not +like white men, you know." + +"Like children, you mean?" + +"Like some children. I'd hate to have them for nephews and nieces." + +"Why?" + +"We-ell"--Witherbee, looking sidelong at Simpson, bit off the end of a +cigar--"a number of reasons. They're superstitious, treacherous, +savage, cruel, and--worst of all--emotional. They've gone back. +They've been going back for a hundred years. The West Coast--I've been +there--is not so bad as Hayti. It's never been anything else than what +it is now, you see, and if it moves at all it must move forward. +There's nothing awful about savagery when people have never known +anything else. Hayti has. You know what the island used to be before +Desalines." + +"I've read. But just what do you mean by West Coast savagery--here?" + +"Snake-worship. Voodoo." Witherbee lit the cigar "Human sacrifice." + +"And the Roman Church does nothing!" There was exultation in Simpson's +voice. His distrust of the Roman Church had been aggravated by his +encounter with the black priest that morning. + +"The Roman Church does what it can. It's been unfortunate in its +instruments. Especially unfortunate now." + +"Father Antoine?" + +"Father Antoine. You met him?" + +"This morning. A brute, and nothing more." + +"Just that." Witherbee let a mouthful of smoke drift into the +motionless air. "It's curious," he said. + +"What is?" + +"Father Antoine will make it unpleasant for you. He may try to have +you knifed, or something." + +"Impossible!" + +"Not at all. Human life is worth nothing here. No wonder--it's not +really worth living. But you're safe enough, and that's the curious +thing." + +"Why am I safe?" + +"Because your landlady is who she is." Witherbee glanced over his +shoulder, and, although they were the only people on the pier, from +force of habit he dropped his voice. "The _mamaloi_ has more power +than the Church." He straightened and looked out toward the ship. +"Here's her idiot with your trunk. My office is the first house on the +left after you leave the pier. Don't forget that." + +He turned quickly and was gone before the cripple's boat had reached +the landing. + + +III + +The town, just stirring out of its siesta as Simpson followed the +cripple through the streets, somehow reassured him. Men like Bunsen +and Witherbee, who smiled at his opinions and remained cold to his +rhapsodies, always oppressed him with a sense of ineffectuality. He +knew them of old--knew them superficially, of course, for, since he +was incapable of talking impersonally about religion, he had never had +the chance to listen to the cool and yet often strangely mystical +opinions which such men hold about it. He knew, in a dim sort of way, +that men not clergymen sometimes speculated about religious matters, +seeking light from each other in long, fragmentary conversations. He +knew that much, and disapproved of it--almost resented it. It seemed +to him wrong to discuss God without becoming angry, and very wrong for +laymen to discuss God at all. When circumstances trapped him into talk +with them about things divine, he felt baffled by their silences and +their reserves, seemed to himself to be scrabbling for entrance to +their souls through some sort of a slippery, impenetrable casing; he +never tried to enter through their minds, where the door stood always +open. The trouble was that he wanted to teach and be listened to; +wherefore he was subtly more at home among the ignorant and in such +streets as he was now traversing than with educated men. He had been +born a few decades too late; here in Hayti he had stepped back a +century or so into the age of credulity. Credulity, he believed, was a +good thing, almost a divine thing, if it were properly used; he did +not carry his processes far enough to realize that credulity could +never become fixed--that it was always open to conviction. A receptive +and not an inquiring mind seemed to him the prerequisite for a +convert. And black people, he had heard, were peculiarly receptive. + +The question was, then, where and how to start his work. Hayti +differed from most mission fields, for, so far as he knew, no one had +ever worked in it before him. The first step was to cultivate the +intimacy of the people, and that he found difficult in the extreme. He +had one obvious channel of approach to them; when buying necessary +things for his room, he could enter into conversation with the +shopkeepers and the market-women, but this he found it difficult to +do. They did not want to talk to him, even seemed reluctant to sell +him anything; and when he left their shops or stalls, did not answer +his "Au revoir." He wondered how much the priest had to do with their +attitude. They had little also that he wanted--he shopped for a week +before he found a gaudy pitcher and basin and a strip of matting for +his floor. Chairs, bureaus, bookcases, and tables did not exist. He +said as much to Madame Picard, and gathered from her growled response +that he must find a carpenter. The cripple, his constant companion in +his first days on the island, took him to one--a gray old negro who +wore on a shoe-string about his neck a pouch which Simpson thought at +first to be a scapular, and whom age and his profession had made +approachable. He was garrulous even; he ceased working when at length +he understood what Simpson wanted, sat in his doorway with his head in +the sun and his feet in the shade, and lit a pipe made out of a tiny +cocoanut. Yes--he could build chairs, tables, anything m'sieu' wanted +There was wood also--black palm for drawer-knobs and cedar and +mahogany and rosewood, but especially mahogany. An excellent wood, +pleasant to work in and suave to the touch. Did they use it in the +United States, he wondered? + +"A great deal," answered Simpson. "And the San Domingo wood is the +best, I believe." + +"San Domingo--but yes," the carpenter said; "the Haytian also--that is +excellent. Look!" + +He led Simpson to the yard at the rear of his house and showed him +half a dozen boards, their grain showing where the broad axe had hewed +them smooth. Was it not a beautiful wood? And what furniture did +m'sieu' desire? + +Simpson had some little skill with his pencil--a real love for drawing +was one of the instincts which his austere obsessions had crushed out +of him. He revolved several styles in his mind, decided at length on +the simplest, and drew his designs on a ragged scrap of wrapping +paper, while the carpenter, leaning down from his chair by the door, +watched him, smoking, and now and then fingering the leather pouch +about his neck. Simpson, looking up occasionally to see that his +sketch was understood, could not keep his eyes away from the +pouch--whatever it was, it was not a scapular. He did not ask about +it, though he wanted to; curiosity, he had heard, should be repressed +when one is dealing with barbarians. But he knew that that was not his +real reason for not asking. + +"But it is easy," said the carpenter, picking up the paper and +examining it. "And the seats of the chairs shall be of white hide, is +it not?" + +Simpson assented. He did not leave the shop at once, but remained +seated on the threshold, following his usual policy of picking up +acquaintances where he could. + +"M'sieu' is a priest?" the old man asked, squinting at he filled the +cocoanut pipe again and thrust it between his ragged yellow teeth. + +"Not a priest. A minister of the gospel." + +"_Quoi_?" said the carpenter. + +Simpson saw that he must explain. It was difficult. He had on the one +hand to avoid suggesting that the Roman Church was insufficient--that +denunciation he intended to arrive at when he had gained firmer ground +with the people--and on the other to refrain from hinting that Haytian +civilization stood in crying need of uplift. That also could come +later. He wallowed a little in his explanation, and then put the whole +matter on a personal basis. + +"I think I have a message--something new to say to you about Christ. +But I have been here a week now and have found none to listen to me." + +"Something new?" the carpenter rejoined. "But that is easy if it is +something new. In Hayti we like new things." + +"No one will listen to me," Simpson repeated. + +The carpenter reflected for a moment, or seemed to be doing so. + +"Many men come here about sunset," he said. "We sit and drink a little +rum before dark; it is good against the fever." + +"I will come also," said Simpson, rising. "It is every evening?" + +"Every evening." The carpenter's right hand rose to the pouch which +was not a scapular and he caressed it. + +"Au revoir," said Simpson suddenly. + +"'_Voir_," the carpenter replied, still immobile in his chair by the +door. + +Up to now a walk through the streets had been a night-mare to Simpson, +for the squalor of them excited to protest every New England nerve in +his body, and the evident hostility of the people constantly +threatened his success with them. He had felt very small and lonely, +like a man who has undertaken to combat a natural force; he did not +like to feel small and lonely, and he did not want to believe in +natural forces. Chosen vessel as he believed himself to be, thus far +the island had successfully defied him, and he had feared more than +once that it would do so to the end. He had compelled himself to +frequent the markets, hoping always that he would find in them the key +to the door that was closed against him; he had not found it, and, +although he recognized that three weeks was but a fractional moment of +eternity, and comforted himself by quoting things about the "mills of +God," he could not approach satisfaction with what he had accomplished +so far. + +His interview with the carpenter had changed all that, and on his way +home he trod the Grand Rue more lightly than he had ever done. Even +the cathedral, even the company of half-starved conscripts that +straggled past him in the tail of three generals, dismayed him no +longer, for the cathedral was but the symbol of a frozen Christianity +which he need no longer fear, and the conscripts were his +people--his--or soon would be. All that he had wanted was a start; he +had it now, though he deplored the rum which would be drunk at his +first meeting with the natives. One must begin where one could. + +Witherbee, sitting in the window of the consulate, called twice before +Simpson heard him. + +"You look pretty cheerful," he said. "Things going well?" + +"They've just begun to, I think--I think I've found the way to reach +these people." + +"Ah?" The monosyllable was incredulous though polite. "How's that?" + +"I've just been ordering some furniture from a carpenter," Simpson +answered. It was the first time since the day of his arrival that he +had seen Witherbee to speak to, and he found it a relief to speak in +his own language and without calculating the result of his words. + +"A carpenter? Vieux Michaud, I suppose?" + +"That's his name. You know him?" + +"Very well." The consul tipped back his chair and tapped his lips with +a pencil. "Very well. He's a clever workman. He'll follow any design +you give him, and the woods, of course, are excellent." + +"Yes. He showed me some. But he's more than a carpenter to me. He's +more--receptive--than most of the natives, and it seems that his shop +is a gathering place--a centre. He asked me to come in the evenings." + +"And drink rum?" Witherbee could not resist that. + +"Ye-es. He said they drank rum. I sha'n't do that, of course, but one +must begin where one can." + +"I suppose so," Witherbee answered slowly. The office was darkened to +just above reading-light, and the consul's face was in the shadow. +Evidently he had more to say, but he allowed a long silence to +intervene before he went on. Simpson, imaging wholesale conversions, +sat quietly; he was hardly aware of his surroundings. + +"Don't misunderstand what I'm going to say," the consul began at +length. Simpson straightened, on his guard at once. "It may be of use +to you--in your work," he added quickly. "It's this. Somehow--by +chance perhaps, though I don't think so--you've fallen into strange +company--stranger than any white man I've ever known." + +"I am not afraid of voodoo," said Simpson rather scornfully. + +"It would be better if you were a little afraid of it. I am--and I +know what I'm talking about. Look what's happened to you. There's the +Picard woman--she's the one who had President Simon Sam under her +thumb. Did you know he carried the symbols of voodoo next his heart? +And now Michaud, who's her right hand and has been for years. Looks +like deep water to me." + +"I must not fear for my own body." + +"That's not what I mean exactly, though I wish you were a little more +afraid for it. It might save me trouble--possibly save our government +trouble--in the end. But the consequences of letting voodoo acquire +any more power than it has may be far-reaching." + +"I am not here to give it more power." Simpson, thoroughly angry, rose +to go. "It is my business to defeat it--to root it out." + +"Godspeed to you in that"--Witherbee's voice was ironical. "But +remember what I tell you. The Picard woman is subtle, and Michaud is +subtle." Simpson had crossed the threshold, and only half heard the +consul's next remark. "Voodoo is more subtle than both of them +together. Look out for it." + +Witherbee's warning did no more than make Simpson angry; he attributed +it to wrong motives--to jealousy perhaps to hostility certainly, and +neither jealousy nor hostility could speak true words. In spite of all +that he had heard he could not believe that voodoo was so powerful in +the island; this was the twentieth century, he insisted, and the most +enlightened country in the world was less than fifteen hundred miles +away; he forgot that opinions and not figures number the centuries, +and refused to see that distance had nothing to do with the case. +These were a people groping through the dark; when they saw the light +they could not help but welcome it, he thought. The idea that they +preferred their own way of life and their own religion, that they +would not embrace civilization till they were forced to do so at the +point of benevolent bayonets, never entered his head. His own way of +life was so obviously superior. He resolved to have nothing more to do +with Witherbee. + +When he returned to the carpenter's house at about six that evening he +entered the council of elders that he found there with the +determination to place himself on an equality with them. It was to his +credit that he accomplished this feat, but it was not surprising for +the humility of his mind at least was genuine. He joined in their +conversation, somewhat stiffly at first, but perhaps no more so than +became a stranger. Presently, because he saw that he could not refuse +without offending his host, he conquered prejudice and took a little +rum and sugar and water. It went to his head without his knowing it, +as rum has a habit of doing; he became cheerfully familiar with the +old men and made long strides into their friendship--or thought he +did. He did not once mention religion to them at that first meeting, +though he had to exercise considerable self-restraint to prevent +himself from doing so. + +On his way home he met Father Antoine not far from Michaud's door. The +priest would have passed with his usual surly look if Simpson had not +stopped him. + +"Well?" Antoine demanded. + +"Why should we quarrel--you and I?" Simpson asked. "Can we not work +together for these people of yours?" + +"Your friends are not my people, heretic!" Father Antoine retorted." +Rot in hell with them!" + +He plunged past Simpson and was gone down the darkling alley. + +"You are late, m'sieu'," remarked Madame Picard as he came into the +kitchen and sat down in a chair near the cripple. Her manner was less +rough than usual. + +"I've been at Michaud's," he answered. + +"Ah? But you were there this morning." + +"He asked me to come this evening, when his friends came, madame. +There were several there." + +"They are often there," she answered. There was nothing significant in +her tone, but Simpson had an uneasy feeling that she had known all the +time of his visit to the carpenter. + +"I met Father Antoine on the way home," he said. + +"A bad man!" She flamed into sudden violence. "A bad man!" + +"I had thought so." Her loquacity this evening was amazing. Simpson +thought he saw an opening to her confidence and plunged in. "And he is +a priest. It is bad, that. Here are sheep without a shepherd." + +"_Quoi_?" + +"Here are many people--all good Christians." Simpson, eager and +hopeful, leaned forward in his chair. His gaunt face with the +down-drawn mouth and the hungry eyes--grown more hungry in the last +three weeks--glowed, took on fervour; his hand shot out expressive +fingers. The woman raised her head slowly, staring at him; more slowly +still she seated herself at the table that stood between them. She +rested her arms on it, and narrowed her eyelids as he spoke till her +eyes glittered through the slits of them. + +"All good Christians," Simpson went on; "and there is none to lead +them save a black----" He slurred the word just in time. The woman's +eyes flashed open and narrowed again. "Save a renegade priest," +Simpson concluded. "It is wrong, is it not? And I knew it was wrong, +though I live far away and came--was led--here to you." His voice, +though it had not been loud, left the room echoing. "It was a real +call." He whispered that. + +"You are a Catholic?" asked Madame Picard. + +"Yes. Of the English Catholic Church." He suspected that the +qualifying adjective meant nothing to her, but let the ambiguity rest. + +"I was not sure," she said slowly, "though you told the boy." Her +eyes, velvet-black in the shadow upcast by the lamp, opened slowly. +"There has been much trouble with Father Antoine, and now small +numbers go to mass or confession." Her voice had the effect of +shrillness though it remained low; her hands flew out, grasping the +table-edge at arms' length with an oddly masculine gesture. "He +deserved that! To tell his _canaille_ that I--that we----He dared! But +now--now--we shall see!" + +Her voice rasped in a subdued sort of a shriek; she sprang up from her +chair, and stood for the fraction of a second with her hands raised +and her fists clinched. Simpson, puzzled, amazed, and a little scared +at last, had barely time to notice the position before it dissolved. +The child, frightened, screamed from the floor. + +"_Taisez-vous--taisez-vous, mon enfant. Le temps vient_." + +She was silent for a long time after that. Simpson sat wondering what +she would do next, aware of an uncanny fascination that emanated from +her. It seemed to him as though there were subterranean fires in the +ground that he walked on. + +"You shall teach us," she said in her usual monotone. "You shall teach +us--preach to many people. No house will hold them all." She leaned +down and caressed the child. "_Le temps vient, mon petit. Le temps +vient_." + +Under Simpson's sudden horror quivered an eerie thrill. He mistook it +for joy at the promised fulfilment of his dreams. He stepped to his +own doorway and hesitated there with his hand on the latch. + +"To many people? Some time, I hope." + +"Soon." She looked up from the child; there was a snakiness in the +angle of her head and neck. "Soon." + +He opened the door, slammed it behind him, and dropped on tense knees +beside his bed. In the kitchen the cripple laughed--laughed for a long +time. Simpson's tightly pressed palms could not keep the sound from +his ears. + + +IV + +Each night the gathering at Vieux Michaud's became larger; it grew too +large for the house, and presently overflowed into the yard behind, +where Michaud kept his lumber. Generally thirty or forty natives +collected between six and seven in the evening, roosting on the piled +boards or sitting on the dusty ground in little groups, their +cigarettes puncturing the blue darkness that clung close to the earth +under the young moon. There were few women among them at first and +fewer young men; Simpson, who knew that youth ought to be more +hospitable to new ideas than age, thought this a little strange and +spoke to Michaud about it. + +"But they are my friends, m'sieu'," answered Michaud. + +The statement might have been true of the smaller group that Simpson +had first encountered at the carpenter's house; it was not true of the +additions to it, for he was evidently not on intimate terms with them. +Nor did he supply rum for all of them; many brought their own. That +was odd also, if Simpson had only known it; the many _cantinas_ +offered attractions which the carpenter's house did not. That fact +occurred to him at length. + +"They have heard of you, m'sieu'--and that you have something new to +say to them. We Haytians like new things." + +Thus, very quietly, almost as though it had been a natural growth of +interest, did Simpson's ministry begin. He stepped one evening to the +platform that overhung the carpenter's backyard, and began to talk. +Long study had placed the missionary method at his utter command, and +he began with parables and simple tales which they heard eagerly. +Purposely, he eschewed anything striking or startling in this his +first sermon. It was an attempt to establish a sympathetic +understanding between himself and his audience, and not altogether an +unsuccessful one, for his motives were still unmixed. He felt that he +had started well; when he was through speaking small groups gathered +around him as children might have done, and told him inconsequent, +wandering tales of their own--tales which were rather fables, folklore +transplanted from another hemisphere and strangely crossed with +Christianity. He was happy; if it had not been that most of them wore +about their necks the leather pouches that were not scapulars he would +have been happier than any man has a right to be. One of these +pouches, showing through the ragged shirt of an old man with thin lips +and a squint, was ripped at the edge, and the unmistakable sheen of a +snake's scale glistened in the seam. Simpson could not keep his eyes +from it. + +He dared to be more formal after that, and on the next night preached +from a text--the Macedonian cry, "Come over and help us." That sermon +also was effective: toward the end of it two or three women were +weeping a little, and the sight of their tears warmed him with the +sense of power. In that warmth certain of his prejudices and +inhibitions began to melt away; the display of feelings and +sensibilities could not be wicked or even undesirable if it prepared +the way for the gospel by softening the heart. He began to dabble in +emotion himself, and that was a dangerous matter, for he knew nothing +whatever about it save that, if he felt strongly, he could arouse +strong feeling in others. Day by day he unwittingly became less sure +of the moral beauty of restraint, and ardours which he had never +dreamed of began to flame free of his soul. + +He wondered now and then why Madame Picard, who almost from the first +had been a constant attendant at his meetings, watched him so closely, +so secretly--both when he sat with her and the cripple at meals and at +the carpenter's house, where he was never unconscious of her eyes. He +wondered also why she brought her baby with her, and why all who came +fondled it so much and so respectfully. He did not wonder at the +deference, almost the fear, which all men showed her--that seemed +somehow her due. She had shed her taciturnity and was even voluble at +times. But behind her volubility lurked always an inexplicable +intensity of purpose whose cause Simpson could never fathom and was +afraid to seek for. It was there, however--a nervous determination, +not altogether alien to his own, which he associated with religion and +with nothing else in the world. Religiosity, he called it--and he was +not far wrong. + +Soon after his first sermon he began little by little to introduce +ritual into the meetings at Michaud's, so that they became decorous; +rum-drinking was postponed till after the concluding prayer, and that +in itself was a triumph. He began to feel the need of hymns, and, +since he could find in French none that had associations for himself, +he set about translating some of the more familiar ones, mostly those +of a militant nature. Some of them, especially "The Son of God goes +forth to war," leaped into immediate popularity and were sung two or +three times in a single service. He liked that repetition; he thought +it laid the groundwork for the enthusiasm which he aroused more and +more as time went on, and which he took more pains to arouse. +Nevertheless, the first time that his feverish eloquence brought tears +and incoherent shoutings from the audience, he became suddenly fearful +before the ecstasies which he had touched to life, he faltered, and +brought his discourse to an abrupt end. As the crowd slowly quieted +and reluctantly began to drift away there flashed on him with blinding +suddenness the realization that his excitement had been as great as +their own; for a moment he wondered if such passion were godly. Only +for a moment, however, of course it was godly, as any rapture informed +by religion must be. He was sorry he had lost courage and stopped so +soon. These were an emotional and not an intellectual people--if they +were to be reached at all, it must be through the channels of their +emotions. Thus far he thought clearly, and that was as far as he did +think, for he was discovering in himself a capacity for religious +excitement that was only in part a reflex of the crowd's fervour, and +the discovery quickened and adorned the memory of the few great +moments of his life. Thus had he felt when he resolved to take orders, +thus, although in a less degree, because he had been doubtful and +afraid, had he felt when he heard the Macedonian cry from this West +Indian island. He had swayed the crowd also as he had always believed +that he could sway crowds if only the spirit would burn in him +brightly enough; he had no doubt that he could sway them again, govern +them completely perhaps. That possibility was cause for prayerful and +lonely consideration, for meditation among the hills, whence he might +draw strength. He hired a pony forthwith and set out for a few days in +the hinterland. + +It was the most perilous thing he could have done. There is neither +sanctity nor holy calm in the tropic jungle, nothing of the hallowed +quietude that, in northern forests, clears the mind of life's muddle +and leads the soul to God. There lurks instead a poisonous anodyne in +the heavy, scented air--a drug that lulls the spirit to an evil repose +counterfeiting the peacefulness whence alone high thoughts can spring. +In the North, Nature displays a certain restraint even in her most +flamboyant moods: the green fires of spring temper their sensuousness +in chill winds, and autumn is rich in suggestion not of love, but of +gracious age, having the aloof beauty of age and its true estimates of +life. The perception of its loveliness is impersonal and leaves the +line between the aesthetic and the sensuous clearly marked. Beneath a +straighter sun the line is blurred and sometimes vanishes: no +orchid-musk, no azure and distant hill, no tinted bay but accosts the +senses, confusing one with another, mingling all the emotions in a +single cup, persuading man that he knows good from evil as little as +though he lived still in Eden. From such stealthy influences the man +of rigid convictions is often in more danger than the man of no +convictions at all, for rigid convictions rather often indicate +inexperience and imperfect observation; experience, +therefore--especially emotional experience--sometimes warps them into +strange and hideous shapes. + +Simpson did not find in the bush the enlightenment that he had hoped +for. He did, however, anaesthetize his mind into the belief that he +had found it. Returning, he approached Port au Prince by a route new +to him. A well-beaten trail aroused his curiosity and he followed it +into a grove of ceiba and mahogany. It was clear under foot, as no +tropic grove uncared for by man can be clear; in the middle of it lay +the ashes of a great fire, and three minaca-palm huts in good repair +huddled almost invisible under the vast trees. The ground, bare of +grass, was trodden hard, as though a multitude had stamped it +down--danced it down, perhaps--and kept it bare by frequent use. + +"What a place for a camp-meeting!" thought Simpson as he turned to +leave it. "God's cathedral aisles, and roofed by God's blue sky." + +His pony shied and whirled around, a long snake--a +fer-de-lance--flowed across the path. + +The desire to hold his services in the grove remained in his mind; the +only reason he did not transfer them there at once was that he was not +yet quite sure of his people. They came eagerly to hear him, they +reflected his enthusiasm at his behest, they wept and praised God. +Yet, underneath all his hopes and all his pride in what he had done +ran a cold current of doubt, an undefined and indefinable fear of +something devilish and malign that might thwart him in the end. He +thrust it resolutely out of his mind. + + +V + +"I have told your people--your _canaille_," said Father Antoine, "that +I shall excommunicate them all." + +The priest had been graver than his wont--more dignified, less +volcanic, as though he was but the mouthpiece of authority, having +none of it himself. + +"They are better out of your Church than in it," Simpson answered. + +Father Antoine trembled a little; it was the first sign he had given +that his violent personality was still alive under the perplexing new +power that had covered it. + +"You are determined?" Simpson nodded with compressed lips. "Their +damnation be on your head, then." + +The priest stood aside. Simpson squeezed by him on the narrow +sidewalk; as he did so, Antoine drew aside the skirts of his cassock. + +From the beginning Simpson had preached more of hell than of heaven; +he could not help doing so, for he held eternal punishment to be more +imminent than eternal joy, and thought it a finer thing to scare +people into heaven than to attract them thither. He took an inverted +pleasure also in dwelling on the tortures of the damned, and had +combed the minor prophets and Revelation for threatening texts to hurl +at his congregation. Such devil-worship, furthermore, gave him greater +opportunity for oratory, greater immediate results also; he had used +it sometimes against his better judgment, and was not so far gone that +he did not sometimes tremble at the possible consequences of its use. +His encounter with the priest, however, had driven all doubts from his +mind, and that evening he did what he had never done before--he openly +attacked the Roman Church. + +"What has it done for you?" he shouted, and his voice rang in the +rafters of the warehouse where a hundred or so Negroes had gathered to +hear him. "What has it done for you? You cultivate your ground, and +its tithes take the food from the mouths of your children. Does the +priest tell you of salvation, which is without money and without +price, for all--for all--for all? Does he live among you as I do? Does +he minister to your bodies? Or your souls?" + +There was a stir at the door, and the eyes of the congregation turned +from the platform. + +"Father Antoine!" shrieked a voice. It was Madame Picard's; Simpson +could see her in the gloom at the far end of the hall and could see +the child astride of her hip. "Father Antoine! He is here!" + +In response to the whip of her voice there was a roar like the roar of +a train in a tunnel. It died away; the crowd eddied back upon the +platform. Father Antoine--he was robed, and there were two acolytes +with him, one with a bell and the other with a candle--began to read +in a voice as thundering as Simpson's own. + +"_Excommunicado_ ----" + +The Latin rolled on, sonorous, menacing. It ceased; the candle-flame +snuffed out, the bell tinkled, there was the flash of a cope in the +doorway, and the priest was gone. + +"He has excommunicated you!" Simpson shouted, almost shrieked. "Thank +God for that, my people!" + +They faced him again; ecstatic, beside himself, he flung at them +incoherent words. But the Latin, mysterious as magic, fateful as a +charm, had frightened them, and they did not yield to Simpson +immediately. Perhaps they would not have yielded to him at all if it +had not been for Madame Picard. + +From her corner rose an eerie chant in broken minors; it swelled +louder, and down the lane her people made for her she came dancing. +Her turban was off, her dress torn open to the breasts; she held the +child horizontally and above her in both hands. Her body swayed +rhythmically, but she just did not take up the swing of the votive +African dance that is as old as Africa. Up to the foot of the platform +she wavered, and there the cripple joined her, laughing as always. +Together they shuffled first to the right and then to the left, their +feet marking the earth floor in prints that overlapped like scales. +She laid the baby on the platform, sinking slowly to her knees as she +did so; as though at a signal the wordless chant rumbled upward from +the entire building, rolled over the platform like a wave, engulfing +the white man in its flood. + +"Symbolism! Sacrifice!" Simpson yelled. "She offers all to God!" + +He bent and raised the child at arm's length above his head. Instantly +the chanting ceased. + +"To the grove!" screamed the _mamaloi_. She leaped to the platform, +almost from her knees it seemed, and snatched the child. "To the +grove!" + +The crowd took up the cry; it swelled till Simpson's ears ached under +the impact of it. + +"To the grove!" + +Doubt assailed him as his mind--a white man's mind--rebelled. + +"This is wrong," he said dully; "wrong." + +Madame Picard's fingers gripped his arm. Except for the spasms of the +talons which were her fingers she seemed calm. + +"No, m'sieu'," she said. "You have them now. Atonement--atonement, +m'sieu'. You have many times spoken of atonement. But they do not +understand what they cannot see. They are behind you--you cannot leave +them now." + +"But--the child?" + +"The child shall show them--a child shall lead them, m'sieu'. They +must see a _théâtre_ of atonement--then they will believe. Come." + +Protesting, he was swept into the crowd and forward--forward to the +van of it, into the Grand Rue. Always the thunderous rumble of the mob +continued; high shrieks flickered like lightning above it; the name of +Christ dinned into his ears from foul throats. On one side of him the +cripple appeared; on the other strode the _mamaloi_--the child, +screaming with fear, on her hip. A hymn-tune stirred under the +tumult--rose above it. + + "_Le fils de Dieu se va Pen guerre + Son drapeau rouge comme sang_." + +Wild quavers adorned the tune obscenely; the mob marched to it, +falling into step. Torches came, flaming high at the edges of the +crowd, flaming wan and lurid on hundreds of black faces. + + "_Il va pour gagner sa couronne + Qui est-ce que suit dans son train_?" + +"A crusade!" Simpson suddenly shouted. "It is a crusade!" + +Yells answered him. Somewhere a drum began, reverberating as though +unfixed in space; now before them, now behind; now, it seemed, in the +air. The sound was maddening A swaying began in the crowd that took on +cadence, became a dance. Simpson, his brain drugged, his senses +perfervid marched on in exultation. These were his people at last. + +The drum thundered more loudly, became unbearable. They were clear of +the town and in the bush at last; huge fires gleamed through the +trees, and the mob spilled into the grove. The cripple and the +_mamaloi_ were beside him still. + +In the grove, with the drums--more than one of them now--palpitating +unceasingly, the dancing became wilder, more savage. In the light of +the fire the _mamaloi_ swayed, holding the screaming child, and close +to the flames crouched the cripple. The hymn had given place to the +formless chant, through which the minors quivered like the wails of +lost souls. + +The scales fell from Simpson's eyes. He rose to his full height and +stretched out his arm, demanding silence; there was some vague hope in +him that even now he might guide them. His only answer was a louder +yell than ever. + +It took form. Vieux Michaud sprang from the circle into the full +firelight, feet stamping, eyes glaring. + +"_La ch vre_!" he yelled. "_La chèvre sans cornes_!" + +The drums rolled in menacing crescendo, the fire licked higher. All +sounds melted into one. + +"_La chèvre sans cornes_!" + +The _mamaloi_ tore the child from her neck and held it high by one +leg. Simpson, seeing clearly as men do before they die, flung himself +toward her. + +The cripple's knife, thrust from below, went home between his ribs +just as the _mamaloi's_ blade crossed the throat of the sacrifice. + +"So I signed the death-certificate," Witherbee concluded. "Death at +the hands of persons unknown." + +"And they'll call him a martyr," said Bunsen. + +"Who knows?" the consul responded gravely. "Perhaps he was one." + + + +MARTIN GARRITY GETS EVEN + +By COURTNEY RYLEY COOPER and LEO. F. CREAGAN + +From _American Magazine_ + + +The entrance of Martin Garrity, superintendent of the Blue Ribbon +Division of the O.R.& T. Railroad, had been attended by all the +niceties of such an occasion, when Martin, grand, handsome, and +magnificent, arrived at his office for the day. True to form, he had +cussed out the office boy, spoken in fatherly fashion to the +trainmaster over the telephone about the lateness of No. 210, remarked +to the stenographer that her last letter had looked like the exquisite +tracks of a cow's hoof--and then he had read two telegrams. A moment +later, white, a bit stooped, a little old in features, he had left the +office, nor had he paused to note the grinning faces of those in his +wake, those who had known hours before! + +Home, and stumbling slightly as he mounted the steps of the veranda, +he faced a person in screaming foulard and a red toque, Mrs. Jewel +Garrity, just starting for the morning's assault upon the market. +Wordlessly he poked forward the first of the telegrams as he pulled +her within the hall and shut the door. And with bulging eyes Jewel +read it aloud: + +Chicago, April 30. +GARRITY, +Montgomery City: + +Effective arrival successor J.P. Aldrich must dispense your valuable +services. Kindly forward resignation by wire confirming this telegram. + +W.W. WALKER, +Vice-President & General +Manager. + +"And who is this Walker person?" Jewel asked, with a vindictive gasp. +"'Tis me that never heard of him. Why should he sign hisself vice +prisident and giniral manager when the whole world knows Mr. Barstow, +bless his soul, is the----" + +"Will ye listen?" Martin bellowed with sorrowful asperity. "Somethin's +happened. And now: + +GARRITY, +Montgomery City. + +Alabaster abound celebrity conglomerate commensurate constituency +effective arrival successor. Meet me Planters Hotel St. Louis this +P.M. + LEMUEL C. BARSTOW." + +And while Jewel gasped Martin went on: + +"'Tis code it is, from Barstow. It says Walker's taken his place--and +I'm out." + +Mouth drawn at the corners, hand trembling slightly, Jewel reached for +the message and stared blankly at the railroad code. Then silently she +turned and thumped up the stairs. In a moment she was down again; the +screaming foulard had given place to a house dress; the red toque had +been substituted by a shawl. But the lips were drawn no longer--a +smile was on them, and a soft hand touched Martin's white cheek as she +reached the door. + +"'Tis me that's goin' to the cash-carry, Marty darlin'," came quietly. +"I never liked that high-toned market annyhow. About--about that +other, Marty, me bye, 'tis all right, it is, it is. We can always +start over again." + +Over again! It had opened the doors of memory for Martin Garrity as, +at the window, he stared after her with eyes that saw in the portly, +middle-aged figure a picture of other days, when the world had centred +about a fluttering honour flag, which flew above a tiny section house +at a bit of a place called Glen Echo, when the rotund form of Jewel +Garrity was slender and graceful, when Martin's freckled face was +thinner and more engaging, and when---- + +Visions of the old days floated before him, days on the section with +his crew of "snipes" back in the Honour Flag times. Memories returned +to him, of blazing hours in the summer, when even the grease-lizards +panted and died, when the heat rays curled in maddening serpent-like +spirals before his glazed eyes. + +And why? Why had he been willing to sacrifice, to work for wages +pitiful indeed, compared to the emoluments of other lines of +endeavour? Why had she, his Jewel, accepted the loneliness, the +impoverishment of those younger days with light-heartedness? He never +had thought of it before. Now, deposed, dethroned, defeated at the +very pinnacle of his life, the answer came, with a force that brought +a lump to his throat and a tear to his eyes. Why? Because they had +loved this great, human, glistening thing of shining steel and +thundering noise, loved it because the Blue Ribbon division had +included the Blue Ribbon section, their section, which they had built +together. + +Now, all they had worked for, lived for, longed for, and enjoyed +together had been taken away, without warning, without reason, and +given to another! Martin groaned with the thought of it. Three hours +later he kissed his Jewel good-bye, roaring at her because a tear +stood in each eye--to cover the fact that tears were in his own. That +night, still grim, still white, he faced Lemuel C. Barstow, former +vice-president and general manager of the O.R.& T. in his hotel room +in St. Louis. That person spoke with biting directness. + +"Politics, Martin," came his announcement. "They shelved me because I +wouldn't play the tricks of a clique that got into power before I +could stop 'em. You were my pet appointee, so you went, too. It wasn't +because we weren't efficient. They lifted the pin on me, and that +meant you. So here we are. But"--and a fist banged on the +table--"they're going to pay for it! This new crowd knows as much +about railroading as a baby does about chess. I tried to tell that to +the men with the money. They wouldn't listen. So I went to men who +could hear, the Ozark Central. I'm to be the new president of that +road." + +"That wooden axle outfit?" Martin squinted. "Sure, Mr. Barstow, I'm +not knockin' the new deal, or----" + +"Never mind that." Lemuel C. Barstow smiled genially. "That's where +your part of the job comes in. That's why I need you. But we'll let +that go for the present. Go back to Montgomery City, turn over the +reins to this new fish, who doesn't know an air brake from a boiler +tube, and keep quiet until I send for you." + +Then ensued two weeks of nothing to do but wait. Nothing to do but to +pace the floor like some belligerent, red-faced caged animal, daring +his Jewel to feel hurt because sneering remarks had been made about +her husband's downfall. Two weeks--then came the summons. + +"Careful now, Martin! No wild throws, remember!" Lemuel Barstow was +giving the final instructions. "We've got a big job ahead. I've +brought you down here because you have the faculty of making men think +they hate you--then going out and working their heads off for you, +because well, to be frank, you're the biggest, blunderingest, +hardest-working blusterer that I ever saw--and you're the only man who +can pull me through. This road's in rotten shape, especially as +concerns the roadbed. The steel and ties are all right, but the +ballast is rotten. You've got to make it the best in Missouri, and +you've got only eight months to do it in. So tear loose. Your job's +that of special superintendent, with no strings on it. Pay no +attention to any one but me. If you need equipment, buy it and tell +the purchasing agent to go to the hot place. By March 1st, and no +later, I want the track from St. Louis to Kansas City to be as smooth +as a ballroom floor." + +"And why the rush?" + +"Just this: The O.R.& T. treated me like a dirty dog. I'm going to +make 'em pay for it; I'm after my pound of flesh now! There's just one +thing that road prizes above all else--it's St. Louis-Kansas City mail +contracts. The award comes up again in March. The system that can make +the fastest time in the government speed trials gets the plum. +Understand?" + +"I do!" answered Martin, with the first real enthusiasm he had known +in weeks. "'Tis me budget I'll be fixin' up immejiate at once. Ye'll +get action, ye will." He departed for a frenzied month. Then he +returned at the request of President Barstow. + +"You're doing wonderful work, Martin," said that official. "It's +coming along splendidly. But--but----I understand there's a bit of a +laugh going around among the railroad men about you." + +"About me?" Garrity's chest bulged aggressively. "An' who's laughin?" + +"Nearly everybody in the railroad game in Missouri. They say you let +some slick salesman sting you for a full set of Rocky Mountain +snow-fighting machinery, even up to a rotary snow plough. I----" + +"Sting me?" Martin bellowed the words. "That I did not!" + +"Good! I knew----" + +"I ordered it of me own free will. And if annybody laughs----" + +"But, Martin"--and there was pathos in the voice--"a rotary snow +plough? On a Missouri railroad? Flangers, jull-ploughs, wedge +ploughs--tunnel wideners--and a rotary? Here? Why--I--I thought better +of you than that. We haven't had a snow in Missouri that would require +all of those things, not in the last ten years. What did they cost?" + +"Eighty-three thousand, fi'hunnerd an' ten dollars," answered Martin +gloomily. He _had_ pulled a boner. Mr. Barstow figured on a sheet of +paper. + +"At three dollars a day, that would hire nearly a thousand track +labourers for thirty days. A thousand men could tamp a lot of ballast +in a month, Martin." + +"That they could, sir," came dolefully. Then Garrity, the old lump in +his throat, waited to be excused, and backed from the office. That +rotary snow plough had been his own, his pet idea--and it had been +wrong! + +Gloomily he returned to Northport, his headquarters, there to observe +a group of grinning railroad men gathered about a great, bulky object +parked in front of the roundhouse. Behind it were other contraptions +of shining steel, all of which Martin recognized without a second +glance--his snow-fighting equipment, just arrived. Nor did he approach +for a closer view. Faintly he heard jeering remarks from the crowd; +then laughter. He caught the mention of his own name, coupled with +derisive comment. His hands clenched. His red neck bulged. His big +lungs filled--then slowly deflated; and Martin went slowly homeward, +in silence. + +"And is it your liver?" asked Jewel Garrity as they sat at dinner. + +"It is not!" bawled Martin. He rose. He pulled his napkin from his +chin with Garrity emphasis and dropped it in the gravy. He thumped +about the table, then stopped. + +One big freckled paw reached uncertainly outward and plunked with +intended gentleness upon the woman's shoulder, to rest, trembling +there, a second. Then silently Martin went on upstairs. For that touch +had told her that it was--his heart! + +A heart that ached with a throbbing sorrow which could not be downed +as the summer passed and Martin heard again and again the reflexes +brought about by the purchase of his snow ploughs. Vainly he stormed +up and down the line of the Ozark Central with its thousands of +labourers. Vainly he busied himself with a thousand intricacies of +construction, in the hope of forgetfulness. None of it could take from +his mind the fact that railroad men were laughing at him, that +chuckling train-butchers were pointing out the giant machinery to +grinning passengers, that even the railroad journals were printing +funny quips about Barstow's prize superintendent and his mountain snow +plough. Nor could even the news that Aldrich, over on the Blue Ribbon +division, was allowing that once proud bit of rail to degenerate into +an ordinary portion of a railroad bring even a passing cheer. They, +too, were laughing! In a last doglike hope Martin looked up the +precipitation reports. It only brought more gloom. Only four times in +thirty years had there been a snowfall in Missouri that could block a +railroad! + +The summer crept into autumn; autumn to early winter, bringing with it +the transformation of the rickety old Ozark Central to a smooth, +well-cushioned line of gleaming steel, where the trains shot to and +fro with hardly a tremor, where the hollow thunder of culvert and +trestle spoke of sturdy strength, where the trackwalker searched in +vain for loose plates or jutting joints; but to Garrity, it was only +the fulfilment or the work of a mechanical second nature. December was +gliding by in warmth and sunshine. January came, with no more than a +hatful of snow, and once more Martin found himself facing the +president. + +"We'll win that contract, Martin!" It almost brought a smile to the +superintendent's face. "I've just been over the road--on the quiet. We +made eighty miles an hour with hardly a jolt!" + +"Thankee, sir." A vague sense of joy touched Martin's aching +heart--only to depart. + +"By the way, I noticed when I went through Northport that you've still +got that rotary where everybody can see it. I wish you'd move that +stuff--behind the roundhouse, out of sight." + +Then Martin, heavier at heart than ever, went back to Northport. There +he said a quaking good-bye to his last hope--and executed the +president's orders, trying not to notice the grins of the "goat" crew +as they shunted the machinery into hiding. That night, after Jewel was +asleep, and the cat outside had ceased yowling, Martin climbed +stealthily out of bed and went on his knees, praying with all the +fervour of his big being for snow. And the prayer was answered---- + +By the worst rain that a Missouri January had known in years, +scattering the freshly tamped gravel, loosening the piles of trestles, +sending Martin forth once more to bawl his orders with the thunder of +the old days back at Glen Echo, even to leap side by side with the +track labourers, a tamping bar in his big hands, that one more blow +might be struck, one more impression made upon the giant task ahead. + +January slid by; February went into the third week before the job was +finished. Martin looked at the sky with hopeful eyes. It was useless. +March the first--and Martin went into St. Louis to make his report, +and to spend an uneasy, restless night with the president in his room +at the hotel. + +"It's only a few days off now"--they were in bed the next morning, +finishing the conversation begun the night before--"and I want you to +keep your eyes open every second! The mail marathon agreement reads +that no postponement can be made on account of physical or mechanical +obstacles. If a trestle should happen to go out--that would be our +finish." + +"I wish"--Martin rolled out of bed and groped for his shoes--"we'd +been workin' with me old Blue Ribbon division. I know every foot o' +----" + +"Oh, chase the Blue Ribbon division! Every time I see you you've got +something on your chest about it. Why, man, don't you know it's the +Blue Ribbon division that I'm counting on! Aldrich has let it run down +until it's worse than a hog trail. If they can make forty-five an hour +on it, I'm crazy. You can't win mail contracts with that. So forget +it. Anyhow, you're working for the Ozark Central now." + +Martin nodded, then for a long moment crouched silent humiliated, his +thick fingers fumbling with the laces of his shoes. At last, with a +sigh, he poked his shirt into his trousers and thumped across the room +to raise the drawn shades. + +He stared. He gulped. He yelped--with an exclamation of joy, of +deliverance, of victory! The outside world was white! A blinding, +swirling veil shrouded even the next building. The street below was +like a stricken thing; the vague forms of the cars seemed to no more +than crawl. Wildly Martin pawed for the telephone and bawled a number. +Barstow sat up in bed. + +"Snow!" he gasped. "A blizzard!" + +"Order the snow ploughs!" Garrity had got the chief dispatcher, and +was bawling louder than ever. "All of thim! Put an injine on each and +keep thim movin'! Run that rotary till the wheels drop off!" + +Then he whirled, grasping wildly at coat, hat, and overcoat. + +"And now will ye laugh?" he roared, as he backed to the door. "Now +will ye laugh at me snow plough?" + +Twenty-four hours later, when trains were limping into terminals hours +behind time, when call after call was going forth to summon aid for +the stricken systems of Missouri, when double-headers, frost-caked +wheels churning uselessly, bucked the drifts in a constantly losing +battle; when cattle trains were being cut from the schedules, and +every wire was loaded with the messages of frantic officials, someone +happened to wonder what that big boob Garrity was doing with his snow +ploughs. The answer was curt and sharp--there on the announcement +board of the Union Station: + +OZARK CENTRAL ALL TRAINS ON TIME + +But Martin had only one remark to make, that it still was snowing. +Noon of the third day came, and the Ozark Central became the detour +route of every cross-Missouri mail train. Night, and Martin Garrity, +snow-crusted, his face cut and cracked by the bite of wind and the +sting of splintered, wind-driven ice, his head aching from loss of +sleep, but his heart thumping with happiness, took on the serious +business of moving every St. Louis-Kansas City passenger and express +train, blinked vacuously when someone called him a wizard. + +Railroad officials gave him cigars, and slapped him on his snow-caked +shoulders. He cussed them out of the way. The telephone at Northport +clanged and sang with calls from President Barstow; but Martin only +waved a hand in answer as he ground through with the rotary. + +"Tell him to send me tilegrams!" he blustered. "Don't he know I'm +busy?" + +Twelve hours more. The snow ceased. The wind died. Ten miles out of +Kansas City Martin gave the homeward-bound order for Northport, then +slumped weakly into a corner. Five minutes before he had heard the +news--news that hurt. The O.R.& T., fighting with every available man +it could summon, had partially opened its line, with the exception of +one division, hopelessly snowed under--his old, his beloved Blue +Ribbon. + +"Tis me that would have kept 'er open," he mused bitterly. "And they +fired me!" + +He nodded and slept. He awoke--and he said the same thing again. He +reached Northport, late at night, to roar at Jewel and the hot water +she had heated for his frost-bitten feet--then to hug her with an +embrace that she had not known since the days when her Marty wore a +red undershirt. + +"And do ye be hearin?" she asked. "The Blue Ribbon's tied up! Not a +wheel----" + +"Will ye shut up?" Martin suddenly had remembered something. The mail +test! Not forty-eight hours away! He blinked. One big hand smacked +into the other. "The pound of flesh!" he bellowed. "Be gar! The pound +of flesh!" + +"And what are ye talkin' ----" + +"Woman, shut up," said Martin Garrity. "'Tis me that's goin' to bed. +See that I'm not disturbed. Not even for Mr. Barstow." + +"That I will," said Jewel--but that she didn't. It was Martin himself +who answered the pounding on the door four hours later, then, in the +frigid dining room, stared at the message which the chief dispatcher +had handed him: + +GARRITY, NORTHPORT: If line is free of snow assemble all snow-fighting +equipment and necessary locomotives to handle same, delivering same +fully equipped and manned with your own force to Blue Ribbon Division +O.R. & T. Accompany this equipment personally to carry out +instructions as I would like to have them carried out. Everything +depends on your success or failure to open this line. + +LEMUEL C. BARSTOW. + +So! He was to make the effort; but if he failed that mail contract +came automatically to the one road free to make the test, the Ozark +Central! That was what Barstow meant! Make the effort, appear to fight +with every weapon, that the O.R. & T. might have no claim in the +future of unfairness but to fail! Let it be so! The O.R. & T. had +broken his heart. Now, at last, his turn had come! + +He turned to the telephone and gave his orders. Then up the stairs he +clambered and into his clothes. Jewel snorted and awoke. + +"Goo'by!" roared Martin as he climbed into his coat. "They've sent for +me to open the Blue Ribbon." + +"And have they?" Jewel sat up, her eyes beaming. "I'd been wishin' +it--and ye'll do it, Marty; I've been thinkin' about the old section +snowed under--and all the folks we knew----" + +"Will ye shut up?" This was something Martin did not want to hear. Out +of the house he plumped, to the waiting double-header of locomotives +attached to the rotary, and the other engines, parked on the switches, +with their wedge ploughs, jull-ploughs, flangers, and tunnel wideners. +The "high-ball" sounded. At daybreak, boring his way through the +snow-clogged transfer at Missouri City, Martin came out upon the main +line of the O.R. & T.--and to his duty of revenge. + +On they went, a slow, deliberate journey, steam hissing, black smoke +curling, whistles tooting, wheels crunching, as the rotary bucked the +bigger drifts and the smaller ploughs eliminated the slighter raises, +a triumphant procession toward that thing which Martin knew he could +attack with all the seeming ferocity of desperation and yet fail--the +fifty-foot thickness of Bander Cut. + +Face to face, in the gaunt sun of early morning he saw it--a little +shack, half covered with snow, bleak and forbidding in its loneliness, +yet all in all to the man who stared at it with eyes suddenly +wistful--his little old section house, where once the honour flag had +flown. + +He gulped. Suddenly his hand tugged at the bell cord. Voices had come +from without, they were calling his name! He sought the door, then +gulped again. The steps and platform of his car were filled with +eager, homely-faced men, men he had known in other days, his old crew +of section "snipes." + +All about him they crowded; Martin heard his voice answering their +queries, as though someone were talking far away. His eyes had turned +back to that section house, seeking instinctively the old flag, his +flag. It spoke for a man who gave the best that was in him, who +surpassed because he worked with his heart and with his soul in the +every task before him. But the flag was not there. The pace had not +been maintained. Then the louder tones of a straw boss called him +back: + +"You'll sure need that big screw and all the rest of them babies, +Garrity. That ole Bander Cut's full to the sky--and Sni-a-bend Hill! +Good-night! But you'll make 'er. You've got to, Garrity; we've made up +a purse an' bet it down in Montgomery that you'll make 'er!" + +Martin went within and the crew waited for a high-ball order that did +not come. In his private car, alone, Martin Garrity was pacing the +floor. The call of the old division, which he had loved and built, was +upon him, swaying him with all the force of memory. + +"I guess we could sell the flivver----" he was repeating. "Then I've +got me diamond ... and Jewel ... she's got a bit, besides what we've +saved bechune us. And he'll win the test, anyhow ... they'll never +beat him over this division ... if I give him back what I've earned +... and if he wins anyhow------" + +Up ahead they still waited. Fifteen minutes. Twenty. At last a figure +appeared in the cab of the big rotary, looking for a last time at that +bleak little section house and the bare flagpole. Then: + +"Start 'er up and give 'er hell!" + +Martin was on the job once more, while outside his old section snipes +cheered, and reminded him that their hopes and dreams for a division +still beloved in spite of a downfall rested upon his shoulders. The +whistles screamed. The bells clanged. Smoke poured from the stacks of +the double-header, and the freshening sun, a short time later, glinted +upon the white-splotched equipment, as the great auger followed by its +lesser allies, bored into the mass of snow at Bander Cut. + +Hours of backing and filling, of retreats and attacks, hours in which +there came, time after time, the opportunity to quit. But Martin did +not give the word. Out the other side they came, the steam shooting +high, and on toward the next obstacle, the first of forty, lesser and +greater, which lay between them and Montgomery City. + +Afternoon ... night. Still the crunching, whining roar of the rotary +as it struck the icy stretches fought against them in vain, then +retreated until pick and bar and dynamite could break the way for its +further attack. Midnight, and one by one the exhausted crew approached +the white-faced, grim-lipped man who stood tense and determined in the +rotary cab. One by one they asked the same question: + +"Hadn't we better tie up for the night?" + +"Goon! D'ye hear me? Goon! What is it ye are, annyhow, a bunch of +white-livered cowards that ye can't work without rest?" + +The old, dynamic, bulldozing force, the force that had made men hate +Martin Garrity only to love him, had returned into its full power, the +force that had built him from a section snipe to the exalted possessor +of the blue pennon which once had fluttered from that flagpole, was +again on the throne, fighting onward to the conclusion of a purpose, +no matter what it might wreck for him personally, no matter what the +cost might be to him in the days to come. He was on his last job--he +knew that. The mail contract might be won a thousand times over, but +there ever would rest the stigma that he had received a telegram which +should have been plain to him, and that he had failed to carry out its +hidden orders. But with the thought of it Martin straightened, and he +roared anew the message which carried tired, aching men through the +night: + +"Go on! Go on! What's stoppin' ye? Are ye going to let these +milk-an'-water fellys over here say that ye tried and quit?" + +Early morning--and there came Sni-a-bend Hill, with the snow packed +against it in a new plane which obliterated the railroad as though it +had never been there. Hot coffee came from the containers, sandwiches +from the baskets, and the men ate and drank as they worked--all but +Garrity. This was the final battle, and with it came his battle cry: + +"Keep goin'! This is the tough one--we've got to go on--we've got to +go on!" + +And on they went. The streaking rays of dawn played for a moment upon +an untroubled mound of white, smooth and deep upon the eastern end of +Sni-a-bend. Then, as though from some great internal upheaval, the +mass began to tremble. Great heaps of snow broke from their place and +tumbled down the embankment. From farther at the rear, steam, +augmented by the vapours of melting snow and the far-blown gushes of +spitting smoke, hissed upward toward the heights of the white-clad +hill. Then a bulging break--the roar of machinery, and a monster came +grinding forth, forcing its way hungrily onward, toward the next and +smaller contest. Within the giant auger a man turned to Garrity. + +"Guess it's over, Boss. They said up at Glen Echo--" + +A silent nod. Then Garrity turned, and reaching into the +telegram-blank holder at the side of the cab, brought forth paper and +an envelope. Long he wrote as the rotary clattered along, devouring +the smaller drifts in steady succession, a letter of the soul, a +letter which told of an effort that had failed, of a decision that +could not hold. And it told, too, of the return of all that Martin had +worked for--Mr. Barstow had been good to him, and he, Martin Garrity, +could not take his money and disobey him. He'd pay him back. + +Whistles sounded, shrieking in answer to the tooting of others from +far away, the wild eerie ones of yard engines, the deeper, throatier +tones of factories. It was the end. Montgomery City! + +Slowly Martin addressed the envelope, and as the big bore came to a +stop, evaded the thronging crowds and sought the railroad mail box. He +raised the letter.... + +"Mr. Garrity!" He turned. The day agent was running toward him. "Mr. +Garrity, Mr. Barstow wants to see you. He's here--in the station. He +came to see the finish." + +So the execution must be a personal one! The letter was crunched into +a pocket. Dimly, soddenly, Martin followed the agent. As through a +haze he saw the figure of Barstow, and felt that person tug at his +sleeve. + +"Come over here, where we can talk in private!" There was a queer ring +in the voice and Martin obeyed. Then--"Shake, Old Kid!" + +Martin knew that a hand was clasping his. But why? + +"You made it! I knew you would. Didn't I tell you we'd get our pound +of flesh?" + +"But--but the contract----" + +"To thunder with the contract!" came the happy answer of Barstow. "If +you had only answered the 'phone, you wouldn't be so much in the dark. +What do I care about mail contracts now--with the best two lines in +Missouri under my supervision? Don't you understand? This was the hole +that I had prayed for this O.R. & T. bunch to get into from the first +minute I saw that snow. They would have been tied up for a week +longer--if it hadn't been for us. Can't you see? It was the argument I +needed--that politics isn't what counts--it's brains and doing things! +Now do you understand? Well"--and Barstow stood off and laughed--"if I +have to diagram things for you, the money interests behind the O.R. & +T. have seen the light. I'll admit it took about three hours of +telephoning to New York to cause the illumination; but they've seen +it, and that's enough. They also have agreed to buy the Ozark Central +and to merge the two. Further, they have realized that the only +possible president of the new lines is a man with brains like, for +instance, Lemuel C. Barstow, who has working directly with him a +general superintendent--and don't overlook that general part--a +_general_ superintendent named Martin Garrity!" + + + +STRANGER THINGS + +By MILDRED CRAM + +From _Metropolitan Magazine_ + + +We were seated in the saloon of a small steamer which plies between +Naples and Trieste on irregular schedule. Outside, the night was +thickly black and a driving rain swept down the narrow decks. + +"You Englishmen laugh at ghosts," the Corsican merchant said. "In my +country, we are less pretentious. Frankly, we are afraid. You, too, +are afraid, and so you laugh! A difference, it seems to me, which +lies, not in the essence but in the manner." + +Doctor Fenton smiled queerly. "Perhaps. What do any of us know about +it, one way or the other? Ticklish business! We poke a little too far +beyond our ken and get a shock that withers our souls. Cosmic force! +We stumble forward, bleating for comfort, and fall over a charged +cable. It may have been put there to hold us out--or in." + +Aldobrandini, the Italian inventor, was playing cards with a German +engineer. He lost the game to his opponent, and turning about in his +chair, came into the conversation. + +"You are talking about ghosts. I have seen them. Once in the Carso. +Again on the campagna near Rome. I met a company of Caesar's +legionaries tramping through a bed of asphodels. The asphodels lay +down beneath those crushing sandals, and then stood upright again, +unharmed." + +The engineer shuffled the cards between short, capable fingers. +"Ghosts. Yes, I agree; there are such things. Created out of our +subconscious selves; mirages of the mind; photographic spiritual +projections; hereditary memories. There are always explanations." + +Doctor Fenton poked into the bowl of his pipe with a broad thumb. "Did +any of you happen to know the English poet, Cecil Grimshaw? No? I'll +tell you a story about him if you care to listen. A long story, I warn +you. Very curious. Very suggestive. I cannot vouch for the entire +truth of it, since I got the tale from many sources--a word here, a +chance encounter there, and at last only the puzzling reports of men +who saw Grimshaw out in Africa. He wasn't a friend of mine, or I +wouldn't tell these things." + +Aldobrandini's dark eyes softened. He leaned forward. "Cecil Grimshaw +... We Latins admire his work more than that of any modern +Englishman." + +The doctor tipped his head back against the worn red velvet of the +lounge. An oil lamp, swinging from the ceiling, seemed to isolate him +in a pool of light. Outside, the invisible sea raced astern, hissing +slightly beneath the driving impact of the rain. + +I first heard of Grimshaw [the doctor began] in my student days in +London. He was perhaps five years my senior, just beginning to be +famous, not yet infamous, but indiscreet enough to get himself talked +about. He had written a little book of verse, "Vision of Helen," he +called it, I believe.... The oblique stare of the hostile Trojans. +Helen coifed with flame. Menelaus. Love ... Greater men than Grimshaw +had written of Priam's tragedy. His audacity called attention to his +imperfect, colourful verse, his love of beauty, his sense of the +exotic, the strange, the unhealthy. People read his book on the sly +and talked about it in whispers. It was indecent, but it was +beautiful. At that time you spoke of Cecil Grimshaw with disapproval, +if you spoke of him at all, or, if you happened to be a prophet, you +saw in him the ultimate bomb beneath the Victorian literary edifice. +And so he was. + +I saw him once at the Alhambra--poetry in a top hat! He wore evening +clothes that were a little too elaborate, a white camellia in his +buttonhole, and a thick-lensed monocle on a black ribbon. During the +entr'acte he stood up and surveyed the house from pit to gallery, as +if he wanted to be seen. He was very tall and the ugliest man in +England. Imagine the body of a Lincoln, the hands of a woman, the jaw +and mouth of Disraeli, an aristocratic nose, unpleasant eyes, and then +that shock of yellow hair--hyacinthine--the curly locks of an insane +virtuoso or a baby prodigy. + +"Who is that?" I demanded. + +"Grimshaw. The chap who wrote the book about naughty Helen. _La belle +Hélène_ and the shepherd boy." + +I stared. Everyone else stared. The pit stopped shuffling and giggling +to gaze at that prodigious monstrosity, and people in the boxes turned +their glasses on him. Grimshaw seemed to be enjoying it. He spoke to +someone across the aisle and smiled, showing a set of huge white +teeth, veritable tombstones. + +"Abominable," I said. + +But I got his book and read it. He was the first Englishman to dare +break away from literary conventions. Of course he shocked England. He +was a savage aesthete. I read the slim volume through at one sitting; +I was horrified and fascinated. + +I met Grimshaw a year later. He was having a play produced at the +Lyceum--"The Labyrinth"--with Esther Levenson as Simonetta. She +entertained for him at her house in Chelsea and I got myself invited +because I wanted to see the atrocious genius at close range. He wore a +lemon-coloured vest and lemon-yellow spats. + +"How d'you do?" he said, gazing at me out of those queer eyes of his. +"I hear that you admire my work." + +"You have been misinformed," I replied. "Your work interests me, +because I am a student of nervous and mental diseases." + +"Ah. Psychotherapy." + +"All of the characters in your poem, 'The Vision of Helen,' are +neurotics. They suffer from morbid fears, delusions, hysteria, violent +mental and emotional complexities. A text-book in madness." + +Grimshaw laughed. "You flatter me. I am attracted by neurotic types. +Insanity has its source in the unconscious, and we English are afraid +of looking inward." He glanced around the crowded room with an amused +and cynical look. "Most of these people are as bad as my Trojans, +Doctor Fenton. Only they conceal their badness, and it isn't good for +them." + +We talked for a few moments. I amused him, I think, by my diagnosis of +his Helen's mental malady. But he soon tired of me and his restless +gaze went over my head, searching for admiration. Esther Levenson +brought Ellen Terry over and he forgot me entirely in sparkling for +the good lady--showing his teeth, shaking his yellow locks, bellowing +like a centaur. + +"The fellow's an ass," I decided. + +But when "The Labyrinth" was produced, I changed my mind. There again +was that disturbing loveliness. It was a story of the passionate +Florence of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and Esther Levenson drifted +through the four long acts against a background of Tuscan walls, +scarlet hangings, oaths, blood-spilling, dark and terrible vengeance. +Grimshaw took London by the throat and put it down on its knees. + +Then for a year or two he lived on his laurels, lapping up admiration +like a drunkard in his cups. Unquestionably, Esther Levenson was his +mistress, since she presided over his house in Cheyne Walk. They say +she was not the only string to his lute. A Jewess, a Greek poetess, +and a dancer from Stockholm made up his amorous medley at that time. +Scandalized society flocked to his drawing-room, there to be received +by Simonetta herself, wearing the blanched draperies and tragic pearls +of the labyrinth he had made for her. Grimshaw offered no apologies. +He was the uncrowned laureate and kings can do no wrong. He was +painted by the young Sargent, of course, and by the aging +Whistler--you remember the butterfly's portrait of him in a yellow +kimono leaning against a black mantel? I, for one, think he was vastly +amused by all this fury of admiration; he despised it and fed upon it. +If he had been less great, he would have been utterly destroyed by it, +even then. + +I went to Vienna, and lost track of him for several years. Then I +heard that he had married a dear friend of mine--Lady Dagmar Cooper, +one of the greatest beauties and perhaps the sternest prude in +England. She wrote me, soon after that unbelievable mating: "I have +married Cecil Grimshaw. I know you won't approve; I do not altogether +approve myself. He is not like the men I have known--not at all +_English_. But he intrigues me; there is a sense of power behind his +awfulness--you see I know that he is awful! I think I will be able to +make him look at things--I mean visible, material things--my way. We +have taken a house in town and he has promised to behave--no more +Chelsea parties, no dancers, no yellow waistcoats and chrysanthemums. +That was all very well for his 'student' days. Now that he is a +personage, it will scarcely do. I am tremendously interested and +happy...." + +Interested and happy! She was a typical product of Victoria's reign, a +beautiful creature whose faith was pinned to the most unimportant +things--class, position, a snobbish religion, a traditional morality +and her own place in an intricate little world of ladies and +gentlemen. God save us! What was Cecil Grimshaw going to do in an +atmosphere of titled bores, bishops, military men, and cautious +statesmen? I could fancy him in his new town house, struggling through +some endless dinner party--his cynical, stone-gray eyes sweeping up +and down the table, his lips curled in that habitual sneer, his mind, +perhaps, gone back to the red-and-blue room in Chelsea, where he had +been wont to stand astride before the black mantel, bellowing +indecencies into the ears of witty modernists. Could he bellow any +longer? + +Apparently not. I heard of him now and then from this friend and that. +He was indeed "behaving" well. He wrote nothing to shock the +sensibilities of his wife's world--a few fantastic short stories, +touched with a certain childish spirituality, and that was all. They +say that he bent his manners to hers--a tamed centaur grazing with a +milk-white doe. He grew a trifle fat. Quite like a model English +husband, he called Dagmar "My dear" and drove with her in the Park at +the fashionable hour, his hands crossed on the head of his cane, his +eyes half closed. She wrote me: "I am completely happy. So is Cecil. +Surely he can have made no mistake in marrying me." + +You all know that this affectation of respectability did not last +long--not more than five years; long enough for the novelty to wear +off. The genius or the devil that was in Cecil Grimshaw made its +reappearance. He was tossed out of Dagmar's circle like a burning rock +hurled from the mouth of a crater; he fell into Chelsea again. Esther +Levenson had come back from the States and was casting about for a +play. She sought out Grimshaw and with her presence, her grace and +pallor and seduction, lured him into his old ways. "The leaves are +yellow," he said to her, "but still they dance in a south wind. The +altar fires are ash and grass has grown upon the temple floor---- I +have been away too long. Get me my pipe, you laughing dryad, and I +will play for you." + +He played for her and all England heard. Dagmar heard and pretended +acquiescence. According to her lights, she was magnificent--she +invited Esther Levenson to Broadenham, the Grimshaw place in Kent, nor +did she wince when the actress accepted. When I got back to England, +Dagmar was fighting for his soul with all the weapons she had. I went +to see her in her cool little town house, that house so typical of +her, so untouched by Grimshaw. And, looking at me with steady eyes, +she said: "I'm sorry Cecil isn't here. He's writing again--a play--for +Esther Levenson, who was Simonetta, you remember?" + +I promised you a ghost story. If it is slow in coming, it is because +all these things have a bearing on the mysterious, the extraordinary +things that happened---- + +You probably know about the last phase of Grimshaw's career--who +doesn't? There is something fascinating about the escapades of a +famous man, but when he happens also to be a great poet, we cannot +forget his very human sins--in them he is akin to us. + +Not all you have heard and read about Grimshaw's career is true. But +the best you can say of him is bad enough. He squandered his own +fortune first--on Esther Levenson and the production of "The Sunken +City"--and then stole ruthlessly from Dagmar; that is, until she found +legal ways to put a stop to it. We had passed into Edward's reign and +the decadence which ended in the war had already set in--Grimshaw was +the last of the "pomegranate school," the first of the bolder, more +sinister futurists. A frank hedonist. An intellectual voluptuary. He +set the pace, and a whole tribe of idolaters and imitators panted at +his heels. They copied his yellow waistcoats, his chrysanthemums, his +eye-glass, his bellow. Nice young men, otherwise sane, let their hair +grow long like their idol's and professed themselves unbelievers. +Unbelievers in what? God save us! Ten years later most of them were +wading through the mud of Flanders, believing something pretty +definite---- + +One night I was called to the telephone by the Grimshaws' physician. +I'll tell you his name, because he has a lot to do with the rest of +the story--Doctor Waram, Douglas Waram--an Australian. + +"Grimshaw has murdered a man," he said briefly. "I want you to help +me. Come to Cheyne Walk. Take a cab. Hurry." + +Of course I went, with a very clear vision of the future of Dagmar, +Lady Cooper, to occupy my thoughts during that lurching drive through +the slippery streets. I knew that she was at Broadenham, holding up +her head in seclusion. + +Grimshaw's house was one of a row of red brick buildings not far from +the river. Doctor Waram himself opened the door to me. + +"I say, this is an awful mess," he said, in a shocked voice. "The +woman sent for me--Levenson, that actress. There's some mystery. A man +dead--his head knocked in. And Grimshaw sound asleep. It may be +hysterical, but I can't wake him. Have a look before I get the +police." + +I followed him into the studio, the famous Pompeian room, on the +second floor. I shall never forget the frozen immobility of the three +actors in the tragedy. Esther Levenson, wrapped in peacock-blue +scarves, stood upright before the black mantel, her hands crossed on +her breast. Cecil Grimshaw was lying full length on a brick-red satin +couch, his head thrown back, his eyes closed. The dead man sprawled on +the floor, face down, between them. Two lamps made of sapphire glass +swung from the gilded ceiling.... Bowls of perfumed, waxen flowers. A +silver statuette of a nude girl. A tessellated floor strewn with rugs. +Orange trees in tubs. Cigarette smoke hanging motionless in the still, +overheated air.... + +I stooped over the dead man. "Who is he?" + +"Tucker. Leading man in 'The Sunken City.' Look at Grimshaw, will you? +We mustn't be too long--" + +I went to the poet. The inevitable monocle was still caught and held +by the yellow thatch of his thick brow. He was breathing slowly. + +"Grimshaw," I said, touching his forehead, "open your eyes." + +He did so, and I was startled by the expression of despair in their +depths. "Ah," he-said, "it's the psychopathologist." + +"How did this happen?" + +He sat up--I am convinced that he had been faking that drunken +sleep--and stared at the sprawling figure on the floor. "Tucker +quarrelled with me," he said. "I knocked him down and his forehead +struck against the table. Then he crawled over here and died. From +fright, d'you think?" He shuddered. "Take him away, Waram, will you? +I've got work to do." + +Suddenly Esther Levenson spoke in a flat voice, without emotion: "It +isn't true! He struck him with that silver statuette. Like this----" +She made a violent gesture with both arms. "And before God in heaven, +I'll make him pay for it. I will! I will! I will!" + +"Keep still," I said sharply. + +Grimshaw looked up at her. He made a gesture of surrender. Then he +smiled. "Simonetta," he said, "you are no better than the rest." + +She sobbed, ran over to him, and went down on her knees, twisting her +arms about his waist. There was a look of distaste in Grimshaw's eyes; +he stared into her distraught face a moment, then he freed himself +from her arms and got to his feet. + +"I think I'll telephone to Dagmar," he said. + +But Waram shook his head. "I'll do that. I'm sorry, Grimshaw; the +police will have to know. While we're waiting for them, you might +write a letter to Mrs. Grimshaw. I'll see that she gets it in the +morning." + +I don't remember whether the poet wrote to Dagmar then or not. But +surely you remember how she stayed by him during the trial--still +Victorian in her black gown and veil, mourning for the hope that was +dead, at least! You remember his imprisonment; the bitter invective of +his enemies; the defection of his followers; the dark scandals that +filled the newspapers, offended public taste, and destroyed Cecil +Grimshaw's popularity in an England that had worshipped him! + +Esther Levenson lied to save him. That was the strangest thing of all. +She denied what she had told us that night of the tragedy. Tucker, she +said, had been in love with her; he followed her to Grimshaw's house +in Chelsea and quarrelled violently with the poet. His death was an +accident. Grimshaw had not touched the statuette. When he saw what had +happened, he telephoned to Doctor Waram and then lay down on the +couch--apparently fainted there, for he did not speak until Doctor +Fenton came. Waram perjured himself, too--for Dagmar's sake. He had +not, he swore, heard the actress speak of a silver statuette, or of +revenge before God.... And since there was nothing to prove how the +blow had been struck, save the deep dent in Tucker's forehead, +Grimshaw was set free. + +He had been a year in prison. He drove away from the jail in a cab +with Doctor Waram, and when the crowd saw that he was wearing the old +symbol--a yellow chrysanthemum--a hiss went up that was like a geyser +of contempt and ridicule. Grimshaw's pallid face flushed. But he +lifted his hat and smiled into the host of faces as the cab jerked +forward. + +He went at once to Broadenham. Years later, Waram told me about the +meeting between those two--the centaur and the milk-white doe! Dagmar +received him standing and she remained standing all during the +interview. She had put aside her mourning for a dress made of some +clear blue stuff, and Waram said that as she stood in the breakfast +room, with a sun-flooded window behind her, she was very lovely +indeed. + +Grimshaw held out his hands, but she ignored them. Then Grimshaw +smiled and shrugged his shoulders and said: "I have made two +discoveries this past year: That conventionalized religion is the most +shocking evil of our day, and that you, my wife, are in love with +Doctor Waram." + +Dagmar held her ground. There was in her eyes a look of inevitable +security. She was mistress of the house, proprietor of the land, +conscious of tradition, prerogative, position. The man she faced had +nothing except his tortured imagination. For the first time in her +life she was in a position to hurt him. So she looked away from him to +Waram and confirmed his discovery with a smile full of pride and +happiness. + +"My dear fellow," Grimshaw shouted, clapping Waram on the back, "I'm +confoundedly pleased! We'll arrange a divorce for Dagmar. Good heaven, +she deserves a decent future. I'm not the sort for her. I hate the +things she cares most about. And now I'm done for in England. Just to +make it look conventional--nice, Victorian, _English_, you +understand--you and I can go off to the Continent together while +Dagmar's getting rid of me. There'll be no trouble about that. I'm +properly dished. Besides, I want freedom. A new life. Beauty, without +having to buck this confounded distrust of beauty. Sensation, without +being ashamed of sensation. I want to drop out of sight. Reform? No! I +am being honest." + +So they went off together, as friendly as you please, to France. Waram +was still thinking of Dagmar; Grimshaw was thinking only of himself. +He swaggered up and down the Paris boulevards showing his tombstone +teeth and staring at the women. "The Europeans admire me," he said to +Waram. "May England go to the devil." He groaned. "I despise +respectability, my dear Waram. You and Dagmar are well rid of me. I +see I'm offending you here in Paris--you look nauseated most of the +time. Let's go on to Switzerland and climb mountains." + +Waram _was_ nauseated. They went to Salvan and there a curious thing +happened. + +They were walking one afternoon along the road to Martigny. The valley +was full of shadows like a deep green cup of purple wine. High above +them the mountains were tipped with flame. Grimshaw walked slowly--he +was a man of great physical laziness--slashing his cane at the +tasselled tips of the crowding larches. Once, when a herd of little +goats trotted by, he stood aside and laughed uproariously, and the +goatherd's dog, bristling, snapped in passing at his legs. + +Waram was silent, full of bitterness and disgust. They went on again, +and well down the springlike coils of the descent of Martigny they +came upon the body of a man--one of those wandering vendors of +pocket-knives and key-rings, scissors and cheap watches. He lay on his +back on a low bank by the roadside. His hat had rolled off into a pool +of muddy water. Doctor Waram saw, as he bent down to stare at the +face, that the fellow looked like Grimshaw. Not exactly, of course. +The nose was coarser--it had not that Wellington spring at the bridge, +nor the curved nostrils. But it might have been a dirty, unshaven, +dead Grimshaw lying there. Waram told me that he felt a shock of +gratification before he heard the poet's voice behind him: "What's +this? A drunkard?" He shook his head and opened the dead man's shirt +to feel for any possible flutter of life in the heart. There was none. +And he thought: "If this were only Grimshaw! If the whole miserable +business were only done with." + +"By Jove!" Grimshaw said. "The chap looks like me! I thought I was the +ugliest man in the world. I know better... D'you suppose he's German, +or Lombardian? His hands are warm. He must have been alive when the +goatherd passed just now. Nothing you can do?" + +Waram stayed where he was, on his knees. He tore his eyes away from +the grotesque dead face and fixed them on Grimshaw. He told me that +the force of his desire must have spoken in that look because Grimshaw +started and stepped back a pace, gripping his cane. Then he laughed. +"Why not?" he said. "Let this be me. And I'll go on, with that +clanking hardware store around my neck. It can be done, can't it? +Better for you and for Dagmar. I'm not being philanthropic. I'm +looking, not for a reprieve, but for release. No one knows this fellow +in Salvan--he probably came up from the Rhone and was on his way to +Chamonix. What d'you think was the matter with him?" + +"Heart," Doctor Waram answered. + +"Well, what d'you say? This pedlar and I are social outcasts. And +there is Dagmar in England, weeping her eyes out because of divorce +courts and more public washing of dirty linen. You love her. I don't! +Why not carry this fellow to the _rochers_, to-night after dark? +To-morrow, when I have changed clothes with him, we can throw him into +the valley. It's a good thousand feet or more. Would there be much +left of that face, for purposes of identification? I think not. You +can take the mutilated body back to England and I can go on to +Chamonix, as he would have gone." Grimshaw touched the pedlar with his +foot. "Free." + +That is exactly what they did. The body, hidden near the roadside +until nightfall, was carried through the woods to the _rochers du +soir_, that little plateau on the brink of the tremendous wall of rock +which rises from the Rhone valley to the heights near Salvan. There +the two men left it and returned to their hotel to sleep. + +In the morning they set out, taking care that the proprietor of the +hotel and the professional guide who hung about the village should +know that they were going to attempt the descent of the "wall" to the +valley. The proprietor shook his head and said: "_Bonne chance, +messieurs_!" The guide, letting his small blue eyes rest for a moment +on Grimshaw's slow-moving hulk, advised them gravely to take the road. +"The tall gentleman will not arrive," he remarked. + +"Nonsense," Grimshaw answered. + +They went off together, laughing. Grimshaw was wearing his conspicuous +climbing clothes--tweed jacket, yellow suede waistcoat, +knickerbockers, and high-laced boots with hob-nailed soles. His green +felt hat, tipped at an angle, was ornamented with a little orange +feather. He was in tremendous spirits. He bellowed, made faces at +scared peasant children in the village, swung his stick. They stopped +at a barber shop in the place and those famous hyacinthine locks were +clipped. Waram insisted upon this, he told me, because the pedlar's +hair was fairly short and they had to establish some sort of a +tonsorial alibi. When the floor of the little shop was thick with the +sheared "petals," Grimshaw shook his head, brushed off his shoulders, +and smiled. "It took twenty years to create that visible +personality--and behold, a Swiss barber destroys it in twenty minutes! +I am no longer a living poet. I am already an immortal--halfway up the +flowery slopes of Olympus, impatient to go the rest of the way. + +"Shall we be off?" + +"By all means," Waram said. + +They found the body where they had hidden it the night before, and in +the shelter of a little grove of larches Grimshaw stripped and then +reclothed himself in the pedlar's coarse and soiled under-linen, the +worn corduroy trousers, the flannel shirt, short coat, and old black +velvet hat. Waram was astounded by the beauty and strength of +Grimshaw's body. Like the pedlar, he was blonde-skinned, thin-waisted, +broad of back. + +Grimshaw shuddered as he helped to clothe the dead pedlar in his own +fashionable garments. "Death," he said. "Ugh! How ugly. How +terrifying. How abominable." + +They carried the body across the plateau. The height where they stood +was touched by the sun, but the valley below was still immersed in +shadow, a broad purple shadow threaded by the shining Rhone. + +"Well?" Waram demanded. "Are you eager to die? For this means death +for you, you know." + +"A living death," Grimshaw said. He glanced down at the replica of +himself. A convulsive shudder passed through him from head to foot; +his face twisted; his eyes dilated. He made a strong effort to control +himself and whispered: "I understand. Go ahead. Do it. I can't. It is +like destroying me myself.... I can't. Do it--" + +Waram lifted the dead body and pushed it over the edge. Grimshaw, +trembling violently, watched it fall. I think, from what Doctor Waram +told me many years later, that the poet must have suffered the +violence and terror of that plummet drop, must have felt the tearing +clutch of pointed rocks in the wall face, must have known the leaping +upward of the earth, the whine of wind in his bursting ears, the dizzy +spinning, the rending, obliterating impact at last.... + +The pedlar lay in the valley. Grimshaw stood on the brink of the +"wall." He turned, and saw Doctor Waram walking quickly away across +the plateau without a backward glance. They had agreed that Waram was +to return at once to the village and report the death of "his friend, +Mr. Grimshaw." The body, they knew, would be crushed beyond +recognition--a bruised and broken fragment, like enough to Cecil +Grimshaw to pass whatever examination would be given it. Grimshaw +himself was to go through the wood to the highroad, then on to Finhaut +and Chamonix and into France. He was never again to write to Dagmar, +to return to England, or to claim his English property.... + +Can you imagine his feelings--deprived of his arrogant personality, +his fame, his very identity, clothed in another man's dirty garments, +wearing about his neck a clattering pedlar's outfit, upon his feet the +clumsy boots of a peasant? Grimshaw--the exquisite futurist, the +daffodil, apostle of the aesthetic! + +He stood for a moment looking after Douglas Waram. Once, in a panic, +he called. But Waram disappeared between the larches, without, +apparently, having heard. Grimshaw wavered, unable to decide upon the +way to the highroad. He could not shake off a sense of loneliness and +terror, as if he himself had gone whirling down to his death. Like a +man who comes slowly back from the effects of ether, he perceived, one +by one, the familiar aspects of the landscape--the delicate flowers +powdering the plateau, the tasselled larches on the slope, the lofty +snow-peaks still suffused with rosy morning light. This, then, was the +world. This clumsy being, moving slowly toward the forest, was +himself--not Cecil Grimshaw but another man. His mind sought clumsily +for a name. Pierre--no, not Pierre; too common-place! Was he still +fastidious? No. Then Pierre, by all means! Pierre Pilleux. That would +do. Pilleux. A name suggestive of a good amiable fellow, honest and +slow. When he got down into France he would change his identity +again--grow a beard, buy some decent clothes. A boulevardier... gay, +perverse, witty.... The thought delighted him and he hurried through +the forest, anxious to pass through Salvan before Doctor Waram got +there. He felt extraordinarily light and exhilarated now, intoxicated, +vibrant. His spirit soared; almost he heard the rushing of his old +self forward toward some unrecognizable and beautiful freedom. + +When he struck the road the sun was high and it was very hot. Little +spirals of dust kicked up at his heels. He was not afraid of +recognition. Happening to glance at his hands, he became aware of +their whiteness, and stooping, rubbed them in the dust. + +Then a strange thing happened. Another herd of goats trotted down from +the grassy slopes and spilled into the road-way. And another dog with +lolling tongue and wagging tail wove in and out, shepherding the +little beasts. They eddied about Grimshaw, brushing against him, their +moon-stone eyes full of a vague terror of that barking guardian at +their heels. The dog drove them ahead, circled, and with a low whine +came back to Grimshaw, leaping up to lick his hand. + +Grimshaw winced, for he had never had success with animals. Then, with +a sudden change of mood, he stooped and caressed the dog's head. + +"A good fellow," he said in French to the goatherd. + +The goatherd looked at him curiously. "Not always," he answered. "He +is an unpleasant beast with most strangers. For you, he seems to have +taken a fancy.... What have you got there--any two-bladed knives?" + +Grimshaw started and recovered himself with: "Knives. Yes. All sorts." + +The goatherd fingered his collection, trying the blades on his broad +thumb. + +"You come from France," he said. + +Grimshaw nodded. "From Lyons." + +"I thought so. You speak French like a gentleman." + +Grimshaw shrugged. "That is usual in Lyons." + +The peasant paid for the knife he fancied, placing two francs in the +poet's palm. Then he whistled to the dog and set off after his flock. +But the dog, whining and trembling, followed Grimshaw, and would not +be shaken off until Grimshaw had pelted him with small stones. I think +the poet was strangely flattered by this encounter. He passed through +Salvan with his head in the air, challenging recognition. But there +was no recognition. The guide who had said "The tall monsieur will not +arrive" now greeted him with a fraternal: "How is trade?" + +"Very good, thanks," Grimshaw said. + +Beyond the village he quickened his pace, and easing the load on his +back by putting his hands under the leather straps, he swung toward +Finhaut. Behind him he heard the faint ringing of the church bells in +Salvan. Waram had reported the "tragedy." Grimshaw could fancy the +excitement--the priest hurrying toward the "wall" with his crucifix in +his hands; the barber, a-quiver with morbid excitement; the stolid +guide, not at all surprised, rather gratified, preparing to make the +descent to recover the body of that "tall monsieur" who had, after +all, "arrived." The telegraph wires were already humming with the +message. In a few hours Dagmar would know. + +He laughed aloud. The white road spun beneath him. His hands, pressed +against his body by the weight of the leather straps, were hot and +wet; he could feel the loud beating of his heart. + +His senses were acute; he had never before felt with such +gratification the warmth of the sun or known the ecstasy of motion. He +saw every flower in the roadbank, every small glacial brook, every new +conformation of the snow clouds hanging above the ragged peaks of the +Argentières. He sniffed with delight the pungent wind from off the +glaciers, the short, warm puffs of grass-scented air from the fields +in the Valley of Trient. He noticed the flight of birds, the lazy +swinging of pine boughs, the rainbow spray of waterfalls. Once he +shouted and ran, mad with exuberance. Again he flung himself down by +the roadside and, lying on his back, sang outrageous songs and laughed +and slapped his breast with both hands. + +That night he came to Chamonix and got lodging in a small hotel on the +skirts of the town. His spirits fell when he entered the room. He put +his pedlar's pack on the floor and sat down on the narrow bed, +suddenly conscious of an enormous fatigue. His feet burned, his legs +ached, his back was raw where the heavy pack had rested. He thought: +"What am I doing here? I have nothing but the few hundred pounds Waram +gave me. I'm alone. Dead and alive." + +He scarcely looked up when the door opened and a young girl came in, +carrying a pitcher of water and a coarse towel. She hesitated and said +rather prettily: "You'll be tired, perhaps?" + +Grimshaw felt within him the tug of the old personality. He stared at +her, suddenly conscious that she was a woman and that she was smiling +at him. Charming, in her way. Bare arms. A little black bodice laced +over a white waist. Straight blonde hair, braided thickly and twisted +around her head. A peasant, but pretty.... You see, his desire was to +frighten her, as he most certainly would have frightened her had he +been true to Cecil Grimshaw. But the impulse passed, leaving him sick +and ashamed. He heard her saying: "A sad thing occurred to-day down +the valley. A gentleman.... Salvan ... a very famous gentleman.... And +they have telegraphed his wife.... I heard it from Simon Ravanel.... +It seems that the gentleman was smashed to bits--_brise en morceau. +Épouvantable, n'est ce pas_?" + +Grimshaw began to tremble. "Yes, yes," he said irritably. "But I am +tired, little one. Go out, and shut the door!" + +The girl gave him a startled glance, frightened at last, but for +nothing more than the lost look in his eyes. He raised his arms, and +she fled with a little scream. + +Grimshaw sat for a moment staring at the door. Then with a violent +gesture he threw himself back on the bed, buried his face in the dirty +pillow and wept as a child weeps, until, just before dawn, he fell +asleep.... + +As far as the public knows, Cecil Grimshaw perished on the +"wall"--perished and was buried at Broadenham beneath a pyramid of +chrysanthemums. Perished, and became an English immortal--his sins +erased by his unconscious sacrifice. Perished, and was forgiven by +Dagmar. Yet hers was the victory--he belonged to her at last. She had +not buried his body at Broadenham, but she had buried his work there. +He could never write again.... + +During those days of posthumous whitewashing he read the papers with a +certain contemptuous eagerness. Some of them he crumpled between his +hands and threw away. He hated his own image, staring balefully from +the first page of the illustrated reviews. He despised England for +honouring him. Once, happening upon a volume of the "Vision of +Helen"--the first edition illustrated by Beardsley--in a book-stall at +Aix-les-Bains, he read it from cover to cover. + +"Poor stuff," he said to the bookseller, tossing it down again. "Give +me 'Ars ne Lupin'." And he paid two sous for a paper-covered, +dog-eared, much-thumbed copy of the famous detective story, not +because he intended to read it, but in payment for his hour of +disillusionment. Then he slung his pack over his shoulders and tramped +out into the country. He laughed aloud at the thought of Helen and her +idolaters. A poetic hoax. Overripe words. Seductive sounds. Nonsense! + +"Surely I can do better than that to-day," he thought. + +He saw two children working in a field, and called to them. + +"If you will give me a cup of cold water," he said, "I'll tell you a +story." + +"Gladly, monsieur." + +The boy put down his spade, went to a brook which threaded the field +and came back with an earthenware jug full to the brim. The little +girl stared gravely at Grimshaw while he drank. Grimshaw wiped his +mouth with the back of his hand. + +"What story shall it be?" he demanded. + +The little girl said quickly: "The black king and the white princess +and the beast who lived in the wood." + +"Not that one," the boy cried. "Tell us about a battle." + +"I will sing about life," Grimshaw said. + +It was hot in the field. A warm, sweet smell rose from the spaded +earth and near by the brook rustled through the grass like a beautiful +silver serpent. Grimshaw sat cross-legged on the ground and words spun +from his lips--simple words. And he sang of things he had recently +learned--the gaiety of birds, the strength of his arms, the scent of +dusk, the fine crystal of a young moon, wind in a field of wheat.... + +At first the children listened. Then, because he talked so long, the +little girl leaned slowly over against his shoulder and fell asleep, +while the boy fingered the knives, jangled the key-rings, clipped +grass stalks with the scissors, and wound the watches one after the +other. The sun was low before Grimshaw left them. "When you are grown +up," he said, "remember that Pierre Pilleux sang to you of life." + +"_Oui, monsieur_," the boy said politely. "But I should like a watch." + +Grimshaw shook his head. "The song is enough." + +Thereafter he sang to any one who would listen to him. I say that he +sang--I mean, of course, that he spoke his verses; it was a minstrel's +simple improvisation. But there are people in the villages of southern +France who still recall that ungainly, shambling figure. He had grown +a beard; it crinkled thickly, hiding his mouth and chin. He laughed a +great deal. He was not altogether clean. And he slept wherever he +could find a bed--in farmhouses, cheap hotels, haylofts, stables, open +fields. Waram's few hundred pounds were gone. The poet lived by his +wits and his gift of song. And for the first time in his remembrance +he was happy. + +Then one day he read in _Le Matin_ that Ada Rubenstein was to play +"The Labyrinth" in Paris. Grimshaw was in Poitiers. He borrowed three +hundred francs from the proprietor of a small café in the Rue Carnot, +left his pack as security, and went to Paris. Can you imagine him in +the theatre--it was the Odéon, I believe--conscious of curious, amused +glances--a peasant, bulking conspicuously in that scented auditorium? + +When the curtain rose, he felt again the familiar pain of creation. A +rush of hot blood surged around his heart. His temples throbbed. His +eyes filled with tears. Then the flood receded and left him trembling +with weakness. He sat through the rest of the performance without +emotion of any sort. He felt no resentment, no curiosity. + +This was the last time he showed any interest in his old existence. He +went back to Poitiers, and then took to the road again. People who saw +him at that time have said that there was always a pack of dogs at his +heels. Once a fashionable spaniel followed him out of Lyons and he was +arrested for theft. You understand, he never made any effort to +attract the little fellows--they joined on, as it were, for the +journey. And it was a queer fact that after a few miles they always +whined, as if they were disappointed about something, and turned +back.... + +He finally heard that Dagmar had married Waram. She had waited a +decent interval--Victorian to the end! A man who happened to be in +Marseilles at the time told me that "that vagabond poet, Pilleux, +appeared in one of the cafés, roaring drunk, and recited a marriage +poem--obscene, vicious, terrific. A crowd came in from the street to +listen. Some of them laughed. Others were frightened. He was an ugly +brute--well over six feet tall, with a blonde beard, a hooked nose, +and a pair of eyes that saw beyond reality. He was fascinating. He +could turn his eloquence off and on like a tap. He sat in a drunken +stupor, glaring at the crowd, until someone shouted: "_Eh bien, +Pilleux_--you were saying?" Then the deluge! He had a peasant's +acceptance of the elemental facts of life--it was raw, that hymn of +his! The women of the streets who had crowded into the caf listened +with a sort of terror; they admired him. One of them said: "Pilleux's +wife betrayed him." He lifted his glass and drank. "No, _ma petite_," +he said politely, "she buried me." + +That night his pack was stolen from him. He was too drunk to know or +to care. They say that he went from café to café, paying for wine with +verse, and getting it, too! At his heels a crowd of loafers, frowsy +women and dogs. His hat gone. His eyes mad. A trickle of wine through +his beard. Bellowing. Bellowing again--the untamed centaur cheated of +the doe! + +And now, perhaps, I can get back to the reasons for this story. And I +am almost at the end of it.... + +In the most obscure alley in Marseilles there is a caf frequented by +sailors, riff-raff from the waterfront and thieves. Grimshaw appeared +there at midnight. A woman clung to his arm. She had no eyes for any +one else. Her name, I believe, was Marie--a very humble Magdalen of +that tragic back-water of civilization. Putting her cheek against +Grimshaw's arm, she listened to him with a curious patience as one +listens to the eloquence of the sea. + +"This is no place for thee," he said to her. "Leave me now, _ma +petite_." + +But she laughed and went with him. Imagine that room--foul air, sanded +floor, kerosene lamps, an odour of bad wine, tobacco, and stale +humanity. Grimshaw pushed his way to a table and sat down with a surly +Gascon and an enormous Negro from some American ship in the harbour. + +They brought the poet wine but he did not drink it--sat staring at the +smoky ceiling, assailed by a sudden sharp vision of Dagmar and Waram +at Broadenham, alone together for the first time, perhaps on the +terrace in the starlight, perhaps in Dagmar's bright room which had +always been scented, warm, remote---- + +He had been reciting, of course, in French. Now he broke abruptly into +English. No one but the American Negro understood. The proprietor +shouted: "Hi, there, Pilleux--no gibberish!" The woman, her eyes on +Grimshaw's face, said warningly: "Ssh! He speaks English. He is +clever, this poet! Pay attention." And the Negro, startled, jerked his +drunken body straight and listened. + +I don't know what Grimshaw said. It must have been a poem of home, the +bitter longing of an exile for familiar things. At any rate, the Negro +was touched--he was a Louisianian, a son of New Orleans. He saw the +gentleman, where you and I, perhaps, would have seen only a maudlin +savage. There is no other explanation for the thing that happened.... + +The Gascon, it seems, hated poetry. He tipped over Grimshaw's glass, +spilling the wine into the woman's lap. She leaped back, trembling +with rage, swearing in the manner of her kind. + +"Quiet," Grimshaw said. And her fury receded before his glance; she +melted, acquiesced, smiled. Then Grimshaw smiled, too, and putting the +glass to rights with a leisurely gesture, said, "Cabbage. Son of pig," +and flipped the dregs into the Gascon's face. + +The fellow groaned and leaped. Grimshaw didn't stir--he was too drunk +to protect himself. But the Negro saw what was in the Gascon's hand. +He kicked back his chair, stretched out his arms--too late. The +Gascon's knife, intended for Grimshaw, sliced into his heart. He +coughed, looked at the man he had saved with a strange questioning, +and collapsed. + +Grimshaw was sobered instantly. They say that he broke the Gascon's +arm before the crowd could separate them. Then he knelt down by the +dying Negro, turned him gently over and lifted him in his arms, +supporting that ugly bullet head against his knee. The Negro coughed +again, and whispered: "I saw it comin', boss." Grimshaw said simply: +"Thank you." + +"I'm scared, boss." + +"That's all right. I'll see you through." + +"I'm dyin', boss." + +"Is it hard?" + +"Yessir." + +"Hold my hand. That's right. Nothing to be afraid of." + +The Negro's eyes fixed themselves on Grimshaw's face--a sombre look +came into their depths. "I'm goin', boss." + +Grimshaw lifted him again. As he did so, he was conscious of feeling +faint and dizzy. The Negro's blood was warm on his hands and wrists, +but it was not wholly that--He had a sensation of rushing forward; of +pressure against his ear-drums; a violent nausea; the crowd of curious +faces blurred, disappeared--he was drowning in a noisy darkness.... He +gasped, struggled, struck out with his arms, shouted, went down in +that suffocating flood of unconsciousness.... + +Opening his eyes after an indeterminate interval, he found himself in +the street. The air was cool after the fetid staleness of that room. +He was still holding the Negro's hand. And above them the stars +burned, remote and calm, like beacon lamps in a dark harbour.... + +The Negro whimpered: "I don't know the way, boss. I'm lost." + +"Where is your ship?" + +"In the _Vieux Port_, near the fort." + +They walked together through the silent streets. I say that they +walked. It was rather that Grimshaw found himself on the quay, the +Negro still at his side. A few prowling sailors passed them. But for +the most part the waterfront was deserted. The ships lay side by +side--an intricate tangle of bowsprits and rigging, masts and chains. +Around them the water was black as basalt, only that now and again a +spark of light was struck by the faint lifting of the current against +the immovable hulls. + +The Negro shuffled forward, peering. A lantern flashed on one of the +big schooners. Looking up, Grimshaw saw the name: "_Anne Beebe, New +Orleans_." A querulous voice, somewhere on the deck, demanded: "That +you, Richardson?" And then, angrily: "This damned place--dark as +hell.... Who's there?" + +Grimshaw answered: "One of your crew." + +The man on deck stared down at the quay a moment. Then, apparently +having seen nothing, he turned away, and the lantern bobbed aft like a +drifting ember. The Negro moaned. Holding both hands over the deep +wound in his breast, he slowly climbed the side ladder, turned once, +to look at Grimshaw, and disappeared.... + +Grimshaw felt again the rushing darkness. Again he struggled. And +again, opening his eyes after a moment of blankness, he found himself +kneeling on the sanded floor of the cafe, holding the dead Negro in +his arms. He glanced down at the face, astounded by the look of placid +satisfaction in those wide-open eyes, the smile of recognition, of +gratification, of some nameless and magnificent content.... + +The woman Marie touched his shoulder. "The fellow's dead, _m'sieur_. +We had better go." + +Grimshaw followed her into the street. He noticed that there were no +stars. A bitter wind, forerunner of the implacable _mistral_, had come +up. The door of the café slammed behind them, muffling a sudden uproar +of voices that had burst out with his going.... + +Grimshaw had a room somewhere in the Old Town; he went there, followed +by the woman. He thought: "I am mad! Mad!" He was frightened, not by +what had happened to him, but because he could not understand. Nor can +I make it clear to you, since no explanation is final when we are +dealing with the inexplicable.... + +When they reached his room, Marie lighted the kerosene lamp and, +smoothing down her black hair with both hands, said simply: "I stay +with you." + +"You must not," Grimshaw answered. + +"I love you," she said. "You are a great man. _C'est ça_. That is +that! Besides, I must love someone--I mean, do for someone. You think +that I like pleasure. Ah! Perhaps. I am young. But my heart follows +you. I stay here." + +Grimshaw stared at her without hearing. "I opened the door. I went +beyond.... I am perhaps mad. Perhaps privileged. Perhaps what they +have always called me--an incorrigible poet." Suddenly he jumped to +his feet and shouted: "I went a little way with his soul! Victory! +Eternity!" + +The woman Marie put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back +into his chair again. She thought, of course, that he was drunk. So +she attempted a simple seduction, striving to call attention to +herself by the coquetries of her kind. Grimshaw pushed her aside and +lay down on the bed with his arms crossed over his eyes. Had he +witnessed a soul's first uncertain steps into a new state? One thing +he knew--he had himself suffered the confusion of death, and had +shared the desperate struggle to penetrate the barrier between the +mortal and the immortal, the known and the unknown, the real and the +incomprehensible. With that realization, he stepped finally out of his +personality into that of the mystic philosopher, Pierre Pilleux. He +heard the woman Marie saying: "Let me stay. I am unhappy." And without +opening his eyes, simply making a brief gesture, he said: "_Eh bien_." +And she stayed. + +She never left him again. In the years that followed, wherever +Grimshaw was, there also was Marie--little, swarthy, broad of cheek +and hip, unimaginative, faithful. She had a passion for service. She +cooked for Grimshaw, knitted woollen socks for him, brushed and mended +his clothes, watched out for his health--often, I am convinced, she +stole for him. As for Grimshaw, he didn't know that she existed, +beyond the fact that she was there and that she made material +existence endurable. He never again knew physical love. That I am sure +of, for I have talked with Marie. "He was good to me," she said. "But +he never loved me." And I believe her. + +That night of the Negro's death Grimshaw stood in a wilderness of his +own. He emerged from it a believer in life after death. He preached +this belief in the slums of Marseilles. It began to be said of him +that his presence made death easy, that the touch of his hand steadied +those who were about to die. Feverish, terrified, reluctant, they +became suddenly calm, wistful, and passed quietly as one falls asleep. +"Send for Pierre Pilleux" became a familiar phrase in the Old Town. + +I do not believe that he could have touched these simple people had he +not looked the part of prophet and saint. The old Grimshaw was gone. +In his place an emaciated fanatic, unconscious of appetite, unaware of +self, with burning eyes and tangled beard! That finished ugliness +turned spiritual--a self-flagellated aesthete. He claimed that he +could enter the shadowy confines of the "next world." Not heaven. Not +hell. A neutral ground between the familiar earth and an inexplicable +territory of the spirit. Here, he said, the dead suffered +bewilderment; they remembered, desired, and regretted the life they +had just left, without understanding what lay ahead. So far he could +go with them. So far and no farther.... + +Personal immortality is the most alluring hope ever dangled before +humanity. All of us secretly desire it. None of us really believe in +it. As you say, all of us are afraid and some of us laugh to hide our +fear. Grimshaw wasn't afraid. Nor did he laugh. He _knew_. And you +remember his eloquence--seductive words, poignant, delicious, +memorable words! In his Chelsea days, he had made you sultry with +hate. Now, as Pierre Pilleux, he made you believe in the shining +beauty of the indestructible, the unconquerable dead. You saw them, a +host of familiar figures, walking fearlessly away from you toward the +brightness of a distant horizon. You heard them, murmuring together, +as they passed out of sight, going forward to share the common and +ineffable experience. + +Well.... The pagan had disappeared in the psychic! Cecil Grimshaw's +melancholy and pessimism, his love of power, his delight in cruelty, +in beauty, in the erotic, the violent, the strange, had vanished! +Pierre Pilleux was a humanitarian. Cecil Grimshaw never had been. +Grimshaw had revolted against ugliness as a dilettante objects to the +mediocre in art. Pierre Pilleux was conscious of social ugliness. +Having become aware of it, he was a potent rebel. He began to write in +French, spreading his revolutionary doctrine of facile spiritual +reward. He splintered purgatory into fragments; what he offered was an +earthly paradise--humanity given eternal absolution, freed of fear, +prejudice, hatred--above all, of fear--and certain of endless life. + +Now that we have entered the cosmic era, we look back at him with +understanding. Then, he was a radical and an atheist. + +Of course he had followers--seekers after eternity who drank his +promises like thirsty wanderers come upon a spring in the desert. To +some of them he was a god. To some, a mystic. To some, a healer. To +some--and they were the ones who finally controlled his destiny--he +was simply a dangerous lunatic. + +Two women in Marseilles committed suicide--they were followers, +disciples, whatever you choose to call them. At any rate, they +believed that where it was so simple a matter to die, it was foolish +to stay on in a world that had treated them badly. One had lost a son, +the other a lover. One shot herself; the other drowned herself in the +canal. And both of them left letters addressed to Pilleux--enough to +damn him in the eyes of authority. He was told that he might leave +France, or take the consequences--a mild enough warning, but it +worked. He dared not provoke an inquiry into his past. So he shipped +on board a small Mediterranean steamer as fireman, and disappeared, no +one knew where. + +Two years later he reappeared in Africa. Marie was with him. They were +living in a small town on the rim of the desert near Biskra. Grimshaw +occupied a native house--a mere hovel, flat-roofed, sun-baked, bare as +a hermit's cell. Marie had hired herself out as _femme de chambre_ in +the only hotel in the place. "I watched over him," she told me. "And +believe me, _monsieur_, he needed care! He was thin as a ghost. He had +starved more than once during those two years. He told me to go back +to France, to seek happiness for myself. But for me happiness was with +him. I laughed and stayed. I loved him--magnificently, _monsieur_." + +Grimshaw was writing again--in French--and his work began to appear in +the Parisian journals, a strange poetic prose impregnated with +mysticism. It was Grimshaw, sublimated. I saw it myself, although at +that time I had not heard Waram's story. The French critics saw it. +"This Pilleux is as picturesque as the English poet, Grimshaw. The +style is identical." Waram saw it. He read everything that Pilleux +wrote--with eagerness, with terror. Finally, driven by curiosity, he +went to Paris, got Pilleux's address from the editor of _Gil Blas_, +and started for Africa. + +Grimshaw is a misty figure at the last. You see him faintly--an exile, +racially featureless, wearing a dirty white native robe, his face +wrinkled by exposure to the sun, his eyes burning. Marie says that he +prowled about the village at night, whispering to himself, his head +thrown back, pointing his beard at the stars. He wrote in the cool +hours before dawn, and later, when the village quivered in heat fumes +and he slept, Marie posted what he had written to Paris. + +One day he took her head between his hands and said very gently: "Why +don't you get a lover? Take life while you can." + +"You say there is eternal life," she protested. + +"_N'en doutez-pas_! But you must be rich in knowledge. Put flowers in +your hair. And place your palms against a lover's palms and kiss him +with generosity, _ma petite_. I am not a man; I am a shadow." + +Marie slipped her arms around him and, standing on tiptoe, put her +lips against his. "_Je t'aime_," she said simply. + +His eyes deepened. There flashed into them the old, mad humour, the +old vitality, the old passion for beauty. The look faded, leaving his +eyes "like flames that are quenched." Marie shivered, covered her face +with her hands, and ran out. "There was no blood in him," she told me. +"He was like a spirit--a ghost. So meagre! So wan! Waxen hands. Yellow +flesh. And those eyes, in which, _monsieur_, the flame was quenched!" + +And this is the end of the curious story.... Waram went to Biskra and +from there to the village where Grimshaw lived. Grimshaw saw him in +the street one evening and followed him to the hotel. He lingered +outside until Waram had registered at the _bureau_ and had gone to his +room. Then he went in and sent word that "Pierre Pilleux was below and +ready to see Doctor Waram." + +He waited in the "garden" at the back of the hotel. No one was about. +A cat slept on the wall. Overhead the arch of the sky was flooded with +orange light. Dust lay on the leaves of the potted plants and bushes. +It was breathless, hot, quiet. He thought: "Waram has come because +Dagmar is dead. Or the public has found me out!" + +Waram came immediately. He stood in the doorway a moment, staring at +the grotesque figure which faced him. He made a terrified gesture, as +if he would shut out what he saw. Then he came into the garden, +steadying himself by holding on to the backs of the little iron garden +chairs. The poet saw that Waram had not changed so very much--a little +gray hair in that thick, black mop, a few wrinkles, a rather stodgy +look about the waist. No more. He was still Waram, neat, +self-satisfied, essentially English.... Grimshaw strangled a feeling +of aversion and said quietly: "Well, Waram. How d'you do? I call +myself Pilleux now." + +Waram ignored his hand. Leaning heavily on one of the chairs, he +stared with a passionate intentness. "Grimshaw?" he said at last. + +"Why, yes," Grimshaw answered. "Didn't you know?" + +Waram licked his lips. In a whisper he said: "I killed you in +Switzerland six years ago. Killed you, you understand." + +Grimshaw touched his breast with both hands. "You lie. + +"Here I am." + +"You are dead." + +"Dead?" + +"Before God, I swear it." + +"Dead?" + +Grimshaw felt once more the on-rushing flood of darkness. His thoughts +flashed back over the years. The "wall." His suffering. The dog. The +song in the field. The Negro. The door that opened. The stars. His own +flesh, fading into spirit, into shadows.... + +"Dead?" he demanded again. + +Waram's eyes wavered. He laughed unsteadily and looked behind him. +"Strange," he said. "I thought I saw----" He turned and went quickly +across the garden into the hotel. Grimshaw called once, in a loud +voice: "Waram!" But the doctor did not even turn his head. Grimshaw +followed him, overtook him, touched his shoulder. Waram paid no +attention. Going to the _bureau_ he said to the proprietor: "You told +me that a Monsieur Pilleux wished to see me." + +"_Oui, monsieur_. He was waiting for you in the garden." + +"He is not there now." + +"But just a moment ago----" + +"I am _here_," Grimshaw interrupted. + +The proprietor brushed past Waram and peered into the garden. It was +twilight out there now. The cat still slept on the wall. Dust on the +leaves. Stillness.... + +"I'm sorry, _monsieur_. He seems to have disappeared." + +Doctor Waram straightened his shoulders. "Ah," he said. "Disappeared. +Exactly." And passing Grimshaw without a glance he went upstairs. + +Grimshaw spoke to the proprietor. But the little man bent over the +desk, and began to write in an account book. His pen went on +scratching, inscribing large, flourishing numbers in a neat column.... + +Grimshaw shrugged and went into the street. The crowds paid no +attention to him--but then, they never had. A dog sniffed at his +heels, whined, and thrust a cold nose into his hand. + +He went to his house. "I'll ask Marie," he thought.... She was sitting +before a mirror, her hands clasped under her chin, smiling at +herself.... She had put a flower in her hair. Her lips were parted. +She smiled at some secret thought. Grimshaw watched her a moment; then +with a leap of his heart he touched her shoulder. And she did not +turn, did not move.... + +He knew! He put his fingers on her cheek, her neck, the shining braids +of her coarse black hair. Then he walked quickly out of the house, out +of the village, toward the desert. + +Two men joined him. One of them said: "I have just died." They went on +together, their feet whispering in the sand, walking in a globe of +darkness until the stars came out--then they saw one another's pale +faces and eager, frightened eyes. Others joined them. And others. Men. +Women. A child. Some wept and some murmured and some laughed. + +"Is this death?" + +"Where now, brother?" + +Grimshaw thought: "The end. What next? Beauty. Love. Illusion. +Forgetfulness." + +He clasped his hands behind his back, lifted his face to the stars, +walked steadily forward with that company of the dead, into the +desert, out of the story at last. + + + +COMET [Published originally under title, "The Comet."] + +By SAMUEL A. DERIEUX + +From _American Magazine_ + + +No puppy ever came into the world under more favourable conditions +than Comet. He was descended from a famous family of pointers. Both +his mother and father were champions. Before he opened his eyes, while +he was still crawling about over his brothers and sisters, blind as +puppies are at birth, Jim Thompson, Mr. Devant's kennel master, picked +him out. + +"That's the best un in the bunch." + +When he was only three weeks old he pointed a butterfly that lit in +the yard in front of his nose. + +"Come here, Molly," yelled Jim to his wife. "Pointed--the little +cuss!" + +When Thompson started taking the growing pups out of the yard, into +the fields to the side of the Devants' great southern winter home, Oak +Knob, it was Comet who strayed farthest from the man's protecting +care. And when Jim taught them all to follow when he said "Heel," to +drop when he said "Drop," and to stand stock-still when he said "Ho," +he learned far more quickly than the others. + +At six months he set his first covey of quail, and remained perfectly +staunch. "He's goin' to make a great dog," said Thompson. +Everything--size, muscle, nose, intelligence, earnestness--pointed to +the same conclusion. Comet was one of the favoured of the gods. + +One day, after the leaves had turned red and brown and the mornings +grown chilly, a crowd of people, strangers to him, arrived at Oak +Knob. Then out of the house with Thompson came a big man in tweed +clothes, and the two walked straight to the curious young dogs, who +were watching them with shining eyes and wagging tails. + +"Well, Thompson," said the big man, "which is the future champion +you've been writing me about?" + +"Pick him out for yourself, sir," said Thompson confidently. + +After that they talked a long time planning for the future of Comet. +His yard training was now over (Thompson was only yard trainer), and +he must be sent to a man experienced in training and handling for +field trials. + +"Larsen's the man to bring him out," said the big man in tweeds, who +was George Devant himself. "I saw his dogs work in the Canadian +Derby." + +Thompson spoke hesitatingly, apologetically, as if he hated to bring +the matter up. "Mr. Devant, ... you remember, sir, a long time ago +Larsen sued us for old Ben." + +"Yes, Thompson; I remember, now that you speak of it." + +"Well, you remember the court decided against him, which was the only +thing it could do, for Larsen didn't have any more right to that dog +than the Sultan of Turkey. But, Mr. Devant, I was there, and I saw +Larsen's face when the case went against him." + +Devant looked keenly at Thompson. + +"Another thing, Mr. Devant," Thompson went on, still hesitatingly; +"Larsen had a chance to get hold of this breed of pointers and lost +out, because he dickered too long, and acted cheesy. Now they've +turned out to be famous. Some men never forget a thing like that. +Larsen's been talkin' these pointers down ever since, sir." + +"Go on," said Devant. + +"I know Larsen's a good trainer. But it'll mean a long trip for the +young dog to where he lives. Now, there's an old trainer lives near +here, Wade Swygert. There never was a straighter man than him. He used +to train dogs in England." + +Devant smiled. "Thompson, I admire your loyalty to your friends; but I +don't think much of your business sense. We'll turn over some of the +others to Swygert, if he wants 'em. Comet must have the best. I'll +write Larsen to-night, Thompson. To-morrow, crate Comet and send him +off." + +Just as no dog ever came into the world under more favourable +auspices, so no dog ever had a bigger "send-off" than Comet. Even the +ladies of the house came out to exclaim over him, and Marian Devant, +pretty, eighteen, and a sports-woman, stooped down, caught his head +between her hands, looked into his fine eyes, and wished him "Good +luck, old man." In the living-room the men laughingly drank toasts to +his future, and from the high-columned portico Marian Devant waved him +good-bye, as in his clean padded crate he was driven off, a bewildered +youngster, to the station. + +Two days and two nights he travelled, and at noon of the third day, at +a lonely railroad station in a prairie country that rolled like a +heavy sea, he was lifted, crate and all, off the train. A lean, +pale-eyed, sanctimonious-looking man came toward him. + +"Some beauty that, Mr. Larsen," said the agent as he helped Larsen's +man lift the crate onto a small truck. + +"Yes," drawled Larsen in a meditative voice, "pretty enough to look +at--but he looks scared--er--timid." + +"Of course he's scared," said the agent; "so would you be if they was +to put you in some kind of a whale of a balloon an' ship you in a +crate to Mars." + +The station agent poked his hands through the slats and patted the +head. Comet was grateful for that, because everything was strange. He +had not whined nor complained on the trip, but his heart had pounded +fast, and he had been homesick. + +And everything continued to be strange: the treeless country through +which he was driven, the bald house and huge barns where he was lifted +out, the dogs that crowded about him when he was turned into the +kennel yard. These eyed him with enmity and walked round and round +him. But he stood his ground staunchly for a youngster, returning +fierce look for fierce look, growl for growl, until the man called him +away and chained him to a kennel. + +For days Comet remained chained, a stranger in a strange land. Each +time at the click of the gate announcing Larson's entrance he sprang +to his feet from force of habit, and stared hungrily at the man for +the light he was accustomed to see in human eyes. But with just a +glance at him the man would turn one or more of the other dogs loose +and ride off to train them. + +But he was not without friends of his own kind. Now and then another +young dog (he alone was chained up) would stroll his way with wagging +tail, or lie down near by, in that strange bond of sympathy that is +not confined to man. Then Comet would feel better and would want to +play, for he was still half puppy. Sometimes he would pick up a stick +and shake it, and his partner would catch the other end. They would +tug and growl with mock ferocity, and then lie down and look at each +other curiously. + +If any attention had been paid him by Larsen, Comet would have quickly +overcome his feeling of strangeness. He was no milksop. He was like an +overgrown boy, off at college or in some foreign city. He was +sensitive, and not sure of himself. Had Larsen gained his confidence, +it would all have been different. And as for Larsen--he knew that +perfectly well. + +One fine sunny afternoon Larsen entered the yard, came straight to +him, and turned him loose. In the exuberance of his spirits he ran +round and round the yard, barking in the faces of his friends. Larsen +let him out, mounted a horse, and commanded him to heel. He obeyed +with wagging tail. + +A mile or more down the road Larsen turned off into the fields. Across +his saddle was something the young pointer had had no experience +with--a gun. That part of his education Thompson had neglected, at +least put off, for he had not expected that Comet would be sent away +so soon. That was where Thompson had made a mistake. + +At the command "Hi on" the young pointer ran eagerly around the horse, +and looked up into the man's face to be sure he had heard aright. At +something he saw there the tail and ears drooped momentarily, and +there came over him again a feeling of strangeness, almost of dismay. +Larsen's eyes were mere slits of blue glass, and his mouth was set in +a thin line. + +At a second command, though, he galloped off swiftly, boldly. Round +and round an extensive field of straw he circled, forgetting any +feeling of strangeness now, every fibre of his being intent on the +hunt, while Larsen, sitting on his horse, watched him with appraising +eyes. + +Suddenly there came to Comet's nose the smell of game birds, strong, +pungent, compelling. He stiffened into an earnest, beautiful point. +Heretofore in the little training he had had Thompson had come up +behind him, flushed the birds, and made him drop. And now Larsen, +having quickly dismounted and tied his horse, came up behind him, just +as Thompson had done, except that in Larsen's hand was the gun. + +The old-fashioned black powder of a generation ago makes a loud +explosion. It sounds like a cannon compared with the modern smokeless +powder now used by all hunters. Perhaps it was only an accident that +had caused Larsen before he left the house to load his pump gun with +black powder shells. + +As for Comet he only knew that the birds rose; then above his head +burst an awful roar, almost splitting his tender eardrums, shocking +every sensitive nerve, filling him with terror such as he had never +felt before. Even then, in the confusion and horror of the surprise, +he turned to the man, head ringing, eyes dilated. A single reassuring +word, and he would have steadied. As for Larsen, though, he declared +afterward (to others and to himself even) that he noticed no +nervousness in the dog; that he was only intent on getting several +birds for breakfast. + +Twice, three times, four times, the pump gun bellowed in its +cannon-like roar, piercing the eardrums, shattering the nerves. Comet +turned; one more glance backward at a face, strange, exultant--and +then the puppy in him conquered. Tail tucked, he ran away from that +shattering noise. + +Miles he ran. Now and then, stumbling over briars, he yelped. Not once +did he look back. His tail was tucked, his eyes crazy with fear. +Seeing a house, he made for that. It was the noon hour, and a group of +farm hands was gathered in the yard. One of them, with a cry "Mad +dog!" ran into the house after a gun. When he came out, they told him +the dog was under the porch. And so he was. Pressed against the wall, +in the darkness, the magnificent young pointer with the quivering soul +waited, panting, eyes gleaming, the horror still ringing in his ears. + +Here Larsen found him that afternoon. A boy crawled underneath the +porch and dragged him out. He, who had started life favoured of the +gods, who that morning even had been full of high spirits, who had +circled a field like a champion, was now a cringing, shaking creature, +like a homeless cur. + +And thus it happened that Comet came home, in disgrace--a gun-shy dog, +a coward, expelled from college, not for some youthful prank, but +because he was--yellow. And he knew he was disgraced. He saw it in the +face of the big man, Devant, who looked at him in the yard where he +had spent his happy puppyhood, then turned away. He knew it because of +what he saw in the face of Jim Thompson. + +In the house was a long and plausible letter, explaining how it +happened: + +I did everything I could. I never was as surprised in my life. The +dog's hopeless. + +As for the other inhabitants of the big house, their minds were full +of the events of the season: de luxe hunting parties, more society +events than hunts; lunches in the woods served by uniformed butlers; +launch rides up the river; arriving and departing guests. Only one of +them, except Devant himself, gave the gun-shy dog a thought. Marian +Devant came out to visit him in his disgrace. She stooped before him +as she had done on that other and happier day, and again caught his +head between her hands. But his eyes did not meet hers, for in his dim +way he knew he was not now what he had been. + +"I don't believe he's yellow--inside!" she declared, looking up at +Thompson, her cheeks flushed. + +Thompson shook his head. + +"I tried him with a gun, Miss Marian," he declared. "I just showed it +to him, and he ran into his kennel." + +"I'll go get mine. He won't run from me." + +But at sight of her small gun it all came back. Again he seemed to +hear the explosion that had shattered his nerves. The Terror had +entered his very soul. In spite of her pleading, he made for his +kennel. Even the girl turned away from him now. And as he lay panting +in the shelter of his kennel he knew that never again would men look +at him as they had looked, or life be sweet to him as it had been. + +Then there came to Oak Knob an old man to see Thompson. He had been on +many seas, he had fought in a dozen wars, and had settled at last on a +little truck farm near by. Somewhere, in his life full of adventure +and odd jobs, he had trained dogs and horses. His face was lined and +seamed, his hair was white, his eyes piercing, blue and kind. Wade +Swygert was his name. + +"There's been dirty work," he said, when he looked at the dog. "I'll +take him if you're goin' to give him away." + +Give him away--who had been Championship hope! + +Marian Devant came out and looked into the face of the old man, +shrewdly, understandingly. + +"Can you cure him?" she demanded. + +"I doubt it, miss," was the sturdy answer. + +"You will try?" + +The blue eyes lighted up. "Yes, I'll try." + +"Then you can have him. And--if there's any expense----" + +"Come, Comet," said the old man. + +That night, in a neat, humble house, Comet ate supper placed before +him by a stout old woman, who had followed this old man to the ends of +the world. That night he slept before their fire. Next day he followed +the old man all about the place. Several days and nights passed this +way, then, while he lay before the fire, old Swygert came in with a +gun. At sight of it Comet sprang to his feet. He tried to rush out of +the room, but the doors were closed. Finally, he crawled under the +bed. + +Every night after that Swygert got out the gun, until he crawled under +the bed no more. Finally, one day the man fastened the dog to a tree +in the yard, then came out with a gun. A sparrow lit in a tree, and he +shot it. Comet tried to break the rope. All his panic had returned; +but the report had not shattered him as that other did, for the gun +was loaded light. + +After that, frequently the old man shot a bird in his sight, loading +the gun more and more heavily, and each time after the shot coming to +him, showing him the bird, and speaking to him kindly, gently. But for +all that the Terror remained in his heart. + +One afternoon the girl, accompanied by a young man, rode over on +horseback, dismounted, and came in. She always stopped when she was +riding by. + +"It's mighty slow business," old Swygert reported; "I don't know +whether I'm makin' any headway or not." + +That night old Mrs. Swygert told him she thought he had better give it +up. It wasn't worth the time and worry. The dog was just yellow. + +Swygert pondered a long time. "When I was a kid," he said at last, +"there came up a terrible thunderstorm. It was in South America. I was +water boy for a railroad gang, and the storm drove us in a shack. +While lightnin' was hittin' all around, one of the grown men told me +it always picked out boys with red hair. My hair was red, an' I was +little and ignorant. For years I was skeered of lightnin'. I never +have quite got over it. But no man ever said I was yellow." + +Again he was silent for a while. Then he went on: "I don't seem to be +makin' much headway, I admit that. I'm lettin' him run away as far as +he can. Now I've got to shoot an' make him come toward the gun +himself, right while I'm shootin' it." + +Next day Comet was tied up and fasted, and next, until he was gaunt +and famished. Then, on the afternoon of the third day, Mrs. Swygert, +at her husband's direction, placed before him, within reach of his +chain, some raw beefsteak. As he started for it, Swygert shot. He drew +back, panting, then, hunger getting the better of him, started again. +Again Swygert shot. + +After that for days Comet "Ate to music," as Swygert expressed it. +"Now," he said, "he's got to come toward the gun when he's not even +tied up." + +Not far from Swygert's house is a small pond, and on one side the +banks are perpendicular. Toward this pond the old man, with the gun +under his arm and the dog following, went. Here in the silence of the +woods, with just the two of them together, was to be a final test. + +On the shelving bank Swygert picked up a stick and tossed it into the +middle of the pond with the command to "fetch." Comet sprang eagerly +in and retrieved it. Twice this was repeated. But the third time, as +the dog approached the shore, Swygert picked up the gun and fired. + +Quickly the dog dropped the stick, then turned and swam toward the +other shore. Here, so precipitous were the banks, he could not get a +foothold. He turned once more and struck out diagonally across the +pond. Swygert met him and fired. + +Over and over it happened. Each time, after he fired, the old man +stooped down with extended hand and begged him to come on. His face +was grim now, and, though the day was cool, sweat stood out on his +brow. "You'll face the music," he said, "or you'll drown. Better be +dead than called yellow." + +The dog was growing weary now. His head was barely above water. His +efforts to clamber up the opposite bank were feeble, frantic. Yet, +each time as he drew near the shore Swygert fired. + +He was not using light loads now. He was using the regular load of the +bird hunter. Time had passed for temporizing. The sweat was standing +out all over his face. The sternness in his eyes was terrible to see, +for it was the sternness of a man who is suffering. + +A dog can swim a long time. The sun dropped over the trees. Still the +firing went on, regularly, like a minute gun. + +Just before the sun set an exhausted dog staggered toward an old man +almost as exhausted as he. The dog had been too near death and was too +faint to care now for the gun that was being fired over his head. On +and on he came, toward the man, disregarding the noise of the gun. It +would not hurt him, that he knew at last. He might have many enemies, +but the gun, in the hands of this man, was not one of them. Suddenly +old Swygert sank down and took the dripping dog in his arms. + +"Old boy," he said, "old boy." + +That night Comet lay before the fire, and looked straight into the +eyes of a man, as he used to look in the old days. + +Next season Larsen, glancing over his sporting papers, was astonished +to see that among promising Derbys the fall trials had called forth +was a pointer named Comet. He would have thought it some other dog +than the one who had disappointed him so by turning out gun-shy, in +spite of all his efforts to prevent, had it not been for the fact that +the entry was booked as: "Comet; owner, Miss Marian Devant; handler, +Wade Swygert." + +Next year he was still more astonished to see in the same paper that +Comet, handled by Swygert, had won first place in a Western trial, and +was prominently spoken of as a National Championship possibility. As +for him, he had no young entries to offer, but was staking everything +on the National Championship, where he was to enter Larsen's Peerless +II. + +It was strange how things fell out--but things have a habit of turning +out strangely in field trials, as well as elsewhere. When Larsen +reached the town where the National Championship was to be run, there +on the street, straining at the leash held by old Swygert, whom he +used to know, was a seasoned young pointer, with a white body, a brown +head, and a brown saddle spot--the same pointer he had seen two years +before turn tail and run in that terror a dog never quite overcomes. + +But the strangest thing of all happened that night at the drawing, +when, according to the slips taken at random from a hat, it was +declared that on the following Wednesday Comet, the pointer, was to +run with Peerless II. + +It gave Larsen a strange thrill, this announcement. He left the +meeting and went straightway to his room. There for a long time he sat +pondering. Next day at a hardware store he bought some black powder +and some shells. + +The race was to be run next day, and that night in his room he loaded +half-a-dozen shells. It would have been a study in faces to watch him +as he bent over his work, on his lips a smile. Into the shells he +packed all the powder they could stand, all the powder his trusted gun +could stand, without bursting. It was a load big enough to kill a +bear, to bring down a buffalo. It was a load that would echo and +reecho in the hills. + +On the morning that Larsen walked out in front of the judges and the +field, Peerless II at the leash, old Swygert, with Comet at his side, +he glanced around at the "field," or spectators. Among them was a +handsome young woman, and with her, to his amazement, George Devant. +He could not help chuckling inside himself as he thought of what would +happen that day, for once a gun-shy dog, always a gun-shy dog--that +was _his_ experience. + +As for Comet, he faced the straw fields eagerly, confidently, already +a veteran. Long ago fear of the gun had left him, for the most part. +There were times when at a report above his head he still trembled, +and the shocked nerves in his ear gave a twinge like that of a bad +tooth. But always at the quiet voice of the old man, his god, he grew +steady, and remained staunch. + +Some disturbing memory did start within him to-day as he glanced at +the man with the other dog. It seemed to him as if in another and an +evil world he had seen that face. His heart began to pound fast, and +his tail drooped for a moment. Within an hour it was all to come back +to him--the terror, the panic, the agony of that far-away time. + +He looked up at old Swygert, who was his god, and to whom his soul +belonged, though he was booked as the property of Miss Marian Devant. +Of the arrangements he could know nothing, being a dog. Old Swygert, +having cured him, could not meet the expenses of taking him to field +trials. The girl had come to the old man's assistance, an assistance +which he had accepted only under condition that the dog should be +entered as hers, with himself as handler. + +"Are you ready, gentlemen?" the judges asked. + +"Ready," said Larsen and old Swygert. + +And Comet and Peerless II were speeding away across that field, and +behind them came handlers, and judges and spectators, all mounted. + +It was a race people still talk about, and for a reason, for strange +things happened that day. At first there was nothing unusual. It was +like any other field trial. Comet found birds, and Swygert, his +handler, flushed them and shot. Comet remained steady. Then Peerless +II found a covey, and Larsen flushed them and shot. And so for an hour +it went. + +Then Comet disappeared, and old Swygert, riding hard and looking for +him, went out of sight over a hill. But Comet had not gone far. As a +matter of fact, he was near by, hidden in some high straw, pointing a +covey of birds. One of the spectators spied him, and called the +judges' attention to him. Everybody, including Larsen, rode up to him, +but still Swygert had not come back. + +They called him, but the old man was a little deaf. Some of the men +rode to the top of the hill but could not see him. In his zeal he had +got a considerable distance away. Meanwhile, here was his dog, +pointed. + +If any one had looked at Larsen's face he would have seen the +exultation there, for now his chance had come--the very chance he had +been looking for. It's a courtesy one handler sometimes extends +another who is absent from the spot, to go in and flush his dog's +birds. + +"I'll handle this covey for Mr. Swygert," said Larsen to the judges, +his voice smooth and plausible, on his face a smile. + +And thus it happened that Comet faced his supreme ordeal without the +steadying voice of his god. + +He only knew that ahead of him were birds, and that behind him a man +was coming through the straw, and that behind the man a crowd of +people on horseback were watching him. He had become used to that, but +when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the face of the advancing +man, his soul began to tremble. + +"Call your dog in, Mr. Larsen," directed the judge. "Make him +back stand." + +Only a moment was lost, while Peerless, a young dog himself, came +running in and at a command from Larsen stopped in his tracks behind +Comet, and pointed. Larsen's dogs always obeyed, quickly, +mechanically. Without ever gaining their confidence, Larsen had a way +of turning them into finished field-trial dogs. They obeyed, because +they were afraid not to. + +According to the rules the man handling the dog has to shoot as the +birds rise. This is done in order to test the dog's steadiness when a +gun is fired over him. No specification is made as to the size of the +shotgun to be used. Usually, however, small-gauge guns are carried. +The one in Larsen's hands was a twelve gauge, and consequently large. + +All morning he had been using it over his own dog. Nobody had paid any +attention to it, because he shot smokeless powder. But now, as he +advanced, he reached into the left-hand pocket of his hunting coat, +where six shells rattled as he hurried along. Two of these he took out +and rammed into the barrels. + +As for Comet, still standing rigid, statuesque, he heard, as has been +said, the brush of steps through the straw, glimpsed a face, and +trembled. But only for a moment. Then he steadied, head high, tail +straight out. The birds rose with a whir--and then was repeated that +horror of his youth. Above his ears, ears that would always be tender, +broke a great roar. Either because of his excitement, or because of a +sudden wave of revenge, or of a determination to make sure of the +dog's flight, Larsen had pulled both triggers at once. The combined +report shattered through the dog's eardrums, it shivered through his +nerves, he sank in agony into the straw. + +Then the old impulse to flee was upon him, and he sprang to his feet, +and looked about wildly. But from somewhere in that crowd behind him +came to his tingling ears a voice--clear, ringing, deep, the voice of +a woman--a woman he knew--pleading as his master used to plead, +calling on him not to run, but to stand. + +"Steady," it said. "Steady, Comet!" + +It called him to himself, it soothed him, it calmed him, and he turned +and looked toward the crowd. With the roar of the shotgun the usual +order observed in field trials was broken up. All rules seemed to have +been suspended. Ordinarily, no one belonging to "the field" is allowed +to speak to a dog. Yet the girl had spoken to him. Ordinarily, the +spectators must remain in the rear of the judges. Yet one of the +judges had himself wheeled his horse about and was galloping off, and +Marian Devant had pushed through the crowd and was riding toward the +bewildered dog. + +He stood staunch where he was, though in his ears was still a +throbbing pain, and though all about him was this growing confusion he +could not understand. The man he feared was running across the field +yonder, in the direction taken by the judge. He was blowing his +whistle as he ran. Through the crowd, his face terrible to see, his +own master was coming. Both the old man and the girl had dismounted +now, and were running toward him. + +"I heard," old Swygert was saying to her. "I heard it! I might 'a' +known! I might 'a' known!" + +"He stood," she panted, "like a rock--oh, the brave, beautiful thing!" + +"Where is that----" Swygert suddenly checked himself and looked +around. + +A man in the crowd (they had all gathered about now), laughed. + +"He's gone after his dog," he said. "Peerless has run away!" + + + +FIFTY-TWO WEEKS FOR FLORETTE + +By ELIZABETH ALEXANDER HEERMANN [ELIZABETH ALEXANDER in _Saturday +Evening Post_, August 13,1921.] + + +It had been over two months since Freddy Le Fay's bill had been paid, +and Miss Nellie Blair was worried. She had written to Freddy's mother +repeatedly, but there had been no answer. + +"It's all your own fault, sister. You should never have taken Freddy," +Miss Eva said sharply. "I told you so at the time, when I saw his +mother's hair. And of course Le Fay is not her real name. It looks to +me like a clear case of desertion." + +"I can't believe it. She seemed so devoted," faltered Miss Nellie. + +"Oh, a girl like that!" Miss Eva sniffed. "You should never have +consented." + +"Well, the poor thing was so worried, and if it meant saving a child +from a dreadful life----" + +"There are other schools more suitable." + +"But, sister, she seemed to have her heart set on ours. She begged me +to make a little gentleman out of him." + +"As if you could ever do that!" + +"Why not?" asked Mary, their niece. + +"That dreadful child!" + +"Freddy isn't dreadful!" cried Mary hotly. + +"With that atrocious slang! Won't eat his oatmeal! And he's such a +queer child--queer! So pale, never laughs, doesn't like any one. Why +should you take up for him? He doesn't even like you. Hates me, I +suppose." + +"It's because we are so different from the women he has known," said +Mary. + +"I should hope so! Well, sister, what are you going to do about it?" + +"I don't know what to do," sighed Miss Nellie. "He hasn't any other +relatives as far as I know. And the summer coming on, what shall we +do?" + +"Nothing for it but to send him to an orphanage if she doesn't write +soon," said Miss Eva. + +"Oh, auntie, you wouldn't!" + +"Why not? How can we afford to give children free board and +education?" + +"It's only one child." + +"It would be a dozen, if we once started it." + +"I'll wait another month," said Miss Nellie, "and then, really, +something will have to be done." + +The girl looked out of the window. + +"There he is now," she said, "sitting on the stone wall at the end of +the garden. It's his favourite spot." + +"What on earth he wants to sit there for--away from all the other +children! He never plays. Look at him! Just sitting there--not moving. +How stupid!" exclaimed Miss Eva impatiently. + +"I do declare, I believe he's fallen asleep," said Miss Nellie. + +Freddy was not asleep. He had only to close his eyes and it would all +come back to him. Memories that he could not put into words, +sensations without definite thought, crowded in upon him. The +smell--the thick smell of grease paint, choking powder, dust, gas, old +walls, bodies, and breath, and sharp perfume; the sickening, +delicious, stale, enchanting, never-to-be-forgotten odour of the +theatre; the nerves' sudden tension at the cry of "Ov-a-chure"; their +tingling as the jaded music blares; the lift of the heart as the +curtain rises; the catch in the throat as Florette runs on to do her +turn. + +Florette was a performer on the trapeze in vaudeville. Her figure was +perfect from the strenuous daily exercise. She was small, young, and a +shade too blonde. First she appeared in a sort of blue evening dress, +except that it was shorter even than a d butante's. She ran out +quickly from the wings, bowed excessively, smiled appealingly, and, +skipping over to the trapeze, seized the two iron rings that hung from +ropes. Lifting her own weight by the strength in her slender wrists, +she flung her legs upward and hooked her knees into the rings. Then +hanging head downward she swung back and forth; flung herself upright +again, sat and swung; climbed to the topmost bar of the trapeze and +hung down again. Her partner ran on and repeated her monkeylike +manoeuvres. Then Florette held his hands while he swung upside down, +he held Florette while she swung upside down. They turned head over +heels, over and over each other, up and down, catching and slipping, +and adjusting their balance, in time to gay tunes. + +Sometimes the audience clapped. Sometimes they were too familiar with +their kind of flirtation with death to clap. Then Florette and her +partner would invent something a little more daring. They would learn +to balance themselves on chairs tilted on two legs on the trapeze, or +Florette would hang by only one hand, or she would support her partner +by a strap held in her teeth. Sometimes Florette's risks were great +enough to thrill the audience with the thought of death. + +The thought of a slip, broken bones, delighted the safe people in +comfortable chairs. They laughed. Florette laughed, too, for Freddy +was waiting in the wings. + +There were mothers in the audience who cooked and mended, swept and +dusted, ran up and down innumerable stairs, washed greasy dishes, wore +ugly house dresses, slaved and scolded and got chapped hands, all for +their children. Florette, always dainty and pretty, had nothing to do +but airily, gracefully swing, and smile. Other mothers spent their +lives for their little boys. Florette only risked hers twice a day. + +While the partner played an accordion Florette ran out for her quick +change. Freddy was waiting, with her dress hung over a chair. He flew +to meet her. His eager, nimble fingers unfastened the blue frock. He +slipped the next costume over her head without mussing a single +beloved blonde hair. The second costume was a tight-fitting silver +bodice with a fluff of green skirt underneath. Freddy had it fastened +up in a twinkling. Florette ran out again and pulled herself up into +the trapeze. + +While Florette went through the second part of her act Freddy folded +up the blue costume and trudged upstairs with it. Florette's dressing +room was usually up four flights. Freddy put the blue dress on a coat +hanger and wrapped a muslin cover about it. Then he trudged down the +four flights again, with the third costume over his arm. It was a +Chinese jacket and a pair of tight, short blue satin trousers, and +Freddy was very proud of this confection. He stood as a screen for +Florette while she put on the trousers, and there are not many little +boys who have a mamma who could look so pretty in them. + +Florette skipped out lightly and finished her act by swinging far out +over the audience, back and forth, faster and faster, farther and +farther out, until it seemed as if she were going to fling herself +into the lap of some middle-aged gentleman in the third row. His wife +invariably murmured something about a hussy as Florette's pretty bare +legs flashed overhead. The music played louder, ended with a boom from +the drum. Florette flung herself upright, kissed her hands, the +curtain fell, and the barelegged hussy ran up to the dressing room +where her little son waited. + +Freddy had already hung up and shrouded the silver-and-green costume, +and was waiting for the Chinese one. He pounced upon it, muttered +about some wrinkles, put it into place, and went to the dressing table +to hand Florette the cold cream. He found her make-up towel, all caked +with red and blue, which she had flung down on the floor. He patted +her highly glittering hair and adjusted a pin. He marshalled the jars +and little pans and sticks of grease paint on her shelf into an +orderly row and blew off the deep layers of powder she had scattered. +Then he took down her street dress from its hook and slipped it deftly +over her shoulders and had it buttoned up before Florette could yawn. +He handed her her saucy bright hat. He flung himself into his own +coat. + +"Well, le's go, Florette!" cried Freddy gayly, with dancing eyes. He +had never called her mamma. She was too little and cute. + +Then they would go to the hotel, never the best, where they were +stopping. The room with its greenish light, its soiled lace curtains, +the water pitcher always cracked, the bed always lumpy, the sheets +always damp, was home to Freddy. Florette made it warm and cozy even +when there was no heat in the radiator. She had all sorts of clever +home-making tricks. She toasted marshmallows over the gas jet; she +spread a shawl on the trunk; or she surprised Freddy by pinning +pictures out of the funny page on the wall. She could make the nicest +tea on a little alcohol stove she carried in her trunk. There was +always a little feast after the theatre on the table that invariably +wabbled. Freddy would pretend that the foot of the iron bed was a +trapeze. How they laughed. On freezing nights in Maine or Minnesota, +Florette would let Freddy warm his feet against hers, or she would get +up and spread her coat that looked just like fur over the bed. + +When they struck a new town at the beginning of each week Freddy and +Florette would go bumming and see all the sights, whether it was +Niagara Falls or just the new Methodist Church in Cedar Rapids. Freddy +would have been sorry for little boys who had to stay in one home all +the time--that is, if he had known anything at all about them. But the +life of the strolling player was all that he had ever known, and he +found it delightful, except for the dreaded intervals of "bookin' the +ac'." + +The dream of every vaudevillian is to be booked for fifty-two unbroken +weeks in the year, but few attain such popularity. Florette's seasons +were sometimes long, sometimes short; but there always came the +tedious worrying intervals when managers and agents must be besought +for work. Perhaps she would find that people were tired of her old +tricks, and she would have to rehearse new ones, or interpolate new +songs and gags. Then the new act would be tried out at some obscure +vaudeville house, and if it didn't go the rehearsals and trampings to +agents must begin all over again. Freddy shared the anxieties and +hardships of these times. But the only hardship he really minded was +the loss of Florette, for of course the pretty Miss Le Fay, who was +only nineteen on the agents' books, could not appear on Broadway with +a great big boy like Freddy. + +However, the bad times always ended, and Florette and Freddy would set +out gayly once more for Oshkosh or Atlanta, Dallas or Des Moines. +Meals expanded, Florette bought a rhinestone-covered comb, and the two +adventurers indulged in an orgy of chocolate drops. With the optimism +of the actor, they forgot all about the dismal past weeks, and saw the +new tour as never ending. + +Freddy felt himself once more a real and important human being with a +place in the sun, not just a child to be shushed by a dingy landlady +while his mother was out looking for a job. He knew that he was as +necessary a part of Florette's act as her make-up box. He believed +himself to be as necessary a part of her life as the heart in her +breast, for Florette lavished all her beauty, all her sweetness on +him. No Johns for Florette, pretty and blonde though she was. To the +contempt of her contemporaries Florette refused every chance for a +free meal. Freddy was her sweetheart, her man. She had showered so +many pretty love words on him, she had assured him so often that he +was all in the world she wanted, that Freddy was stunned one day to +hear that he was to have a papa. + +"I don' wan' one," said Freddy flatly. "I ain't never had one, an' I +ain't got no use for one." + +Florette looked cross--an unusual thing. + +"Aw, now, Freddy, don't be a grouch," she said. + +"I don' wan' one," repeated Freddy. + +"You ought to be glad to get a papa!" cried Florette. + +"Why?" + +"Makes you respectable." + +"What's that?" + +"Who'd believe I was a widow--in this profession?" + +Freddy still looked blank. + +"Well," said Florette, "you're goin' to get a nice papa, so there +now!" + +Then the cruel truth dawned on Freddy. It was Florette who wanted a +papa. He had not been enough for her. In some way Florette had found +him lacking. + +Tactfully, Freddy dropped the subject of papas, wooed Florette, and +tried to atone for his shortcomings. He redoubled his compliments, +trotted out all the love words he knew, coaxed Florette with +everything she liked best in him. He even offered to have his nails +filed. At night, in bed, he kissed Florette's bare back between the +shoulder blades, and snuggled close to her, hugging her desperately +with his little thin arms. + +"Flo," he quavered, "you--you ain't lonesome no more, are you?" + +"Me? Lonesome? Whatcher talkin' about, kid?" sleepily murmured +Florette. + +"You ain't never lonesome when you got me around, are you, Flo?" + +"Sure I ain't. Go to sleep, honey." + +"But, Florette----" + +Florette was dozing. + +"Oh, Florette! Florette!" + +"Florette, if you ain't lonesome----" + +"Sh-h-h, now, sh-h-h! Le's go to sleep." + +"But, Florette, you don' wan'--you don' wan'--a pop----" + +"Sh-h-h! Sh-h-h! I'm so tired, honey." + +Florette slept. Freddy lay awake, but he lay still so as not to +disturb her. His arms ached, but he dared not let her go. Finally he +slept, and dreamed of a world in which there was no Florette. He +shuddered and kicked his mother. She gave him a little impatient +shove. He woke. Day was dawning. It was Florette's wedding day. Freddy +did not know it until Florette put on her best coral-velvet hat with +the jet things dangling over her ears. + +"You ain' gonna wear that hat," said Freddy severely. "It's rainin'." + +"Yeah, I'm gonna wear this hat," said Florette, pulling her blonde +earbobs into greater prominence. "An' you put on your best suit an' +new necktie. We're goin' to a weddin'." + +Her tone was gay, arch, her eyes were happy. + +"Who--whose?" Freddy faltered. + +"Mine!" chirped Florette. "I'm goin' to get you that papa I promised +you." + +Freddy turned away. + +"Sulkin'!" chided Florette. "Naughty, jealous boy!" + +The new papa did not appear so formidable as Freddy had expected. In +fact, he turned out to be only Howard, Florette's acrobatic partner. +Freddy philosophically reflected that if one must have a new papa, far +better so to call Howard, who necessarily encroached on Florette's +time, than a stranger who might take up some of her leisure hours. + +But Freddy received a distinct shock when the new papa joined them +after the evening performance and accompanied them up to their room. + +Freddy had always regarded Florette's room as his, too. He felt that +the new papa was an intruder in their home. Alas! It soon became all +too apparent that it was Freddy who was _de trop_, or, as he would +have expressed it, a Mister Buttinski. + +They were having a little supper of pickles and cheese and liver +sausage and jam. Florette and the papa drank out of a bottle by turns +and laughed a great deal. Florette seemed to think the papa very +clever and funny. She laughed at everything he said. She looked at him +with shining eyes. She squeezed his hand under the table. Freddy tried +in vain to attract her attention. Finally he gave up and sat staring +at the oblivious couple with a stupid expression. + +"That kid's half asleep," said the new papa. + +Florette looked at Freddy and was annoyed by his vacant eyes. + +"Go to bed right away," she commanded. + +Freddy looked at her in amazement. + +"Ain't you goin', too, Florette?" he asked. + +"No, you go on--go to sleep." + +"Git into that nice li'l cot an' go by-by," said the new papa +genially. + +Freddy had not seen the cot before. It had been moved in during his +absence at the theatre, and stood white, narrow, and lonely, partly +concealed by a screen. + +"I--I always slep' with Florette," faltered Freddy. + +This seemed to amuse the new papa. But Florette flushed and looked +annoyed. + +"Now, Freddy, are you goin' to be a grouch?" she wailed. + +Freddy was kissed good-night, and went to sleep in the cot. He found +it cold and unfriendly. But habit, the much maligned, is kind as well +as cruel; if it can accustom us to evil, so can it soften pain. Freddy +was beginning to assume proprietary airs toward the cot, which +appeared in every town, and even to express views as to the relative +values of cots in Springfield, Akron, or Joliet--when one night he +woke to hear Florette sobbing. + +Freddy lay awake listening. He had sobbed, too, when he was first +banished to the cot. Was Florette missing him as he had missed her? +Ah, if she at last had seen that papas were not half so nice as +Freddy's, he would not be hard on her. His heart swelled with +forgiveness and love. He stole on tiptoe to Florette's bedside. + +"Flo," he whispered. + +The sobbing ceased. Florette held her breath and pretended to be +asleep. Freddy wriggled his little thin body under the covers and +threw his arms around Florette. With a gulp, she turned and threw her +arms around him. They clasped each other tight and clung without +speaking. They lay on the edge of the bed, holding their breath in +order not to wake the papa who snored loudly. Freddy's cheeks and hair +were wet, a cold tear trickled down his neck, his body ached from the +hard edge of the bed; but he was happy, as only a child or a lover can +be, and Freddy was both. + +In the morning the papa was cross. He did not seem to care for his own +breakfast, but concentrated his attention on Freddy's. Freddy had +always been accustomed to a nice breakfast of tea and toast and jam, +but Howard insisted on ordering oatmeal for him. + +"Naw, Freddy can't stand oatmeal," Florette objected. + +"It's good for him," said Howard, staring severely at his son across +the white-topped restaurant table. + +"I don' see no use forcin' a person to eat what they can't stomach," +said Florette. + +"Yeah, tha's the way you've always spoiled that kid. Look a' them pale +cheeks! Li'l ole pale face!" Howard taunted, stretching a teasing hand +toward Freddy. "Mamma's boy! Reg'lar sissy, he is!" + +He gave Freddy a poke in the ribs. Freddy shrank back, made himself as +small as possible in his chair, looked mutely at Florette. + +"Aw, cut it out, Howard," she begged. "Quit raggin' the kid, can't +you?" + +"Mamma's blessed sugar lump!" jeered Howard, with an ugly gleam in his +eye. "Ought to wear a bib with pink ribbons, so he ought. Gimme a +nursin' bottle for the baby, waiter!" + +The impertinence of this person amazed Freddy. He could only look at +his tormentor speechlessly. Freddy and Florette had been such great +chums that she had never used the maternal prerogative of rudeness. He +had never had any home life, so he was unaware of the coolness with +which members of a family can insult one another. Howard's tones, +never low, were unusually loud this morning, and people turned around +to laugh at the blushing child. The greasy waiter grinned and set the +oatmeal which Howard had ordered before Freddy. + +"Now, then, young man," commanded Howard sternly, "you eat that, and +you eat it quick!" + +Freddy obeyed literally, swallowing as fast as he could, with painful +gasps and gulps, fighting to keep the tears back. Florette reached +under the table and silently squeezed his knee. He flashed her a smile +and swallowed a huge slimy mouthful. + +"You ain't eatin' nothin' yourse'f, Howard," said Florette acidly. +"W'y don' you have some oatmeal?" + +"Tha's right!" shouted Howard. "Side with the kid against me! Tha's +all the thanks I get for tryin' to make a man out o' the li'l sissy. +Oughta known better'n to marry a woman with a spoiled brat." + +"Sh-h-h!" whispered Florette. "Don't tell the whole resterunt about +your fam'ly troubles." + +"Say," hissed Howard, bending down toward her and thrusting out his +jaw, "lay off o' me, will yer?" + +"Lay off yourse'f!" retorted Florette under her breath. "If you wanna +fight le's go back to the hotel where it's private." + +"I don' min' tellin' the world I bin stung!" roared Howard. + +Florette flushed up to the slightly darker roots of her too-blonde +hair. + +"You?" she gasped furiously. "After all I've put up with!" + +"Say, you ain't got any kick comin'! I treated you white, marryin' +you, an' no questions asked." + +"What-ta you mean?" breathed Florette, growing deathly pale. + +Freddy, alarmed, half rose from his chair. + +"Sit down there you!" roared Howard. "What-ta I mean, Miss Innocence?" +he said, mimicking Florette's tone. "Oh, no, of course you ain't no +idea of what I mean!" + +"Come on, Freddy," Florette broke in quickly. "It's a katzenjammer. He +ain't got over last night yet." + +She seized Freddy's hand and walked rapidly toward the door. Howard +lurched after her, followed by the interested stares of the +spectators. On the street he caught up with her and the quarrel +recommenced. + +The act went badly that afternoon. It must be hard to frolic in midair +with a heavy heart. Under cover of the gay music there were angry +muttered words and reproaches. + +"Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!" Florette would trill happily to the audience as +she poised on one toe. "What-ta you tryin' to do--shake me off'n the +bar?" she would mutter under her breath to her partner. + +"That's right! Leggo o' me an' lemme bus' my bean, damn you!" snarled +Howard. And to the audience he sang, "Oh, ain't it great to have a +little girlie you can trust for--life!" + +They were still muttering angrily as they came off. The handclapping +had been faint. + +"Aw, for God's sake, stop your jawin'!" half screamed Florette. "It +ain't no more my fault than it is yours. If they don' like us they +don' like us, tha's all." + +She ran up the stairs, sobbing. Howard followed her. They shared a +dressing room now. It was small, and Freddy was in the way, although +he tried to squeeze himself into the corner by the dingy stationary +washstand. Howard shoved Freddy. Florette protested. The quarrelling +broke out afresh. Howard tipped over a bottle of liquid white. +Florette screamed at him, and he raised his fist. Freddy darted out of +his corner. + +"Say, ya big stiff, cut out that rough stuff, see?" cried little +Freddy in the only language of chivalry that he knew. + +Howard whirled upon him furiously, calling him a name that Freddy did +not understand, but Florette flung herself between them and caught the +blow. + + * * * * * + +"He certainly looks as if he had fallen asleep," Miss Nellie Blair +repeated. "Better run out and get him, Mary. He might tumble off the +wall." + +As Mary went out a maid came in. + +"A gen'l'mun to see you, Miss Blair," she announced. + +"Is it a parent?" asked Miss Nellie. + +The maid's eyebrows twitched, and she looked faintly grieved, as all +good servants do when they are forced to consider someone whom they +cannot acknowledge as their superior. + +"No, ma'am, he doesn't look like a parent," she complained. + +"He really is a very queer-lookin' sort of person, ma'am. I wouldn't +know exactly where to place him. Shall I say you are out, ma'am?" + +"Yes," said Miss Eva. "No doubt he wants to sell an encyclopedia." + +"No, let him come in," said Miss Nellie. "It might be a reporter about +Madame d'Avala," she added, turning to her sister. "Sometimes they +look queer." + +"If it turns out to be an encyclopedia I shall leave you at once," +said Miss Eva. "You are so kind-hearted that you will look through +twenty-four volumes, and miss your dinner----" + +But the gentleman who came in carried no books, nor did he look like +one who had ever been associated with them. Carefully dressed in the +very worst of taste from his scarfpin to his boots, he had evidently +just been too carefully shaved, for there were scratches on his wide, +ludicrous face, and his smile was as rueful as a clown's. + +"The Misses Blair, I presume?" he asked in what was unmistakably his +society manner, and he held out a card. + +Miss Eva took it and read aloud, "Mr. Bert Brannigan, Brannigan and +Bowers, Black-Face Comedians." + +"Ah?" murmured Miss Nellie, who was always polite even in the most +trying circumstances. + +But Miss Eva could only stare at the rich brown suit, the lavender tie +and matching socks and handkerchief. + +"Well?" said Miss Eva. + +Mr. Brannigan cleared his throat and looked cautiously about the room. +His heavy, clownlike face was troubled. + +"Where's the kid?" he asked in a hoarse whisper. + +"What child?" Miss Eva snapped. + +"You've come to see one of our pupils?" Miss Nellie faltered. + +"Yeah. Hers." + +"Hers?" + +"W'y, Miss Le Fay's li'l boy." + +"Oh, Freddy?" + +"Sure! Does he--he don't--you ain't tole 'im yet, have you?" + +"Told him what?" + +"My God! don't you know?" + +Bert Brannigan stared at the ladies, mopping his brow with the +lavender handkerchief. + +"Please explain yourself, Mr. Brannigan," said Miss Eva. + +"She's dead. I thought you knew." + +"Miss Le Fay is dead?" gasped Miss Nellie. + +"Why weren't we told?" asked Miss Eva. + +"It was in the papers," said Bert. "But they didn't give Florette no +front-page headlines, an' maybe you don't read the theatrical news." + +"No," said Miss Eva. + +"Well, not bein' in the profession," Mr. Brannigan said as if he were +apologizing for her. + +He sat down and continued to mop his brow mechanically. The two +sisters stared in dismay at the clown who had brought bad news. + +"W'at I don' know is how to tell the kid," said Bert. "He was nutty +about Florette; didn't give a darn for no one else. I bin on the bill +with them two lots of times, an' I seen how it was. The money ain't +goin' to be no comfort to that kid!" + +"The money?" + +"Florette's insurance--made out to him. Tha's w'y I come. She wan'ed +him to stay on here, see, till he was all educated. They's enough, +too. She was always insured heavy for the kid. They's some back money +comin' to you, too. She tole me. The reason w'y she didn't sen' it on +was because she was out of luck an' broke, see?" + +"But why didn't Miss Le Fay write to us?" asked Miss Nellie. "If she +was in difficulties we----" + +"Naw, Florette wasn' that kind; nev' put up any hard-luck story y' +un'erstan'. But she'd bin outa work, sick. An' w'en she come back it +looked like her ac' was a frost. I run up on her in K.C., an'----" + +"What is K.C.?" + +"Why, Kansas City! We was on the bill there two weeks ago. Me an' +Florette was ole friends, see? No foolishness, if you know what I +mean. I'm a married man myse'f--Bowers there on the card's my +wife--but me an' Florette met about five years ago, an' kep' on +runnin' on to one another on the bill, first one place an' then +another. So she was glad to see me again, an' me her. 'W'y, w'ere's +Freddy?' I says, first thing. An' then I never seen any person's face +look so sad. But she begun tellin' me right off w'at a fine place the +kid was at, an' how the theayter wasn't no place for a chile. An' she +says, 'Bert, I wan' him to stay w'ere he's happy an' safe,' she says. +'Even if I nev' see him again,' she says. Well, it give me the shivers +then. Psychic, I guess." + +Bert paused, staring into space. + +"And then?" Miss Nellie asked gently. + +"Well, like I was tellin' you, Florette had been playin' in hard luck. +Now I don' know whether you ladies know anything about the vodvil +game. Some ac's is booked out through the circuit from N' Yawk; others +is booked up by some li'l fly-by-night agent, gettin' a date here an' +a date there, terrible jumps between stands, see?--and nev' knowin' +one week where you're goin' the nex', or whether at all. Well, +Florette was gettin' her bookin' that way. An' on that you gotta make +good with each house you play, get me? An' somethin' had went wrong +with the ac' since I seen it las'. It useter be A Number I, y' +un'erstan', but looked like Florette had lost int'rust or somethin'. +She didn't put no pep into it, if you know what I mean. An' vodvil's +gotta be all pep. Then, too, her an' that partner of hers jawin' all +the time somethin' fierce. I could hear him raggin' her that af'noon, +an' me standin' in the wings, an' they slipped up on some of their +tricks terrible, an' the audience laughed. But not with 'em, at 'em, +y' un'erstan'! Well, so the ac' was a fros', an' they was cancelled." + +"Cancelled?" + +"Fired, I guess you'd call it. They was to play again that night an' +then move on, see?" + +"Oh, yes." + +"An' they didn't have no bookin' ahead. Florette come an' talked to me +again, an' she says again she wanted Freddy to be happy, an' git a +better start'n she'd had an' all. 'An,' Bert,' she says, 'if anything +ev' happens to me, you go an' give 'um the money for Freddy,' she +says." + +"Poor thing! Perhaps she had a premonition of her death," murmured +Miss Nellie. + +Bert gave her a queer look. + +"Yeah--yes, ma'am, p'raps so. I was watchin' her from the wings that +night," he went on. "The ac' was almos' over, an' I couldn't see +nothin' wrong. Howard had run off an' Florette was standin' up on the +trapeze kissin' her ban's like she always done at the finish. But all +of a sudden she sort of trem'led an' turned ha'f way roun' like she +couldn't make up her min' what to do, an' los' her balance, an' caught +holt of a rope--an' let go--an' fell." + +Miss Nellie covered her face with her hands. Miss Eva turned away to +the window. + +"She was dead w'en I got to her," said Bert. + +"Be careful!" said Miss Eva sharply. "The child is coming in." + +"Freddy wasn't asleep at all," said Mary, opening the door. "He was +just playing a game, but he won't tell me----Oh, I beg your pardon! I +didn't know any one was here." + +Freddy had stopped round-eyed, open-mouthed with incredulous delight. + +"Bert!" he gasped. "The son of a gun!" + +"Freddy!" cried the Misses Blair. + +But Bert held out his arms and Freddy ran into them. + +"Gee, Bert, I'm glad to see ya!" rejoiced Freddy. + +"Me, too, kid, glad to see you! How's the boy, huh? Gettin' educated, +huh? Swell school, ain't it?" babbled Bert, fighting for time. + +"Aw, it's all right, I guess," Freddy replied listlessly, glancing at +the Misses Blair. Then turning again with eager interest to Bert, "But +say, Bert, what in the hell a----I mean what-ta you doin' here?" + +"Why--ah--ah--jus' stoppin' by to say howdy, see, an'----" + +"Playin'in N'Yawk?" + +"No." + +"Jus'come in?" + +"Yeah." + +Freddy drew his breath in quickly. + +"Say, Bert, you--you ain't seen Florette anywheres?" + +"Why, ye-yeah." + +"Where is she, Bert?" + +There was a deathly hush. + +Then Miss Eva motioned to Miss Nellie and said, "If you will excuse +us, Mr. Brannigan, we have some arrangements to make about the concert +to-night. Madame d'Avala is to sing in the school auditorium, a +benefit performance," and she went out, followed by her sister and +niece. + +"Where's Florette?" Freddy asked again, his voice trembling with +eagerness. + +"I--seen her in K.C., sonny." + +"How's the ac'?" + +"Fine! Fine! Great!" + +"No kiddin'?" + +"No kiddin'." + +"Florette--all right?" + +"Why, what made you think any different?" + +"Who hooks her up now, Bert?" + +"She hires the dresser at the theatre." + +"I could 'a' kep' on doin' it," said Freddy, with a sigh. + +"Aw, now, kid, it's better for you here, gettin' educated an' all." + +"I don't like it, Bert." + +"You don't like it?" + +"Naw." + +"You don't like it! After all she done!" + +"I hate this ole school. I wanna leave. You tell Florette." + +"Aw, now, Freddy----" + +"I'm lonesome. I don't like nobody here." His voice dropped. "An'--an' +they don't like me." + +"Aw, now, Freddy----" + +"Maybe Miss Mary does. But Miss Eva don't. Anyway, I ain't no use to +anybody here. What's the sense of stayin' where you ain't no use? An' +they're always callin' me down. I don't do nothin' right. I can't even +talk so's they'll like it. Florette liked the way I talked all right. +An' you get what I mean, don't you, Bert? But they don't know nothin'. +Why, they don't know nothin', Bert! Why, there's one boy ain't ever +been inside a theatre! What-ta you know about that, Bert? Gee, Bert, +I'm awful glad you come! I'd 'a' bust not havin' somebody to talk to." + +Bert was silent. He still held Freddy in his arms. His heart reeled at +the thought of what he must tell the child. He cleared his throat, +opened his mouth to speak, but the words would not come. + +Freddy chattered on, loosing the flood gates of his accumulated +loneliness. He told how Florette had bidden him "learn to be a li'l +gem'mum," and how he really tried; but how silly were the rules that +governed a gentlemanly existence; how the other li'l gem'mum laughed +at him, and talked of things he had never heard of, and never heard of +the things he talked of, until at last he had ceased trying to be one +of them. + +"You tell Florette I gotta leave this place," he concluded firmly. +"Bert, now you tell Florette. Will you, Bert? Huh?" + +"Freddy--I----Freddy, lissen now. I got somethin' to tell you." + +"What?" + +"I--I come on to tell you, Freddy. Tha's why I come out to tell you, +see?" + +"Well, spit it out," Freddy laughed. + +Bert groaned. + +"Whassa matter, Bert? What's eatin' you?" + +"I--I----Say, Freddy, lissen--lissen, now, Freddy. I----" + +"Florette! She ain't sick? Bert, is Florette sick?" + +"No! No, I----" + +"You tell me, Bert! If it's bad news about Florette----" + +His voice died out. His face grew white. Bert could not meet his eyes. + +"No, no, now, Freddy," Bert mumbled, turning away his head. "You got +me all wrong. It--it's good news, sonny." + +Like a flash Freddy's face cleared. + +"What about, Bert? Good news about what?" + +"Why--ah--why, the ac's goin' big, like I tole you. An'--an' say, boy, +out at one place--out at K.C., it--why, it stopped the show!" + +"Stopped the show!" breathed Freddy in awe. "Oh, Bert, we never done +that before!" + +"An' so--so she--ah, Florette--y'see, kid, account of the ac' goin' so +big, why, she--has to--go away--for a little while." + +"Go away, Bert! Where?" + +"To--to--Englund, an'--Australia." + +"To Englund, an'--Australia?" + +"Yeah, they booked her up 'count o' the ac' goin' so great." + +"Oh, Bert!" + +"Yeah. An' lissen. She's booked for fifty-two weeks solid!" + +"Fifty-two weeks! Oh, Bert, that ain't never happened to us before!" + +"I know. It's--great!" + +Bert blew out his breath loudly, mopped his forehead. He could look at +Freddy now, and he saw a face all aglow with love and pride. + +"When she comin' to get me, Bert?" the child asked confidently. + +"Why--why, Freddy--now--you---" + +Bert could only flounder and look dismayed. + +"She ain't goin' off an' leave me!" wailed the child. + +"Now, lissen! Say, wait a minute! Lissen!" + +"But, Bert! Bert! She--" + +"Say, don't you wanna help Florette, now she's got this gran' bookin' +an' all?" + +"Sure I do, Bert. I wanna he'p her with her quick changes like I +useter." + +"You he'p her! Say, how would that look in all them swell places she's +goin' to? W'y, she'll have a maid!" + +"Like the headliners, Bert?" + +"Sure!" + +"A coon, Bert?" + +"Sure! Like a li'l musical com'dy star." + +"Honest?" + +"Honest!" + +"But, Bert, w'y can't I go, too?" + +"Aw, now, say--w'y--w'y, you're too big!" + +"What-ta y' mean, Bert?" + +"W'y, kid, you talk's if you never bin in the p'fession. How ole does +Miss Le Fay look? Nineteen, tha's all. But with a great big boy like +you taggin' on--W'y, say, you'd queer her with them English managers +right off. You don' wanna do that now, Freddy?" + +"No, but I--" + +"I knew you'd take it sensible. You always bin a lot of help to +Florette." + +"Did she tell you, Bert?" + +"Sure!" + +"A' right. I'll stay. When--when's she comin' to tell me goo'-by?" + +"Why--why--look-a-here. Brace up, ole man. She had to leave a'ready." + +"She's gone?" + +"Say, you don' think bookin' like that can wait, do you? It was take +it or leave it--quick. You didn't wan' her to throw away a chancet +like that, huh, Freddy? Huh?" + +Freddy's head sank on his chest. His hands fell limp. "A' right," he +murmured without looking up. + +The big man bent over the child clumsily and tried to raise his +quivering chin. + +"Aw, now, Freddy," he coaxed, "wanna come out with me an'--an' have a +soda?" + +Freddy shook his head. + +"Buy ya some candy, too. Choc'late drops! An' how about one o' them +li'l airyplane toys I seen in the window down the street? Huh? Or some +marbles? Huh? Freddy, le's go buy out this here dinky li'l ole town. +What-ta ya say, huh? Le's paint this li'l ole town red! What-ta ya +say, sport?" + +Freddy managed a feeble smile. + +"How come you so flush, Brudder Johnsing?" he asked in what he +considered an imitation of darky talk. "Mus' 'a' bin rollin' dem +bones!" + +"Tha's a boy!" shouted Bert with a great guffaw. "There's a comeback +for you! Game! Tha's what I always liked about you, Freddy. You was +always game." + +"I wanna be game!" said Freddy, stiffening his lips. "You tell +Florette. You write to her I was game. Will ya, Bert?" + +A bell rang. + +"Aw, I gotta go dress for supper, Bert. They dress up for supper +here." + +"A' right, kid. Then I'll be goin'----" + +"Goo'-by, Bert. You tell her, Bert." + +"So long, kid." + +"Will ya tell her I was game, Bert?" + +"Aw, she'll know!" + +Madame Margarita d'Avala found herself in a situation all the more +annoying because it was so absurd. She had promised to sing at the +Misses Blair's School for the benefit of a popular charity, and she +had motored out from New York, leaving her maid to do some errands and +to follow by train. But it was eight o'clock and the great Madame +d'Avala found herself alone in the prim guest room of the Misses +Blair's School, with her bag and dressing case, to be sure, but with +no one to help her into the complicated draperies of her gown. There +was no bell. She could not very well run down the corridor, half nude, +shouting for help, especially as she had no idea of where the Misses +Blair kept either themselves or their servants. The Misses Blair had +been so fatiguingly polite on her arrival. Perhaps she had been a +little abrupt in refusing their many offers of service and saying that +she wanted to rest quite alone. Now, of course, they were afraid to +come near her. And, besides, they would think that her maid was with +her by this time. They had given orders to have Madame d'Avala's maid +shown up to her as soon as she arrived, and of course their maid would +be too stupid to know that Madame d'Avala's maid had never come. + +Margarita d'Avala bit her lips and paced the floor, looked out of the +window, opened the door, but there was no one in sight. Well, no help +for it. She must try to get into the gown alone. She stepped into it +and became entangled in the lace; stepped out again, shook the dress +angrily and pushed it on over her head, giving a little impatient +scream as she rumpled her hair. Then she reached up and back, +straining her arms to push the top snap of the corsage into place. But +with the quiet glee of inanimate things the snap immediately snapped +out again. Flushing, Madame d'Avala repeated her performance, and the +snap repeated its. Madame d'Avala stamped both feet and gave a little +gasp of rage. She attacked the belt with no better luck. Chiffon and +lace became entangled in hooks, snaps flew out as fast as she could +push them in. Her arms ached, and the dress assumed strange humpy +outlines as she fastened it up all wrong. + +She would like to rip the cursed thing from her shoulders and tear it +into a million pieces! She felt hysteria sweeping over her. She knew +that she was going to have one of her famous fits of temper in a +minute. + +"Oh! Oh! Oh!" Madame d'Avala screamed aloud, stamping her feet up and +down as fast as they could go. "Oh! Oh! Oh! Damn! Damn! Damn!" + +She did not swear in Italian, because she was not an Italian except by +profession. Her name had been Maggie Davis, but that was a secret +between herself and her press agent. + +"Oh! Damn!" screamed Madame d'Avala again. + +"Ain't it hell?" remarked an interested voice, and Madame d'Avala saw +a small pale face staring at her through the door which she had left +ajar. + +"Come in!" she ordered, and a small thin boy entered, quite unabashed, +looking at her with an air of complete understanding. + +"Who are you?" asked Madame d'Avala. + +"Freddy." + +"Well, Freddy, run at once and find a maid for me, please. Mine hasn't +come, and I'm frantic, simply frantic. Well, why don't you go?" + +"I'll hook you up," said Freddy. + +"You!" + +"Sure! I kin do it better'n any maid you'd get in this helluva +school." + +"Why, Freddy!" + +"Aw, I heard you sayin' damn! You're in the p'fession, +huh? Me, too." + +"You, too?" + +His face clouded. + +"Oh! And now--you have retired?" + +"Yeah--learnin' to be a gem'mum. Lemme there," said Freddy, stepping +behind Madame d'Avala. "Say, you've got it all started wrong." He +attacked the stubborn hooks with light, deft fingers. + +"Why, you can really do it!" cried Madame d'Avala. + +"Sure! This ain't nothin'." Freddy's fingers flew. + +"Careful of that drapery. It's tricky." + +"Say, drapery's pie to me. I fastened up lots harder dresses than +this." + +"Really?" + +"Sure! Florette had swell clo'es. This'n's swell, too. My! ain't it +great to see a classy gown again!" + +Madame d'Avala laughed and Freddy joined her. + +"Say, you seen the teachers at this school?" he asked. "You seen 'em?" + +Madame d'Avala nodded. + +"Nice ladies," said Freddy in an effort to be fair. "But no class--you +know what I mean. Way they slick their hair back, an' no paint or +powder. Gee, Florette wouldn't wear their clo'es to a dog fight!" + +"Nor I," said Madame d'Avala; "I love dogs." + +"I tole Miss Eva she ought to put peroxide in the rinsin' water for +her hair like Florette useter, but it made her mad. I b'lieve in a +woman fixin' herself up all she can, don't you?" asked Freddy +earnestly. + +"Indeed, I do! But tell me, who is Florette?" + +So Freddy told her all about his mother, and about the good fortune +that had come to her. + +"Fifty-two weeks solid! Some ac' to get that kinda bookin, huh?" he +ended. + +"Yes! Oh, yes, indeed!" + +"There y'ah now! Look at youse'f! See if it's a'right." + +Madame d'Avala turned to the mirror. Her gown fell in serene, lovely +folds. It seemed incredible that it was the little demon of a few +minutes before. + +"Perfect! Freddy, you're a wonder. How can I thank you?" + +"Tha's a'right. You're welcome." + +He was regarding her with worshipful eyes. + +"You're awful pretty," he breathed. + +"Thank you," said Madame d'Avala. "Are you coming to my concert?" + +"No, they put us to bed!" cried Freddy in disgust. "Puttin' me to bed +at 8:30 every night! What-ta y' know about that! Jus' w'en the +orchestra would be tunin' up for the evenin' p'formance." + +"What a shame! I'd like to have you see my act." + +"I bet it's great. You got the looks, too. Tha's what it takes in this +p'fession. Make a quick change?" + +"No, I wear the same dress all through." + +"Oh! Well," he sighed deeply--"well, it's been great to see you, +anyway. Goo'-bye." + +The great lady bent down to him and kissed his forehead. + +"Good-bye, Freddy," she said. "You've helped me so much." + +Freddy drew in a long breath. + +"M-m," he sighed, "you know how I come to peek in your door like +that?" + +"Because you heard me screaming 'damn'?" + +"No, before that. Comin' all the way down the hall I could smell it. +Smelled so nice. Don't none of these ladies use perfume. I jus' knew +somebody I'd like was in here soon's I got that smell." + +"Oh, Freddy, I like you, too! But I've got to hurry now. Good-bye. And +thanks so much, dear." + +She started out the door. + +"Oh, gee! I can't go to bed!" Freddy wailed. + +"Come along, then!" cried Madame d'Avala, impetuously seizing his +hand. "I'll make them let you go to the concert. They must!" + +They ran down the hall together hand in hand, Freddy directing the way +to the Misses Blair's study. Miss Eva and Miss Nellie and Mary were +there, and they looked at Freddy compassionately. And though Miss Eva +said it was most unusual, Miss Nellie agreed to Madame d'Avala's +request. + +"For," said gentle Miss Nellie, drawing Madame d'Avala aside and +lowering her voice--"for we are very sorry for Freddy now. His +mother----" + +"Oh, yes, she has gone to England." + +"Why, no! She--is dead!" + +"Oh, _mio povero bambino_! And how he adores her!" + +"Yes." + +"And what will he do then?" + +"He can stay on here. But I am afraid he doesn't like us," Miss Nellie +sighed. + +"Has he no one else?" + +"No--that is, a stepfather. But his mother put him here to save him +from the stepfather's abuse, and--and all the coarsening influences of +stage life, if you understand." + +"Ah, yes, I understand," said Madame d'Avala. "And yet I think I +understand the little one, too. He and I--we have the same nature. We +cannot breathe in the too-high altitudes. For us there must be dancing +in the valley, laughter and roses, perfume and sunshine--always +sunshine." + +"Oh--er--yes," replied Miss Nellie, taken aback by this effusiveness, +which she could only explain as being foreign. + +"It's 8:30," said Miss Eva, looking at her watch. + +"Ah, then I must fly," cried Madame d'Avala. + +"Goo'-bye!" said Freddy wistfully. + +"_Au revoir_," said Madame d'Avala, and electrified the Misses Blair +by adding, "See you after the show, kid." + +"I am very lonely, too," said Margarita d'Avala after the +concert--"lonely and sad." + +"You are?" Freddy cried in amazement. Then, practically, "What about?" + +"It's about a man," confessed the lady. + +"Aw, g'wan!" exclaimed Freddy incredulously. "Say," lowering his voice +confidentially, "lemme tell you something! They ain't a man on earth +worth crying for." + +"How did you know?" asked Margarita. + +"Flo--Florette used to say so." Then a cloud passed over his face. +"She used to say so," he added. + +There was a moment's silence, while the lady watched him. Then +Freddy's mobile face cleared, his eyes shone with their old gay +confidence. + +"Say, I'm telln' you!" said Freddy, spreading his feet apart, +thrusting his hands in his pockets. "I ain't got no use for men +a-tall! An' you take my advice--don't bother over 'em!" + +Margarita laughed. She laughed so hard that Freddy had joined her, and +without knowing how, he was by her side, holding on to her hand while +they both rocked with merriment. When they could laugh no more he +snuggled up to the shoulder that smelled so nice. His face became +babyish and wistful. He stroked the satin of the lovely gown with one +timid finger, while his blue eyes implored hers. + +"Ladies an' children is nicest, ain't they?" he appealed. + +Suddenly the great Margarita d'Avala caught him in her arms and drew +him to that warm, beautiful breast where no child's head had ever +rested. + +"Oh, Freddy, Freddy!" she cried. "You are right, and I must have you!" + +"You kin, s' long's Florette's away," said Freddy. + + + +WILD EARTH + +By SOPHIE KERR + +From _Saturday Evening Post_ + + +The big department store so terrified Wesley Dean that he got no +farther than five steps beyond the entrance. Crowds of well-dressed +ladies milling round like cattle, the noise of many feminine voices, +the excessive warmth and the heady odour of powder and perfume--the +toilet goods were grouped very near the door--all combined to bewilder +and frighten him. He got out before the floorwalker of the centre +aisle could so much as ask him what he wanted. + +Once outside he stood in the spring wind and meditated. There must be +other stores in Baltimore, little ones, where a man could buy things +in quiet and decency. Until the four-o'clock motor stage started for +Frederick he had nothing to do. + +He stuck his hands in his pockets and started down the crowded +crookedness of Lexington Street. He reached the market and strolled +through it leisurely, feeling very much at home with the meats and +vegetables and the good country look of many of the stall keepers. Its +size amazed him; but then he'd always heard that Baltimore was a big +city, and so many people must take a lot to eat. He went on, all the +way through, and after a little hesitation struck down a quiet street +to the right. But he saw no shops of the sort he was looking for, and +he had thoughts of going back and braving the big store again. He +turned again and again, pleased by the orderly rows of +red-brick-with-white-trim houses, homey-looking places in spite of +their smallness and close setting. At last, right in the middle of a +row of these, he saw a large window set in place of the two usual +smaller ones, a window filled with unmistakable feminine stuff, and +the sign, small, neatly gilt lettered: Miss Tolman's Ladies' Shop. +Hemstitching Done. + +There wasn't a soul going in or out, so he braved it, and was happier +still when he found himself the sole customer. The opening of the door +made a bell tinkle in a back room. + +A girl came through parted green wool curtains, a girl so +flaxen-haired, with such blue eyes--like a friendly kitten--that +Wesley Dean almost forgot the errand that had brought him so far. + +As for the girl, she was surprised to see a man, and particularly a +young country man, among the gloves and stockings, cheap pink +underthings, and embroideries of Miss Tolman's shop. + +"You got any--any aprons?" he stammered. + +"White aprons or gingham?" The girl's smile helped Wesley a great +deal. A very nice girl, he decided; but she made him feel queer, +light-headed. + +"I'm not sure, ma'am. When I come away from home this morning I asked +Aunt Dolcey did she need anything, and she said 'yes, a couple of +aprons,' but she didn't say what kind." + +The girl thought it over. "I reckon maybe if she's your auntie she'd +want white aprons." + +Her mistake gave him a chance for the conversation which he felt a +most surprising wish to make. + +"No'm, she's not my auntie. She's the old coloured woman keeps house +for me." + +Oh, she was a very nice girl; something about the way she held her +head made Wesley think of his spunky little riding mare, Teeny. + +"H'm. Then I think you'd be safe to get a gingham; anyway, a gingham +apron comes in handy to anybody working round a kitchen. We got some +nice big ones." + +"Aunt Dolcey's not so awful big; not any bigger'n you, but heavier +set, like." + +There is a distinct advance in friendly intimacy when one has one's +size considered in relation to a customer's needs, particularly when +the consideration shows how little a man knows about women's garments. +The girl reached beneath the counter and brought up an armful of +blue-and-white-checked aprons. She unfolded them deftly, and Wesley +saw that she had small strong hands and round wrists. + +"These got bibs and nice long strings, cover you all up while you're +cooking. They're a dollar." + +His gaze, intent on her rather than the aprons, brought her eyes to +his. + +"Good-looking, but country," was her swift appraisal, adding to it, +"And what a funny mark he's got on his forehead." + +It was true. His young hawklike face, tanned brown by sun and wind, +was made strangely grim by a dark vein on his brow, which lent a +frowning shadow to his whole visage. Yet the eyes she had looked into +were shy and gentle and reassuringly full of open admiration. + +"If you think she'll like 'em I'll take two," he said after an +instant's pause. + +"I'm sure she'll like 'em. They're good gingham and real well made. We +don't keep shoddy stuff. You could go into one of the big stores and +get aprons for fifty, sixty cents, but they wouldn't be good value." + +The soft cadence of her voice gave Wesley a strange and stifled +feeling around the heart. He must--he must stay and talk to her. +Hardly knowing what he said, he burst into loquacity. + +"I did go into one of the big stores, and it sort of scared +me--everything so stuffy and heaped up, and such a lot of people. I +don't get down to Baltimore very often, you see. I do most of my +buying right in Frederick, but I'd broke my disker, and if you send, +it's maybe weeks before the implement house will 'tend to you. So I +just come down and got the piece, so there won't be but one day lost." + +The girl looked up at him again, and he could feel his heart pound +against his ribs. This time she was a little wistful. + +"They say it's real pretty country out round Frederick. I've never +been out of Baltimore, 'cept to go down the bay on +excursions--Betterton and Love Point, and places like that. It makes a +grand sail in hot weather." + +She handed him the package and picked up the two bills he had laid +down on the counter. There was plainly no reason for his further +lingering. But he had an artful idea. + +"Look here--maybe I ought to get Aunt Dolcey a white apron, too. Maybe +she won't want the gingham ones at all." + +The girl looked surprised at such extravagance. + +"But if she doesn't you can bring 'em back when you come to Baltimore +again, and we'd exchange 'em," she argued mildly. + +"No, I better get a white one now. She puts on a white apron +evenings," he added craftily. + +A box of white aprons was lifted from the shelf and a choice made, but +even that transaction could not last forever, as Wesley Dean was +desperately aware. + +"Look here, are you Miss Tolman?" he burst out. "I saw the name +outside on the window." + +"Mercy, no! Miss Tolman's a kind of cousin of mine. She's fifty-two, +and she can't hardly get through that door there." + +He disregarded the description, for the second bundle was being tied +up fast. He had never seen any one tie so fast, he thought. + +"My name's Wesley Dean, and I got a farm in the mountains back of +Frederick. Say--I don't want you to think I'm fresh, but--but--say, +would you go to the movies with me to-night?" + +It had come to him in a flash that he could disregard the seat in the +four-o'clock bus and go back to-morrow morning. Sweat stood out on his +forehead and on his curving, clean-shaven upper lip. His boy's eyes +hung on hers, pleading. All the happiness of his life, he felt, waited +for this girl's answer, this little yellow-haired girl whom he had +never seen until a quarter of an hour before. + +"We-ell," she hesitated, "I--I don't like to have you think I'd pick +up like this with any fellow that come along----" + +"I don't think so!" he broke in fiercely. "If I thought so I'd +never've asked you." + +There was a strange breathless moment in the tiny cluttered shop, a +moment such as some men and women are lucky enough to feel once in a +lifetime. It is the moment when the heart's wireless sends its clear +message, "This is my woman" and "This is my man." The flaxen-haired +girl and the dark boy were caught in the golden magic of it and, half +scared, half ecstatic, were thrown into confusion. + +"I'll go," she whispered breathlessly. "There's a little park a block +down the street. I'll be there at seven o'clock, by the statue." + +"I'll be there, waiting for you," he replied, and because he could not +bear the strange sweet pain that filled him he plunged out of the +shop, jerking the door so that the little bell squealed with surprise. +He had forgotten his packages. + +Also, as he remembered presently, he did not know her name. + +He was at the feet of the statue in the park by half-past six, and +spent a restless half hour there in the cool spring twilight. Perhaps +she would not come! Perhaps he had frightened her, even as he had +frightened himself, by this inexplicable boldness. Other girls passed +by, and some of them glanced with a coquettish challenge at the +handsome tall youth with his frowning brow. But he did not see them. +Presently--and it was just on the stroke of seven--he saw her coming, +hesitantly, and with an air of complete and proper primness. She had +on a plain little shabby suit and hat, but round her throat was a +string of beads of a blue to match her eyes, an enticing, naive +harmony. + +She carried the forgotten aprons, and handed them to him gravely. + +"You left these," she said; and then, to regularize the situation, "My +name's Anita Smithers. I ought've told you this afternoon, but--I +guess I was kind of forgetful, too." + +That made them both smile, and the smile left them less shy. He +stuffed the forgotten aprons into his overcoat pocket. + +"I was so afraid you wouldn't come. Where can we go? I don't know +anything much about the city. I'd like to take you to a nice picture +show, the best there is." + +She flushed with the glory of it. + +"There's a real nice picture house only a little ways from here. They +got a Pauline Frederick film on. I'm just crazy about Pauline +Frederick." + +By this time they were walking sedately out of the park, not daring to +look at each other. She watched him while he bought the tickets and +then a box of caramels from the candy stand inside. + +"He knows what to do," she thought proudly. "He's not a bit of a +hick." + +"D'you go to the pictures a lot?" he asked when they were seated. + +"'Most every night. I'm just crazy about 'em." + +"I expect you've got steady company, then?" The question fairly jerked +out of him. + +She shook her head. "No, I almost always go by myself. My girl friend, +she goes with me sometimes." + +He sighed with relief. "They got good picture shows in Frederick. I go +'most every Saturday night." + +"But you don't live right in Frederick, you said." + +He seized the chance to tell her about himself. + +"Oh, my, no. I live back in the mountains. Say, I just wish you could +see my place. It's up high, and you can look out, ever so +far--everything kind of drops away below, and you can see the river +and the woods, and it takes different colours, 'cording to the season +and the weather. Some days when I'm ploughing or disking and I get up +on the ridge, it's so high up and far away seems like I'm on top the +whole world. It's lonesome--it's off the pike, you see--but I like it. +Here in the city everything crowds on you so close." + +She had listened with the keenest interest. + +"That's so. It must be grand to get off by yourself and have plenty +room. I get so tired of that squinched-in, narrow, stuffy shop; and +the place where I board is worse. I don't make enough to have a room +by myself. There's two other girls in with me, and seems like we're +always under-foot to each other. And there isn't any parlour, and we +got only one bureau for the three of us, and you can guess what a mess +that is. And the closet's about as big as a pocket handkerchief." + +"Ain't you got any folks?" + +The blue eyes held a sudden mist. + +"Nobody but Miss Tolman, and she's only a distant cousin. Ma died two +years ago. She used to sew, but she wasn't strong, and we never could +get ahead." + +"My folks are all gone, too." + +How little and alone she was, but how much nearer to him her aloneness +brought her. He wanted to put his hand over hers and tell her that he +would take care of her, that she need never be alone again. But the +beginning of the film choked back the words. He poked the box of +caramels at her, and she took it, opened it with a murmured "Oh, my, +thank you!" Presently they both had sweetly bulging cheeks. Where +their elbows touched on the narrow chair arm made tingling thrills run +all over him. Once she gave him an unconscious nudge of excitement. + +Out of the corner of his eye he studied her delicate side face as she +sat, with her lips parted, intent on the film. + +"She's pretty--and she's good," thought Wesley Dean. "I expect she's +too good for me." + +But that unwontedly humble thought did not alter it a hair's breadth +that she must be his. The Deans had their way always. The veins in his +wrists and the vein in his forehead beat with his hot purpose. He +shifted so that his arm did not touch hers, for he found the nearness +of her disturbing; he could not plan or think clearly while she was so +close. And he must think clearly. + +When the last flicker of the feature was over and the comic and the +news had wrung their last laugh and gasp of interest from the crowd, +they joined the slow exit of the audience in silence. On the sidewalk, +however, she found her voice. + +"It was an awful nice picture," she said softly. "'Most the nicest I +ever saw." + +"Look here, let's go somewhere and have a hot choc'late, or some soda, +or ice cream," he broke in hurriedly. He could not let her go with so +much yet unsaid. "Or would you like an oyster stew in a reg'lar +restaurant? Yes, that'd be better. Come on; it isn't late." + +"Well, after all those caramels, I shouldn't think an oyster stew----" + +"You can have something else, then." The main thing was to get her at +a table opposite him, where they wouldn't have to hurry away. "Let's +go in there." + +He pointed toward a small restaurant across the street where red +candlelights glimmered warmly through panelled lace. + +"But that looks like such a stylish place," she protested, even as she +let him guide her toward it. + +But it was not so stylish when they got inside, and the appearance of +the stout woman, evidently both proprietor and cashier, who presided +over the scene at a table on a low platform near the door reassured +them both. And the red candleshades were only crinkled paper; the lace +curtains showed many careful darns. A rebellious boy of fourteen, in a +white jacket and apron, evidently the proprietor's son, came to take +their order. After a good bit of urging Anita said that she would take +a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee. + +Wesley ordered an oyster stew for himself, and coffee, and then +grandly added that they would both have vanilla and chocolate ice +cream. + +"He looks as if he just hated being a waiter," said Anita, indicating +the departing boy servitor. + +"Sh'd think he would," said Wesley. He put his arms on the table and +leaned toward her. "I was going home this afternoon till I saw you. I +stayed over just to see you again. I've got to go back in the morning, +for I've not got my spring work done; but--you're going with me." + +The vein on his forehead heightened his look of desperate +determination. He was not so much a suitor as a commander. + +"You haven't got any folks and neither have I, so that makes it easy. +I'll come for you in the morning, about eight o'clock, and we'll go +get a license and get married, and then we can get the ten-o'clock bus +out to Frederick. Oh, girl, I never saw any one like you! I--I'll be +good to you--I'll take care of you. It don't matter if I didn't ever +see you till this afternoon, I'd never find anybody else that I want +so much in a hundred thousand years. I've not got a lot of money, but +the farm's mine, all free and clear, and if my wheat turns out all +right I'll have a thousand dollars' cash outright come the end of the +year, even after the taxes are paid and everything. Won't you look at +me, Anita--won't you tell me something? Don't you like me?" + +The girl had listened with her eyes cast down, her hands nervously +picking at the edge of the tablecloth. But he was not mistaken in her. +She had wherewith to meet him, and her gaze was honest, without +coquetry or evasion. + +"Oh, I do like you!" she cried with quick colour. "I do! I do! I +always thought somebody like you'd come along some day, just like +this, and then--it just seemed foolish to expect it. But look here. I +told you a story, right off. My name's not Anita--it's Annie. I took +to pretending it's Anita because--it does seem sort of silly, but I +got to tell you--because I saw it in the movies, and it seemed sort of +cute and different, and Annie's such a plain, common name. But I +couldn't let you go on talking like that and calling me by it, now +could I?" + +The mutinous young waiter brought their food and thumped it +truculently down before them. + +"Look out!" said Dean with sudden violent harshness, the vein in his +forehead darkening ominously. "What do you think you're doing, feeding +cattle?" + +The boy drew back in confusion, and Annie exclaimed: "Oh, he didn't +mean it anything against us--he's just mad because he has to be a +waiter." + +"Well, he'd better be careful; kids can be too smart Aleck." + +The little gust had deflected them away from their own affairs. But +Annie brought them back. She leaned toward him. + +"You make me kind of afraid of you. If you ever spoke to me like that +it'd just about kill me." + +He was contrite. "Why, I couldn't ever speak to you like that, honey; +it just made me mad the way he banged things down in front of you. I +don't want people to treat you like that." + +"And you look so fierce, too--scowling so all the time." + +He put up a brown finger and touched his savage vein. + +"Now, now--you mustn't mind my look. All the Dean men are marked like +that; it's in the blood. It don't mean a thing." He smiled winningly. +"I reckon if you're beginning to scold me you're going to marry me, +huh?" + +Something very sweet and womanly leaped in Annie's blue eyes. + +"I--I reckon I am," she said, and then confessed herself a brave +adventurer and philosopher in one. "Yes, I'd be a fool to sit round +and make excuses and pretend it wouldn't do to be so out of the +ordinary when here you are and here I am, and it means--our whole +lives. I don't care, either, if I didn't ever set eyes on you till +to-day--I know you're all right and that what you say's true. And I +feel as if I'd known you for years and years." + +"That's the way I felt about you the minute I looked at you. Oh"--he +gave a vast and shaking sigh--"I can't hardly believe my luck. Eat up +your supper and let's get out of here. Maybe there's some stores open +yet and I could buy you a ring." + +"And I have to be in my boarding house by half-past ten," offered +Annie, "or I'll be locked out. What the girls are going to say when I +come in and tell 'em----" She looked at him with intense and piteous +question--the question that every woman at the moment of surrender +asks sometimes with her lips, but always with her heart: "It is going +to be all right, isn't it? And you'll be good to me?" + +"So help me God," said young Wesley Dean. + + * * * * * + +The farm lay high, as Wesley had said. Indeed, all the way from +Baltimore they had seemed to be going into the hills, those placidly +rounding friendly Maryland hills that rise so softly, so gradually +that the traveller is not conscious of ascent. The long straight road +dips across them gallantly, a silver band of travel to tie them to the +city, with little cities or towns pendent from it at wide intervals. +Trees edge it with a fringe of green; poor trees, maimed by the +trimmers' saws and shears into twisted caricatures of what a tree +should be, because the telegraph wires and telephone wires must pass, +and oaks and locusts, pines and maples, must be butchered of their +spreading branches to give them room. + +It was along this highway that the motor bus, filled with passengers +and baggage and driven with considerably more haste than discretion, +carried the newly married pair. Annie's eyes grew wide at the wonder +and beauty of it. She was not at all afraid. She snuggled her hand +into Wes's and loved it--and loved him, too, with his look of pride +and joy in her. She was content to be silent and let him talk. Now and +then she looked at the little turquoise ring on her finger above the +shiny new wedding ring, and loved that, too, for he had chosen it at +once from the trayful offered them, blurting out that she must have it +because it matched her eyes. + +"All this country out here's rich," he bragged, "but Fred'rick +County's far the richest land of all. Richest in the state. Maybe +richest in the whole United States, I dunno. And all the farms are +big. Great big farms--and great big teams to till 'em. People don't +use mules here s'much as they do over on the Eastern Shore. And +there's not any sand, like there is over there--in spots, that is." + +"What's that man doing?" asked Annie alertly. + +"Ploughin'. Say, didn't you ever see a man ploughin' before?" "Only in +the movies," said Annie, unabashed. "Do you ever plough?" + +He laughed outright. + +"Say, you're going to be some little farmer's wife. I can see that. +Yes'm, I plough a little now and then. It's like fancywork--awful +fascinating--and once you get started you don't want to stop till you +get a whole field done." + +"Quit kidding." + +"Say, Annie, do you know a chicken when you see it walking round? Or a +turkey? Or a guinea keet? We got 'em all. Aunt Dolcey, she takes care +of 'em." + +"I'd like to take care of 'em. I'll feed 'em, if she'll show me how." + +"Aunt Dolcey'll show you. She'll be tickled to death to have somebody +feed 'em when she's got the mis'ry." + +At Frederick they left the big motor bus and got into Wes's own +rackety flivver, the possession of which delighted Annie's heart. + +"My land, I never thought I'd get married to a man that owned an +automobile," she confessed with flattering frankness in her voice. + +"This ain't an automobile," said Wes. "It's a coffeepot, and an awful +mean one. Sometimes she won't boil, no matter what I do." + +The coffeepot on this particular day chose to boil. They rattled +merrily out of Frederick and off into the higher hills beyond. It was +a little after noon when they reached the farm. + +They had had to turn off the pike and take a winding wood road, rough +and muddy from the spring rains. All through the budding green of the +trees dogwood had hung out white bridal garlands for them, and there +were violets in all the little mossy hollows. At last they came +through to the clearing, where lay the farm, right on the ridge, its +fields smiling in the sun, a truce of Nature with man's energy and +persistence. Yet not a final truce. For all around, the woods crept up +to the open and thrust in tentative fingers--tiny pine trees, sprouts +and seedlings of hardwood, scraps of underbrush--all trying to gain a +foothold and even when cut and overturned by the sharp plough still +clinging tenaciously to their feeble rooting. + +"It looks somehow," said Annie, vaguely understanding this, "as if the +trees and things were just waiting to climb over the walls." + +"And that's what they are," said Wesley Dean. "The time I put in +grubbing! Well--let's go in and see Aunt Dolcey." + +He had told her, coming out, that he was afraid she would find the +house sort of plain, but just the space of it delighted her. The rooms +were bare and square, whitewashed exquisitely, the furniture dark old +cherry and walnut of a style three generations past. + +There were no blinds or curtains, and in the streaming sunlight Annie +could see that everything was clean and polished to the last flicker +of high light. Here and there were bits of colour--crimson and blue in +the rag carpet, golden brass candlesticks on the mantel, a red-beaded +mat on the table under the lamp, the lamp itself clear glass and +filled with red kerosene that happily repeated the tint of the mat. It +all pleased Annie, touching some hitherto untwanged chord of beauty in +her nature. And there was about it the unmistakable atmosphere of +home. + +"Old-fashioned but sort of swell, too," she decided. "Looks kind of +like some of the parlours of those old houses on Charles Street that I +used to rubber into in the evenings when the lights were lit and +they'd forgot to put the blinds down." + +She liked the impassive almost Egyptian face of Aunt Dolcey, too. The +old coloured woman had received her with a serious regard but +friendly. + +"Mist' Wes, he stahtle me mighty frequen', but he nevah stahtle me +with no marryin' befo'," she said. "Honey, it'll be mighty nice to +have a pret' young gal in de house. I'll serve you de bes' I kin, +faithful an' stiddy, like I always serve him. Ef I'd 'a' known you was +a-comin' I'd sho' had somethin' fo' dinneh to-day besides greens an' +po'k, cracklin' pone an' apple dumplin's. That's nuffin' fo' a weddin' +dinneh." + +But when they came to eat it, it was delicious--the greens delicately +seasoned, not greasy, the salt pork home-cured and sweet, the +cracklin' pone crumbling with richness, and the apple dumpling a +delight of spicy flavour. + +They sat opposite each other, in as matter-of-fact fashion as if they +had been married for years. They were young and exceedingly hungry, +and hunger destroys self-consciousness. + +The china was very old--white plates with a curving pattern of blue +leaves and yellow berries. The knives and forks were polished steel +with horn handles. The spoons were silver; old handmade rat-tail +spoons they were, with the mark of the smith's mallet still upon them +and the initials W.D. cut in uneven letters. + +"Those were my great-granddad's," said Wesley. "Same name as mine. He +had 'em made out of silver money by a man down in Frederick. They must +be nearly a hundred years old. My great-granddad, he was the man that +bought this land and began to clear it. He wanted to be away off from +everybody." + +"Why?" asked Annie, interested in the story. + +The vein on Wesley's forehead seemed to grow larger and darker as he +answered: + +"Oh, he got into trouble--knocked a man down, and the fellow struck +his head on a stone and died. It didn't come to trial--it really was +an accident--but it didn't make granddad popular. Not that he cared. +He was a hard-headed, hard-fisted old son of a gun, if there ever was +one, according to the stories they tell about him." + +"What were they fighting about?" + +"Oh, I dunno--granddad was high-tempered, and this fellow was sort of +smart Aleck; give him some lip about something and dared him to touch +him. And quick's a wink granddad punched him. At least that's the way +I always heard it. Prob'ly they'd both been taking too much hard +cider. Bring me another dumplin', Aunt Dolcey, please." + +As the old woman entered, bringing the dumpling, Annie fancied there +were both warning and sympathy in her eyes. Why, she couldn't imagine. +In a moment she forgot it, for Wesley was looking at her hard. + +"It's funny," he said, "to think I only saw you yesterday, and that we +got married this morning. Seems as if you'd been here for years and +years. Does it seem awful strange to you, honey?" + +"No," said Annie. "No, it doesn't. It is queer, but all the way here, +and when I come into the house, I had a sense of having been here +before sometime; kind of as if it was my home all along and I hadn't +known about it." + +"So it was--and if I hadn't ever met you I'd been an old bach all my +life." + +"Yes, you would." + +"Yes, I wouldn't." + +They were both laughing now. He got up and stretched himself. + +"Well, Mrs. Dean," he said, "I gotta go out and fix my disker, and you +gotta come along. I don't want to let you out of my sight. You might +fly off somewhere, and I'd never find you again." + +"Don't you worry about that. You couldn't lose me if you tried." + +They went through the kitchen, and there a tall gaunt old coloured man +rose and bowed respectfully. He and Aunt Dolcey were having their own +dinner at the kitchen table. + +"This here's Unc' Zenas," said Wesley. "He's Aunt Dolcey's husband, +and helps me on the place." + +And again Annie saw, this time in the old man's eyes, the flicker of +sympathy and apprehension that she had marked in Aunt Dolcey's. + +"And right glad to welcome y', Missy," said Unc' Zenas. "We didn' +'spect Marse Wes to bring home a wife whenas he lef', but that ain' no +sign that it ain' a mighty fine thing." + +They went out into the mellow spring day. Wesley Dean, now in his blue +overalls and working shirt, became a king in his own domain, a part of +the fair primitiveness about them. It was as if he had sprung from +this dark fertile soil, was made of its elements, at one with it. Here +he belonged, and the very spring of the earth beneath his feet was +repeated in the measured beating of his blood. The land could not warp +or break him, as it does so many, for he belonged to it as essentially +and as completely as it belonged to him. Dimly the little town girl +beside him felt this, and dimly she hoped that she, too, might prove +to be of the same mould. + +"Look at the barn, and the stables, and the corncrib," he was saying. +"See how they're all built? Hand-hewn logs chinked with plaster. +Great-granddad built them all, helped by his two slaves. That's all +the slaves he had, just two and one of 'em was Unc' Zenas's +grandfather. Everything's strong and sound as the day he finished it." + +"That one looks newer," said Annie, pointing. + +Wesley looked a little shamefaced, as does every typical Anglo-Saxon +discovered in sentiment. + +"I built that," he confessed. "It's a chicken house. Somehow I didn't +want to go down to the sawmill and get planks and build with 'em +'mongst all these old log things. So I got the logs out in the woods +and build same as great-granddad. Maybe it was foolish, but I couldn't +help it." + +"It wasn't foolish; it was nice," she affirmed. + +She perched on the tongue of a wagon while he mended the disker, +dividing her attention between him and the live things of the +barnyard. A string of decorative white ducks marched in single file +about the edge of the cow pound. Beyond them a proud red-wattled cock +paraded and purred among his harem of trim hens, now and then +disturbed in his dignity by the darting nervousness of a pair of +malicious guineas, acknowledged brigands of the feathered tribes. Trim +iridescent pigeons toddled about on their coral feet, looking for +leftovers from the chickens' table. + +"Say, Wes, I should think you'd have a dog," she said suddenly. "A +nice big dog lazying round here would sort of complete it." + +He bent suddenly over his disker and gave the nut he was working on a +mighty twist, but he had tossed aside his hat, and she could see the +sudden jump and darkening of his menacing vein. + +"I had a dog," he said in a low voice, "but he died." + +A curious restraint fell on them, and for the first time Annie felt +herself an alien, a stranger, far adrift from familiar shores. +She shivered in the light wind. + +"You cold? You better go in the house and get something round you," +Wes said to her. + +"I guess I'd better." And she left him hammering. + +In the house she found Aunt Dolcey in the big bedroom over the living +room. She had just finished remaking the bed--an old maple +four-poster, the wood a soft and mellowed orange, fine and colourful +against the white quilt, the lace-edged pillow slips. + +"I put on clean sheets," said Aunt Dolcey as Annie hesitated on the +threshold. "Yes'm, I put on everything clean, an' the bes'. I know +what's fitten. My chile, dish yer de third bridal bed I made up for +wives of de Dean men." + +Something caught in Annie's throat, terrified her. This old black +woman, with her remoteness, her pitying wise eyes, what did she mean? +Annie wanted terribly to ask her. But how begin? How get through this +wall of inscrutability which the black and yellow races have raised +for their protection? + +She fluttered nearer to the old woman. + +"Look," she began tremulously--"look--it's all right, isn't it, my +marrying him so quick? I haven't got any folks, and--and I suppose I +haven't got much sense; but there was something about him that just +made me trust him and--and want him. But it was all so quick, and--now +I'm here it seems like maybe--there was--something----Oh, you'd tell +me, wouldn't you? It is all right, isn't it?" + +The old woman considered. "It's all right ef you're all right," she +pronounced at length. + +"But--but what do you mean? And--and look here--Aunt Dolcey--tell +me--what'd he do to that dog he had?" + +"What you know 'bout any dog?" + +"I don't know--anything; but when I asked him why he didn't have a +dog--he was queer. It scared me." + +"Doan be skeered. They ain' nuffin' to be skeered of 'bout Marse Wes. +Eve'ything all right ef you got patience, an' ef you got sense, an' ef +you got haht enough. Sperrit an' sense go far, but the haht gwine +carry you froo. Now I said my say"--her tone mellowed into unctuous +kindness--"what you want, Missy? Som'n Aun' Dolcey c'n fotch you? +Temme what it is, f'r I got to be up an' erbout my wuk. I got er +weddin' cake to mek yit this ebenin'. Yes, ma'am--I gwi' mek you +weddin' cake fill de bigges' pan in de kitchen." + +She helped Annie rummage in her trunk and get out the sweater she had +come in for, and it was not until the girl was running back to the +barns that she realized Aunt Dolcey had not answered her question. But +the old woman's words had steadied her, reassured her. + +And Wes received her gayly. His repairs were done, his team in +harness, ready to start. + +"It's a shame," he said. "We ought to go off down to town and play +round and have a big time, but I'm so behind with my disking, Annie, +honey. You see I had to stay over a day in Baltimore. Fact. Important +business." He winked at her jocosely. "So I've got to work rest of the +day. That's what comes of marrying a farmer. Farm work don't even wait +on a bride, not even the prettiest bride in the world." + +He stooped to kiss her, and she held tight to his arm. + +"I don't mind. You go on about your business and I'll get all unpacked +and settled. But don't be late to supper--Aunt Dolcey's making us a +wedding cake." + +She watched him as he drove down the lane and turned into the field +and steadied the first straining rush of his team. Again she felt her +abandonment, her utter forlornity, her distance from everything she +had known and been accustomed to. But once more she proved herself an +adventurer and a philosopher. + +Shrugging her shoulders, she turned back to the house. + +"It may be a funny way to get married; but everything's all right +until it stops being all right, and--and I like it here." + + * * * * * + +She had been married a week now, and the week had been the fairest of +fair weather, indoors as well as out. Now she sat at the clumsy old +secretary desk to write a letter to Miss Tolman. + + ... For all you said, and hought I was crazy, I am just as happy as I +can be. Wes is kind and full of fun, and he works very hard. This farm +is a pretty place, and the house is ten times as big as your shop. I +am learning to cook and churn butter, and Aunt Dolcey, the old +coloured woman, teaches me and doesn't laugh when I am dumb. She says, +and Wes does, too, that I am a born farmer's wife, and I think maybe I +am, for I like it in the country more than I ever thought I'd like any +place, and I don't get a bit lonely. You ought to see our wheat--it's +like green satin, only prettier. + +I hope the rheumatism in your hands is better, and that you have got +somebody good in my place. Cousin Lorena, I am a very lucky girl to +fall in love with such a nice man, with a piece of property and a +flivver, even if it is an old one; but better than all that he has is +Wes himself, for you never saw a better, kinder man. He is not rough +and does not chew tobacco as you thought maybe he did, only smokes a +pipe once in a while. I made a sweet-potato custard yesterday, and he +said it was the best he ever tasted. He says I must not do anything +that is too hard for me, but I am going to drop seed corn. We have +been down to town once, and went to the movies and bought some candy, +and he wanted to buy me a new hat, but I wouldn't let him. He is so +kind.... + + * * * * * + +She had written in a glow of happiness, trying to tell everything and +finding it hard to get it into words that would allay Cousin Lorena's +forebodings and impress her properly. Annie frowned at the paper. How +inform a bilious, middle-aged prophet of evil that she had not only +wedded prosperity and industry but also a glorious young demigod whose +tenderness and goodness passed belief? + +Suddenly she heard a voice, loud, angry, incoherent. She dropped the +pen and ran out to the kitchen door. + +Wes stood there, confronting Uncle Zenas--a Wes she had never dreamed +could exist. The vein on his forehead was black and swollen; indeed +his whole face was distorted with rage. + +"You damned old liar--don't you tell me again you put that pitchfork +away when I found it myself in the stable behind the mare's stall. +Pretty business if she'd knocked it down and run one of the tines into +her." + +"Marse Wes, you haddat pitchfo'k dere yo'se'f dis mawnin'; I ain't +nevah touch dat pitchfo'k." Unc' Zenas's voice was low and even. + +Behind Wes's back Aunt Dolcey made signs to her husband for silence. + +"I tell you you're a liar, and by rights I ought to cut your lying +tongue out of your head! I haven't even seen that pitchfork for three +days, and when I went to look for it just now I found it in the stable +where you'd had it cleaning out the stalls. Now shut up and get out +about your work! Don't let me hear another word out of you!" + +Unc' Zenas turned away and Wes, without a word or look at the two +women, strode after him. Annie, shaken, caught Aunt Dolcey's arm. + +"Oh, Aunt Dolcey," she breathed, "what on earth was the matter?" + +Aunt Dolcey drew her into the kitchen. + +"Nuffin' but Marse Wes flyin' int' one his bad Dean temper fits, +honey," said the old woman "No use to min' him. No use payin' any +'tention. Dat why I waggle my head at Zenas to say nuffin' back. Talk +back to Marse Wes when he's high-flyin' on'y meks things worse." + +Annie beheld an abyss yawning beneath her feet. + +"Yes, but, Aunt Dolcey--what's the sense in talking that way? It +wasn't anything, just a pitchfork out of place. And he went on so. And +he looked so dreadful." + +Aunt Dolcey rattled her pans. + +"I been dreadin' dis moment, whenas you firs' see Marse Wes in his +anger. Zenas an' me, we's use to it. Marse Wes dataway; som'n go wrong +he fly off de handle. Zenas ain't mislay no pitchfo'k--I seed Marse +Wes mahse'f wid dat pitchfo'k dis mawnin'. But eve'y once in a while +he git a temper fit an' blow off he mouf like dat. Sometimes he strike +some-buddy--but he doan often strike Zenas. Sometimes he git mad at +oner de hosses an' frail it proper. Dat high temper run in de Dean +fambly, chile. Dey gits mad, an' dey flies off, an' you just got to +stan' it." + +"But does he--does he get over it quick?" + +The old negress shook her head. + +"He'll be mighty quiet come suppeh-time, not talkin' much, lookin' +dahk. Walk light, an' don't say nuffin' rile him up, eve'ything all +right. T'-morrow mawnin' come, he's outer it." Her voice rose into a +minor cadence, almost a chant. "Chile, it's a dahk shadder on all de +Deans--dey all mahked wid dat frown on deir foreheads, an' dey all got +dahk hours come to um. Marse Wes's maw she fade out an' die caze she +cain' stan' no such. His grammaw, she leave his grampaw. An' so on +back. Ontell some ooman marry a Dean who kin chase dat debbil outer +him, jes so long de Dean men lib in de shadder. I tole you, ain' I, de +day you come, sperrit an' sense carry you fur, but it's de haht gwine +carry you froo. Now you un'stan'." + +Yes, Annie understood, imperfectly. So might Red Riding Hood have +understood when the wolf suddenly appeared beside her peaceful +pathway. She asked one more question, "Does he get mad often?" and +waited, trembling, for the answer. + +Aunt Dolcey stuck out her underlip. "Sometime he do, en den again, +sometime he doan'. Mos' giner'ly he do." + +Annie walked back to her letter, and looked at its last phrase. She +picked up the pen, but did not write. + +Then with a quick intake of breath she took her first conscious step +in the path of loyal wifehood. + +She added, writing fast: "He is the best man that ever lived, I do +believe," and signed her name, folded the letter and sealed it in its +envelope as quickly as she could. + +At supper she watched Wes. He was, as Aunt Dolcey had predicted, very +silent; the vein in his forehead still twitched menacingly and the +pupils of his eyes were distended until the colour about them +disappeared in blackness. After he had eaten he went outside and +smoked, while Annie sat fiddling with a bit of sewing and dreading she +knew not what. + +But nothing happened. Presently he came in, announced that he was +tired and had a hard day before him to-morrow, and thought he'd go to +bed. + +Long after he had fallen into immobile slumber Annie lay beside him, +awake, marvelling how suddenly he had become a stranger, almost an +ogre. Yet she loved him and yearned to him. The impulse that had made +her finish the letter to Cousin Lorena in the same spirit in which she +had begun it called her to pity and help him. She must conceal his +weakness from their world. She listened to his deep, regular +breathing, she put her hand against his hard palm. + +"I'm his wife," thought Annie Dean with inarticulate tenderness. "I'm +going to try to be everything a wife ought to be." + +The next morning he was his old self again, laughing, joking, teasing +her as usual. The scene of yesterday seemed to have gone utterly from +his memory, though he must have known that she had seen and heard it. +But he made no allusion to it, nor did she. The farm work was +pressing; the warm spring days foretold an early season. + +As he went whistling out toward the barn Annie heard him salute Unc' +Zenas with familiar friendliness: + +"How's tricks this morning? Think the Jersey'll be fresh next week?" + +Aunt Dolcey heard him, too, and she and Annie exchanged long glances. +The old woman's said, "You see--what I told you was true"; and the +young woman's answered, "Yes, I see, and I understand. I'm going to +see it through." + +But something in her youth had definitely vanished, as it always does +when responsibility lays its heavy hand on us. She went about her new +life questioningly eager for understanding. There was so much for her +to see and learn--the erratic ways of setting hens, the care of +foolish little baby chicks; the spring house, cool and damp and +gray-walled, with its trickle of cold water forever eddying about the +crocks of cream-topped milk; the garden making, left to her and Aunt +Dolcey after the first spading; the various messes and mashes to be +prepared for cows with calf; the use of the stored vegetables and +fruits, and meat dried and salted in such generous quantity that she +marvelled at it. All the farm woman's primer she learned, bit by bit, +seeing how it supplemented and harmonized with that life of the fields +that so engrossed and commanded Wes. + +But through it all, beneath it all, she found herself waiting, with +dread, for another outburst. Against whom would it be this time--Unc' +Zenas again--Aunt Dolcey--one of the animals--or perhaps herself? She +wondered if she could bear it if he turned on her. + +She was working in the spring house mixing cream with curd for cottage +cheese, very busy and anxious over it, for this was her first essay +alone, when she heard Wes again in anger. She dropped her spoon, but +did not go to look, only concentrated herself to listen. + +This time he was cursing one of his horses, and she could hear the +stinging whish of a whip, a wicked and sinister emphasis to the +beast's snorting and frenzied thumping of hoofs. Her blue eyes dilated +with fear; she knew in what pain and fright the horse must be lunging +under those blows. And Wes, raucous, violent, his mouth foul with +unclean words--only this morning he had told her that when Sunday came +they'd go into the woods and find a wild clematis to plant beside the +front door. Wild clematis! She could have laughed at the irony of it. + +At last she could bear it no longer; she put her hands to her ears to +shut out the hideousness of it. After an interminable wait she took +them down. He had stopped--there was silence--but she heard footsteps +outside, and she literally cowered into the darkest corner of the +spring house. But it was only Aunt Dolcey, her lips set in a line of +endurance. + +"I was lookin' erbout foh you, honey," she said reassuringly. "I di'n' +know where you was, en den I remembah you come off down heah. Let Aunt +Dolcey finish up dat cheese." + +"What--what started him?" asked Annie piteously. + +"I doan' jes' know--sound' like one de big team di'n' go inter his +right stall, er som'n like dat. It's always som'n triflin', en no +'count. But land, he'll be ovah it come night. Doan' look so white en +skeer, chile." + +"But--but I been thinking--what if he might turn on me--what if he'd +strike me? Aunt Dolcey--did he ever strike you?" + +"Oncet." + +"Oh, Aunt Dolcey, what did you do?" + +Something flared in Aunt Dolcey's eyes that was as old as her race. +She looked past Annie as if she saw something she rather relished; +just so her ancestors must have looked when they were dancing before a +bloodstained Congo fetish. + +"You see dat big white scar on Marse Wes' lef' wris'? When he struck +me I mahk him dere wid my hot flatiron. Am' no man eveh gwine lif' his +hand to Dolcey, no matter who." + +A shrewd question came to Annie: + +"Aunt Dolcey, did he ever strike you again?" + +"No, ma'am, no 'ndeedy, he didn'. Wil' Marse Wes may be, but he ain' +no crazy man. It's dat ole debbil in his nature, Miss Annie, honey. En +ef ever once som'n tremenjus happen to Marse Wes, dat debbil'll be +cas' out. But hit's got to be stronger en mo' pow'ful dan he is. Not +'ligion, fer 'ligion goes f'm de outside in. Som'n got to come from +inside Marse Wes out befo' dat ole debbil is laid." + +This was meagre comfort, and Annie did not follow the primitive +psychology of it. She only knew that into her happiness there had come +again the darkening of a fear, fear that was to be her devil, no less +terrible because his presence was for the most part veiled. + +But again she steeled her courage. "I won't let him spoil everything; +I won't let him make me afraid of him," she vowed, seeing Wes in his +silent mood that night. "I won't be afraid of him. I wish I could cut +that old vein out of his forehead. I hate it--it's just as if it was +the thing that starts him. Never seems as if it was part of the real +Wes, my Wes." + +In the depths of the woods, on Sunday, she stood by while he dug up +the wild clematis--stood so he could not see her lips quiver--and she +put her clenched hands behind her for fear they, too, would betray +her. + +"Wes," she asked, "what made you get so mad last Thursday and beat old +Pomp so?" + +He turned toward her in genuine surprise. + +"I wasn't mad; not much, that is. And all I laid on Pomp's tough old +hide couldn't hurt him. He's as mean as a mule, that old scoundrel. +Gets me riled every once in a while." + +"I wish you wouldn't ever do it again. It scared me almost to death." + +"Scared you!" he laughed. "Oh, Annie, you little silly--you aren't +scared of me. Now don't let on you are. What you doing--trying to kid +me? There, ain't that a splendid plant? I believe I'll take back a +couple shovelfuls this rich wood earth to put in under it. It'll never +know it's not at home." + +"Yes, but, Wes--I wish you'd promise me something." + +"Promise you anything." + +"Then--promise me not to get mad and beat the horses any more or +holler at Unc' Zenas. I don't like it." + +"Annie, you little simp--what's the matter with you? A fellow's got to +let off steam once in a while, and if you'd been pestered like I have +with Unc' Zenas's ornery trifling spells and old Pomp's general +cussedness, you'd wonder that I don't get mad and stay mad every +minute. Don't let's talk any more about it. Say, look there--there's a +scarlet tanager! Ain't it pretty? Shyest bird there is, but up here in +the woods there's a couple pairs 'most every year. Pull that old +newspaper up round the earth a little, so's I can get a better holt of +it. That's the girl. Gee, I never knew what fun it'd be to have a wife +who'd be so darn chummy as you are. How d'you like your husband, Mrs. +Dean? Ain't it about time you said something nice to the poor feller +instead of scolding his lights and liver out of place on a nice +peaceful Sabbath day? You ought to be ashamed of yourself." + +She pushed back the fear devil and answered his smile. + +'No, sir, I'm not going to say anything nice to my husband. I'll tell +you a secret about him--he's awful stuck on himself now." + +"Why shouldn't he be? Look who he picked out to marry." + +Who could stand against such beguiling? Annie looked up at him and saw +his Dean mark give a little mocking twitch as if it rejoiced in her +thwarting. + +But she said no more; and they planted the wild clematis with its +black woods earth beneath at the side of the front door, and Annie +twisted its pliable green stems round one of the posts of the little +benched entrance. + +Her hands moved deftly, and Wes, who had finished firming the earth +about the plant, watched them. + +"Your little paws are gettin' awful brown," he said. "I remember that +first day, in the shop, how white they were--and how quick they moved. +You wrapped up them aprons like somethin' was after you, and I was +trying to get my nerve up to speak to you." + +"Tryin' to get up your nerve! I reckon it wasn't much effort. There, +don't that vine look's if it grew there of itself?" + +"Yeh--it looks fine." He sat down on the bench and pulled her down +beside him, his arm about her. "Annie, baby, are y' happy?" + +She put her cheek against his shoulder and shut her eyes. + +"I'm so happy I wouldn't darst be any happier." + +"You're not sorry you picked up with me so quick? You don't wish't +you'd stayed down in Balt'mer and got you a city beau?" + +"I'd rather be with you--here--than any place in the world. And, +Wes--I think you're the best and kindest man that ever lived. I +wouldn't have you changed, any way, one little bit." + +She defied her fears and that mocking, twitching vein with the words. + +"Same here. Made to order for me, you were. First minute I looked in +those round blue eyes of yours I knew it." + +"It isn't possible," she thought. "It isn't possible that he can get +so mad and be so dreadful. Maybe if I can make him think he's awful +good and kind"--oh, simple subtlety--"believe he is, too, and he'll +stop getting such spells. Oh, if he would always be just like this!" + +But it was only two days later when she called him to help her; there +was a hen that was possessed to brood, and Aunt Dolcey had declared +that it was too late, that summer chickens never thrived. + +"I can't get her out, Wes," said Annie. "She's 'way in under the +stable, and she pecks at me so mean. You got longer arms'n me--you +reach in and grab her." + +He came, smiling. He reached in and grabbed, and the incensed biddy +pecked viciously. + +In a flash his anger was on him. He snatched again, and this time +brought out the creature and dropped her with wrung neck, a mass of +quivering feathers and horribly jerking feet, before Annie. + +"I reckon that'll learn the old crow!" he snarled, and strode away. + +"We might's well have soup for supper," remarked Aunt Dolcey, coming +on the scene a moment later. "Dere, chile, what's a chicken, anyway?" + +"It's not that," said Annie briefly; "but he makes me afraid of him. +If I get too afraid of him I'll stop caring anything about him. I +don't want to do that." + +"Den," answered Aunt Dolcey with equal brevity, "you got think up some +manner er means to dribe his debbil out. Like I done tol' you." + +"Yes, but----" + +Aunt Dolcey paused, holding the carcass of the chicken in her hands, +and faced her. + +"Dishyer ain' nuthin'. Wait tell he gits one his still spells, whenas +he doan' speak ter nobody an' doan' do no work. Why ain' we got no +seed potaters? Marse Wes he took a contrairy spell an' he wouldn't dig +'em, an' he wouldn't let Zenas tech 'em needer. Me, I went out +moonlight nights an' dug some to eat an' hid 'em in de cellar. Miss +Annie, you doan' know nuffin' erbout de Dean temper yit." + +They went silently to the house. Aunt Dolcey stopped in the kitchen +and Annie went on into the living room. There on the walls hung the +pictures of Wes's father and mother, cabinet photographs framed square +in light wood. Annie looked at those pictured faces in accusing +inquiry. Why had they bequeathed Wes such a legacy? In his father's +face, despite the beard that was the fashion of those days, there was +the same unmistakable pride and passion of Wes to-day. And his mother +was a meek woman who could not live and endure the Dean temper. Well, +Annie was not going to be meek. She thought with satisfaction of Aunt +Dolcey and the hot flatiron. The fact that he had never lifted finger +to Aunt Dolcey again proved that if one person could thus conquer him, +so might another. Was she, his wife, to be less resourceful, less +self-respecting than that old Negro woman? Was she to endure what Aunt +Dolcey would not? + +Suddenly she snatched out the little old family album from its place +in the top of the desk secretary, an old-fashioned affair bound in +shabby brown leather with two gilt clasps. Here were more pictures of +the Dean line--his grandfather, more bearded than his father, his Dean +vein even more prominent; his grandmother, another meek woman. + +"Probably the old wretch beat her," thought Annie angrily. + +Another page and here was great-grandfather himself, in middle age, +his picture--a faded daguerreotype--showing him in his Sunday best, +but plainly in no Sunday mood. "Looks like a pirate," was Annie's +comment. There was no picture of great-grandmother. "Probably he +killed her off too young, before she had time to get her picture +taken." And Annie's eyes darted blue fire at the supposed culprit. She +shook her brown little fist at him. "You started all this," she said +aloud. "You began it. If you'd had a wife who'd've stood up to you +you'd never got drunk and killed a man, and you wouldn't have left +your family a nasty old mad vein in the middle of their foreheads, +looking perfectly unChristian. I just wish I had you here, you old +scoundrel! I'll bet I'd tell you something that'd make your ears +smart." + +She banged to the album and put it in its place. + +"Well, not me!" said Annie. "Not me! I'm not going to be bullied and +scared to death by any man with a bad temper, and the very next time +Mister Wes flies off the handle and raises Cain I'm going to raise +Cain, two to his one. I won't be scared! I won't be a little gump and +take such actions off any man. We'll see!" + +It is easy enough to be bold and resolute and threaten a picture. It +is easy enough to plot action either before or after the need for it +arises. But when it comes to raising Cain two to your husband's one, +and that husband has been a long and successful cultivator of that +particular crop--why, that is quite a different thing. + +Besides, as it happened, Annie did not wholly lack sympathy for his +next outburst, which was directed toward a tramp, a bold dirty +creature who appeared one morning at the kitchen door and asked for +food. + +"You two Janes all by your lonesome here?" he asked, stepping in. + +Wes had come into the house for another shirt--he had split the one he +was wearing in a mighty bout with the grubbing hoe--and he entered the +kitchen from the inner door just in time to catch the words. + +He leaped and struck in one movement, and it carried the tramp and +himself outside on the grass of the drying yard. The tramp was a burly +man, and after the surprise of the attack he attempted to fight. He +might as well have battled with a locomotive going full speed. + +"What you doin' way up here, you lousy loafer?" demanded Wes between +blows. "Get to hell out of here before I kill you, like you deserve, +comin' into my house and scarin' women. I've a great mind to get my +gun and blow you full of holes." + +In two minutes the tramp was running full speed toward the road, +followed by Wes, who assisted his flight with kicks whenever he could +reach him. After twenty minutes or so the victor came back. His eyes +were red with rage that possessed him. He did not stop to speak, but +hurried out his rackety little car and was gone. Later they found out +he had overtaken the tramp, fought him again, knocked him out, and +then, roping him, had taken him to the nearest constable and seen him +committed to jail. + +But the encounter left him strange and silent for a week, and his Dean +mark twitched and leaped in triumph. During that time the only notice +he took of Annie was to teach her to use his rifle. + +"Another tramp comes round, shoot him," he commanded. + +"En in de meantime," counselled Aunt Dolcey, "it'll come in mighty +handy fer you to kill off some deseyer chicken hawks what makin' so +free wid our nex' crap br'ilers." + +But beyond the learning how to use the gun Annie had learned something +more: she added it to her knowledge that Aunt Dolcey had once outfaced +that tyrant. It was this--that Wes's rage was the same, whether the +cause of it was real or imaginary. + + * * * * * + +The advancing summer, with its sultriness, its sudden evening storms +shot through with flaming lightning and reverberant with the drums of +thunder, brought to Annie a cessation of her purpose. She was languid, +subject to whimsical desires and appetites, at times a prey to sudden +nervous tears. The household work slipped back into Aunt Dolcey's +faithful hands, save now and then when Annie felt more buoyant and +instinct with life and energy than she had ever felt before. Then she +would weed her garden or churn and print a dozen rolls of butter with +a keen and vivid delight in her activity. + +In the evening she and Wes walked down the long lane and looked at the +wheat, wide level green plains already turning yellow; or at the corn, +regiments of tall soldiers, each shako tipped with a feathery tassel. +Beyond lay the woods--dark, mysterious. Little dim plants of the soil +bloomed and shed faint scent along the pathway in the dewy twilight. +Sometimes they sat under the wild clematis, flowering now, and that, +too, was perfumed, a wild and tangy scent that did not cloy. They did +not talk very much, but he was tender with her, and his fits of anger +seemed forgotten. + +When they did talk it was usually about the crops--the wheat. It was +wonderful heavy wheat. It was the best wheat in all the neighbourhood. +Occasionally they took out the little coffeepot and drove through the +country and looked at other wheat, but there was none so fine as +theirs. + +And with the money it would bring--the golden wheat turned into +gold--they would---- And now came endless dreams. + +"I thought we'd sell the old coffeepot to the junkman and get a +brand-new car, a good one, but now----" This was Wes. + +"I think we ought to save, too. A boy'll need so many things." + +"Girls don't need anything much, I suppose--oh, no!" He touched her +cheek with gentle fingers. + +"It's not going to be a girl." + +"How d'you know?" + +"I know." + +So went their talk, over and over, an endless garland of happy +conjectures, plans, air castles. Cousin Lorena sent little patterns +and thin scraps of material, tiny laces, blue ribbons. + +"I told her blue--blue's for boys," said Annie. And Wes laughed at +her. It was all a blessed interlude of peace and expectancy. + +The wheat was ready for harvest. From her place under the clematis +vine, where she sat with her sewing, Annie could see the fields of +pale gold, ready for the reaper. Wes had taken the coffeepot and gone +down to the valley to see when the threshers would be able to come. In +the morning he would begin to cut. Annie cocked a questioning eye at +the sky, for she had already learned to watch the farmer's greatest +ally and enemy--weather. + +"If this good spell of weather only holds until he gets it all cut!" +She remembered stories he had told her of sudden storms that flattened +the ripe grain to the ground, beyond saving; of long-continued rains +that mildewed it as it stood in the shocks. But if the good weather +held! And there was not a cloud in the sky, nor any of those faint +signs by which changing winds or clouds are forecast. + +She heard the rattle and clack of the returning coffeepot, boiling up +the hill at an unwonted speed. And she waved her hand to Wes as he +came past; but he was bent over the wheel and did not even look round +for her, only banged the little car round to the back furiously. +Something in his attitude warned her, and she felt the old +almost-forgotten devil of her fear leap to clutch her heart. + +Presently he came round the house, and she hardly dared to look at +him; she could not ask. But there was no need. He flung his hat on the +ground before her with a gesture of frantic violence. When he spoke +the words came in a ferment of fury: + +"That skunk of a Harrison says he won't bring the thresher up here +this year; claims the road's too rough and bridges are too weak for +the engine." + +"Oh, Wes--what'll you do?" + +"Do! I'm not going to do anything! I'm not going to haul my wheat down +to him--I'll see him in hell and back again before I will." + +"But our wheat!" + +"The wheat can rot in the fields! I won't be bossed and blackguarded +by any dirty little runt that thinks because he owns the only +threshing outfit in the neighbourhood that he can run my affairs." + +He raged up and down, adding invective, vituperation. + +"But you can't, Wes--you can't let the wheat go to waste." For Annie +had absorbed the sound creed of the country, that to waste foodstuff +is a crime as heinous as murder. + +"Can't I? Well, we'll see about that!" + +She recognized from his tone that she had been wrong to protest; she +had confirmed him in his purpose. She picked up her sewing and tried +with unsteady fingers to go on with it, but she could not see the +stitches for her tears. He couldn't mean it--and yet, what if he +should? She looked up and out toward those still fields of precious +ore, dimming under the purple shadows of twilight, and saw them a +black tangle of wanton desolation. The story Aunt Dolcey had told her +about the potatoes of last year was ominous in her mind. + +He was sitting opposite her now, his head in his hands, brooding, +sullen, the implacable vein in his forehead swollen with triumph, +something brutish and hard dimming his clean and gallant youth. + +"That's the way he's going to look as he gets older," thought Annie +with a touch of prescience. "He's going to change into somebody +else--little by little. This is the worst spell he's ever had. And all +this mean blood's going to live again in my child. It goes on and on +and on." + +She leaned against the porch seat and struggled against the sickness +of it. + +"I might stand it for myself," she thought. "I might stand it for +myself; but I'm not going to stand it for my baby. I'll do +something--I'll take him away." + +Her thoughts ran on hysterically, round and round in a coil that had +no end and no beginning. + +The silent fit was on Wes now. Presently, she knew, he would get up +and stalk away to bed without a word. And in the morning---- + +It was as she expected. Without a word to her he got up and went +inside, and she heard him going up the stairs. She sat then a little +longer, for the night was still and warm and beautiful, the stars very +near, and the soft hush-h of the country solitude comforting to her +distress. + +Then she heard Unc' Zenas and Dolcey talking at the kitchen door, +their voices a faint cadenced murmur; and this reminded her that she +was not quite alone. She slipped round to them. + +"Unc' Zenas, Wes says he's not going to cut the wheat; he'll let it +rot in the fields. Seems Harrison won't send his thresher up this far; +wants us to haul to him instead." + +"Marse Wes say he ain' gwine cut dat good wheat? Oh, no Miss Annie, he +cain' mean dat, sholy, sholy!" + +"He said it. He's got an awful spell this time. Unc' +Zenas--look--couldn't you ride the reaper if he wouldn't? Couldn't +you? Once the wheat gets cut there's some chance." + +"Befo' my God, Miss Annie, wid deseyer wuffless ole han's I cain' +ha'dly hol' one hawss, let alone three. Oh, if I had back my stren'th +lak I useter!" + +The three fell into hopeless silence. + +"Are the bridges so bad? Is it too hard to get the thresher up here?" +asked Annie at last. "Or was that just Harrison's excuse?" + +"No, ma'am; he's got de rights. Dem ole bridges might go down mos' any +time. An' dishyer road up yere, it mighty hard to navigate foh er +grea' big hebby contraption lak er threshin' machine en er engine. +Mos' eve'y year he gits stuck. Las' year tuk er day en er ha'f to git +him out. No'm; he's got de rights." + +"Yes, but, Unc' Zenas, that wheat mustn't be left go to waste." + +Aunt Dolcey spoke up. "Miss Annie, honey, go git your res'--mawnin' +brings light. Maybe Marse Wes'll come to his solid senses een de +mawnin'. You cain' do nuffin' ternight noway." + +"No, that's so." She sighed hopelessly. "Unc' Zenas, maybe we could +hire somebody else to cut the wheat if he won't." + +"Miss Annie, honey, eve'ybody busy wid his own wheat--an', moreover, +Marse Wes ain' gwi' let any stranger come on dis place an' cut his +wheat--you know he ain'." + +There seemed nothing more to say. In the darkness tears were slowly +trickling down Annie's cheeks, and she could not stop them. + +"Well--good-night." + +"Good-night, my lamb, good-night. I gwi' name you en your tribulations +in my prayers dis night." + +She had never felt so abandoned, so alone. She could not even make the +effort to force herself to believe that Wes would not commit this +crime against all Nature; instead, she had a vivid and complete +certainty that he would. She went over it and over it, lying in +stubborn troubled wakefulness. She put it in clear if simple terms. If +Wes persisted in his petty childish anger and wasted this wheat, it +meant that they could not save the money that they had intended for +the child that was coming. They would have, in fact, hardly more than +their bare living left them. The ridiculous futility of it swept her +from one mood to another, from courage to utter hopelessness. She +remembered the first time that she had seen Wes angry, and how she had +lain awake then and wondered, and dreaded. She remembered how, later, +she had planned to manage him, to control him. And she had done +nothing. Now it had come to this, that her child would be born in +needless impoverishment; and, worse, born with the Dean curse full +upon him. She clenched and unclenched her hands. The poverty she might +bear, but the other was beyond her power to endure. Sleep came to her +at last as a blessed anodyne. + +In the first moment of the sunlit morning she forgot her trouble, but +instantly she remembered, and she dressed in an agony of apprehension +and wonder. Wes was gone, as was usual, for he got up before she did, +to feed his cattle. She hurried into her clothes and came down, to +find him stamping in to breakfast, and with the first glance at him +her hope fell like a plummet. + +He did mean it--he did! He did not mean to cut that wheat. She watched +him as he ate, and that fine-spun desperation that comes when courage +alone is not enough, that purpose that does the impossible, took hold +of her. + +When he had finished his silent meal he went leisurely out to the +little front porch and sat down. She followed him. "Wes Dean, you +going to cut that wheat?" she demanded; and she did not know the sound +of her own voice, so high and shrill it was. + +The vein in his forehead leered at her. What was she to pit her +strength against a mood like this? He did not answer, did not even +look at her. + +"Do you mean to say you'd be so wicked--such a fool?" she went on. + +Now he looked up at her with furious, threatening eyes. + +"Shut your mouth and go in!" he said. + +She did not move. "If you ain't going to cut it--then I am!" + +She turned and started through the house, and he leaped up and +followed her. In the kitchen he overtook her. + +"You stay where you are! You don't go out of this house this day!" He +laid a rough, restraining hand on her shoulder. + +At that touch--the first harshness she had ever felt from +him--something hot and flaming leaped through her. She whirled away +from him and caught up Aunt Dolcey's big sharp butcher knife lying on +the table; lifted it. + +"You put your hands on me like that again and I'll kill you!" Her +voice was not high and shrill now; she did not even raise it. "You and +your getting mad! You and your rotten, filthy temper! You'd waste that +wheat because you haven't got enough sense to see what a big fool you +are." + +She dropped the knife and walked past him, out of the kitchen, to the +barn. + +"Unc' Zenas," she called, "you hitch up the horses to the reaper. I'm +going to cut that near field to-day myself." + +"But, Miss Annie----" began the old man. + +"You hitch up that team," she said. "If there ain't any men round this +place, I don't know's it makes so much difference." + +She waited while the three big horses were brought out and hitched to +the reaper, and then she mounted grimly to the seat. She did not even +look around to see if Wes might be watching. She did not answer when +Unc' Zenas offered a word of direction. + +"Let dat nigh horse swing round de cornahs by hisse'f, Miss Annie. He +knows. An' look--here's how you drop de knife. I'll let down de bars +an' foller you." + +Behind her back he made frantic gestures to Dolcey to come to him, +and she ran, shuffling, shaken. Together they followed the little +figure in the blue calico dress, perched high on the rattling, +clacking reaper. Her hair shone in the sun like the wheat. + +The near horse knew the game, knew how to lead the others. That was +Annie's salvation. As she swung into the field she had a struggle with +the knife, but it dropped into place, and the first of the golden +harvest fell before it squarely, cleanly; the stubble was even behind +it. She watched the broad backs of her team, a woman in a dream. She +did not know how she drove them; the lines were heavy in her hands, +dragged at her arms. It was hot, and sweat rolled down her forehead. +She wished vaguely that she had remembered to put on her sunbonnet. + +Behind her came Unc' Zenas and Aunt Dolcey, setting the sheaves into +compact, well-capped stocks, little rough golden castles to dot this +field of amazing conflict. + +And now the reaper had come to the corner. Unc' Zenas straightened +himself and watched anxiously. But his faith in the near horse was +justified--the team turned smoothly, Annie lifted the blade and +dropped it, and they started again, only half visible now across the +tall grain. + +Annie's wrists and back ached unbearably, the sweat got in her eyes, +but she drove on. She thought a little of Wes, and how he had looked +when she picked up that butcher knife. She thought of his heavy hand +on her shoulder, and her flesh burned where he had grasped it. + +"I'm going to cut this wheat if it kills me." she said over and over +to herself in a queer refrain. "I'm going to cut this wheat if it +kills me!" She thought probably it would. But she drove on. + +She made her second corner successfully, and now the sun was at her +back, and that gave her a little ease. This wheat was going to be cut, +and hauled to the thresher, and sold in the market, if she did every +bit of the work herself. She would show Wes Dean! Let him try to stop +her--if he dared! + +And there would be money enough for everything the baby might want or +might need. Her child should not be born to poverty and skimping. If +only the sun didn't beat so hard on the back of her neck! If only her +arms didn't ache so! + +After countless hours of time she overtook Dolcey and Zenas, and the +old woman divined her chief discomfort. She snatched the sunbonnet off +her own head and handed it up to her. + +"Marster in hebben, ef I only had my stren'th!" muttered Zenas as she +went on. + +"Angels b'arin' dat chile up wid deir wings," chanted Aunt Dolcey. +Then, descending to more mundane matters, she added a delighted +chuckle: "I knowed she'd rise en shine one dese days. Holler at Marse +Wes she did, name him names, plenty. Yessuh--laid him out!" + +"What you s'pose he up to now?" asked Zenas, looking over his +shoulder. + +"I dunno--but I bet you he plumb da'nted. Zenas, lak I tol' you--man +may hab plenty debbilment, rip en t'ar, but he'll stan' back whenas a +ooman meks up her min' she stood enough." And Aunt Dolcey had never +heard of Rudyard Kipling's famous line. + +"Dat chile might kill he'se'f." + +"When yo' mad yo' kin 'complish de onpossible, en it doan' hurt yo'," +replied Dolcey, thus going Kipling one better. + +But she watched Annie anxiously. + +The girl held out, though the jolting and shaking racked her +excruciatingly and the pull of the reins seemed to drag the very flesh +from her bones. Now and then the golden field swam dark before her +eyes, the backs of the horses swelled to giant size and blotted out +the sun. But she kept on long after her physical strength was gone; +her endurance held her. Slowly, carefully, the machine went round and +round the field, and the two bent old figures followed. + +And so they came to mid-morning. They had long since ceased to look or +care for any sign of the young master of the land. None of them +noticed him, coming slowly, slowly from the stables, coming slowly, +slowly to the field's edge and standing there, watching with +unbelieving, sullen eyes the progress of the reaper, the wavering arms +that guided the horses, the little shaken blue figure that sat high in +the driver's seat. But he was there. + +It is said of criminals that a confession can often be extracted by +the endless repetition of one question alone; they cannot bear the +pressure of its monotony. Perhaps it was the monotony of the measured +rattle and clack of the machine going on so steadily that finally +impelled Wes Dean, after his long frowning survey of the scene, to +vault the low stone wall and approach it. + +Annie did not check the horses when she saw him; she did not even look +at him. But he looked at her, and in her white face, with the dreary +circles of utter fatigue shadowing her eyes, his defeat was completed. +He put his hand on the bit of the nearest horse and stopped the team. + +Then she looked at him, as one looks at a loathsome stranger. + +"What you want?" she asked coldly. + +He swallowed hard. "Annie--I'll--I'll cut the wheat, le'me lift you +down off there." He held out his arms. + +She did not budge. "You going to cut it all--and haul it down to the +thresher?" + +"Yes--yes, I will. Gee, you look near dead--get down, honey. You go in +the house and lay down--I'm afraid you'll kill yourself. I'm afraid +you'll hurt--him some way." + +Still she did not move. "I'd ruther be dead than live with a man that +acts like you do," she said. "Grown up, and can't handle his temper." + +Something in her quiet, cold scorn struck through to him and cut away +forever his childish satisfaction with himself. A new manhood came +into his face; his twitching, sinister vein was still. Surrender +choked him, but he managed to get it out: + +"I know I acted like a fool. But I can't let you do this. I'll--I'll +try to----" + +The words died on his lips and he leaped forward in time to catch her +as she swayed and fell, fainting. + +An hour later Annie lay on the lounge in the sitting room, still +aching with terrible weariness, but divinely content. Far away she +could hear the steady susurrus of the reaper, driven against the +golden wheat, and the sound was a promise and a song to her ears. She +looked up now and then at the pictured face of Wes's father, frowning +and passionate, and the faint smile of a conqueror curved her tired +mouth. For she had found and proved the strongest thing in the world, +and she would never again know fear. + + + +THE TRIBUTE + +By HARRY ANABLE KNIFFIN + +From _Brief Stories_ + + +The Little Chap reached up a chubby hand to the doorknob. A few +persistent tugs and twists and it turned in his grasp. Slowly pushing +the door open, he stood hesitating on the threshold of the studio. + +The Big Chap looked up from his easel by the window. His gray eyes +kindled into a kindly smile, its welcoming effect offset by an +admonitory headshake. "Not now, Son," he said. "I'm busy." + +"Can't I stay a little while, Daddy?" The sturdy little legs carried +their owner across the floor as he spoke. "I'll be quiet, like--like I +was asleep." + +The Big Chap hesitated, looking first at his canvas and then at the +small replica of himself standing before him. + +"I got on my new pants," the youngster was saying, conversationally +easing the embarrassment of a possible capitulation. "Mummy says I +ought to be proud of them, and because I'm five years old." + +The artist looked gravely down at him. "Proud, Son?" he asked, in the +peculiar way he had of reasoning with the Little Chap. "Have you +reached the age of five because of anything you have done? Or did you +acquire the trousers with money you earned?" + +The Little Chap looked up at him questioningly. He had inherited his +father's wide gray eyes, and at present their expression was troubled. +Then, evidently seeking a more easily comprehended topic, his eyes +left his father's and sought the canvas on which was depicted a court +scene of mediaeval times. "Who is that, Daddy?" His small index finger +pointed to the most prominent figure in the painting. + +His father continued to regard him thoughtfully. "One of England's +proud kings, Son." + +"And what did _he_ do to be proud of?" came quickly from the youthful +inquisitioner. + +A hearty laugh escaped the artist. "Bully for you, Son! That's a +poser! Aside from taxing the poor and having enemies beheaded, I'm +puzzled to know what he really did do to earn his high position." + +The Little Chap squirmed himself between his father's knees and +started to scale the heights to his lap, where he finally settled down +with a sigh of comfort. "Tell me a story about him," he said eagerly. +"A story with castles, 'n' wars, 'n' everything." + +The artist's gaze rested on the kingly figure in the picture, then +wandered away to the window through which he seemed to lose himself in +scenes of a far-distant time. + +"I'll tell you a story, Son," he began, slowly and ruminatingly, "of +how Loyalty and Service stormed the Stronghold of Honour and +Splendour. This proud king you see in the picture lived part of the +time in the great castle of Windsor, and the balance of the year in +Saint James's Palace in London." + +"It must have cost him a lot for rent," wisely interpolated the Little +Chap. + +"No, the people paid the rent, Son. Some of them were glad to do it, +for they looked upon their king as a superior being. Among this class +of loyal subjects was an old hatter, very poor and humble." + +"What was his name?" asked the Little Chap, apparently greatly +interested. + +"He had no name. People in those olden days were known by their trade +or calling. So he was simply called 'the hatter'." + +"And did he make nice hats?" + +"I've no doubt he did, Son. But you mustn't interrupt. Well, the +hatter paid his tithes, or taxes, after which, I dare say, he had +little enough left to live on. But he appeared not to mind. And +whenever the King and Queen rode through the streets in their gilded +coach of state, his cracked old voice would cheer lustily, and his +hoary head would be bared in deepest reverence." + +"Didn't he ever catch cold?" + +"Hush, Son, I'm telling a story! As the hatter grew older he lost his +wits and became quite crazy on the subject of his king. He yearned to +do something to prove his loyalty. And whenever England engaged in a +war, and a proclamation was issued calling for men to fight for King +and country, he would be one of the first to volunteer. But they never +accepted him, of course, because he was so old. + +"With the passing of the years the Queen died, and the King decided to +marry again. Great preparations for the ceremony were begun at +Westminster Abbey, where the wedding was to take place. The old hatter +became greatly excited when he heard the news. His addled wits +presently hit upon a wonderful scheme by which he could both honour +and serve his sovereign: _He would make the King a hat to wear at his +wedding_!" + +"I guess he must 've been a good hatter, after all," the Little Chap +murmured, in a tone of conviction. + +"Perhaps, in his time," his father conceded. "But you must remember he +now was old and foolish. His materials were merely such odds and ends +as he could gather together, and the result was very +disreputable-looking. But in his rheumy old eyes it was the most +wonderful hat ever designed for a monarch. He carefully wrapped it in +a soiled old cloth and started out to present it to the King. At the +palace gates the guards refused him admittance, and cruelly laughed in +his face. He tried every means he could think of to have the hat reach +its destination. Once he stopped the Court Chamberlain on the street, +only to be rebuked for his pains. Another time he waylaid a peer, as +he left the House of Lords, and was threatened with arrest. Foiled in +all his attempts, the cracked-brained old fellow impatiently awaited +the wedding ceremony. At last the great day arrived. All the bells of +old London were ringing blithely as the gilded coach, drawn by ten +white horses, deposited the King at Westminster Abbey. In the +forefront of the vast throng surrounding the entrance stood the +hatter." + +"And did he have the hat with him?" asked the Little Chap. + +"Yes, Son, he had it with him. And when the King entered the portals +of the ancient Abbey, the hatter somehow broke through the line of +guards and ran after him crying 'Your Majesty! Your Majesty! Deign to +accept this token of a loyal subject's regard!' + +"The King turned in surprise And when he saw the ragged old fellow +tending him the ridiculous-looking hat, he flew into a great rage and +cried angrily: 'How comes this varlet here, interrupting his +Sovereign's nuptials and desecrating our Tomb of Kings? Away with him +to prison, and let him repent his insolence as he rots in a dungeon!'" + +"Why did he do that, Daddy?" + +"The Sovereign, Son, was a very proud king, while the hatter was both +poor and humble. And at his words the guards hurried forward and +hustled the old man out of the Abbey, where his presence was an insult +to the Great. In the struggle the hat rolled into the gutter, and one +of the King's white horses put his hoof through it. The hatter cried +like a child when he saw the work of his loving hands thus ruined. But +they carried him off to prison and kept him shut up there until he +died and paid the penalty for his crime of desecrating the Abbey." + +"Oh, the poor old hatter! But is that the end of the story, Daddy?" +The Little Chap's disappointment was markedly pronounced. + +"No, Son, there is a little more to come. I meant to tell you that the +hatter had reared a large family of boys. His sons all married and, in +turn, raised large families. These numerous relatives or kin took the +name of Hatterskin. In course of time that became shortened to +Hatkins, and so remained until the British habit of dropping their H's +reduced it to Atkins. + +"At last the proud King died and was buried with great ceremony in the +Abbey. Year followed year, and century succeeded century. England, +although blessed with a Royal pair both humane and good, was ruled by +an even wiser monarch--the Sovereign People. + +"Then came an August day when the black thunder-cloud of war darkened +her smiling horizon. Four bloody, terrible years the conflict lasted. +And when at last an armistice was signed, the stricken people went +wild with joy." + +The Big Chap's gaze returned to the canvas with its scene of mediaeval +splendour. A mystic light smouldered in his eyes as, unconscious of +his surroundings and his youthful auditor, he continued: "On the +second anniversary of that happy day an unprecedented thing happened. +Before the ancient Abbey a gun carriage, bearing the flag-draped +casket of an unidentified warrior, came to rest on the very spot where +the gilded coach of the proud King once had stopped. Again the square +was crowded, as on that day in the long ago when the poor hatter +foolishly tried to honour his sovereign. The traditions of centuries +toppled when the body of the unknown soldier passed through those +storied portals followed by the King of England as chief mourner. In +the dim, historic chapel the king stood, in advance of princes, prime +ministers, and the famous leaders of both army and navy. Like the +humble hatter of old his royal head was reverently bared as the +nameless hero was laid among the silent company of England's +illustrious dead. 'The Boast of Heraldry and the Pomp of Power' bowed +in silent homage before the remains of a once common soldier. Thus +Loyalty and Service eventually stormed the Stronghold of Honour and +Splendour!" + +For a moment there was an impressive, brooding silence, broken +presently by the Little Chap. "And what was the soldier's name, +Daddy?" + +Recalled from his revery, the father answered: + +"_He was known, Son, as Tommy Atkins_." + +The Little Chap's brow was puckered in thought. At last he laughed +delightedly and clapped his hands. "Was the soldier, Daddy, one of the +hatter's family--the poor old hatter who was thrown out of the Abbey?" + +The Big Chap lifted the child from his lap and placed him on his feet. +Then he picked up a brush and turned to his painting. + +"I like to think so, Son. But only God knows." + + + +THE GETAWAY + +By O.F. LEWIS + +From _Red Book_ + + +Old Man Anderson, the lifer, and Detroit Jim, the best second-story +man east of the Mississippi, lay panting side by side in the +pitch-dark dugout, six feet beneath the surface of the prison yard. +They knew their exact position to be twenty feet south of the north +wall, and, therefore, thirty feet south of the slate sidewalk outside +the north wall. + +It had taken the twain three months and twenty-one days to achieve the +dugout. Although there was always a guard somewhere on the north wall, +the particular spot where the dugout had come into being was sheltered +from the wall-guard's observation by a small tool-house. Also whenever +the pair were able to dig, which was only at intervals, a bunch of +convicts was always perched on the heap of dirt from various +legitimate excavations within the yard, which Fate had piled up at +that precise spot. The earth from the dugout and the earth from these +other diggings mixed admirably. + +Nor, likewise because of the dirt-pile, could any one detect the job +from the south end of the yard. If a guard appeared from around the +mat-shop or coming out of the Principal Keeper's office, the convicts +sunning themselves on the dirt-pile in the free hour of noon, or late +in the afternoon, after the shops had closed, spoke with motionless +lips to the two diggers. Plenty of time was thus afforded to shove a +couple of boards over the aperture, kick dirt over the boards, and +even push a barrow over the dugout's entrance--and there you were! + +One minute before this narrative opens, on July 17th, a third convict +had dropped the boards over the hole into which Old Man Anderson, the +lifer, and Detroit Jim, had crawled. This convict had then frantically +kicked dirt over the boards, had clawed down still more dirt, to make +sure nothing could be seen of the hole--had made the thing look just +like part of the big dirt-pile indeed--and then had legged it to the +ball-game now in progress on this midsummer Saturday afternoon, at the +extreme south end of the yard, behind the mat-shop. + +Dirt trickled down upon the gray hair of Old Man Anderson in the dark +and stuffy hole he shared with his younger companion. But the darkness +and the stuffiness and the filtering dirt were unsensed. Something far +more momentous was in the minds of both. How soon would Slattery, the +prison guard, whom they knew to be lying dead in the alley between the +foundry and the tool-shop, be found? For years Slattery had been a +fairly good friend to Old Man Anderson, but what did that count in the +face of his becoming, for all his friendship, a last-minute and +totally unexpected impediment to the get-away? He had turned into the +alley just when Old Man Anderson and Detroit Jim were crouching for +the final jump to the dugout! A blow--a thud--that was all.... + +Anderson lay now, staring wide-eyed into the black nothing of the +hole. For the second time he had killed a man, and God knew he hadn't +intended to--either time! Fourteen years ago a man had tried to get +his wife away from him, while he was serving a one-year bit in the +county jail. Both men had had guns, and Old Man Anderson had killed +the other or he would have been killed himself. So that was no murder +at all! And as for Slattery--big, heavy, slow-moving, red-faced +Slattery--Old Man Anderson would even have gone out of his way to do +the guard a favour, under ordinary circumstances. But as between +Slattery and the chance to escape--that was different. + +Old Man Anderson rubbed his right hand in the dirt and held it before +his eyes in the blackness. He knew that the moisture on it was +Slattery's blood. The iron pipe in Old Man Anderson's hands had struck +Slattery on the head just once, but once was enough. + +Old Man Anderson burst into hiccoughing sobs. The younger convict +punched him in the ribs, and swore at him in muffled tones. Anderson +stifled his sobs then, but continued to sniffle and shiver. This time +it would absolutely be The Chair for him--if they got him! In a few +minutes they couldn't help discovering Slattery. Anderson never could +give himself up now, however this business of the dugout and the +hoped-for old sewer conduit should finally turn out. In the beginning +he had counted on crawling out, if worst came to worst, and +surrendering. But to crawl out now meant but one thing--The Chair! + +In all his fourteen years behind the walls the vision of The Chair had +terrorized the old man. When they had sent him to prison his first +cell had been in the death-house, separated from The Chair only by a +corridor that, they told him, was about twenty feet long, and took no +more than five seconds to traverse--with the priest. Until they +changed his cell, the gaunt, terrible Thing in the next room edged +every day nearer, nearer, nearer, looming, growing, broadening before +his morbid vision until it seemed to have cut off from his sight +everything else in the world--closer, closer until it was only seven +incredible hours away! Then had come the commutation of his sentence +from death to life! + +The next day Old Man Anderson, gray-haired even then, went out from +the death-house among his gray-clad fellows, but straight into the +prison hospital, where for three months be lay a victim of chair-shock +just as surely as was ever a man shell-shocked on the Flanders front. +And never since had the hands of the man wholly ceased to quiver and +to shake. + +Now he was a murderer for the second time! In the blackness he +stretched out his hand, and ran it over a stack of tin cans. Detroit +Jim had been mighty clever! Canned food from the storehouse, enough to +last perhaps two weeks! Detroit Jim had had a storehouse job. Twice a +day, during the last ten days, the wiry little ferret-faced +second-story man had got away with at least one can from the prison +commissary. Also he had provided matches, candles, and even a cranky +little flashlight. Only chewing tobacco, because you can smell smoke a +long way when you are hunting escaped convicts. And a can of water +half the size of an ash can! + +Despair fastened upon Old Man Anderson, and a wave of sickness swept +over him. All the food in the world wouldn't bring Slattery back to +life. And again that Thing in the death-house rose before his mind's +eyes. Throughout all the years he had carried a kind of dread that +sometime a governor might come along who would put back his sentence +where it had been at first--and then all his good behaviour in these +endless years would count for nothing. Until Detroit Jim had told him +about the long-forgotten sewer conduit, he had never even thought to +disobey the prison rules. + +The old man's teeth chattered. Detroit Jim's thin fingers tugged at +his sleeve. That meant getting busy, and digging with the pick with +the sawed-off handle. So Anderson wriggled into the horizontal +chamber, which was just large enough to permit his body and arms to +function. + +As he hacked away at the damp earth, he could see in the pitch +darkness the dirty sheet of paper, now in Detroit Jim's pocket, upon +which their very life depended. It was a tracing made by a discharged +convict from a dusty leather-covered book in the public library in New +York, sent in by the underground to Jim. The book had contained the +report of some forgotten architect, back in the fifties of the last +century, and the diagram in his report showed the water and sewage +conduit--in use! It ran from the prison building, right down across +the yard, six feet under ground, and out under the north wall, under +the street outside, and finally into the river. Built of brick, four +feet wide, four feet high. A ready-made tunnel to freedom! + +Old Man Anderson could hear Detroit Jim's hoarse whisper now, as he +chopped away at the dirt, which he shoved back under his stomach, to +where Jim's fingers caught it and thrust it farther back. + +"We're only a couple of feet from that old conduit right now. Dig, you +son of a gun, dig! Can the snifflin'! You dig, and then I'll dig!" + +They were saving their matches and candles against necessity. +Mechanically the old man chopped and hacked at the wall of earth in +front of him. Now and then the pick would encounter a stone or some +other hard substance. In the last few days they had come upon frequent +pieces of old brick. Detroit Jim had rejoiced over these signs. For +the old man every falling clod of earth seemed to bring him nearer to +freedom. They also took his mind off Slattery. + +So he chopped away, how long he did not know. Suddenly his pick struck +an obstacle again. He hacked at it. It gave slightly. A third time he +struck it, and it seemed to recede. An odour of mouldy air filled his +nostrils. In that little aperture his pick touched nothing now! He +heard something fall! Then he knew! There was a hollow place in front +of them! The abandoned conduit? He stifled a shout. + +From somewhere, muffled at first, but ultimately faintly strident, +rose a prolonged wail that seemed to issue from the very earth. The +sound rose, and fell, and rose again. Frantically the pick of Old Man +Anderson hacked away at the dirt, and then at whatever was in front of +him. Detroit Jim snapped the feeble flashlight then. It was a +wall--the conduit wall! + +Meantime, the prison siren shrieked out to the countryside the news of +an escape. + +What time it was--whether night or day or what day, neither Jim nor +Old Man Anderson knew. They had slept, of course, and Jim had +forgotten to wind his watch. Had one week or two weeks passed? If two +weeks had slipped by and if the prison officers ran true to form they +would by now have ceased searching inside the prison walls. + +Old Man Anderson and Detroit Jim huddled close to each other in the +darkness of the conduit. A hundred times they had crawled from one end +to the other of their vaultlike trap! In their desperate and fruitless +search for an outlet to the conduit they had burned many matches and +several candles. Besides, Old Man Anderson had required light in which +to fight off his attacks of nerves, and the last of the candles had +gone for that. Now total darkness enveloped them. + +The conduit was blocked! By earth at one end, and by a brick wall at +the other! All along the winding hundred feet of vault they had hacked +out brick after brick only to encounter solid earth behind. Only a few +tins of food remained and the water was wholly gone; the liquid from +the food cans only served to increase their thirst. + +Old Man Anderson had grown to loathe Detroit Jim. Every word he +murmured, every movement he made, intensified the loathing. He had +made up his mind that Jim was planning to desert him the next time he +should fall asleep; perhaps would kill him and leave him there--in the +dark. The two had practically ceased speaking to each other. In his +mental confusion Old Man Anderson kept revolving in his mind, with +satisfaction, a new plan he had evolved. The next time Jim should fall +asleep he would crawl back through the aperture in the conduit wall, +pry up the boards over the opening into the prison yard, wriggle out, +and take his chances in getting over the wall somehow! Better even be +shot by a guard than die like a rat in this unspeakable place, as he +was doing, where he couldn't stand up and dared not lie down on +account of the things that were forever crawling through the place! +His contemplation of his plan was broken in upon by his companion +clutching him spasmodically by the arm. The old man's cry died in his +throat. + +Footsteps! Dull and distant they were, and somewhere above +them--momentarily more distinct--receding--gone! + +Detroit Jim pulled Andersen's head toward him, and whispered: + +"Sidewalk! People going by! We've never sat right here before! We +wouldn't hear them if they weren't walking on stone, or slate, or +something hard!" + +The old man's heart pounded like a trip-hammer. Detroit Jim seized the +pick and began to pry the bricks loose from the arched roof of the +conduit. They worked like mad, picking, hacking, pulling, piling the +bricks softly down on the conduit floor. + +Once, for an instant, Jim stopped working. "How far from the hole we +came in through, do you think we are?" he whispered. + +"'Bout a hundred feet, I guess," answered the old man. "Why?" + +Without replying Detroit Jim resumed his picking, picking, at the +bricks. A hundred feet from where they had entered would not be under +the sidewalk. Finally, he understood. This conduit wound around a good +deal; it would take a hundred winding feet to cover thirty +straightaway. + +Finally, also, Detroit Jim turned the pick over to the old man, who, +feeling in the blackness with his hands, discovered the span as wide +as his outstretched arms, from which Detroit Jim had removed the +bricks. It was a span of yielding earth into which the old man now dug +his pick. As he worked, the loosened dirt fell upon him, upon his +head, into his eyes and nose and ears.... + +Abruptly the old man's pick struck the flagging above them! Detroit +Jim mounted upon the pile of bricks and shoved Anderson aside. + +Jim felt along the edges of the stone clear around. It seemed to +measure about three feet by two, and to be of slate, and probably held +in place only by its contact with other stones, or by cement between +the stones. No light appeared through the crevices. Detroit Jim took +from his pocket a huge pocket-knife and with the longest blade poked +up between the main stone and the one adjoining. The blade met +resistance. + +Ultimately, and abruptly, however, the blade shot through to the hilt +of the knife. Jim drew it back instantly. No light came through the +crevice. + +"I smell good air," he whispered, "but I can't see a thing. It must be +night!" + +They knew now what to do. The flagging must be removed at once, before +any one should go by! The hole would be big enough to let them out! +Old Man Andersen's heart leaped. It was over. They had won. Trust him +to go where they'd never get him for the Slattery business! As for +Detroit Jim, he already knew the next big trick that he would pull +off--out in Cleveland! + +Ultimately, as Detroit Jim worked upon it, the stone began to sag. An +edge caught upon the adjacent flagging. The two men, perched upon the +wobbly bricks, manipulated the stone, working it loose, until, +finally, it came crashing down. + +The stone had made noise enough, it seemed, to wake the dead; yet +above them there was no sound. Swiftly they raised the flagging and +set it securely upon the heap of bricks. When Detroit Jim stood upon +this improvised platform his head was level with the aperture they had +made. He could see no sky, no stars, could feel no wind, discover no +light such as pervades even the darkest night. + +"Good God!" he breathed. His fingers went out over the flagging. His +knife dropped. The tinkle echoed dully down the conduit. He stooped to +where Old Man Anderson stood, breathing hard. + +"It's a--a room!" he whispered. + +"A--a room?" repeated Old Man Anderson dully. + +"Come! After me! Up! I'll pull you up!" + +Detroit Jim, being wiry, swung himself up, and then bent down, groping +for the old man's hands. Winded, panting, exhausted, the two men stood +at last in this new blackness, clutching each other, their ears +strained to catch the slightest sound. + +"For God's sake, don't fall down that hole now!" hissed Detroit Jim. +"Listen. We'll both crawl together till we get to a wall. Then you +feel along one way, and whisper to me what you find, and I'll crawl +the other. Look for a window or a door--some way out! We'll come +together finally. Are you ready?" + +"I'm--I'm afraid," whined the old man. + +Detroit Jim's fingers dug into the other's arm, and he pulled the +latter along. Their groping hands touched a wall--a wall of wood. +Detroit Jim stood up and pulled Anderson beside him. He felt the old +man shiver. He shoved him gently in to the left and himself moved +cautiously to the right, slowly, catlike. + +Finally, Jim came to a door. He could perceive no light through the +chinks in the door. Sensing the increasing uncanniness of a room +without windows, without furniture, with flagging for a floor, he +turned the knob of the door gently, and it gave under his touch. + +Just then there came to him a hoarse whisper from across the room. It +made him jump. "I've--I've found some wires," the old man was saying, +"in a cable running along the floor----" + +"See where they lead!" Detroit Jim was breathless, in anticipation. + +And then, shattering the overwhelming tension of the moment, shrilled, +suddenly, a horrible, prolonged, piercing shriek ending in a gasp and +the sound of a heavy body falling to the floor! What, in God's name, +had happened to the old man? And that yell was enough to awaken the +entire world! + +Detroit Jim groped his way across the room. He could hear now no +further sound from the old man.... Steps outside! He sank upon his +knees, his hands outstretched. He heard a lock turn; then following +upon a click the whole universe went white, and dazzling and +scorching! + +He raised one arm to his blinking, throbbing eyes. A rough voice +shouted: "Hands up!" + +There was a rush of feet, the rough clutch of hands at his +shoulders.... Presently he found himself blinking down upon the +fear-contorted face of Old Man Anderson dirt-streaked, bearded, gaunt, +dead! + +Slowly his eyes crawled beyond the body on the floor.... Before him, +its empty arms stretched toward him, its straps and wires twisting +snakily in front of him, was The Chair! + + + +"AURORE" + +By ETHEL WATTS MUMFORD + +From _Pictorial Review_ + + +"Your name!--_Votre nom_?" Crossman added, for in the North Country +not many of the habitants are bilingual. + +She looked at him and smiled slowly, her teeth white against +cardinal-flower lips. + +"Ma name? Aurore," she answered in a voice as mystically slow as her +smile, while the mystery of her eyes changed and deepened. + +Crossman watched her, fascinated. She was like no woman he had ever +seen, radiating a personality individual and strange. "Aurore," he +repeated. "You're not the dawn, you know; not a bit like it." He did +not expect her to own to any knowledge of the legend of her name, but +she nodded her head understandingly. + +"It was the Curé name' me so," she explained. "But the Curé and me," +she shrugged, "never could--how you say?--see--hear--one the +other--so, I would not be a blonde just for spite to him--I am a very +black dawn, _n'est-ce pas_?" + +"A black dawn," he repeated. Her words unleashed his fancy--her heavy +brows and lashes, her satiny raven hair, her slow voice that seemed +made of silence, her eyes that changed in expression so rapidly that +they dizzied one with a sense of space. "Black Dawn!" He stared at her +long, which in no wise disconcerted her. + +"Will you want, then, Antoine and me?" she asked at length. + +He woke from his dream with a savage realization that, most surely, he +wanted her. "Yes. Of course--you--and Antoine. Wait, _attendez_, don't +go yet." + +"_Why_ not?" she smiled. "I have what I came for." + +Her hand was on the door-latch. The radiance from the opened door of +the square, old-fashioned stove shimmered over her fur cap and +intensified the broad scarlet stripes of her mackinaw. In black +corduroy trousers, full and bagging as a moujik's, she stood at ease, +her feet small and dainty even in the heavy caribou-hide boots. + +"_Bon soir, monsieur_," she said. "In two days we go with you to +camp--me--_and_ Antoine." + +"Wait!" he cried, but she had opened the door. He rose with a start, +and, ignoring the intense cold, followed her till the stinging breath +of the North stabbed him with the recollection of its immutable power. +All about him the night was radiant. Of a sudden the sky was hung with +banners--banners that rippled and folded and unfolded, banners of +rainbows, long, shaking loops of red and silver, ghosts of lost +emeralds and sapphires, oriflammes that fluttered in the heavens, +swaying across the world in mysterious majesty. Immensity, Silence, +Mystery--The Northern Lights! "Aurora!" he called into the night, +"Aurora--Borealis!" + +The Curé of Portage Dernier drove up to the log-cabin office and shook +himself from his blankets; his _soutane_ was rolled up around his +waist and secured with safety-pins; his solid legs were encased in the +heaviest of woollen trousers and innumerable long stockings. His +appearance was singularly divided--clerical above, under the long +wool-lined cape, and "lay" below. Though the thermometer showed a +shockingly depressed figure, the stillness and the warmth of the sun, +busy at diamond-making in the snow, gave the feeling of spring. + +The sky was inconceivably blue. The hard-frozen world was one +immaculate glitter, the giant evergreens standing black against its +brightness. The sonorous ring of axes on wood, the gnawing of saws, +the crunching of runners, the crackling crash of distant trees falling +to the woodsmen's onslaughts--Bijou Falls logging-camp was a vital +centre of joyous activity. + +The Curé grinned and rubbed his mittened hands. "H--Hola!" he called. + +At his desk in the north window Crossman heard the hail, and went to +the door. At sight of the singular padded figure his face lifted in a +grin. "Come in, Father," he exclaimed; "be welcome." + +"Ah," said the Priest, his pink face shining with benevolence, "I +thank you. Where is my friend, that good Jakapa? I am on my monthly +circuit, and I thought to see what happens at the Falls of the Bijou." +He stepped inside the cabin and advanced to the stove with +outstretched hands. "I have not the pleasure," he said tentatively. + +"My name is Crossman," the other answered. "I am new to the North." + +"Ah, so? I am the Curé of Portage Dernier, but, as you see, I must +wander after my lambs--very great goats are they, many of them, and +the winter brings the logging. So I, too, take to the timber. My +team," he waved an introducing hand at the two great cross-bred +sled-dogs that unhooked from their traces had followed him in and now +sat gravely on their haunches, staring at the fire. "You are an +overseer for the company?" suggested the Curé, politely curious--"or +perhaps you cruise?" + +Crossman shook his head. "No, _mon père_. I came up here to get well." + +"Ah," said the Curé, sympathetically tapping his lung. "In this air of +the evergreens and the new wood, in the clean cold--it is the world's +sanatorium--you will soon be yourself again." + +Crossman smiled painfully. "Perhaps _here_"--he laid a long, slender +finger on his broad chest--"but I heal not easily of the great world +sickness--the War. It has left its mark! The War, the great malady of +the world." + +"You are right." Meditatively the Priest threw aside his cape and +began unfastening the safety-pins that held up his cassock. "You say +well. It strikes at the _heart_." + +Crossman nodded. + +"Yet it passes, my son, and Nature heals; as long as the hurt be in +Nature, Nature will take care. And you have come where Nature and God +work together. In this great living North Country, for sick bodies and +sick souls, the good God has His good sun and His clean winds." He +nodded reassurance, and Crossman's dark face cleared of its brooding. + +"Sit down, Father." He advanced a chair. + +"So," murmured the Curé, continuing his thought as he sank into the +embrace of thong and withe. "So you were in the War, and did you take +hurt there, my son?" + +Crossman nodded. "Trench pneumonia, and then the rat at the lung; but +of shock, something also. But I think it was not concussion, as the +doctors said, but _soul_-shock. It has left me, Father, like +Mohammed's coffin, suspended. I think I have lost my grip on the +world--and not found my hold on another." + +"Shock of the soul," the Priest ruminated. "Your soul is bruised, my +son. We must take care of it." His voice trailed off. There was +silence in the little office broken only by the yawn and snuffle of +the sled-dogs. + +Suddenly the door swung open. In the embrasure stood Aurore in her red +mackinaw and corduroy trousers. A pair of snowshoes hung over her +back, and her hand gripped a short-handled broad axe. Her great eyes +turned from Crossman to the Curé, and across her crimson mouth crept +her slow smile. The Curé sprang to his feet at sight of her, his face +went white, and the lines from nose to lips seemed to draw in. + +"Aurore!" he exclaimed; "Aurore!" + +"_Oui, mon père_," she drawled. "It is Aurore." She struck a +provocative pose, her hand on her hip, her head thrown back, while her +eyes changed colour as alexandrite in the sun. + +The Curé turned on Crossman. "What is this woman to you?" + +Her eyes defied him. "Tell him," she jeered. "What _am_ I to you?" + +"She is here with Antoine Marceau, the log-brander," Crossman answered +unsteadily. "She takes care of our cabin, Jakapa's and mine." + +"Is that _all_?" the Priest demanded. + +Her eyes challenged him. What, indeed, was she to him? +What _was_ she? From the moment he had followed her into the boreal +night, with its streaming lights of mystery and promise, she had held +his imagination and his thoughts. + +"Is that _all_?" the Priest insisted. + +"You insult both this girl and me," Crossman retorted, stung to sudden +anger. + +"_Dieu merci_!" the Curé made the sign of the cross as he spoke. "As +for this woman, send her away. She is _not_ the wife of Antoine +Marceau; she is not married--she _will_ not be." + +In spite of himself a savage joy burned in Crossman's veins. She was +the wife of no man; she was a free being, whatever else she was. + +"I do not have to marry," she jeered. "That is for the women that only +one man desires--or perhaps two--like some in your parish, _mon +père_." + +"She is evil," the Priest continued, paying no attention to her +sneering comment. "I know not what she is, nor who. One night, in +autumn, in the dark of the hour before morning, she was brought to me +by some Indians. They had found her, a baby, wrapped in furs, in an +empty canoe, rocking almost under the Grande Falls. But I tell you, +and to my sorrow, I _know_, she is evil. She knows not God, nor God +her. You, whose soul is sick, flee her as you would the devil! Aurore, +the Dawn! I named her, because she came so near the morning. Aurore! +Ah, God! She should be named after the blackest hour of a witch's +Sabbath!" + +She laughed. It was the first time Crossman had heard her laugh--a +deep, slow, far-away sound, more like an eerie echo. + +"_He_ has a better name for me," she said, casting Crossman a look +whose intimacy made his blood run hot within him. "'The Black +Dawn'--_n'est-ce-pas?_ Though I _have_ heard him call me in the +night--by another name," with which equivocal statement she swung the +axe into the curve of her arm, turned on her heel, and softly closed +the door between them. + +The Priest turned on him. "My son," his eyes searched Crossman's, "you +have not lied to me?" + +"No," he answered steadily. "Once I called her the Aurora +Borealis--that is all. To me she seems mysterious and changing, and +coloured, like the Northern Lights." + +"She is mysterious and changing and beautiful, but it is not the +lights of the North and of Heaven. She is the _feu follet_, the +will-o'-the-wisp that hovers over what is rotten, and dead. Send her +away, my son; send her away. Oh, she has left her trail of blood and +hatred and malice in my parish, I know. She has bred feuds; she has +sent strong men to the devil, and broken the hearts of good women. But +_you_ will not believe me. It is to Jakapa I must talk. _Mon Dieu_! +how is it that he let her come! You are a stranger, but he----" + +"Jakapa wished for Antoine, and she was with him," explained Crossman +uneasily, yet resentful of the Priest's vehemence. + +"I can not wait." The Curé rose and began repinning his clerical +garments. "Where is Jakapa? Have you a pair of snowshoes to lend me? +You must forgive my agitation, Monsieur, but you do not +understand--I--which way?" + +"He should be at Mile End, just above the Bijou. Sit still, Father; I +will send for him. The wind sets right. I'll call him in." Slipping on +his beaver jacket, he stepped outside and struck two blows on the +great iron ring, a bent rail, that swung from its gibbet like a +Chinese gong. A singing roar, like a metal bellow, sprang into the +clear, unresisting air, leaped and echoed, kissed the crags of the +Bijou and recoiled again, sending a shiver of sound and vibration +through snow-laden trees, on, till the echoes sighed into silence. +Crossman's over-sensitive ear clung to the last burring whisper as it +answered, going north, north, to the House of Silence, drawn there by +the magnet of Silence, as water seeks the sea. For a moment he had +almost forgotten the reason for the smitten clamour, hypnotized by the +mystery of sound. Then he turned, to see Aurore, a distant figure of +scarlet and black at the edge of the wood road, shuffling northward on +her long snowshoes, northward, as if in pursuit of the sound that had +gone before. She raised a mittened hand to him in ironic salutation. +She seemed to beckon, north--north--into the Silence. Crossman shook +himself. What was this miasma in his heart? He inhaled the vital air +and felt the rush of his blood in answer, realizing the splendour of +this beautiful, intensely living world of white and green, of sparkle +and prismatic brilliance. Its elemental power like the urge of the +world's youth. + +But Aurore? His brain still heard the echo of her laugh. He cursed +savagely under his breath, and turned his back upon the Curé, unable +to face the scrutiny of those kind, troubled eyes. + +"Jakapa will be here presently," he said over his shoulder. "That gong +carries ten miles if there's no wind. One ring, that's for the Boss; +two, call in for the whole gang; three, alarm--good as a telegraph or +the telephone as far as it goes. Meanwhile, if you'll excuse me, I'll +have a look at the larder." + +Without a doubt, he reasoned, Aurore would have left their mid-day +meal ready. She would not return, he knew, until the guest had gone. +In the little overheated cook-house he found the meal set out. All was +in order. Then his eye caught a singular decoration fastened to the +door, a paper silhouette, blackened with charcoal, the shape of a +cassocked priest. The little cut-out paper doll figure was pinned to +the wood by a short, sharp kitchen knife driven viciously deep, and +the handle, quivering with the closing of the door, gave the illusion +that the hand that had delivered the blow must have only at that +instant been withdrawn. + +Crossman shivered. He knew that world-old formula of hate; he knew of +its almost innocent use in many a white caban, but its older, deeper +meaning of demoniacal incantation rushed to his mind, somehow blending +with the wizardry with which he surrounded his thoughts of the strange +woman. + +A step outside crunching in the snow. The door opened, revealing +Antoine Marceau. The huge form of the log-brander towered above him. +He could not read the expression of the eyes behind the square-cupped +snow spectacles. + +"She tell me, Aurore," he rumbled, "that I am to come. We have the +company." + +"Yes, the Curé of Portage Dernier." Crossman watched him narrowly. + +Antoine took off the protecting wooden blinders and thrust them in his +pocket. + +Crossman stood aside, hesitating. Antoine drew off his mittens with +businesslike precision, and placed a huge, capable hand on a pot-lid, +lifted it, and eyed the contents of the saucepan. + +"The Curé, he like ptarmigan," he observed, "but," he added in a +matter-of-fact voice, "the Curé like not Aurore--he have tell you, +_hein_? Ah, well, why not? For him such as Aurore _are_ not--_voilà_." + +"The Curé says she is a devil." Crossman marvelled at his temerity, +yet he hung on the answer. + +"Why not? For him, as I have say, she _is_ not--for _me_, for _you_, +ma frien', _that_ is different." Antoine turned on him eyes as +impersonal as those of Fate; where Crossman had expected to see +animosity there was none, only a strange brotherhood of pitying +understanding. + +"For who shall forbid that the dawn she shall break--_hein_?" he +continued. "The Curé? Not mooch. When the Dawn she come, she come; not +with his hand can he hold her back. For me, now comes perhaps the +sunset; perhaps the dawn for you. But what would you? Who can put the +dog-harness on the wind, or put the bit in the teeth of the waterfall +to hold him up?" + +"Or who with his hand can draw the Borealis from heaven?" Crossman cut +in. He spoke unconsciously. He had not wished to say that, he had not +wanted to speak at all, but his subconscious mind had welded the +thought of her so fast to the great mystery of the Northern Lights +that without volition he had voiced it. + +Antoine Marceau nodded quietly. The strangely aloof acknowledgment of +Crossman's possible relation to this woman, _his_ woman, who yet was +not his or any man's, somehow shocked Crossman. His blood flamed at +the thought, and yet he felt her intangible, unreal. He had but to +look into her shifting, glittering eyes, and there were silence and +playing lights. Suddenly his vision of her changed, became human and +vital. He saw before him the sinuous movement of her strong young +body. He realized the living perfume of her, clean and fresh, faintly +aromatic as of pine in the sunlight, and violets in the shadow. + +Antoine Marceau busied himself about the cook-house. He did not speak +of Aurore again, not even when his eye rested on the paper doll +skewered to the door by the deep-driven knife. He frowned, made the +sign of the cross, jerked out the knife, and thrust its point in the +purifying blaze of the charcoal fire. But he made no comment. + +Crossman turned on his heel and entered the office-building. Through +the south window he saw Jakapa snowshoeing swiftly up the short +incline to the door; beside him walked the Curé, pleading and anxious. +He could follow the words as his lips framed them. In the present mood +Crossman did not wish to hear the Curé's denunciation. It was +sufficient to see that the Foreman had, evidently, no intention of +acting on the advice proffered. + +As he softly closed the door between the main office and the living +room at the rear, he heard the men enter on a quick word of reproof in +the Curé's rich bass. + +"She does her work sufficiently well, and I shall not order her from +the camp," Jakapa snapped in reply. "She is with Marceau; if he keeps +her in hand, what do I care? She leave him, that _his_ affair, _mon +Dieu, mon père_." + +"She has bewitched you, too, Jakapa. She has bewitched that other, the +young man who is here for the healing of his soul. What an irony, to +heal his soul, and she comes to poison it!" + +"Heal his soul?" Jakapa laughed harshly. "He's had the weak lung, +shell-shock, and he's a friend of the owner. _Mon père_, if he is here +for the good of his soul, that is _your_ province--but me?--I am here +to boss one job, and I boss him, that's all. I hope only you have not +driven the cook away, or the _pot-au-feu_, she will be thin." He tried +to speak the latter part of his sentence lightly, but his voice +betrayed his irritation. + +Crossman opened the door and entered. "Antoine will be here in a +minute," he announced. "Aurore sent him back to feed the animals." He +took down the enamelled tin dishes and cups and set their places. +Jakapa eyed him covertly, with a half-sneering venom he had never +before shown. + +It was a silent meal. The Curé sighed and shook his head at intervals, +and the Boss grumbled a few comments in answer to an occasional +question concerning his lumberjacks. Crossman sat in a dream. Could he +have understood aright when Antoine had spoken of the dawn? + +Jakapa dropped a plate with a curse and a clatter. The sudden sound +ripped the sick man's nerves like an exploding bomb. White to the +lips, he jumped from his chair to meet the Boss's sneering eyes. The +Curé laid a gentle hand on his arm, and he settled back shamefacedly. + +"Your pardon, _mon père_--my nerves are on edge--excuse me--an +inheritance of the trenches." + +"Emotion is bad for you, my son, and you should not emotion yourself," +said the Priest gently. + +"Do you travel far when you leave us now?" Crossman asked +self-consciously, anxious to change the subject. + +"To the camp at the Chaumière Noire, a matter of ten kilometres. It is +no hardship, my rounds, not at all, with the ground like a white +tablecloth, and this good sun, to me like to my dogs, it is but play." +He rose from the table, glad of the excuse to hasten his going, and +with scant courtesy Jakapa sped his guest's departure. + +As the sled disappeared among the trees, bearing the queerly bundled +figure of the Priest, the Boss unhooked his snowshoes from the wall. +He seemed to have forgotten Crossman's presence, but as he turned, his +smouldering eyes lighted on him. He straightened with a jerk. "What +did he mean when he say, _she_ have bewitch _you_?" As always, when +excited, his somewhat precise English slipped back into the idiom of +the habitant. "By Gar! Boss or no Boss, I pack you out if I catch you. +We make no jealousies for any one, not where I am. You come here for +your health--_hein?_ Well, better you keep this place healthy for +you." + +As if further to complicate the situation, the door opened to admit +the woman herself. She closed it, leaned against the wall, looking +from one to the other with mocking eyes. + +"Well, do I leave? Am I to pack? Have you wash the hand of me to +please the Curé, yes?" + +Jakapa turned on her brutally. "Get to the cook-house! Wash your dish! +Did I give orders to Antoine to leave hees work? By Gar! I feel like I +take you and break you in two!" He moved his knotted hands with a +gesture of destruction. There was something so sinister in the action +that, involuntarily, Crossman cried out a startled warning. Her laugh +tinkled across it. + +"Bah!" she shrugged. "If you wish to kill, why do you not kill those +who make the interferre? Are you a man? What is it, a cassock, that it +so protect a man? But me, because I do not wear a woman's skirt, you +will break me, hey? _Me!_ Nevair mind, I prefer this man. He at least +make no big talk." She slipped her arm through Crossman's, letting her +fingers play down from his wrist to his finger-tips--and the thrill of +it left him tongue-tied and helpless. + +Jakapa cursed and crouched low. He seemed about to hurl himself upon +the pair before him. Again she laughed, and her tingling, searching +fingers stole slowly over his throbbing pulses. + +She released Crossman's arm with a jerk, and snapped the fingers that +had just caressed him in the face of the furious lumberman. "_Allons!_ +Must I forever have no better revenge but to knife one paper doll? Am +I to be hounded like a beast, and threatened wherever I go? I am tired +of this dead camp. I think I go me down the river." She paused a +moment in her vehemence. Her next words came almost in a whisper: +"_Unless you can cross the trail to Chaumière Noire--then_, maybe, I +stay with you--I say--maybe." With a single swooping movement of her +strong young arm she swept the door open, and came face to face with +Antoine Marceau. "What, thou?" she said airily. + +He nodded. "Shall I go back, or do you want that I go to the other +side?" he asked the Foreman. + +"Go to the devil!" growled Jakapa, and slinging his snowshoes over his +arm, he stamped out. + +"_Tiens_!" said Antoine. "He is mad, the Boss." + +"I think we are all mad," said Crossman. + +"Maybe," said Antoine. Quietly he gathered together his axe, mittens, +and cap, and shrugging his huge shoulders into his mackinaw, looked +out at the glorious brightness of the stainless world and frowned. +"Come, Aurore," he said quietly. + +A little later, as Crossman rose to replenish the dwindling fire, he +saw him, followed by Aurore, enter the northern end of the timber +limit. Were they leaving, Crossman wondered. Had the silent woodsman +asserted his power over the woman? Crossman took down the +field-glasses from the nail on the wall. They were the sole reminder, +here in the North Country, of his years of war service. He followed +the two figures until the thickening timber hid them. Idly he swept +the horizon of black-green trees, blue shadows, and sparkling snow. A +speck moved--a mackinaw-clad figure passed swiftly across the clearing +above the Little Bijou--only a glimpse--the man took to cover in the +burned timber, where the head-high brush made a tangle of brown above +which the gaunt, white, black-smeared arms of dead trees flung +agonized branches to the sky.--"The short-cut trail to Chaumière +Noire"--"Shall I forever have no better revenge but to stab one paper +doll?" Her words echoed in his ears. + +_Jakapa was on the short cut to the Chaumière Noire_! Only Crossman's +accidental use of the field-glasses had betrayed his going. For an +instant Crossman's impulse was to rush out and ring the alarm on the +shrieking steel gong, but the next instant he laughed at himself. Yes, +surely, he was a sick man of many imaginings. The gang boss was gone +about his business. The log-brander had called upon his woman to +accompany him. That was all. Her angry words were mere threats--best +forgotten. + +With nervous haste he bundled into his heavy garments and ran from +himself and his imaginings into the dazzling embrace of the sun. + +He tramped to the gang at work above the Little Bijou Chute, where +they raced the logs to the iron-hard ice of the river's surface far +below. He even took a hand with the axe, was laughed at, and watched +the precision and power of the Jacks as they clove, swung, and lopped. +From the cliff he looked down at the long bunk-house, saw the blue +smoke rising straight, curled at the top like the uncoiling frond of a +new fern-leaf. Saw the Chinese cook, in his wadded coat of blue, +disappear into the snow-covered mound that hid the provision shack, +and watched the bounding pups refusing to be broken into harness by +Siwash George. It was all very simple, very real, and the twists of +his tired mind relaxed; his nervous hands came to rest in the warm +depths of his mackinaw pockets. The peace of sunned spaces and +flowing, clean air soothed his mind and heart. + +The blue shadows lengthened. The gang knocked off work. The last log +was rushed down the satin ice of the chute to leap over its fellows at +the foot. The smell of bacon sifted through the odours of evergreen +branches and new-cut wood. Crossman declined a cordial invitation to +join the gang at chuck. He must be getting back, he explained, "for +chow at the Boss's." + +Whistling, he entered the office, stirred up the fire, and crossed to +the cook-house. It was empty. The charcoal fire was out. Shivering, he +rebuilt it, looked through the larder, and hacked off a ragged slice +of jerked venison. A film of fear rose in his soul. What if they were +_really_ gone? What if Antoine _had_ taken her? It looked like it. His +heart sank. Not to see her again! Not to feel her strange, thrilling +presence! Not to sense that indomitable, insolent soul, throwing its +challenge before it as it walked through the world! + +Crossman came out, returned to the office, busied himself in tidying +the living room and solving the disorder of his desk. The twilight +sifted over wood and hill, crept from under the forest arches, and +spread across the snow of the open. He lit the lamps and waited. The +silence was complete. It seemed as if the night had come and closed +the world, locking it away out of the reach even of God. + +The meal Crossman had bunglingly prepared lay untouched on the table. +Now and then the crash of an avalanche of snow from the overburdened +branches emphasized the stillness. Dreading he knew not what, Crossman +waited--and loneliness is not good for a sick soul. + +Thoughts began crowding, nudging one another; happenings that he had +dismissed as casual took on new and sinister meanings. "Two and two +together" became at once a huge sum, leaping to terrifying +conclusions. Then with the silence and the tense nerve-draw of waiting +came the sense of things finished--done forever. A vast, all-embracing +finality--"_Néant_"--the habitant expression for the uttermost +nothing, the word seemed to push at his lips. He wanted to say it, but +a premonition warned him that to utter it was to make it real. + +Should he call upon the name of the Void, the Void would answer. He +feared it--it meant that She would be swallowed also in the great +gaping hollow of nothingness. He strained his ears for sounds of the +living world--the spit of the fire, the fall of clinkers in the grate, +the whisper of the wind stirring at the door. He tried to analyse his +growing uneasiness. He was sure now that she had followed Antoine's +bidding--forgetting him, if, indeed, her desires had ever reached +toward him. + +Now she seemed the only thing that mattered. He must find her; he must +follow. Wherever she was, there only was the world of reality. Where +she was, was life. And to find her, he must find Antoine--and then, +without warning, the door gaped--and Antoine stood before him, like a +coloured figure pasted on the black ground of the night. Then he +entered, quiet and matter-of-fact. He nodded, closed the door against +the biting cold, pulled off his cap, and stood respectfully. + +"It is no use to wait for the Boss; he will not come," said the +log-brander. "I came to tell Monsieur, before I go on, that le Curé is +safe at Chaumière Noire. Yes, he is safe, and Monsieur Jakapa have +turn back, when I catch up with him and tell him----" + +"What?" gasped Crossman. + +"It was to do," the giant twisted his cap slowly, "but it was harder +than I think. It was not for jealousy, I beg you to know. That she +would go if she want--to who she want, she can. I have no right to +stop her. But she would have had the Curé knifed to death. She made +the wish, and she put her wish in the heart of a man. If it had not +been this time--then surely some other time. She always find a hand to +do her will--even this of mine--once. I heard her tell to Jakapa. +Therefore, Jakapa he has gone back to watch with her body. I told him +where. Me I go. There are for me no more dawns. You love her, too, +Monsieur, therefore, I come to tell you the end. _Bon soir, +Monsieur_." + +He was gone. Again there was silence. Crossman sat rigid. What had +happened? His mind refused to understand. Then he visioned her, lying +on the white snow, scarlet under her breast, redder than her mackinaw, +redder than her woollen mittens, redder than the cardinal-flower of +her mouth--cardinal no more! "No, no!" he shrieked, springing to his +feet. His words echoed in the empty room. "No--no!--He couldn't kill +her!" He clung to the table. "No--no! No!" he screamed. Then he saw +her eyes; she was looking in through the window--yes, they were her +eyes--changing and glowing, eyes of mystery, of magic, eyes that made +the silence, eyes that called and shifted and glowed. He laughed. +Fools, fools! to think her dead! He staggered to the door and threw it +wide. Hatless, coatless, he plunged headlong into the dark--the Dark? +No! for she was there--on high, wide-flung, the banners of the Aurora +Borealis blazed and swung, banners that rippled and ran, banners of +rainbows, the souls of amethysts and emeralds, they fluttered in the +heavens, they swayed across the world, streamed like amber wine poured +from an unseen chalice, dropped fold on fold, like the fluttering +raiment of the gods. + +In the north a great sapphire curtain trembled as if about to part and +reveal the unknown Beyond; it grew brighter, dazzling, radiant. + +"Aurore!" he called. "Aurore!" The grip of ice clutched his heart. +Cold seized on him with unseen numbing hands. He was struggling, +struggling with his body of lead--for one step--just a step nearer the +great curtain, that now glowed warm--red--red as the ghost of her +cardinal-flower lips--pillars of light, as of the halls of heaven. +"Aurore!--Aurore!" + + + +MR. DOWNEY SITS DOWN + +By L.H. ROBBINS + +From _Everybody's_ + + +I + +Jacob Downey waited in line at the meat shop. A footsore little man +was he. All day long, six days a week for twenty-two years, he had +stood on his feet, trotted on them, climbed on them, in the hardware +department of Wilbram, Prescot & Co., and still they would not +toughen; still they would hurt; still to sustain his spirit after +three o'clock he had to invoke a vision of slippers, a warm radiator, +the _Evening Bee_, and the sympathy of Mrs. Downey and the youngsters. +To the picture this evening he had added pork chops. + +The woman next in line ahead of him named her meat. Said the butcher, +with a side glance at the clock, "A crown roast takes quite a while, +lady. Could I send it in the morning?" + +No, the lady wished to see it prepared. Expressly for that purpose had +she come out in the rain. To-morrow she gave a luncheon. + +"First come first served," thought Jacob Downey, and bode his time in +patience, feeling less pity for his aching feet than for Butcher +Myers. Where was the charity in asking a hurried man at five minutes +to six o'clock to frill up a roast that would not see the inside of +the oven before noon next day? + +Now, crown roasts are one thing to him who waits on fallen arches, and +telephone calls are another. Scarcely had Downey's opening come to +speak for pork chops cut medium when off went the bell and off rushed +Butcher Myers. + +Sharply he warned the unknown that this was Myers's Meat Shop. Blandly +he smiled into the transmitter upon learning that his caller was Mrs. +A. Lincoln Wilbram. + +By the audience in front of the counter the following social +intelligence was presently inferred: + +That Mr. and Mrs. Wilbram had just returned from Florida; that they +had enjoyed themselves ever so much; that they hoped Mr. Myers's +little girl was better; that they were taking their meals at the +Clarendon pending the mobilization of their house-servants; that they +expected to dine with the Mortimer Trevelyans this evening; that food +for the dog may with propriety be brought home from a hotel, but not +from the Mortimer Trevelyans; that there was utterly nothing in the +icebox for poor Mudge's supper; that Mudge was a chow dog purchased by +a friend of Mr. Wilbram's in Hongkong at so much a pound, just as Mr. +Myers purchased live fowls; that Mudge now existed not to become chow, +but to consume chow, and would feel grateful in his dog heart if Mr. +Myers would, at this admittedly late hour, send him two pounds of +bologna and a good bone; and that Mrs. Wilbram would consider herself +under deep and lasting obligation to Mr. Myers for this act of +kindness. + +Mr. Myers assured Mrs. Wilbram that it would mean no trouble at all; +he would send up the order as soon as his boy came back from +delivering a beefsteak to the Mortimer Trevelyans. + +He filled out a slip and stuck it on the hook. + +"Now, Mr. Downey," he said briskly. + +But Jacob Downey gave him one tremendous look and limped out of the +shop. + + +II + +It was evening in the home of Miss Angelina Lance. Twenty-seven hours +had passed since Jacob Downey's exasperated exit from Myers's Meat +Shop. The eyes of Miss Angelina were bright behind her not-unbecoming +spectacles as she watched the face of the solemn young man in the +Morris chair near the reading lamp. + +In his hand the solemn young man held three sheets of school +composition paper. As he read the pencil writing on page one he lost +his gravity. Over page two he smiled broadly. At the end of the last +page he said: + +"D.K.T. couldn't have done better. May I show it to him?" + +In the office of the Ashland (N.J.) _Bee_ the solemn young man was +known as Mr. Sloan. At Miss Lance's he was Sam. The mentioned D.K.T. +conducted the celebrated "Bee-Stings" column on the editorial page of +Mr. Sloan's journal, his levity being offset by the sobriety of Mr. +Sloan, who was assistant city-editor. + +On two evenings a week Mr. Sloan fled the cares of the Fourth Estate +and became Sam in the soul-refreshing presence of Miss Angelina. He +was by no means her only male admirer. In the Sixth Grade at the +Hilldale Public School she had thirty others; among these Willie +Downey, whose name appeared on every page of the composition Mr. Sloan +had read. + +With a host of other sixth-graders throughout the city Willie had +striven that day for a prize of ten dollars in gold offered by the +public-spirited A. Lincoln Wilbram, of Wilbram, Prescott & Co., for +the best schoolboy essay on Moral Principles. + +"Moral principles, gentlemen; that is what we need in Ashland. How +many men do you know who stand up for their convictions--or have any +to stand up for?" + +If the head of a department store is a bit thunderous at times, think +what a Jovian position he occupies. In his cloud-girt, +mahogany-panelled throne-room on the eighth floor he rules over a +thousand mortals, down to the little Jacob Downeys in the basement, +who, if they do not quite weep with delight when he gives them a +smile, tremble, at least, at his frown. When a large body of popular +opinion accords him greatness, were he not undemocratic to affect +humility and speak small? + +"I speak of common men," said Mr. Wilbram (this was at a Chamber of +Commerce banquet); "of men whose living depends upon the pleasure of +their superiors. How few there are with fearless eye!" + +He scarcely heard the laughter from a group of building contractors at +a side table, who had not seen a servile eye among their workmen in +many moons; for a worthy project had popped into his mind at that +instant. How was the moral backbone of our yeomanry to be stiffened +save through education? Why not a prize contest to stimulate the +interest of the rising generation in this obsolete subject? + +In many an Ashland home where bicycles, roller-skates, wireless +outfits, and other such extravagances were strongly desired, the +question had since been asked: "Pa, what are Moral Principles?" While +some of the resulting essays indicated a haziness in paternal minds, +not so the production that Mr. Sloan read in Miss Lance's parlour. + +"But I couldn't let you print it," said Miss Angelina. "I wouldn't +have Willie shamed for anything. He may be weak in grammar, but he is +captain of every athletic team in the school. He has told me in +confidence that he means to spend the prize money for a genuine +horse-hide catching-mitt." + +"If I cross out his name, or give him a _nom de plume_?" + +On that condition Miss Lance consented. + + +III + +At the office next morning Sloan found the essay in his pocket and +looked around the city-room for D.K.T. The staff poet-clown was no +daylight saver; professing to burn the midnight oil in the interest of +his employer, he seldom drifted in before half-past nine. + +"See me. S.S." wrote Sloan, and dropped Willie's manuscript on +D.K.T.'s desk. + +Then he jumped and gasped, and copy-readers and office-boys jumped and +gasped, and the religious editor dashed frantically for the stairs, +outrunning the entire staff down the hall, though he had farther to go +than any other man or woman there. A huge, heart-stopping shock had +rocked the building, set the windows to clattering and the lights to +swinging, and brought down in a cloud the accumulated dust of a +quarter-century. + +Within two minutes by the clock Sloan and five reporters had started +for the scene of the Rutland disaster, fifteen miles away, where +enough giant powder had gone up in one terrific blast to raze +Gibraltar. A thriving town lay in ruins; hundreds of families were +homeless; a steamship was sunk at her dock; a passenger train blown +from the rails. + +At eleven o'clock on the night following that pitiful day Sloan +journeyed homeward to Ashland in an inter-urban trolley-car in company +with a crowd of refugees. A copy of the last edition of the _Bee_ +comforted his weary soul. + +The first page was a triumph. Count on the office to back up its men +in the field! There was the whole story, the whole horror and +heartbreak, finely displayed. There were his photographs of the +wreckage; there, in a "box" was his interview with the superintendent +of the Rutland Company; there was a map of the devastated area. +Perhaps someone had found time even to do an editorial; in that case +the clean-up would be complete. + +Opening the paper to the sixth page, he groaned; for the first thing +that caught his eye was Willie Downey's essay, at the top of D.K.T.'s +column, with Willie's name below the headline. + +MOREL PRINSAPLES + +BY WILLIE DOWNEY + +AGE 12 + +Morel Prinsaples is when you have a nerve to stick up for some thing. + +Like last night my Father went in Mires meet shop & stood in line 15 +or twenty min. wateing his tirn & when his tirn come he says to mr. +Mires Ile have 6 porc chops. + +at that inst. the telaphone wrang & mr. Mires slidd for it like it was +2nd base. + +Hold on Mires says Pa, who got here 1st, me or that bell wringer. +Igscuse me just 1 min. says Mr. mires. + +No I be ding if Ile igscuse you says Pa, 1st come 1st served is the +rool of bizness all over. + +But Mr. mires wyped his hands on his apern & ansered the wring & it +was mrs. Will Brum, she was going to eat out at a frends so she wanted +2 lbs, bolony & a dog bone. + +So then Pa give him hale columbus. + +Here I bin wateing ½ an our he said, yet when some lazy lofer of a +woman who has been reading a novvle or a sleep all after noon pfhones +you to rush her up some dog meet in youre Autto with gass 36 cts. & +charge it to her acct. & may be you wont get youre munny for three 4 +munths, wy you run to wate on her while I stand & shovle my feet in +youre saw dust like a ding mexican pea own or some thing. + +What says Pa is there about a cusstamer who takes the trubble to come +for his meet & pay cash for it & deliwers it him self that maiks him +so Meen & Lo that he hass to be pushed one side for some body that has +not got Gumpshun enoughf to order her dog bones before the rush our? + +Do you think that people with a telapfhone's munny is any better than +mine, do you think because I walk in here on my hine leggs that I am a +piker & a cheep skait, becuase if so I will bring along my telapfhone +contract nex time & show you & then may be you will reckonnize me as a +free born amerrican who dont haff to traid where I haff to play 2d +fiddle to a chow pupp. Its agenst my morel prinsaples says Pa. + +With theas wirds he walks out in the rane althogh his feet hurt him +clear down to Washington St. to the nex meet store, but by that time +they were all cloased up so we had prinsaples for supper insted of +porc chops. + +Pa says if he run a store & had a pfhone & no body to anser it & do +nothing else he would ring it's neck, becuase while the telaphone is +the gratest blesing of the aige, but a pfhone with out an opperater is +like a ham ommalet with the ham let out. He says the reazon the Chane +Stores have such a pull with the public is becuase the man behine the +counter is not all the time jilting you in the middle of your order & +chacing off to be sweet to some sosciety dame with a dog 4 miles away. + +Ma says she dont kno why we have a pfhone any how becuase every time +she is youseing it a woman buts in & jiggles the hook & says will you +pleas hang up so I can call a Dr. & when Ma hangs up & then lissens in +to see who is sick, wy this woman calls up a lady f rend & they nock +Ma back & 4th over the wyre for ours & some times they say I bet she +is lisening in on us dont you. + +So as I say let us all stick up for our Morel Prinsaples like my +Father come what may. + + +IV + +Bright were Miss Angelina's eyes but not with mirth. It was +unspeakable, this thing that Mr. Sloan had done. Thrice before bedtime +she called his lodgings. Mr. Sloan was not in. + +Before the last call, she donned her wraps and went out to Plume +Street. Courageously she pulled the bell at Number Nine. Willie's +mother opened the door and cried, surprised, "Why! Miss Lance." + +"Is Willie here? Have you seen the paper? Will you let me tell him how +it happened, and how sorry I am?" + +Willie was not receiving callers this evening. He had been sent to bed +without supper. The explosion at Rutland had been as nothing, it +seemed, to the outburst in the Downey home. + +Slowly the extent of the harm dawned upon Miss Angelina. + +"It was Mrs. A. Lincoln Wilbram wanted the dog bone," said Mrs. Downey +tearfully. "Everybody will recognize her; and what Mr. Wilbram will do +to us we don't need to be told. Poor Jake is so upset he has gone out +to roam in the dark. He couldn't stay in the house." + +New jobs were scarce for men at his time of life, and with his feet. +Dora and Jennie might have to leave high school. + +"I'm sure you meant us no wrong, Miss Lance; I'm sure there was a +mistake. But think how dreadful it is, after twenty-two years of +having Mr. Wilbram's pay, then to turn around and backbite his wife +like that, right out in print!" + +Doubly troubled now, Miss Lance departed. Attracted by a quick +gathering of loiterers in the avenue, she witnessed a controversy that +might easily have become a police matter. + +"You're a liar if you say you said all that to me!" shouted the burly +Butcher Myers. "You never opened your head, you shrimp! Bawling me out +in the papers and losing me my best customers! Whaddye mean?" + +Back came the retort from Jacob Downey with the snarl of a little +creature at bay. + +"If I didn't say it to you then, you big lobster, I say it to you now. +All that the paper says I said I say. What'll you do about it?" + +"Hah! You!" Myers snapped his fingers in Downey's fiery face and +turned away. + +Miss Lance's path to the Hilldale School next morning took her past +three post-boxes. Into the third she dropped a note that she had +carried from home. Mr. Sloan would find her message exceedingly brief, +although (or, perhaps, because) she had spent hours in composing it. + +DEAR SIR: + +I regret to discover that you lack moral principles. + + ANGELINA LANCE. + +Just before the last bell the janitor brought in a prisoner for her +custody. Willie Downey's head was bloody but unbowed; three +seventh-graders he had vanquished in one round. "They guyed me," said +he. "They called me a Nawthour." + +Morning prayer and song waited while teacher and pupil spoke earnestly +of many things; while the teacher's eyes filled with tears, and the +pupil's heart filled with high resolve to bring home the baseball +championship of the Ashland Public School League and lay it at Miss +Angelina's feet, or perish in the attempt. + + +V + +The A. Lincoln Wilbram prize went to a small boy named Aaron Levinsky +whose English was 99 per cent. pure. Little Aaron's essay was printed +as the centre-piece in Wilbram, Prescott & Co.'s page in the _Bee_; +little Aaron invested his gold in thrift-stamps, and the tumult and +the shouting died. + +Miss Angelina Lance sat alone every evening of the week. True, Mr. +Sloan had tried to right the wrong; he had called Miss Angelina on the +telephone, which he should have known was an inadequate thing to do; +he had also sent a ten-dollar bank-note to Willie, in care of Miss +Lance at the Hilldale School, together with his warm felicitations +upon Willie's success as a _littérateur_. Did Willie know that his +fine first effort had been reprinted, with proper credit, in the great +New York _Planet_? + +True, too, the illustrious D.K.T. had written Miss Angelina an abject +apology, most witty and poetic, taking all the blame to himself and +more than exonerating his high-principled friend Mr. Sloan. + +But the bank-note went back to its donor without even a rejection +slip; and D.K.T.'s humour was fatal to his client's cause. Ghastly are +they who jest in the shadow of tragedy. Mr. Sloan and D.K.T. did not +know, of course--Miss Angelina had not thought it of any use to tell +them--of the sword which they had hung up by a thread above the heads +of the Downeys. + +As for Jacob Downey, he limped about amid his hardware in the basement +at Wilbram, Prescott & Co.s, careworn, haunted of eye, expecting the +house to crash about his ears at any moment. One does not with +impunity publish the wife of one's employer as a lazy loafer. + +The A. Lincoln Wilbrams had servants again, and dined at home. To Mr. +Wilbram said Mrs. Wilbram one evening: + +"It is the strangest thing. In the last month I've met scarcely a soul +who hasn't asked me silly questions about Mudge and his diet. Mrs. +Trevelyan and everybody. And they always look so queer." + +Mr. Wilbram was reminded that while coming home that evening with a +package in his hand he had met Trevelyan, and Trevelyan had inquired: +"What's that? A bone for the dog?" + +"To-morrow," said A. Lincoln, "I'll ask him what he was driving at." + +"What was the package?" queried his wife. + +He fetched it from the hall. It had come to him at the store that day +by registered mail. + +"From Hildegarde," said Mrs. Wilbram, noting the Los Angeles postmark. +Hildegarde was honeymooning among the orange groves. Wrote the happy +bride: + +Dear Aunt and Uncle: + +Charles and I see by the paper that Mudge is hungry, so we are sending +him a little present. + +"What can the child mean, Abe?" + +"Don't ask me," he answered. "Undo the present and see." + +They loosened blue ribbons and wrappings of soft paper, and disclosed +a link of bologna sausage. + +Maddening? It might have been, if Hildegarde had not thought to +inclose a page from the _Daily Southern Californian_, upon which, +ringed with pencil marks, was a bit of miscellany headed, "Morel +Prinsaples." + +They read it through to the conclusion: + +So as I say let us all stick up for our Morel Prinsaples like my +Father come what may.--Willie Downey in Ashland (N.J.) _Bee_. + +"Why!--why!--it's--it's me!" cried Mrs. Wilbram. "I did telephone to +Mr. Myers for two pounds of bologna and a dog bone--on the night we +dined at the Trevelyans'!" + +"It comes mighty close to libel," fumed Wilbram. + +"How do they dare! You must see Worthington Oakes about this, Abe." + +"I certainly will," he vowed. + + +VI + +He certainly did, as Mr. Worthington Oakes, the publisher of the +_Bee_, will testify. In the front office on the editorial floor he saw +Mr. Oakes for a bad half-hour, and demanded a public retraction of the +insult. + +At about the same time a dapper stranger who had come up in the +elevator with Mr. Wilbram held speech with Assistant City-Editor Sloan +in the local room at the other end of the hall. + +"Yonder's your bird," said Mr. Sloan, pointing to a poetic-looking +young man at a desk in a corner. + +Crossing to the poet, who was absorbed in his day' poesy and talking +to himself as he versified, the stranger smiled and spoke. + +"Am I addressing the celebrated D.K.T.?" + +"Am, cam, dam, damn, ham, jam, lamb----" + +The far-away look of genius faded out of the poet's eyes. + +"Not buying," said he. "My pay-envelope is mortgaged to you +book-agents for ten years to come. Ma'am, ram, Sam, cram, clam, gram, +slam----" + +"Books are not my line," said the dapper one briskly. "I represent the +Jones-Nonpareil Newspaper Syndicate. In fact, I am Jones. I have a +proposition to make to you, Mr. D.K.T., that may enable you to buy +more books than you can ever read. You know, of course, what the +Jones-Nonpareil service is. We reach the leading dailies of the United +States and Canada----" + +"Have a chair, Mr. Jones." + +"Thank you. We handle some very successful writers. Malcomb Hardy, you +may have heard, takes his little five hundred a week out of us; and +poor Larry Bonner pulled down eleven hundred as long as he had health. +His Chinese-laundryman sketches might be selling yet." + +"Suspense is cruel," spoke D.K.T. eagerly. "Let the glad news come." + +"Some time ago," said the syndicate man, "you printed in your column +an essay in imitation of a schoolboy's. You called it 'Moral +Principles'." + +D.K.T. sank back with a low moan. + +"If you can write six of those a week for a year," continued the +visitor, "you won't ever need to slave any more. You can burn your pen +and devote the rest of your life to golf and good works." + +The poet closed his eyes. "Sham, swam, diagram," he murmured. + +"Does a minimum guarantee of fifteen thousand a year look like +anything to you? There will, of course, be the book rights and the +movie rights in addition." + +"Anagram, epigram, telegram, flimflam--aha!" cried D.K.T. "Siam!" He +wrote it down. + +"That little skit of yours," pursued the caller, "has swept the +country. You have created a nation-wide demand. My ringer is on the +journalistic pulse, and I know. Can you repeat?" + +He drew a paper from his pocketbook. + +"Here is a list of subjects your imaginary Willie Downey might start +with: The Monetary System; the Cost of Living; the League of Nations; +Capital and Labour----" + +Over the stranger's head an office-boy whispered significantly: "Front +office." + +"Excuse me," said the poet, and hurried away. + +With the publisher, in the front office, sat A. Lincoln Wilbram, quite +purple in the cheeks. They had a file of the _Bee_ before them. + +"Diedrick," said Mr. Oakes, "on March eighteenth you printed this +thing"--his finger on Willie's essay--"why did you do it?" + +"What's the matter with it?" replied D.K.T. + +"The matter with it," spoke Mr. Wilbram terribly, "is that it slanders +my wife. It makes her out to eat dog bones. Friends of ours as far +away as California have seen it and recognized her portrait, drawn by +your scurrilous pen. The worst of it is, the slander is founded on +fact. By what right do you air my domestic affairs before the public +in this outrageous fashion?" + +With agonized eyes the funny-man read the essay as far as the fateful +line, "It was Mrs. Will Brum." + +"My gosh!" he cried. + +"How did you come to write such a thing?" Mr. Oakes demanded. + +"Me write that thing? If I only had!" + +The facts were recalled; the sending of Mr. Sloan and many reporters +to Rutland; the need of extra hands at the copy-table that day. + +"I found this contribution on my desk. It looked safe. In the rush of +the morning I sent it up and never gave it another thought." + +"So it is really a boy's essay, and not some of your own fooling?" +asked Oakes. + +"A boy's essay, yes; entered in Mr. Wilbram's prize contest, +eliminated by the boy's teacher and shown by her to Mr. Sloan, who +brought it to the shop. I know now that Sloan meant me to change the +author's name to save the kid from ridicule. If there were actual +persons in it, I'm as amazed as Mrs. Wilbram." + +"I wonder, Oakes," said Wilbram, "that a dignified newspaper like +yours would print such trash, in the first place." + +Worthington Oakes looked down his nose. D.K.T. took up the challenge. + +"Trash, sir? If it's trash, why has the Ashland Telephone asked +permission to reprint it on the front cover of their next directory?" + +"Have they asked that?" + +"They have; they say they will put a little moral principle into the +telephone hogs in this town. And didn't a Fifth Avenue minister preach +a sermon on it last Sunday? Doesn't the _Literary Review_ give it half +a page this week? Hasn't it been scissored by almost every exchange +editor in the land? Isn't there a man in the city-room now offering me +fifteen thousand a year to write a daily screed like it?" + +"You can see, Wilbram," said Mr. Oakes, "that there was no intention +to injure or annoy. We are very sorry; but how can we print an apology +to Mrs. Wilbram without making the matter worse?" + +"Who is this Willie Downey?" demanded Wilbram. "And who is the school +teacher?" + +"I don't believe my moral principles will let me tell you," replied +D.K.T. "I'm positive Mr. Sloan's won't let him. We received the essay +in confidence." + +"Enough said," Mr. Wilbram exclaimed, rising. "Good day to you. I +don't need your help, anyway. I'll find out from the butcher." + + +VII + +It seemed necessary that Mr. Sloan should call at the Lance home that +evening. Whatever Miss Angelina might think of him, it was his duty to +take counsel with her for the welfare of Willie. + +He began with the least important of the grave matters upon his mind. + +"Do you suppose your _protégé_ could write some essays like the one we +printed?" + +"Why, Mr. Sloan?" + +If Miss Angelina had responded, "Why, you hyena?" she would not have +cut him more deeply than with her simple, "Why, Mr. Sloan?" + +"A newspaper syndicate," he explained, "has offered D.K.T. a fortune +for a series of them." + +"Poor Willie!" she sighed. "He flunked his English exam, to-day. I'm +afraid I shall have him another year." + +"He is a lucky boy," said Sloan. + +"Do you think so?" + +Clearly her meaning was, "Do you think he is lucky when a powerful +newspaper goes out of its way to crush him?" + +"There is no use approaching him with a literary contract?" + +"Not with the baseball season just opening. His team beat the +Watersides yesterday, sixteen nothing. He has more important business +on hand than writing for newspapers." + +Since Sloan wrote for a newspaper, this was rather a dig. +Nevertheless, he persevered. + +"A. Lincoln Wilbram is on his trail. Do you know that Willie libelled +Mrs. Wilbram?" + +"Oh! Sam. Surely I know about the libel. But is--is Mr. Wilbram +really----Has he discovered?" + +"He came to the office to-day. We gave him no information; but he has +other sources. He is bound to identify his enemy before he quits." + +"I didn't know about the so-called slander at first," said she, "when +I--when you----" + +"When I promised to change Willie's name?" + +"I found out when I went to them, on the night it came out in the +paper. They were woefully frightened. They are frightened still. Mr. +Downey has worked for Mr. Wilbram since he was a boy. They think of +Mr. Wilbram almost as a god. It's--it's a tragedy, Sam, to them." + +"Would it do any good to warn them?" + +"They need no warning," said Miss Angelina. "Don't add to their +terrors." + +"I am more sorry than I can say. May I hope to be forgiven some day?" + +"There's nothing to forgive, Sam. It was an accident. But don't you +see what a dangerous weapon a newspaper is?' + +"Worse than a car or a gun," he agreed. + +As he strolled homeward along a stately avenue, wondering what he +could do to avert the retribution that moved toward the Downeys, and +finding that his assistant city-editor's resourcefulness availed him +naught, he heard the scamper of feet behind him and whirled about with +cane upraised in time to bring a snarling chow dog to a stand. + +"Beat it, you brute!" he growled. + +"Yeowp!" responded the chow dog, and leaped in air. + +"Don't be alarmed," spoke a voice out of the gloom of the nearest +lawn. "When he sees a man with a stick, he wants to play." + +Sloan peered at the speaker's face. "Isn't this Mr. Wilbram? You were +at the _Bee_ office to-day, sir. May I have a word with you about the +Willie Downey matter?" + +"Come in," said Mr. Wilbram. + + +VIII + +On the first pay-day in May the impending sword cut its thread. Said a +messenger to Jacob Downey: "They want you on the eighth floor." Downey +set his jaws and followed. + +In the mahogany-panelled room A. Lincoln Wilbram turned from the +window and transfixed his servitor with eyes that bored like steel +bits. + +"Downey, I understand you have a literary son." + +Jacob held his breath, eyed his accuser steadily, and assured himself +that it would soon be over now. + +"How about it, Downey?" + +"I know what you mean, sir." + +"Did you say the things printed there?" + +The little man wasted no time in examining the newspaper clipping. + +"Yes, sir, I did. If it has come to your lady's ears what I called +her, I beg her pardon. But what I said I'll stick to. If I stand +fifteen minutes in line in a meat store or any other kind of store, +I've got a right to be waited on ahead of anybody that rings up, I +don't give a ding who she is." + +"Good for you, Downey. Let me see, how long have you worked for us?" + +"Twenty-three years next January, sir." + +"Floor salesman all the while?" + +"Since 1900. Before that I was a wrapper." + +"How many men have been promoted over your head?" + +"Three." + +"Four," Wilbram corrected. "First was Miggins." + +"I don't count him, sir. Him and I started together." + +"Miggins was a failure. Then Farisell; now in prison. Next, McCardy; +he ran off to Simonds & Co. the minute they crooked a finger at him. +Last, young Prescott, who is now to come up here with his father. +Could you run the department if you had it?" + +"Between you and I," replied Jacob Downey, sick, dizzy, trembling, "I +been running the department these fifteen years." + +"How'd you like to run it from now as manager? When I find a man with +convictions and courage I advance him. The man who stands up is the +man to sit down. That's evolution. If you could stand up to a big +butcher like Myers and talk Dutch to him the way you did, I guess we +need you at a desk. What do you say?" + +A desk! A chance to rest his feet! Jacob Downey stiffened. + +"Mr. Wilbram, I--I got to tell the truth. I never said those things to +Myers. I just walked out." + +"But you said them. You acknowledge it." + +"I said 'em, yes--after I got home. To the family I said 'em. When I +was in the meat shop I only thought 'em." + +"So Myers has told me," said Jove, smiling. "Downey, my man, you've +got more than moral courage. You've got common sense to go with it. +Tell young Prescott to give you his keys." + + + +THE MARRIAGE IN KAIRWAN + +By WILBUR DANIEL STEELE + +From _Harper's_ + + +Kairwan the Holy lay asleep, pent in its thick walls. The moon had +sunk at midnight, but the chill light seemed scarcely to have +diminished; only the limewashed city had become a marble city, and all +the towers turned fabulous in the fierce, dry, needle rain of the +stars that burn over the desert of mid-Tunisia. + +In the street Bab Djedid the nailed boots of the watch passed from +west to east. When their thin racket had turned out and died in the +dust of the market, Habib ben Habib emerged from the shadow of a door +arch and, putting a foot on the tiled ledge of Bou-Kedj's fry shop, +swung up by cranny and gutter till he stood on the plain of the +housetops. + +Now he looked about him, for on this dim tableland he walked with his +life in his hands. He looked to the west, toward the gate, to the +south, to the northeast through the ghostly wood of minarets. Then, +perceiving nothing that stirred, he went on moving without sound in +the camel-skin slippers he had taken from his father's court. + +In the uncertain light, but for those slippers and the long-tasselled +_chechia_ on his head, one would not have taken him for anything but a +European and a stranger. And one would have been right, almost. In the +city of his birth and rearing, and of the birth and rearing of his +Arab fathers generations dead, Habib ben Habib bel-Kalfate looked upon +himself in the rebellious, romantic light of a prisoner in +exile--exile from the streets of Paris where, in his four years, he +had tasted the strange delights of the Christian--exile from the +university where he had dabbled with his keen, light-ballasted mind in +the learning of the conqueror. + +Sometimes, in the month since he had come home, he had shaken himself +and wondered aloud, "Where am I?" with the least little hint, perhaps, +of melodrama. Sometimes in the French café outside the walls, among +the officers of the garrison, a bantering perversity drove him on to +chant the old glories of Islam, the poets of Andalusia, and the +bombastic histories of the saints; and in the midst of it, his face +pink with the Frenchmen's wine and his own bitter, half-frightened +mockery, he would break off suddenly, "_Voilà, Messieurs!_ you will +see that I am the best of Mussulmans!" He would laugh then in a key so +high and restless that the commandant, shaking his head, would murmur +to the lieutenant beside him, "One day, Genet, we must be on the alert +for a dagger in that quarter there, eh?" + +And Genet, who knew almost as much of the character of the university +Arab as the commandant himself, would nod his head. + +When Habib had laughed for a moment he would grow silent. Presently he +would go out into the ugly dark of the foreign quarter, followed very +often by Raoul Genet. He had known Raoul most casually in Paris. Here +in the Tunisian _bled_, when Raoul held out his hand to say good-night +under the gate lamp at the Bab Djelladin, the troubled fellow clung to +it. The smell of the African city, coming under the great brick arch, +reached out and closed around him like a hand--a hand bigger than +Raoul's. + +"You are my brother: not they. I am not of these people, Raoul!" + +But then he would go in, under the black arch and the black shade of +the false-pepper trees. In the darkness he felt the trees, centuries +old, and all the blank houses watching him.... + +To-night, stealing across the sleeping roofs, he felt the star-lit +mosque towers watching him in secret, the pale, silent espionage of +them who could wait. The hush of the desert troubled him. Youth +troubled him. His lips were dry. + +He had come to an arbour covered with a vine. Whose it was, on what +house-holder's roof it was reared, he had never known. He entered. + +"She is not here." He moistened his lips with his tongue. + +He sat down on the stone divan to wait, watching toward the west +through the doorway across which hung a loop of vine, like a snake. + +He saw her a long way off, approaching by swift darts and intervals of +immobility, when her whiteness grew a part of the whiteness of the +terrace. It was so he had seen her moving on that first night when, +half tipsy with wine and strangeness, he had pursued, caught her, and +uncovered her face. + +To-night she uncovered it herself. She put back the hooded fold of her +_haik_, showing him her face, her scarlet mouth, her wide eyes, long +at the outer corners, her hair aflame with henna. + +The hush of a thousand empty miles lay over the city. For an hour +nothing lived but the universe, the bright dust in the sky.... + +That hush was disrupted. The single long crash of a human throat! +Rolling down over the plain of the housetops! + +"_La illah il Allah, Mohammed rassoul'lah! Allah Akbar!_ God is +great!" + +One by one the dim towers took it up. The call to prayer rolled +between the stars and the town. It searched the white runways. It +penetrated the vine-bowered arbour. Little by little, tower by tower, +it died. In a _fondouk_ outside the gate a waking camel lifted a +gargling wail. A jackal dog barked in the Oued Zaroud two miles away. +And again the silence of the desert came up over the city walls. + +Under the vine Habib whispered: "No, I don't care anything about thy +name. A name is such a little thing. I'll call thee 'Nedjma,' because +we are under the stars." + +"_Ai, Nedjmetek_--'Thy Star'!" The girl's lips moved drowsily. In the +dark her eyes shone with a dull, steady lustre, unblinking, +unquestioning, always unquestioning. + +That slumberous acquiescence, taken from all her Arab mothers, began +to touch his nerves with the old uneasiness. He took her shoulders +between his hands and shook her roughly, crying in a whisper: + +"Why dost thou do nothing but repeat my words? Talk! Say things to me! +Thou art like the rest; thou wouldst try to make me seem like these +Arab men, who wish for nothing in a woman but the shadow of +themselves. And I am not like that!" + +"No, _sidi_, no." + +"But talk! Tell me things about thyself, thy life, thy world. Talk! In +Paris, now, a man and a woman can talk together--yes--as if they were +two friends met in a coffeehouse. And those women can talk! Ah! in +Paris I have known women--" + +The girl stirred now. Her eyes narrowed; the dark line of her lips +thinned. At last something comprehensible had touched her mind. + +"Thou hast known many women, then, _sidi_! Thou hast come here but to +tell me that? Me, who am of little beauty in a man's eyes!" + +Habib laughed under his breath. He shook her again. He kissed her and +kissed her again on her red lips. + +"Thou art jealous, then! But thou canst not comprehend. Canst thou +comprehend this, that thou art more beautiful by many times than any +other woman I have ever seen? Thou art a heaven of loveliness, and I +cannot live without thee. That is true ... Nedjma. I am going to take +thee for my wife, because I cannot live without thine eyes, thy lips, +the fragrance of thy hair.... Yes, I am going to marry thee, my star. +It is written! It is written!" + +For the first time he could not see her eyes. She had turned them +away. Once again something had come in contact with the smooth, heavy +substance of her mind. He pulled at her. + +"Say! Say, Nedjmà!... It is written!" + +"It is not written, _sidi_." The same ungroping acquiescence was in +her whisper. "I have been promised, _sidi_, to another than thee." + +Habib's arms let go; her weight sank away in the dark under the vine. +The silence of the dead night crept in and lay between them. + +"And in the night of thy marriage, then, thy husband--or thy father, +if thou hast a father--will kill thee." + +"_In-cha-'llah_. If it be the will of God." + +Again the silence came and lay heavy between them. A minute and +another minute went away. Habib's wrists were shaking. His breast +began to heave. With a sudden roughness he took her back, to devour +her lips and eyes and hair with the violence of his kisses. + +"No, no! I'll not have it! No! Thou art too beautiful for any other +man than I even to look upon! No, no, no!" + + * * * * * + +Habib ben Habib walked out of the gate Djelladin. The day had come; +the dawn made a crimson flame in the false-pepper trees. The life of +the gate was already at full tide of sound and colour, braying, +gargling, quarrelling--nomads wading in their flocks, Djlass +countrymen, Singalese soldiers, Jewish pack-peddlers, Bedouin women +bent double under their stacks of desert fire-grass streaming inward, +dust white, dust yellow, and all red in the dawn under the red wall. + +The flood ran against him. It tried to suck him back into the maw of +the city. He fought against it with his shoulders and his knees. He +tried now to run. It sucked him back. A wandering _Aissaoua_ plucked +at his sleeve and held under his nose a desert viper that gave off +metallic rose glints in its slow, pained constrictions. + +"To the glory of Sidna Aissa, master, two sous." + +He kept tugging at Habib's sleeve, holding him back, sucking him back +with his twisting reptile into the city of the faithful. + +"In the name of Jesus, master, two copper sous!" + +Habib's nerves snapped. He struck off the holy mendicant with his +fist. "That the devil grill thee!" he chattered. He ran. He bumped +into beasts. He bumped into a blue tunic. He halted, blinked, and +passed a hand over his hot-lidded eyes. He stammered: + +"My friend! I have been looking for you! _Hamdou lillah! El +hamdou'llah_!" + +Raoul Genet, studying the flushed, bright-eyed, unsteady youth, put up +a hand to cover a little smile, half ironic, half pitying. + +"So, Habib ben Habib, you revert! Camel-driver's talk in your mouth +and camel's-hide slippers on your feet. Already you revert! Eh?" + +"No, that is not the truth. But I am in need of a friend." + +"You look like a ghost, Habib." The faint smile still twisted Raoul's +lips. "Or a drunken angel. You have not slept." + +"That's of no importance. I tell you I am in need--" + +"You've not had coffee, Habib. When you've had coffee--" + +"Coffee! My God! Raoul, that you go on talking of coffee when life and +death are in the balance! For I can't live without--Listen, now! +Strictly! I have need to-night--to-morrow night--one night when it is +dark--I have need of the garrison car." + +The other made a blowing sound. "I'm the commandant, am I, overnight? +_Zut_! The garrison car!" Habib took hold of his arm and held it +tight. "If not the car, two horses, then. And I call you my friend." + +"_Two_ horses! Ah! So! I begin to perceive. Youth! Youth!" + +"Don't jibe, Raoul! I have need of two horses--two horses that are +fast and strong." + +"Are the horses in thy father's stable, then, of no swiftness and of +no strength?" + +It was said in the _patois_, the bastard Arabic of the Tunisian +_bled_. A shadow had fallen across them; the voice came from above. +From the height of his crimson saddle Si Habib bel-Kalfate awaited the +answer of his son. His brown, unlined, black-bearded face, shadowed in +the hood of his creamy burnoose, remained serene, benign, urbanely +attendant. But if an Arab knows when to wait, he knows also when not +to wait. And now it was as if nothing had been said before. + +"Greeting, my son. I have been seeking thee. Thy couch was not slept +upon last night." + +Habib's face was sullen to stupidity. "Last night, sire, I slept at +the _caserne_, at the invitation of my friend, Lieutenant Genet, whom +you see beside me." + +The Arab, turning in his saddle, appeared to notice the Christian for +the first time. His lids drooped; his head inclined an inch. + +"Greeting to thee, oh, master!" + +"To thee, greeting!" + +"Thou art in well-being?" + +"There is no ill. And thou?" + +"There is no ill. That the praise be to God, and the prayer!" + +Bel-Kalfate cleared his throat and lifted the reins from the neck of +his mare. + +"Rest in well-being!" he pronounced. + +Raoul shrugged his shoulders a little and murmured: "May God multiply +thy days!... And yours, too," he added to Habib in French. He bowed +and took his leave. + +Bel-Kalfate watched him away through the thinning crowd, sitting his +saddle stolidly, in an attitude of rumination. When the blue cap had +vanished behind the blazing corner of the wool dyers, he threw the +reins to his Sudanese stirrup boy and got down to the ground. He took +his son's hand. So, palm in palm, at a grave pace, they walked back +under the arch into the city. The market-going stream was nearly done. +The tide, against which at its flood Habib had fought and won ground, +carried him down again with its last shallow wash--so easily! + +His nerves had gone slack. He walked in a heavy white dream. The city +drew him deeper into its murmurous heart. The walls pressed closer and +hid him away. The _souks_ swallowed him under their shadowy arcades. +The breath of the bazaar, fetor of offal, stench of raw leather, and +all the creeping perfumes of Barbary, attar of roses, chypre and amber +and musk, clogged his senses like the drug of some abominable +seduction. He was weary, weary, weary. And in a strange, troubling way +he was at rest. + +"_Mektoub_! It is written! It is written in the book of the destiny of +man!" + +With a kind of hypnotic fascination, out of the corners of his eyes, +he took stock of the face beside him, the face of the strange being +that was his father--the broad, moist, unmarked brow; the large eyes, +heavy-lidded, serene; the full-fleshed cheeks from which the beard +sprang soft and rank, and against which a hyacinth, pendent over the +ear, showed with a startling purity of pallor; and the mobile, +deep-coloured, humid lips--the lips of the voluptuary, the eyes of the +dreamer, the brow of the man of never-troubled faith. + +"Am I like that?" And then, "What can that one be to me?" + +As if in answer, bel-Kalfate's gaze came to his son. + +"I love thee," he said, and he kissed Habib's temple with his lips. +"Thou art my son," he went on, "and my eyes were thirsty to drink of +the sight of thee. It is _el jammaa_." [Friday, the Mohammedan +Sabbath.] "It is time we should go to the prayer. We shall go with +Hadji Daoud to-day, for afterward, there at the mosque, I have +rendezvous with his friends, in the matter of the dowry. It is the +day, thou rememberest, that he appointed." + +Habib wanted to stop. He wanted to think. He wanted time. But the +serene, warm pressure of his father's hand carried him on. + +Stammering words fell from his mouth. + +"My mother--I remember--my mother, it is true, said something--but I +did not altogether comprehend--and--Oh! my sire ----" + +"Thou shalt be content. Thou art a man now. The days of thy learning +are accomplished. Thou hast suffered exile; now is thy reward +prepared. And the daughter of the notary, thy betrothed, is as lovely +as a palm tree in the morning and as mild as sweet milk, beauteous as +a pearl, Habib, a milk-white pearl. See!" + +Drawing from his burnoose a sack of Moroccan lambskin, he opened it +and lifted out a pearl. His fingers, even at rest, seemed to caress +it. They slid back among the treasure in the sack, the bargaining +price for the first wife of the only son of a man blessed by God. And +now they brought forth also a red stone, cut in the fashion of Tunis. + +"A milk-white sea pearl, look thou; to wed in a jewel with the +blood-red ruby that is the son of my breast. Ah, Habib, my Habib, but +thou shalt be content!" + +They stood in the sunlight before the green door of a mosque. As the +hand of the city had reached out for Habib through the city gate, so +now the prayer, throbbing like a tide across the pillared mystery of +the court, reached out through the doorway in the blaze.... And he +heard his own voice, strange in his mouth, shallow as a bleat: + +"Why, then, sire--why, oh! why, then, hast thou allowed me to make of +those others the friends of my spirit, the companions of my mind?" + +"They are neither companions nor friends of thine, for God is God!" + +"And why hast thou sent me to learn the teaching of the French?" + +"When thou settest thy horse against an enemy it is well to have two +lances to thy hand--thine own and his. And it is written, Habib, son +of Habib, that thou shalt be content.... Put off thy shoes now and +come. It is time we were at prayer." + +Summer died. Autumn grew. With the approach of winter an obscure +nervousness spread over the land. In the dust of its eight months' +drought, from one day to another, from one glass-dry night to another, +the desert waited for the coming of the rains. The earth cracked. A +cloud sailing lone and high from the coast of Sousse passed under the +moon and everywhere men stirred in their sleep, woke, looked out--from +their tents on the cactus steppes, from _fondouks_ on the camel tracks +of the west, from marble courts of Kairwan.... The cloud passed on and +vanished in the sky. On the plain the earth cracks crept and ramified. +Gaunt beasts tugged at their heel ropes and would not be still. The +jackals came closer to the tents. The city slept again, but in its +sleep it seemed to mutter and twitch.... + +In the serpent-spotted light under the vine on the housetop Habib +muttered, too, and twitched a little. It was as if the arid months had +got in under his skin and peeled off the coverings of his nerves. The +girl's eyes widened with a gradual, phlegmatic wonder of pain under +the pinch of his blue fingers on her arms. His face was the colour of +the moon. + +"Am I a child of three years, that my father should lead me here or +lead me there by the hand? Am I that?" + +"Nay, _sidi_, nay." + +"Am I a sheep between two wells, that the herder's stick should tell +me, 'Here, and not there, thou shalt drink'? Am I a sheep?" + +"Thou art neither child nor sheep, _sidi_, but a lion!" + +"Yes, a lion!" A sudden thin exaltation shook him like a fever chill. +"I am more than a lion, Nedjma, I am a man--just as the _Roumi_" +[Romans--_i.e_., Christians.] "are men--men who decide--men who +undertake--agitate--accomplish ... and now, for the last time, I have +decided. A fate has given thy loveliness to me, and no man shall take +it away from me to enjoy. I will take it away from them instead! From +all the men of this Africa, conquered by the French. Hark! I will come +and take thee away in the night, to the land beyond the sea, where +thou mayest be always near me, and neither God nor man say yes or no!" + +"And there, _sidi_, beyond the sea, I may talk unveiled with other +men? As thou hast told me, in France ----" + +"Yes, yes, as I have told thee, there thou mayest--thou ----" + +He broke off, lost in thought, staring down at the dim oval of her +face. Again he twitched a little. Again his fingers tightened on her +arms. He twisted her around with a kind of violence of confrontation. + +"But wouldst thou rather talk with other men than with me? Dost thou +no longer love me, then?" + +"_Ai_, master, I love thee. I wish to see no other man than thee." + +"Ah, my star, I know!" He drew her close and covered her face with his +kisses. + +And in her ear he whispered: "And when I come for thee in the night, +thou wilt go with me? Say!" + +"I will go, _sidi. In-cha-'llah_! If God will!" + +At that he shook her again, even more roughly than before. + +"Don't say that! Not, 'If God will!' Say to me, 'If _thou_ wilt.'" + +"_Ai--Ai_ ----" + +There was a silence. + +"But let it be quickly," he heard her whispering, after a while. Under +his hand he felt a slow shiver moving over her arms. "_Nekaf_!" she +breathed, so low that he could hardly hear. "I am afraid." + +It was another night when the air was electric and men stirred in +their sleep. Lieutenant Genet turned over in bed and stared at the +moonlight streaming in through the window from the court of the +_caserne_. In the moonlight stood Habib. + +"What do you want?" Genet demanded, gruff with sleep. + +"I came to you because you are my friend." + +The other rubbed his eyes and peered through the window to mark the +Sudanese sentry standing awake beside his box at the gate. + +"How did you get in?" + +"I got in as I shall get out, not only from here, but from Kairwan, +from Africa--because I am a man of decision." + +"You are also, Habib, a skeleton. The moon shows through you. What +have you been doing these weeks, these months, that you should be so +shivery and so thin? Is it Old Africa gnawing at your bones? Or are +you, perhaps, in love?" + +"I am in love. Yes.... _Ai, ai_, Raoul _habiby_, if but thou couldst +see her--the lotus bloom opening at dawn--the palm tree in a land of +streams ----" + +"Talk French!" Genet got his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. +He passed a hand through his hair. "You are in love, then ... and +again I tell, you, for perhaps the twentieth time, Habib, that between +a man and a woman in Islam there is no such thing as love." + +"But I am not in Islam. I am not in anything! And if you could but see +her ----" + +"Lust!" + +"What do you mean by 'lust'?" + +"Lust is the thing you find where you don't find trust. Lust is a +priceless perfume that a man has in a crystal vial, and he is the +miser of its fragrance. He closes the windows when he takes the +stopper out of that bottle to drink its breath, and he puts the +stopper back quickly again, so that it will not evaporate--not too +soon." + +"But that, Raoul, is love! All men know that for love. The priceless +perfume in a crystal beyond price." + +"Yes, love, too, is the perfume in the vial. But the man who has that +vial opens the windows and throws the stopper away, and all the air is +sweet forever. The perfume evaporates, forever. And this, Habib, is +the miracle. The vial is never any emptier than when it began." + +"Yes, yes--I know--perhaps--but to-night I have no time ----" + +The moon _did_ shine through him. He was but a rag blown in the dark +wind. He had been torn to pieces too long. + +"I have no time!" he repeated, with a feverish force. "Listen, Raoul, +my dear friend. To-day the price was paid in the presence of the +_cadi_, Ben Iskhar. Three days from now they lead me to marriage with +the daughter of the notary. What, to me, is the daughter of the +notary? They lead me like a sheep to kill at a tomb.... Raoul, for the +sake of our friendship, give me hold of your hand. To-morrow +night--the car! Or, if you say you haven't the disposal of the car, +bring me horses." And again the shaking of his nerves got the better +of him; again he tumbled back into the country tongue. "For the sake +of God, bring me two horses! By Sidna Aissa! by the Three Hairs from +the Head of the Prophet I swear it! My first-born shall be named for +thee, Raoul. Only bring thou horses! Raoul! Raoul!" + +It was the whine of the beggar of Barbary. Genet lay back, his hands +behind his head, staring into shadows under the ceiling. + +"Better the car. I'll manage it with some lies. To-morrow night at +moonset I'll have the car outside the gate Djedid." After a moment he +added, under his breath, "But I know your kind too well, Habib ben +Habib, and I know that you will not be there." + +Habib was not there. From moonset till half-past three, well over two +hours, Genet waited, sitting on the stone in the shadow of the gate, +prowling the little square inside. He smoked twenty cigarettes. He +yawned three times twenty times. At last he went out got into the car +and drove away. + +As the throb of the engine grew faint a figure in European clothes and +a long-tasselled _chechia_ crept out from the dark of a door arch +along the street. It advanced toward the gate. It started back at a +sound. It rallied again, a figure bedeviled by vacillation. It came as +far as the well in the centre of the little square. + +On the horizon toward the coast of Sousse rested a low black wall of +cloud. Lightning came out of it from time to time and ran up the sky, +soundless, glimmering.... The cry of the morning muezzin rolled down +over the town. The lightning showed the figure sprawled face down on +the cool stone of the coping of the well.... + +The court of the house of bel-Kalfate swam in the glow of candles. A +striped awning shut out the night sky, heavy with clouds, and the +women, crowding for stolen peeps on the flat roof. A confusion of +voices, raillery, laughter, eddied around the arcaded walls, and thin +music bound it together with a monotonous count of notes. + +Through the doorway from the marble _entresol_ where he stood Habib +could see his father, cross-legged on a dais, with the notary. They +sat hand in hand like big children, conversing gravely. With them was +the _caid_ of Kairwan, the _cadi_, ben Iskhar, and a dark-skinned +cousin from the oases of the Djerid in the south. Their garments +shone; there was perfume in their beards. On a rostrum beyond and +above the crowded heads the musicians swayed at their work--_tabouka_ +players with strong, nervous thumbs; an oily, gross lutist; an +organist, watching everything with the lizard eyes of the hashish +taker. Among them, behind a taborette piled with bait of food and +drink, the Jewish dancing woman from Algiers lolled in her cushions, a +drift of white disdain.... + +He saw it all through a kind of mist. It was as if time had halted, +and he was still at the steaming _hammam_ of the afternoon, his spirit +and his flesh undone, and all about him in the perfumed vapour of the +bath the white bodies of his boyhood comrades glimmering luminous and +opalescent. + +His flesh was still asleep, and so was his soul. The hand of his +father city had come closer about him, and for a moment it seemed that +he was too weary, or too lazy, to push it away. For a little while he +drifted with the warm and perfumed cloud of the hours. + +Hands turned him around. It was Houseen Abdelkader, the _caid's_ son, +the comrade of long ago--Houseen in silk of wine and silver, hyacinths +pendent on his cheeks, a light of festival in his eyes. + +"_Es-selam alekoum, ya Habib habiby_!" It was the salutation in the +plural--to Habib, and to the angels that walk, one at either shoulder +of every son of God. And as he spoke he threw a new white burnoose +over Habib's head, so that it hung down straight and covered him like +a bridal veil. + +"_Alekoum selam, ya Seenou_!" It was the name of boyhood, Seenou, the +diminutive, that fell from Habib's lips. And he could not call it +back. + +"Come thou now." He felt the gentle push of Houseen's hands. He found +himself moving toward the door that stood open into the street. The +light of an outer conflagration was in his eyes. The thin music of +lute and tabouka in the court behind him grew thinner; the boom of +drums and voices in the street grew big. He had crossed the threshold. +A hundred candles, carried in horizontal banks on laths by little +boys, came around him on three sides, like footlights. And beyond the +glare, in the flaming mist, he saw the street Dar-el-Bey massed with +men. All their faces were toward him, hot yellow spots in which the +black spots of their mouths gaped and vanished. + +"That the marriage of Habib be blessed! Blessed be the marriage of +Habib!" + +The riot of sound began to take form. It began to emerge in a measure, +a _boom-boom-boom_ of tambours and big goatskin drums. A bamboo fife +struck into a high, quavering note. The singing club of Sidibou-Sa d +joined voice. + +The footlights were moving forward toward the street of the market. +Habib moved with them a few slow paces without effort or will. Again +they had all stopped. It could not be more than two hundred yards to +the house of the notary and his waiting bride, but by the ancient +tradition of Kairwan an hour must be consumed on the way. + +An hour! An eternity! Panic came over Habib. He turned his hooded eyes +for some path of escape. To the right, Houseen! To the left, close at +his shoulder, Mohammed Sherif--Mohammed the laughing and the +well-beloved--Mohammed, with whom in the long, white days he used to +chase lizards by the pool of the Aglabides ... in the long, white, +happy days, while beyond the veil of palms the swaying camel +palanquins of women, like huge bright blooms, went northward up the +Tunis road.... + +What made him think of that? + +"_Boom-boom-boom-boom_!" And around the drums beyond the candles he +heard them singing: + + _On the day of the going away of my Love, + When the litters, carrying the women of the tribe, + Traversed the valley of Dad, like a sea, mirage, + They were like ships, great ships, the work of the children of + Adoul, + Or like the boats of Yamen's sons...._ + +"_Boom-boom_!" The monotonous pulse, the slow minor slide of sixteenth +tones, the stark rests--he felt the hypnotic pulse of the old music +tampering with the pulse of his blood. It gave him a queer creeping +fright. He shut his eyes, as if that would keep it out. And in the +glow of his lids he saw the tents on the naked desert; he saw the +forms of veiled women; he saw the horses of warriors coming like a +breaker over the sand--the horses of the warriors of God! + +He pulled the burnoose over his lids to make them dark. And even in +the dark he could see. He saw two eyes gazing at his, untroubled, +untroubling, out of the desert night. And they were the eyes of any +woman--the eyes of his bride, of his sister, his mother, the eyes of +his mothers a thousand years dead. + +"Master!" they said. + +They were pushing him forward by the elbows, Mohammed and Houseen. He +opened his eyes. The crowd swam before him through the yellow glow. +Something had made an odd breach in his soul, and through the breach +came memories. + +Memories! There at his left was the smoky shelf of blind Moulay's +café--black-faced, white-eyed old Moulay. Moulay was dead now many +years, but the men still sat in the same attitudes, holding the same +cups, smoking the same _chibouk_ with the same gulping of bubbles as +in the happy days. And there between the café and the _souk_ gate was +the same whitewashed niche where three lads used to sit with their +feet tucked under their little _kashabias_, their _chechias_ awry on +their shaven polls, and their lips pursed to spit after the leather +legs of the infidel conquerors passing by. The _Roumi_, the French +blasphemers, the defilers of the mosque! Spit on the dogs! Spit! + +Behind his reverie the drums boomed, the voices chanted. The lament of +drums and voices beat at the back of his brain--while he remembered +the three lads sitting in the niche, waiting from one white day to +another for the coming of Moulay Saa, the Messiah; watching for the +Holy War to begin. + +"And I shall ride in the front rank of the horsemen, please God!" + +"And I, I shall ride at Moulay Saa's right hand, please God, and I +shall cut the necks of _Roumi_ with my sword, like barley straw!" + +Habib advanced in the spotlight of the candles. Under the burnoose his +face, half shadowed, looked green and white, as if he were sick to his +death. Or, perhaps, as if he were being born again. + +The minutes passed, and they were hours. The music went on, +interminable. + +"_Boom-boom-boom-boom_ ----" But now Habib himself was the instrument, +and now the old song of his race played its will on him. + +Pinkness began to creep over the green-white cheeks. The cadence of +the chanting had changed. It grew ardent, melting, voluptuous. + +_... And conquests I have made among the fair ones, perfume inundated, +Beauties ravishing; that sway in an air of musk and saffron, Bearing +still on their white necks the traces of kisses...._ + +It hung under the pepper trees, drunk with the beauty of flesh, +fainting with passion. Above the trees mute lightning played in the +cloud. Habib ben Habib was born again. Again, after exile, he came +back into the heritage. He saw the heaven of the men of his race. He +saw Paradise in a walking dream. He saw women forever young and +forever lovely in a land of streams, women forever changing, forever +virgin, forever new; strangers intimate and tender. The angels of a +creed of love--or of lust! + +"Lust is the thing you find where you don't find trust." + +A thin echo of the Frenchman's diatribe flickered through his memory, +and he smiled. He smiled because his eyes were open now. He seemed to +see this Christian fellow sitting on his bed, bare-footed, +rumple-haired, talking dogmatically of perfumes and vials and stoppers +thrown away, talking of faith in women. And that was the jest. For he +seemed to see the women, over there in Paris, that the brothers of +that naive fellow trusted--trusted alone with a handsome young +university student from Tunisia. Ha-ha-ha! Now he remembered. He +wanted to laugh out loud at a race of men that could be as simple as +that. He wanted to laugh at the bursting of the iridescent bubble of +faith in the virtue of beautiful women. The Arab knew! + +A colour of health was on his face; his step had grown confident. Of a +sudden, and very quietly, all the mixed past was blotted out. He heard +only the chanting voices and the beating drums. + +_Once I came into the tent of a young beauty on a day of rain.... +Beauty blinding.... Charms that ravished and made drunkards of the +eyes...._ + +His blood ran with the song, pulse and pulse. The mute lightning came +down through the trees and bathed his soul. And, shivering a little, +he let his thoughts go for the first time to the strange and virgin +creature that awaited his coming there, somewhere, behind some blind +house wall, so near. + +"Thou hast suffered exile. Now is thy reward prepared." + +What a fool! What a fool he had been! + +He wanted to run now. The lassitude of months was gone from his limbs. +He wanted to fling aside that clogging crowd, run, leap, arrive. How +long was this hour? Where was he? He tried to see the housetops to +know, but the glow was in his eyes. He felt the hands of his comrades +on his arms. + +But now there was another sound in the air. His ears, strained to the +alert, caught it above the drums and voices--a thin, high ululation. +It came from behind high walls and hung among the leaves of the trees, +a phantom yodeling, the welcoming "_you-you-you-you_" of the women of +Islam. + +Before him he saw that the crowd had vanished. Even the candles went +away. There was a door, and the door was open. + +He entered, and no one followed. He penetrated alone into an empty +house of silence, and all around him the emptiness moved and the +silence rustled. + +He traversed a court and came into a chamber where there was a light. +He saw a negress, a Sudanese duenna, crouching in a corner and staring +at him with white eyes. He turned toward the other side of the room. + +She sat on a high divan, like a throne, her hands palms together, her +legs crossed. In the completeness of her immobility she might have +been a doll or a corpse. After the strict fashion of brides, her +eyebrows were painted in thick black arches, her lips drawn in +scarlet, her cheeks splashed with rose. Her face was a mask, and +jewels in a crust hid the flame of her hair. Under the stiff kohl of +their lids her eyes turned neither to the left nor to the right. She +seemed not to breathe. It is a dishonour for a maid to look or to +breathe in the moment when her naked face suffers for the first time +the gaze of the lord whom she has never seen. + +A minute passed away. + +"This is the thing that is mine!" A blinding exultation ran through +his brain and flesh. "Better this than the 'trust' of fools and +infidels! No question here of 'faith.' _Here I know_! I know that this +thing that is mine has not been bandied about by the eyes of all the +men in the world. I know that this perfume has never been breathed by +the passers in the street. I know that it has been treasured from the +beginning in a secret place--against this moment--for me. This bud has +come to its opening in a hidden garden; no man has ever looked upon +it; no man will ever look upon it. None but I." + +He roused himself. He moved nearer, consumed with the craving and +exquisite curiosity of the new. He stood before the dais and gazed +into the unwavering eyes. As he gazed, as his sight forgot the +grotesque doll painting of the face around those eyes, something queer +began to come over him. A confusion. Something bothering. A kind of +fright. + +"Thou!" he breathed. + +Her icy stillness endured. Not once did her dilated pupils waver from +the straight line. Not once did her bosom lift with breath. + +"_Thou_! It is _thou_, then, O runner on the housetops by night!" + +The fright of his soul grew deeper, and suddenly it went out. And in +its place there came a black calm. The eyes before him remained +transfixed in the space beyond his shoulder. But by and by the painted +lips stirred once. + +"_Nekaf_!... I am afraid!" + +Habib turned away and went out of the house. + +In the house of bel-Kalfate the Jewess danced, still, even in +voluptuous motion, a white drift of disdain. The music eddied under +the rayed awning. Raillery and laughter were magnified. More than a +little _bokha_, the forbidden liquor distilled of figs, had been +consumed in secret. Eyes gleamed; lips hung.... Alone in the thronged +court on the dais, the host and the notary, the _caid_, the _cadi_, +and the cousin from the south continued to converse in measured tones, +holding their coffee cups in their palms. + +"It comes to me, on thought," pronounced bel-Kalfate, inclining his +head toward the notary with an air of courtly deprecation--"it comes +to me that thou hast been defrauded. For what is a trifle of ten +thousand _douros_ of silver as against the rarest jewel (I am certain, +_sidi_) that has ever crowned the sex which thou mayest perhaps +forgive me for mentioning?" + +And in the same tone, with the same gesture, Hadji Daoud replied: +"Nay, master and friend, by the Beard of the Prophet, but I should +repay thee the half. For that is a treasure for a sultan's daughter, +and this _fillette_ of mine (forgive me) is of no great beauty or +worth ----" + +"In saying that, Sidi Hadji, thou sayest a thing which is at odds with +half the truth." + +They were startled at the voice of Habib coming from behind their +backs. + +"For thy daughter, Sidi Hadji, thy Zina, is surely as lovely as the +full moon sinking in the west in the hour before the dawn." + +The words were fair. But bel-Kalfate was looking at his son's face. + +"Where are thy comrades?" he asked, in a low voice. "How hast thou +come?" Then, with a hint of haste: "The dance is admirable. It would +be well that we should remain quiet, Habib, my son." + +But the notary continued to face the young man. He set his cup down +and clasped his hands about his knee. The knuckles were a little +white. + +"May I beg thee, Habib ben Habib, that thou shouldst speak the thing +which is in thy mind?" + +"There is only this, _sidi_, a little thing: When thou hast another +bird to vend in the market of hearts, it would perhaps be well to +examine with care the cage in which thou hast kept that bird. + +"Thy daughter," he added, after a moment of silence--"thy daughter, +Sidi Hadji, is with child." + +That was all that was said. Hadji Daoud lifted his cup and drained it, +sucking politely at the dregs. The _cadi_ coughed. The _cadi_ raised +his eyes to the awning and appeared to listen. Then he observed, +"To-night, _in-cha-'llah_, it will rain." The notary pulled his +burnoose over his shoulders, groped down with his toes for his +slippers, and got to his feet. + +"Rest in well-being!" he said. Then, without haste, he went out. + +Habib followed him tardily as far as the outer door. In the darkness +of the empty street he saw the loom of the man's figure moving off +toward his own house, still without any haste. + +"And in the night of thy marriage thy husband, or thy father, if thou +hast a father ----" + +Habib did not finish with the memory. He turned and walked a few steps +along the street. He could still hear the music and the clank of the +Jewess's silver in his father's court.... + +"_In-cha-'llah_!" she had said, that night. + +And after all, it _had_ been the will of God.... + +A miracle had happened. All the dry pain had gone out of the air. Just +now the months of waiting for the winter rains were done. All about +him the big, cool drops were spattering on the invisible stones. The +rain bathed his face. His soul was washed with the waters of the +merciful God of Arab men. + +For, after all, from the beginning, it had been written. All written! + +"_Mektoub_!" + + + +GRIT + +By TRISTRAM TUPPER + +From _Metropolitan Magazine_ + + +Grit was dead. There was no mistake about that. And on the very day of +his burial temptation came to his widow. + +Grit's widow was "Great" Taylor, whose inadequate first name was +Nell--a young, immaculate creature whose body was splendid even if her +vision and spirit were small. She never had understood Grit. + +Returning from the long, wearisome ride, she climbed the circular iron +staircase--up through parallels of garlic-scented tenement gloom--to +her three-room flat, neat as a pin; but not even then did she give way +to tears. Tears! No man could make Great Taylor weep! + +However, drawing the pins from her straw hat, dyed black for the +occasion, she admitted, "It ain't right." Grit had left her nothing, +absolutely nothing, but an unpleasant memory of himself--his grimy +face and hands, his crooked nose and baggy breeches.... And Great +Taylor was willing that every thought of him should leave her forever. +"Grit's gone," she told herself. "I ain't going to think of him any +more." + +Determinedly Great Taylor put some things to soak and, closing down +the top of the stationary washtubs, went to the window. The view was +not intriguing, and yet she hung there: roofs and more roofs, a +countless number reached out toward infinity, with pebbles and pieces +of broken glass glittering in the sunlight; chimneys sharply outlined +by shadow; and on every roof, except one, clothes-lines, from which +white cotton and linen flapped in the wind at the side of faded +overalls and red woollen shirts. They formed a kind of flag--these +red, white, and blue garments flying in the breeze high above a nation +of toilers. But Great Taylor's only thought was, "It's Monday." + +One roof, unlike the rest, displayed no such flag--a somewhat +notorious "garden" and dance hall just around the corner. + +And adjacent to this house was a vacant lot on which Great Taylor +could see a junk-cart waiting, and perhaps wondering what had become +of its master. + +She turned her eyes away. "I ain't going to think of him." Steadying +her chin in the palms of her hands, elbows on the window-sill, Nell +peered down upon a triangular segment of chaotic street. Massed +humanity overflowed the sidewalks and seemed to bend beneath the +weight of sunlight upon their heads and shoulders. A truck ploughed a +furrow through push-carts that rolled back to the curb like a wave +crested with crude yellow, red, green, and orange merchandise. She +caught the hum of voices, many tongues mingling, while the odours of +vegetables and fruit and human beings came faintly to her nostrils. +She was looking down upon one of the busiest streets of the city that +people sometimes call the Devil's Own. + +Grit had wrested an existence from the débris of this city. Others +have waded ankle-deep in the crowd; but he, a grimy, infinitesimal +molecule, had been at the bottom wholly submerged, where the light of +idealism is not supposed to penetrate. Grit had been a junkman; his +business address--a vacant lot; his only asset--a junk-cart across the +top of which he had strung a belt of jingling, jangling bells that had +called through the cavernous streets more plainly than Grit himself: +"Rags, old iron, bottles, and ra-ags." + +This had been Grit's song; perhaps the only one he had known, for he +had shoved that blest cart of his since a boy of thirteen; he had worn +himself as threadbare as the clothes on his back, and at last the +threads had snapped. He had died of old age--in his thirties. And his +junk-cart, with its bells, stood, silent and unmanned, upon the vacant +lot just around the corner. + +Great Taylor had seen Grit pass along this narrow segment of street, +visible from her window; but his flight had always been swift--pushing +steadily with head bent, never looking up. And so it was not during +his hours of toil that she had known him.... + +Nell closed the window. She was not going to think of him any more. +"Ain't worth a thought." But everything in the room reminded her of +the man. He had furnished it from his junk-pile. The drawer was +missing from the centre table, the door of the kitchen stove was wired +at the hinges; even the black marble clock, with its headless gilt +figure, and the brown tin boxes marked "Coffee," "Bread," and +"Sugar"--all were junk. And these were the things that Grit, not +without a show of pride, had brought home to her! + +Nell sank into a large armchair (with one rung gone) and glowered at +an earthen jug on the shelf. Grit had loved molasses. Every night he +had spilt amber drops of it on the table, and his plate had always +been hard to wash. "Won't have that to do any more," sighed Nell. Back +of the molasses jug, just visible, were the tattered pages of a +coverless book. This had come to Grit together with fifty pounds of +waste paper in gunny-sacks; and though Nell had never undergone the +mental torture of informing herself as to its contents, she had dubbed +the book "Grit's Bible," for he had pawed over it, spelling out the +words, every night for years. It was one thing from which she could +not wash Grit's grimy fingermarks, and so she disliked it even more +than the sticky molasses jug. "Him and his book and his brown molasses +jug!" One was gone forever, and soon she would get rid of the other +two. + +And yet, even as she thought this, her eyes moved slowly to the door, +and she could not help visualizing Grit as he had appeared every +evening at dusk. His baggy breeches had seemed always to precede him +into the room. The rest of him would follow--his thin shoulders, from +which there hung a greenish coat, frayed at the sleeves; above this, +his long, collarless neck, his pointed chin and broken nose, that +leaned toward the hollow and smudges of his cheek. + +He would lock the door quickly and stand there, looking at Nell. + +"Why did he always lock the door?" mused Great Taylor. "Nothing here +to steal! Why'd he stand there like that?" Every night she had +expected him to say something, but he never did. Instead, he would +take a long breath, almost like a sigh, and, after closing his eyes +for a moment, he would move into the room and light the screeching +gas-jet. "Never thought of turning down the gas." This, particularly, +was a sore point with Great Taylor. "Never thought of anything. Just +dropped into the best chair." + +"It's a good chair, Nell," he would say, "only one rung missing." And +he would remain silent, drooping there, wrists crossed in his lap, +palms turned upward, fingers curled, until supper had been placed +before him on the table. "Fingers bent like claws," muttered Great +Taylor, "and doing nothing while I set the table." + +Sometimes he would eat enormously, which irritated Nell; sometimes he +would eat nothing except bread and molasses, which irritated Nell even +more. "A good molasses jug," he would say; "got it for a dime. Once I +set a price I'm a stone wall; never give in." This was his one boast, +his stock phrase. After using it he would look up at his wife for a +word of approval; and as the word of approval was never forthcoming, +he would repeat: "Nell, I'm a stone wall; never give in." + +After supper he would ask what she had been doing all day. A weary, +almost voiceless, man, he had told her nothing. But Great Taylor while +washing the dishes would rattle off everything that had happened since +that morning. She seldom omitted any important detail, for she knew by +experience that Grit would sit there, silent, wrists crossed and palms +turned up, waiting. He had always seemed to know when she had left +anything out, and she always ended by telling him. Then he would take +a long breath, eyes closed, and, after fumbling back of the molasses +jug, would soon be seated again beneath the streaming gas-jet spelling +to himself the words of his coverless book. + +So vivid was the picture, the personality and routine of Grit, that +Great Taylor felt the awe with which he, at times, had inspired her. +She had been afraid of Grit--afraid to do anything she could not tell +him about; afraid not to tell him about everything she had done. But +now she determined: "I'll do what I please." And the first thing it +pleased Great Taylor to do was to get rid of the odious molasses jug. + +She plucked it from the shelf, holding the sticky handle between two +fingers, and dropped it into the peach crate that served as a +waste-basket. The noise when the jug struck the bottom of the crate +startled her. Great Taylor stood there--listening. Someone was slowly +ascending the circular staircase. The woman could hear a footfall on +the iron steps. + +"Grit's gone," she reassured herself. "I'll do what I please." + +She reached for the grimy book, "Grit's Bible," the most offensive +article in the room, and with sudden determination tore the book in +two, and was about to throw the defaced volume into the basket along +with the earthen jug when fear arrested the motion of her hands. Her +lips parted. She was afraid to turn her head. The door back of her had +opened. + +Great Taylor was only ordinarily superstitious. She had buried Grit +that morning. It was still broad daylight--early afternoon. And yet +when she turned, clutching the torn book, she fully expected to see a +pair of baggy breeches preceding a collarless, long-necked man with a +broken nose, and smudges in the hollows of his cheeks. + +Instead, she wheeled to see a pair of fastidiously pressed blue serge +trousers, an immaculate white collar, a straight nose and ruddy +complexion. In fact, the man seemed the exact opposite of Grit. Nell +glanced at the open door, back at the man, exhaled tremulously with +relief, and breathed: "Why didn't you knock?" + +"Sorry if I startled you," puffed the man, entirely winded by the six +flights. "Must have pushed the wrong button in the vestibule. No great +harm done." + +"Who are you? What you want?" + +"Junk. That's one of the things I came to see about--the junk in back +of my place. I suppose it's for sale." He thrust his white hands into +the side pockets of his coat, pulling the coat snugly around his waist +and hips, and smiled amiably at Great Taylor's patent surprise. + +"You!.... Buy Grit's junk business!" What did _he_ want with junk? He +was clean! From head to foot he was clean! His hair was parted. It was +not only parted, it was brushed into a wave, with ends pointing +stiffly up over his temples (a coiffure affected by bartenders of that +day); and Nell even detected the pleasant fragrance of pomade. "You +ain't a junkman." + +The man laughed. "I don't know about that." + +He studied her a moment in silence. Nell was leaning back against the +washtubs, her sleeves rolled up, her head tilted quizzically, lips +parted, while tints of colour ebbed and flowed in her throat and +cheeks. She had attained the ripeness of womanhood and very nearly +animal perfection. The man's attitude might have told her this. One of +his eyes, beneath a permanently cocked eyebrow, blinked like the +shutter of a camera and seemed to take intimate photographs of all +parts of her person. The other eye looked at her steadily from under a +drooping lid. "No," he said, after the pause of a moment, "I'm not +going into the junk business." But he wanted to get the rubbish away +from the back of his place. "I'll buy it and have it carted away. It's +too near the 'Garden.'" He rocked up on his toes and clicked his heels +gently. "I own the house just around the corner." + +"I knew it," Nell murmured fatuously. The man was vaguely familiar, +even though she could not remember having seen him before. + +"Set your price." He turned away, and Nell imagined that his +camera-like eye was taking instantaneous photographs of all the broken +and mended things in the immaculate room. A wave of hot blood made her +back prickle and dyed her throat crimson. + +"I don't like rubbish," said the man. "I don't like junk." + +"Who does?" stammered Great Taylor. + +"You dislike junk, and yet there was your husband, a junkman." He +watched her narrowly from beneath his drooping eyelid. + +Great Taylor was not of the noblesse, nor did she know the meaning of +noblesse oblige; and had she been a man, perhaps she would have denied +her former lord and master--once, twice, or even thrice--it has been +done; but being a woman, she said: "Leave Grit out of it." + +This seemed to please the man from around the corner. "I think we are +going to get on," he said significantly. "But you must remember that +Grit can't take care of you any longer." + +"Grit's gone," assented Nell; "gone for good." + +"Uhm." The man allowed his singular eyes to move over her. "I think we +can arrange something. I've seen you pass my place, looking in; and I +had something in mind when I started up here--something aside from +junk. I could make a place over there--matron or cashier. How would +you like that--cashier at the Garden?" He rocked up on his toes and +clicked his heels quite audibly. + +"I don't know anything about it." + +"You'll soon learn," he was confident. He mentioned the salary, and +that a former cashier was now half owner of an uptown place. And for +half an hour Great Taylor's saturnine mind followed in the wake of his +smoothly flowing words. + +Why couldn't Grit have talked like that? she kept asking herself. Grit +never said anything. Why couldn't he been clean like that, with hair +brushed into a curl that sat up like that? ... The man's words +gradually slipped far beyond her, and only his pleasant voice +accompanied her own thoughts. No reason why she shouldn't be cashier +at the Garden. Only one reason, anyway, and that wasn't any reason at +all.... + +On an afternoon more than a year ago she had gone to the place around +the corner. She had told Grit all about it, and Grit had said in his +weary voice, "Don't never go again, Nell." She had argued with Grit. +The Garden wasn't wicked; nothing the matter with it; other people +went there of an afternoon; she liked the music.... And Grit had +listened, drooping in his chair, wrists crossed and palms turned +upward. Finally, when Nell had finished, he had repeated, "Don't go +again." He had not argued, for Grit never argued; he was always too +weary. But this had been one of his longest speeches. He had ended: +"The Devil himself owns that place. I ought to know, my junkyard's +right back of it." And he had closed his eyes and taken a long, deep +breath. "When I say a thing, Nell, I'm a stone wall. You can't go +there again--now or never." And that had settled it, for Great Taylor +had been afraid of Grit. But now Grit was dead; gone for good. She +would do as she pleased.... + +When she looked up the man had stopped talking. He glanced at the +clock. + +"What time?" murmured Great Taylor. + +"Five," said the man from just around the corner. + +Nell nodded her head and watched as the man's fastidiously pressed +trousers and polished shoes cleared the closing door. Nell immediately +went to the looking-glass--a cracked little mirror that hung by the +mantelpiece--and studied the reflection of herself with newly awakened +interest. She had never seemed so radiant--her smooth hair, her +lineless face, her large gray eyes and perfect throat. "I ain't so bad +looking," she admitted. Grit had never made her feel this way. And +again she asked herself why he could not have been clean like the man +from around the corner. + +She rehearsed all that had been said. She thought of the salary the +man had mentioned, and made calculations. It was more than Grit had +averaged for the two of them to live on. With prodigal fancy she spent +the money and with new-born thrift she placed it in bank. Limited only +by her small knowledge of such things, she revelled in a dream of +affluence and luxury which was only dissipated when gradually she +became conscious that throughout the past hour she had been clinging +to a grimy, coverless book. + +Damp finger-prints were upon the outer leaves, and the pages adhered +to her moistened hand. She loosened her grip, and the book opened to a +particularly soiled page on which a line had been underscored with a +thick red mark. Dully, Great Taylor read the line, spelling out the +words; but it conveyed nothing to her intellect. It was the fighting +phrase of a famous soldier: "_I have drawn the sword and thrown away +the scabbard_." + +"What does that mean?" she mumbled. Her eyes wandered to the top of +the page, where in larger type was the title: "Life of 'STONEWALL' +JACKSON." "Stonewall," repeated Nell. "Stonewall!" The word had the +potency to bring vividly before her Grit's drooping, grimy form. Her +ears rang with his ridiculous boast. His voice seemed no longer low +and weary. "When I say a thing ... stone wall. Can't go there +again--now or never." Great Taylor mumbled disparagingly, "He got it +from a book!" And again she read the fighting phrase of Grit's hero: +"_I have drawn the sword and thrown away the scabbard_." "Can't mean +Grit," she mused. "He never threw away anything...." And she tossed +his desecrated Bible toward the peach crate; but missing its aim, the +book slid along the floor with a slight rustle, almost like a sigh, +and struck the chair-board behind the washtubs, where it lay limp and +forgotten. + +Back of Nell the clock struck the half hour, and she turned quickly, +her heart thumping with the fear of being late. But the hour was only +three thirty. "Plenty time." She gazed at the broken clock. "A good +clock," Grit used to say; "keeps time and only cost a quarter." "Stone +wall!... Humph!..." + +Nell transformed the washtubs into a bath by the removal of the centre +partition, and within an hour was bathed and dressed. Sticking the +pins through her straw hat, dyed black, she took from the bottom +drawer of the cupboard a patent-leather hand-bag with colourful +worsted fruit embroidered upon its shining sides. She thought of the +night Grit had brought it home to her, his pride--he had bought it at +a store. But a glance around the room obliterated this memory, and she +mumbled, "Wish I warn't never, _never_ going to see this place again! +Wait till I get money...." She glared at the broken furniture, each +piece of which brought back some memory of the man. She could see him +drooping in the armchair, with his wrists crossed, fingers curled. She +glared at the shelf and imagined him fumbling for something that was +not there. She started for the door, then, turning back, reached into +the peach crate. "There! Keep your old molasses jug!" she said, in a +dry voice, and, replacing the jug on the shelf, she went out into the +hall. + +Winding down through the tenement-house gloom, Great Taylor was not +without fear. Her footfall on the uncarpeted landings and iron treads +sounded hollow and strangely loud. The odours that in the past had +greeted her familiarly, making known absorbing domestic details of her +neighbours, caused her neither to pause nor to sniff. She reached the +narrow entrance hall, dark and deserted, and, hurrying down its +length, fumbled with the knob and pulled open the street door. +Dazzling sunlight, a blast of warm air and the confused clatter of the +sidewalk engulfed her. She stood vacillating in the doorway, thinly +panoplied for the struggle of existence. Her body was splendid, it is +true, but her spirit was small. Despite the sunlight and warmth she +was trembling. And yet, for years she had gone down into this street +confident of herself, mingling on equal terms with its wayfarers, her +ear catching and translating the sounds that, converging, caused this +babel. Now, suddenly, all of it was meaningless, the peddlers with +whom she had bickered and bargained in a loud voice with gestures, +breast to breast, were strangers and the street an alien land. Many +things seemed to have passed backward out of her life. She was no +longer Grit's wife, no longer the Great Taylor of yesterday. She was +something new-born, free of will; all the old ties had been clipped. +She could do as she pleased. No one could stop her. And she pleased to +become a denizen of a world which, though just around the corner, was +unrelated to the sphere in which she had moved. + +"What's the matter with me?" she asked herself. "Nothing to be afraid +of. He's gone. I'll do as I please." With such assertions she +bolstered her courage, but nevertheless she was trembling.... + +Glossy-haired women jostled her with their baskets. Taller by a head, +Nell pushed her way oblivious of the crowd. At the corner she paused. +"I ain't going to be early." A clock across the avenue, visible +beneath the reverberating ironwork of the elevated, seemed to have +stopped at the half hour. It was four thirty. She watched the long +hand until it moved jerkily. A policeman, half dragging a shrieking +woman and followed by a jostling, silent crowd, swept Great Taylor +aside and put in a call for the wagon. + +She hurriedly rounded the corner and passed a window that displayed a +pyramid of varnished kegs backed by a mirror with a ram's head painted +on it in colours. Beyond was the side entrance. Over the door hung a +glass sign, one word in large red letters: "DANCING." She caught the +odour of cheap wine and stale beer. Again she said, "I ain't going to +be early," and moved away aimlessly. + +Beyond the end of this building was a vacant lot and Great Taylor +moved more swiftly with head averted. She had passed nearly to the +next building before she stopped and wheeled around defiantly. "I +ain't afraid to look," she said to herself and gazed across at Grit's +junk-cart, with its string of bells, partly concealed back against the +fence. It was standing in the shadow, silent, unmanned. She walked on +for a few steps and turned again. The cart was standing as before, +silent, unmanned. She stood there, hands on her hips, trying to +visualize Grit drooping over the handle--his collarless neck, his +grimy face and baggy breeches; but her imagination would not paint the +picture. "Grit's gone for good," she said. "Why couldn't he been clean +like other people, like the man that owns the Garden? No excuse for +being dirty and always tired like that. Anybody could push it and keep +clean, too--half clean, anyway." She slipped a glance at the clock. It +stood at twenty minutes before the hour of her appointment. "A baby +could push it...." + +She picked her way across the vacant lot to the junk-cart and laid her +hand upon the grimy handle. The thing moved. The strings of bells set +up a familiar jingle. "Easy as a baby carriage!" And Great Taylor +laughed. The cart reached the sidewalk, bumped down over the curb and +pulling Great Taylor with it went beyond the centre of the street. She +tried to turn back but a clanging trolley car cut in between her and +the curb, a wheel of the junk-cart caught in the smooth steel track +and skidded as if it were alive with a stupid will of its own. "It +ain't so easy," she admitted. With a wrench she extracted the wheel, +narrowly avoided an elevated post and crashed head on into a +push-cart, laden with green bananas resting on straw. An Italian swore +in two languages and separated the locked wheels. + +Hurriedly Great Taylor shoved away from the fruit man and became +pocketed in the traffic. Two heavy-hoofed horses straining against wet +leather collars crowded her toward the curb and shortly the traffic +became blocked. She looked for a means of escape and had succeeded in +getting one wheel over the curb when a man touched her on the arm. +"Someone is calling from the window up there," he said in a low weary +voice like Grit's. Nell swung around, gasping, but the man had moved +away down the sidewalk and a woman was calling to her from a +second-story window. + +"How much?" called the woman, waving a tin object that glinted in the +sunlight. Great Taylor stared stupidly. "Clothes boiler," yelled the +woman. "Fifty cents.... Just needs soldering." "What?" stammered Nell. +"Fifty cents," shouted the woman in the window. And something prompted +Great Taylor to reply, "Give you a dime." + +"Quarter," insisted the woman. "Dime ... Ten cents," repeated Great +Taylor, somewhat red in the face. "Once I set a price I'm a ..." But +the woman's head had disappeared and her whole angular person soon +slid out through the doorway. Entirely befogged, Great Taylor fumbled +in her patent-leather bag with its worsted fruit, discovered two +nickels, and placed the leaky boiler beside the rusty scales on the +junk-cart. + +"Ain't I got enough junk without that?" she grumbled. But the traffic +of the Devil's Own city was moving again and Great Taylor was moving +with it. She passed a corner where a clock in a drug store told her +the time--ten minutes of the hour. "I got to get back," she told +herself, and heading her cart determinedly for an opening succeeded in +crossing to the opposite side of the congested avenue. There, a child, +attracted by the jingling of the bells, ran out of a house with a +bundle of rags tied in a torn blue apron. The child placed the bundle +on the scales and watched with solemn wide eyes. Great Taylor again +fumbled in the bag and extracted a coin which transformed the little +girl into an India-rubber thing that bounced up and down on one foot +at the side of the junk-cart. "Grit never gave me only a penny a +pound," she cried. + +"Grit is dead," said Great Taylor. + +"Dead!" echoed the child, clinging motionless to the wheel. "_Grit_ is +dead?" She turned suddenly and ran toward the house, calling: "Mamma, +poor old Grit is dead." + +Great Taylor put her weight against the handle of the cart. She pushed +on desperately. Something had taken hold of her throat. "What's the +matter with me?" she choked. "Didn't I know he was dead before this? +Didn't I know it all along? I ain't going to cry over no man ... not +in the street, anyway." She hurriedly shoved her cart around a corner +into a less-congested thoroughfare and there a mammoth gilded clock at +the edge of the sidewalk confronted her. The long hand moved with a +sardonic jerk and indicated the hour--the hour of her appointment. But +Great Taylor turned her eyes away. "Pushing a junk-cart ain't so +easy," she said, and for a moment she stood there huddled over the +handle; then, taking a long, deep breath, like Grit used to do, she +straightened herself and sang out, clear and loud, above the noises of +the cavernous street: "Rags ... old iron ... bottles and ra-ags." + +The city that people call the Devil's Own lost its sharp outline and +melted into neutral tints, gray and blue and lavender, that blended +like an old, old tapestry. It was dusk. Great Taylor strode slowly +with laborious long strides, her breast rising and falling, her body +lengthening against the load, her hands gripping the handle of the +cart, freighted with rusty, twisted, and broken things. At crossings +she paused until the murmuring river of human beings divided to let +her pass. Night settled upon the high roofs and dropped its shadow +into the streets and alleys, and the windows began to glow. Light +leaped out and streaked the sidewalks while at each corner it ran +silently down from high globes like full moons and spattered over the +curb into the gutter and out as far as the glistening car tracks. She +passed blocks solid with human beings and blocks without a human soul. +Cataracts of sound crashed down into the street now and again from +passing elevated trains, and the noise, soon dissipated, left +trembling silence like pools of sinister black water. She passed +through stagnant odours and little eddies of perfume. She lifted her +drooping head and saw a door open--the darkness was cut by a rectangle +of soft yellow light, two figures were silhouetted, then the door +closed. A gasolene torch flared above a fruit stand hard against the +towering black windowless wall of a warehouse and a woman squatted in +the shadow turning a handle. Nell pushed on past a cross street that +glittered and flared from sidewalk to cornice, and at the next corner +a single flickering gas-jet revealed a dingy vestibule with rows of +tarnished speaking tubes.... + +The air became thick with noise and odours and the sidewalks swayed +with people. Great Taylor slowly rounded a familiar corner, slackened +the momentum of the junk-cart, and brought up squarely against the +curb. Dragging the wheels, she gained the sidewalk and, beyond, the +rims of the cart cut into soft earth. She crossed the vacant lot. A +city's supercilious moon alone gave its half-light to the junkyard of +Grit and here the woman unloaded the cart, carrying heavy unyielding +things against her breast. She did not linger. She was trembling from +fatigue and from emotions even more novel to her. She closed the gate +without looking back at the weird crêpe-like shadows that draped +themselves among the moonlit piles of twisted things. Nearing the +corner, she glanced with dull eyes at a glaring red sign: "Dancing." +Voices, laughter, and music after a kind came from the doorway, A man +was singing. Great Taylor recognized the voice but did not pause. She +was not to see the man from just around the corner again for many +years. + +Hurrying, without knowing why she hurried, Nell climbed the circular +iron staircase up through parallels of odorous gloom and, entering her +flat, closed the door and quickly locked it against the world +outside--the toil, the bickering, the sneers, the insults and curses +flung from alley gates and down upon her in the traffic of the Devil's +Own city. She closed her eyes and took a long deep breath almost like +a sigh. She was home. It was good to be home, but she lacked the words +and was far too weary to express her emotions. + +Lighting the gas she sank into a chair. What did it matter if the gas +was screeching? She drooped there, hands in her lap, wrists crossed, +palms turned upward and fingers curled stiffly like claws--from +holding to the jarring handle of the junk-cart. + +Presently she raised her eyes and glanced across at the shelf with its +row of tin boxes marked "Bread," "Coffee," "Sugar." On the next shelf +was Grit's molasses jug. She arose and fumbled behind this, but +nothing was there--Grit's Bible was gone. Then she remembered, and +striking a match placed her cheek to the floor and found the grimy +book beneath the stationary washtubs. "Stone wall," she murmured, +"Grit was a stone wall." At the mantelpiece she caught a glimpse of +herself in the cracked little mirror, but she was too weary to care +what she looked like, too weary to notice that her hair was matted, +that grime and smudges made hollows in her cheeks, and that even her +nose seemed crooked. + +She sank again into the chair beneath the screeching gas-jet. "Grit," +she repeated dully, "was a stone wall." And between very honest, +tired, and lonely tears she began slowly to spell out the words of the +coverless book, having gained within the past few hours some +understanding of what it means in the battle of life to draw the sword +and throw away the scabbard. + +There came another afternoon, another evening, another year, and still +another; but this narrative covers merely a part of two days--Great +Taylor's first and last as a junk-woman. The latter came nearly ten +years after the burial of Grit. For almost a decade Nell followed in +his grimy footprints and the polyglot people of the lower East Side, +looking down from their windows as she passed through the congested +streets pushing steadily with head bent, thought of her either as an +infinitesimal molecule at the bottom of the mass where the light of +idealism seldom penetrates or else as a female Colossus striding from +end to end of the Devil's Own city only ankle-deep in the débris from +which she wrested an existence. But to Great Taylor it seemed not to +matter what people thought. She sang her song through the cavernous +streets, the only song she knew: "Rags, old iron, bottles, and +ra-ags." She pounded with a huge, determined fist on alley gates, she +learned expertly to thread the traffic and to laugh at the teamsters, +their oaths, their curses. "They ain't so bad." And, finally, +bickering and bargaining with men of all classes, she came to wonder +why people called this the Devil's Own city. In all those years of +toil she did not once see him in the eyes of men. But there came the +day when she said, "I'm done." + +On this day Great Taylor lifted the end of a huge kitchen range +against two struggling members of the other sex. A pain shot through +her breast, but she carried her part of the dead weight, saying +nothing, and, at high noon, pushed her jingling, jangling cart through +streets sharply outlined with sunlight and shadow to a dilapidated +brick warehouse that, long since, had taken the place of Grit's +junk-yard. + +There, in the interior gloom of the shabby old building, could be seen +piles of broken, twisted, and rusty things--twisted iron rods, broken +cam-shafts, cog wheels with missing teeth, springs that had lost their +elasticity--a miniature mountain of scrap iron each piece of which at +some time had been a part of some smoothly working machine. In another +pile were discarded household utensils--old pots and pans and +burnt-out kettles, old stoves through the linings of which the flames +had eaten and the rust had gnawed. There were other hillocks and +mountains with shadowy valleys between--a mountain of waste paper, +partly baled, partly stuffed into bursting bags of burlap, partly +loose and scattered over the grimy floor; a hill of rags, all colours +fading into sombre shadows.... And in the midst of these mountains and +valleys of junk sat Great Taylor upon her dilapidated throne. + +She drooped there over an old coverless book, spelling out the words +and trying to forget the pain that was no longer confined to her +breast. From shoulder to hip molten slag pulsed slowly through her +veins and great drops of sweat moved from her temples and made +white-bottomed rivulets among the smudges of her cheeks. "I'm done," +she mumbled, closing Grit's book. "I got a right to quit. I got a +right to be idle like other people...." + +Raising her head she appraised the piles that surrounded her. "All +this stuff!" It had to be disposed of. She lifted herself from the +creaking chair and, finding a pot of black paint and a board, laboured +over this latter for a time. "I could get rid of it in a week," she +mused. But she was done--done for good. "I ain't going to lay a hand +on the cart again!" She studied the sign she had painted, and spelled +out the crooked letters: "M A n WAnTeD." It would take a man a month, +maybe more, she reckoned, adding: "Grit could done it in no time." She +moved to the arched door of the warehouse and hung the sign outside in +the sunlight against an iron shutter and for a moment stood there +blinking. Despite the sunlight and warmth she was trembling, the +familiar noises were a babel to her ears; the peddlers with their +carts piled high with fruits and vegetables and colourful merchandise +seemed like strangers; the glossy-haired women with baskets seemed to +be passing backward out of her life, and the street was suddenly an +alien land. "What's the matter with me?" she asked herself. + +Returning to the interior gloom of the warehouse, she looked down upon +the old junk-cart. The string of bells was the only part of it that +had not been renewed twice, thrice, a number of times since Grit had +left it standing on the vacant lot. "Guess I'll save the bells," she +decided. + +The rest she would destroy. Nobody else was going to use it--nobody. +She cast about for an adequate instrument of destruction, an axe or +sledge, and remembering a piece of furnace grate upon the farther pile +of junk, made her way slowly into the deepening shadows. + +There, at the foot of the rusty mountain of scrap iron, Great Taylor +stood irresolute, straining her eyes to pierce the gloom. She had not +seen any one enter; and yet, standing beyond the pile with white hands +stabbing the bottom of his pockets, was a man. She could not remember +having seen him before, and yet he was vaguely familiar. One eye +looked at her steadily from beneath a drooping lid, the other blinked +like the shutter of a camera and seemed to take intimate photographs +of all parts of her grimy person. His sleek hair was curled over his +temples with ends pointing up, and she caught, or imagined, the +fragrance of pomade. + +"What do you want?" she breathed, allowing the heavy piece of iron to +sink slowly to her side. + +"Sit down," said the man. "Let's talk things over." + +Great Taylor sank into a broken armchair, her huge calloused hands +rested in her lap, wrists crossed, palms turned upward, fingers +stiffly curled. "I know who you are," she mumbled, leaning forward and +peering through the half-light. "What do you want?" + +"You hung out a sign...." + +"You ain't the man I expected." + +"No?" He rocked up on his toes and made a gesture that indicated the +piles of junk. "You're done." + +"I'm done," assented Great Taylor. "I ain't going to lay a hand on the +cart again. Ten years...." + +"Uhm. You have a right to the things that other women have. But...." +He glanced around the dingy warehouse. "Is this all you have for your +ten years?" + +Great Taylor made no reply. + +"It isn't much," said the man. + +"It's something," said Great Taylor. + +"Not enough to live on." + +"Not enough to live on," she echoed. "But I can't go on working. I +can't go on alone. The cart's too heavy to push alone. I'm done." She +drooped there. + +"I think we can arrange something." For a moment the man was silent, +his queer eyes moving over her body. "I had something in mind when I +entered--something aside from junk. I could make a place for you. I'll +do better than that. With this rubbish you buy a half share in one of +my places and sit all day with your hands folded. You can make more in +a week than you ever made in a year...." His voice flowed smoothly on +until Great Taylor raised her head. + +"I didn't come ten years ago." + +The man laughed. "Who cares how you make your money? Do you know what +people say when they hear you calling through the streets? They say, +'It's nothing, it's only Great Taylor.' And do you know what they +think when they look down upon you and your junk-cart? They think of +you just as you used to think of Grit...." + +She staggered to her feet. "You leave Grit out of it!" For ten years a +sentence had been pulsing through her mind. "Get out!" she cried, +"_Grit warn't dirty underneath_!" The pain in her breast choked her +and stopped her short as she moved threateningly toward him. The piece +of iron fell heavily to the floor. + +"Who sees underneath?" came the voice of the man. + +"Grit," she moaned, "Grit sees underneath." And she hurled her +tortured body forward, striking at him with her fists. She fell upon +the pile of scrap iron. Each heave of her breast was a sob. She +struggled to her feet and glared around her. But the man was not +there. + +Moaning, she sank into the armchair. "What's the matter with me? There +warn't nobody here! _He_ warn't here. No man could stay the same for +ten years." The piles of junk seemed slowly to revolve around her. +"What's the matter with me?" she asked again. "Ain't I got a +right?..." + +"Of course you have a right to the things you want." From the top of +the hill of rags came his voice. It brought Great Taylor to her feet, +sobbing. But the pain in her side, more fearful than ever, held her +motionless. + +"Wash away the ugly grime of toil," said the voice. "You're less than +forty. You're a woman. You can have the things that other women have." + +"I got more than some women," she cried. "I'm clean--I'm clean +underneath." She stumbled toward him but again sank to the floor. She +tried to spring up. Her will sprang up, for her spirit at last was +splendid even if her body was weak. It dragged her up from the floor. +And now she could see him all around her--on top the hill of rags, on +top the mountain of iron, amid the bursting bags of waste +paper--blinking down as he sat enthroned upon the débris--the twisted, +broken, discarded things of the city that people call the Devil's Own. +"These are mine!" he called. "And you belong to the débris. You are +one of the broken, useless things." From all points he moved toward +her. She could no longer fight him off. There was no escape. "Grit," +she cried, "Grit, you can stop him. You ... you was a stone wall...." + +Stumbling back, her hand struck a familiar object. There was a tinkle +of bells. She wheeled around, and there in the shadows of the +dilapidated old warehouse someone was drooping over the handle of the +junk-cart--a collarless man with baggy breeches and a nose that leaned +toward the smudges and hollows of his cheek. He was striving to move +the cart. "Not alone," cried Great Taylor. "You can't do it alone! But +we can do it together!" She took hold of the handle. The thing moved. +"Easy as a baby carriage," she laughed. "We should always done it +together...." + +Out of the gloom, through the arched doorway into the sunlight moved +the cart with its jingling, jangling bells. Glossy-haired women with +their baskets made way for it and the cart bumped down over the curb. +Teamsters drew aside their heavy-hoofed horses. Peddlers rolled their +push-carts back to the curb. + +"The street opens when we work together," laughed Great Taylor. + +"Who is she talking to?" asked the people. + +"Talking to herself," the ignorant replied. + +"And why is she looking up like that?" + +"Looking for junk." + +"And why does she laugh?" they asked. + +"Who knows? Who knows? Perhaps she's happy." + +A song burst from her throat: "Rags," she sang, "old iron ... bottles, +and ra-ags...." + +People inside their houses heard her song and the bells of her cart. +"It's nothing," they laughed, "it's only Great Taylor." A woman came +to a window and waved an object that glinted in the sunlight. "How +much?" she called down. But Great Taylor seemed not to hear. A child +ran out with a bundle in her arms. "Rags," called the child, then +stepped back out of the way, wondering. Great Taylor was passing on. +An elevated train sent down a cataract of noise, but her song rose +above it: "Rags ... old iron...." And when she reached the avenue a +policeman with a yellow emblematic wheel embroidered on his sleeve +held up his hand and stopped the traffic of the Devil's Own city to +let Great Taylor pass. + +And so, like a female Colossus, she strode slowly across the city, her +head tilted, her eyes looking up from the cavernous streets--up beyond +the lofty roofs of houses, her voice becoming fainter and fainter: +"Rags ... old iron ... bottles and ra-ags ..." until the God of those +who fall fighting in the battle of life reached down and, drawing the +sword, threw away the scabbard. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories +of 1921, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRIZE STORIES OF 1921 *** + +***** This file should be named 11512-8.txt or 11512-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/5/1/11512/ + +Produced by Stan Goodman, Keith M. 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For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: + https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL + + diff --git a/old/11512-8.zip b/old/11512-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9504ad9 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11512-8.zip diff --git a/old/11512.txt b/old/11512.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..441851e --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11512.txt @@ -0,0 +1,14775 @@ +Project Gutenberg's O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921, by Various + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 + +Author: Various + +Release Date: March 8, 2004 [EBook #11512] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRIZE STORIES OF 1921 *** + + + + +Produced by Stan Goodman, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team + + + + + +_O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD PRIZE STORIES of 1921_ + + +CHOSEN BY THE SOCIETY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES + +WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS + +1922 + + + +CONTENTS + + +THE HEART OF LITTLE SHIKARA. By Edison Marshall + +THE MAN WHO CURSED THE LILIES. By Charles Tenney Jackson + +THE URGE. By Maryland Allen + +MUMMERY. By Thomas Beer + +THE VICTIM OF HIS VISION. By Gerald Chittenden + +MARTIN GERRITY GETS EVEN. By Courtney Ryley Cooper and Leo F. Creagan + +STRANGER THINGS. By Mildred Cram + +COMET. By Samuel A. Derieux + +FIFTY-TWO WEEKS FOR FLORETTE. By Elizabeth Alexander Heermann + +WILD EARTH. By Sophie Kerr + +THE TRIBUTE. By Harry Anable Kniffin + +THE GET-AWAY. By O.F. Lewis + +"AURORE." By Ethel Watts Mumford + +MR. DOWNEY SITS DOWN. By L.H. Robbins + +THE MARRIAGE IN KAIRWAN. By Wilbur Daniel Steele + +GRIT. By Tristram Tupper + + + +FOUNDER OF THE O. HENRY MEMORIAL COMMITTEE + +The plan for the creation of the O. Henry Memorial Committee was +conceived and the work of the Committee inaugurated in the year 1918 +by the late John F. Tucker, LL.M., then Directing Manager of the +Society of Arts and Sciences. The Society promptly approved the plan +and appropriated the sum necessary to inaugurate its work and to make +the award. + +The Committee is, therefore, in a sense, a memorial to Mr. Tucker, as +well as to O. Henry. Up to the time of his death Mr. Tucker was a +constant adviser of the Committee and an attendant at most of its +meetings. + +Born in New York City in 1871 and educated for the law, Mr. Tucker's +inclinations quickly swept him into a much wider stream of +intellectual development, literary, artistic, and sociological. He +joined others in reviving the Twilight Club (now the Society of Arts +and Sciences), for the broad discussion of public questions, and to +the genius he developed for such a task the success of the Society up +to the time of his death was chiefly due. The remarkable series of +dinner discussions conducted under his management, for many years, in +New York City, have helped to mould public opinion along liberal +lines, to educate and inspire. Nothing he did gave him greater pride +than the inception of the O. Henry Memorial Committee, and that his +name should be associated with that work perpetually this tribute is +hereby printed at the request of the Society of Arts and Sciences. +E.J.W. + + + +INTRODUCTION + +In 1918 the Society of Arts and Sciences established, through its +Managing Director, John F. Tucker, the O. Henry Memorial. Since that +year the nature of the annual prize and the work of the Committee +awarding it have become familiar to writer, editor, and reader of +short stories. To the best short story written by an American and +published in America the sum of $500 is awarded; to the second best, +the sum of $250. In 1919 the prize winning story was Margaret Prescott +Montague's "England to America"; in 1920 it was Maxwell Struthers +Hurt's "Each in His Generation." Second winners were: 1919, Wilbur +Daniel Steele's "For They Know Not What They Do," and, 1920, Frances +Noyes Hart's "Contact!" [The prizes were delivered on June 2, 1920, +and on March 14, 1921, at the annual memorial dinner, Hotel Astor.] + + +In 1921 the Committee of Award consisted of these members: + + BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS, Ph. D., Chairman + EDWARD J. WHEELER, Litt. D. + ETHEL WATTS MUMFORD + FRANCES GILCHRIST WOOD + GROVE E. WILSON + +And the Committee of Administration: + + JOHN F. TUCKER, [Deceased, February 27, 1921.], Founder of the O. + Henry Memorial + EDWARD J. WHEELER, Litt.D. + GLENN FRANK, Editor of _The Century Magazine_ + GEORGE C. HOWARD, Attorney. + +As in previous years each member of the Committee of Award held +himself responsible for reviewing the brief fiction of certain +magazines and for circulating such stories as warranted reading by +other members. + +Results in 1921 differ in a number of respects from those of 1919 and +1920. In the earlier half year, January excepted, every reader +reported a low average of current fiction, so low as to excite +apprehension lest the art of the short story was rapidly declining. +The latter six months, however, marked a reaction, with a higher +percentage of values in November and December. Explanation of the low +level lies in the financial depression which forced a number of +editors to buy fewer stories, to buy cheaply, or to search their +vaults for remnant of purchases made in happier days. Improvement +began with the return to better financial conditions. + +The several members of the Committee have seldom agreed on the +comparative excellence of stories, few being of sufficient superiority +in the opinion of the Committee as a whole to justify setting them +aside for future consideration. The following three dozen candidates, +more or less, average highest: + +Addington, Sarah, Another Cactus Blooms (_Smart Set_, December). + +Alexander, Elizabeth, Fifty-Two Weeks for Florette [Reprinted as by + Elizabeth Alexander Heermann.] (_Saturday Evening Post_, August 13). + +Allen, Maryland, The Urge (_Everybody's_, September). + +Arbuckle, Mary, Wasted (_Midland_, May). + +Beer, Thomas, Mummery (_Saturday Evening Post_, July 30). + +Burt, Maxwell Struthers, Buchanan Hears the Wind (_Harper's_, August). + +Byrne, Donn, Reynardine (_McClure's_, May). + +Chittenden, Gerald, The Victim of His Vision (_Scribner's_, May). + +Comfort, Will Levington, and Dost, Zamin Ki, The Deadly Karait + (_Asia_, August). + +Cooper, Courtney Ryley, and Creagan, Leo F. Martin, Gerrity Gets Even + (_American_, July). + +Cooper, Courtney Ryley, Old Scarface (_Pictorial Review_, April). + +Cram, Mildred, Stranger Things--(_Metropolitan_, January). + +Derieux, Samuel A., Comet (_American_, December). + +Hull Helen R., Waiting (_Touchstone_, February). + +Jackson, Charles Tenney, The Man who Cursed the Lilies (_Short + Stories_, December 10). + +Kerr, Sophie, Wild Earth (_Saturday Evening Post_, April 2). + +Kniffin, Harry Anable, The Tribute (_Brief Stories_, September). + +Lewis, O.F., The Get-A way (_Red Book_, February); The Day of Judgment + (_Red Book_, October). + +Mahoney, James, Wilfrid Reginald and the Dark Horse (_Century_, + August). + +Marshall, Edison, The Heart of Little Shikara (_Everybody's_, + January). + +Morris, Gouverneur, Groot's Macaw (_Cosmopolitan_, November); Just One + Thing More (_Cosmopolitan_, December). + +Mumford, Ethel Watts, "Aurore" (_Pictorial Review_, February); The + Crowned Dead (_Short Stories_, July); Funeral Frank (_Detective + Stories_, October 29). + +Robbins, L.H., Mr. Downey Sits Down (_Everybody's_, June). + +Steele, Wilbur Daniel, 'Toinette of Maissonnoir (_Pictorial Review_, + July); The Marriage in Kairwan (_Harper's_, December). + +Street, Julian, A Voice in the Hall (_Harper's_, September). + +Stringer, Arthur, A Lion Must Eat (_McClure's_, March). + +Tupper, Tristram, Grit (_Metropolitan_, March). + +Vorse, Mary Heaton, The Halfway House (_Harper's_, October). + +Wolff, William Almon, Thalassa! Thalassa! (_Everybody's_, July). + + * * * * * + +The following stories rank high with a majority of the Committee: + +Anthony, Joseph, A Cask of Ale for Columban (_Century_, March). + +Baker, Karle Wilson, The Porch Swing (_Century_, April). + +Balmer, Edwin, "Settled Down" (_Everybody's_, February). + +Beer, Thomas, Addio (_Saturday Evening Post_, October 29); The Lily + Pond (_Saturday Evening Post_, April 16). + +Biggs, John, Jr., Corkran of the Clamstretch (_Scribner's_, December). + +Boulton, Agnes, The Snob (_Smart Set_, June). + +Boyle, Jack, The Heart of the Lily (_Red Book_, February); The Little + Lord of All the Earth (_Red Book_, March). + +Byrne, Donn, The Keeper of the Bridge (_McClure's_, April). + +Canfield, Dorothy, Pamela's Shawl (_Century_, August). + +Connell, Richard, The Man in the Cape (_Metropolitan_, July). + +Cooper, Courtney Ryley, The Fiend (_Cosmopolitan_, March); Love (_Red + Book_, June). + +Cram, Mildred, Anna (_McCatt's_, March); The Bridge (_Harper's + Bazaar_, April). + +Derieux, Samuel A., Figgers Can't Lie (_Delineator_, April); The + Bolter (_American_, November). + +Dreiser, Theodore, Phantom Gold (_Live Stories_, March). + +Ellerbe, Alma and Paul, When the Ice Went Out (_Everybody's_, May). + +England, George Allan, Test Tubes (_Short Stories_, March). + +Erickson, Howard, The Debt (_Munsey's_, February). + +Fraenkel, H. E., The Yellow Quilt (_Liberator_, December). + +Ginger, Bonnie, The Decoy (_Century_, October). + +Hart, Frances Noyes, The American (_Pictorial Review_, November). + +Hergesheimer, Joseph, Juju (_Saturday Evening Post_, July 30); The + Token (_Saturday Evening Post_, October 22). + +Hopper, Elsie Van de Water, The Flight of the Herons (_Scribner's_, + November). + +Hughes, Rupert, When Crossroads Cross Again (_Collier's_, January 29). + +Hurst, Fannie, She Walks in Beauty (_Cosmopolitan_, August). + +Irwin, Inez Haynes, For Value Received (_Cosmopolitan_, November). + +Irwin, Wallace, The Old School (_Pictorial Review_, April). + +Kabler, Hugh MacNair, Like a Tree (_Saturday Evening Post_) January + 22). + +Lanier, Henry Wysham, Circumstantial (_Collier's_, October 15). + +Lewis, Sinclair, Number Seven (_American_, May). + +Mahoney, James, Taxis of Fate (_Century_, November). + +Mason, Grace Sartwell, Glory (_Harper's_, April). + +Moore, Frederick, The Picture (_Adventure_, September 10). + +Mouat, Helen, Aftermath (_Good Housekeeping_, September). + +Natteford, J. F., A Glimpse of the Heights (_Photoplay_, April). + +Neidig, William F, The Firebug (_Everybody's_, April). + +Pitt, Chart, Debt of the Snows (_Sunset_, April). + +Post, Melville Davisson, The Mottled Butterfly (_Red Book_, August); + The Great Cipher (_Red Book_, November). + +Read, Marion Pugh, Everlasting Grace (_Atlantic Monthly_, March). + +Rhodes, Harrison, Night Life and Thomas Robinson (_Saturday Evening + Post_, June 4). + +Rouse, William Merriam, Arms of Judgment (_Argosy-All-Story Weekly_, + March 12). + +Shore, Viola Brothers, The Heritage (_Saturday Evening Post_, February + 5). + +Singmaster, Elsie, The Magic Mirror (_Pictorial Review_, November). + +Springer, Fleta Campbell, The Mountain of Jehovah (_Harper's_, March). + +Tarkington, Booth, Jeannette (_Red Book_, May). + +Titus, Harold, The Courage of Number Two (_Metropolitan_, June). + +Train, Arthur, The Crooked Fairy (_McCall's_, July). + +Watson, Marion Elizabeth, Bottle Stoppers (_Pictorial Review_, June). + +Wormser, G. Ranger, Gossamer (_Pictorial Review_, March). + +The following stories are regarded the best of the year by the judges +whose names are respectively indicated: + +1. The Marriage in Kairwan, by Wilbur Daniel Steele (_Harper's_, + December). Ethel Watts Mumford. + +2. A Life, by Wilbur Daniel Steele (_Pictorial Review_, August). + Edward J. Wheeler. + +3. Wisdom Buildeth Her House, by Donn Byrne (_Century_, December). + Blanche Colton Williams. + +4. Waiting, by Helen R. Hull (_Touchstone_, February). Grove E. + Wilson. + +5. The Poppies of Wu Fong, by Lee Foster Hartman (_Harper's_, + November). Frances Gilchrist Wood. + +Out of the first list sixteen stories were requested for republication +in this volume. The significance of the third list lies in the fact +that only one story was selected from it, the others meeting +objections from the remainder of the Committee. + +Since no first choice story won the prize, the Committee resorted, as +in former years, to the point system, according to which the leader is +"The Heart of Little Shikara," by Edison Marshall. To Mr. Marshall, +therefore, goes the first prize of $500. In like manner, the second +prize, of $250, is awarded to "The Man Who Cursed the Lilies," by +Charles Tenney Jackson. + +In discussing "A Life," "The Marriage in Kairwan," and "'Toinette of +Maissonnoir," all published by Wilbur Daniel Steele in 1921, in +remarking upon the high merit of his brief fiction in other years, and +in recalling that he alone is represented in the first three volumes +of O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories, the Committee intimated the +wish to express in some tangible fashion its appreciation of this +author's services to American fiction. On the motion of Doctor +Wheeler, therefore, the Committee voted to ask an appropriation from +the Society of Arts and Sciences as a prize to be awarded on account +of general excellence in the short story in 1919, 1920, and 1921. This +sum of $500 was granted by the Society, through the proper +authorities, and is accordingly awarded to Wilbur Daniel Steele. + +Two characteristics of stories published in 1921 reveal editorial +policies that cannot but be harmful to the quality of this art. These +ear-marks are complementary and, yet, paradoxically antipodal. In +order to draw out the torso and tail of a story through Procrustean +lengths of advertising pages, some editors place, or seem to place, a +premium upon length. The writer, with an eye to acceptance by these +editors, consciously or unconsciously pads his matter, giving a +semblance of substance where substance is not. Many stories fall below +first rank in the opinion of the Committee through failure to achieve +by artistic economy the desired end. The comment "Overwritten" +appeared again and again on the margins of such stories. The reverse +of this policy, as practised by other editors, is that of chopping the +tail or, worse, of cutting out sections from the body of the +narrative, then roughly piecing together the parts to fit a smaller +space determined by some expediency. Under the observation of the +Committee have fallen a number of stories patently cut for space +accommodation. Too free use of editorial blue pencil and scissors has +furnished occasion for protest among authors and for comment by the +press. For example, in _The Literary Review_ of _The New York Post_, +September 3, the leading article remarks, after granting it is a rare +script that cannot be improved by good editing, and after making +allowance for the physical law of limitation by space: "Surgery, +however, must not become decapitation or such a trimming of long ears +and projecting toes as savage tribes practise. It seems very probable +that by ruthless reshaping and hampering specifications in our +magazines, stories and articles have been seriously affected." +Further, "the passion for editorial cutting" is graphically +illustrated in The _Authors' League Bulletin_ for December (page 8) by +a mutilation of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. + +Although, by the terms of the Memorial, the Committee were at liberty +to consider only stories by American authors, they could not but +observe the increasing number of races represented through authorship. +Some of the following names will be recognized from preceding years, +some of them are new: Blasco Ibanez, W. Somerset Maugham, May +Sinclair, Mrs. Henry Dudeney, Mary Butts, Frank Swinnerton, Georges +Clemenceau, Johan Bojer, H. Soederberg, Seumas Macmanus, R. Sabatini, +Demetra Vaka, Achmed Abdullah, Rabindranath Tagore, A. Remizov, Konrad +Bercovici, Anzia Yezierska, and--daughter of an English mother and +Italian father who met in China, she herself having been born in San +Francisco--Adriana Spadoni. Nor do these represent all the nations +whose sons and daughters practise the one indigenous American art on +its native soil. Let the list stand, without completion, sufficient to +the point. + +The note of democracy is sounded, as a sequence, in the subject +matter. East Side Italian and Jew brush shoulders in Miss Spadoni's +tales; Englishman, Dane, and South Sea Islander shake hands on the +same page of W. Somerset Maugham's "The Trembling of a Leaf"; +Norwegian, Frenchman, and Spaniard are among us, as before; +Bercovici's gypsies from the Roumanian Danube, now collected in +"Ghitza," flash colourful and foreign from the Dobrudja Mountains and +the Black Sea. In one remarkable piece of melodrama, "Rra Boloi," by +the Englishman Crosbie Garstin (_Adventure_), and the African witch +doctor of the Chwene Kopjes enters short-story literature. + +The Oriental had been exploited to what appeared the ultimate; but +continued interest in the Eastern problem brings tidal waves of +Japanese and Chinese stories. Disarmament Conferences may or may not +effect the ideal envisioned by the Victorian, a time "when the war +drums throb no longer, and the battle-flags are furled in the +Parliament of Man"; but the short story follows the gleam, merely by +virtue of authorship and by reflecting the peoples of the earth. + +When Lee Foster Hartman created his Chinese hero in "The Poppies of Wu +Fong," dramatized Oriental inscrutability with Occidental suavity and +sureness, and set off the Oriental gentleman in American surroundings, +he brought together the nations in a new vision of the brotherhood of +man. This story was preferred, for the reasons implied, by Frances +Gilchrist Wood, who sees in Wu Fong's garden the subtle urge of acres +of flowers, asleep under the stars, pitted against the greed of +profiteers; who sees in answer to Western fume and fret the wisdom of +Confucius, "Come out and see my poppies." The story was rejected by +other members who, while applauding the author's motivation of +character, his theme, and his general treatment, yet felt a lack of +emotion and a faltering at the dramatic climax. + +Wilbur Daniel Steele's "The Marriage in Kairwan" presents an appalling +tragedy which, if it be typical, may befall any Tunisian lady who +elects for herself man's standard of morality--for himself. Such a +story is possible when the seeing eye and the understanding heart of +an American grasps the situation in Kairwan and through the +technician's art develops it, transforms it, and bears it into the +fourth dimension of literature. The thread of narrative runs thinly, +perhaps, through the stiffly embroidered fabric, heavy as cloth of +gold; the end may be discerned too soon. But who can fail of being +shocked at the actual denouement? The story may be, as Ethel Watts +Mumford admits, caviar. "But if so," she adds, "it is Beluga +Imperial." + +Donn Bryne's "Wisdom Buildeth Her House," is constructed on a +historic foundation, the visit that Balkis, Queen of Sheba, made to +Solomon, King of the Jews. Mr. Bryne has not only built a cunning +mosaic, plunging into the stream of Scriptural narrative for his +tessellations and drawing gems out of The Song of Solomon, but he has +also recalled by virtue of exercising a vigorous imagination, the +glory of the royalty that was Sheba's and the grandeur of her domain +in pictures as gorgeously splendid as those from an Arabian Night. He +has elaborated the Talmud story with mighty conviction from a novel +point of view and has whetted his theme on the story of a love the +King lacked wisdom to accept. The Chairman of the Committee prefers +this story; but other members assert that it lacks novelty and +vitality, nor can they find that it adds anything new to the Song of +Songs. + +These three first choice stories, then, are strong in Oriental +flavour, characters, and setting. + +Again, democracy (in the etymological sense of the word, always, +rather than the political) is exemplified in the fiction of 1921, in +that the humblest life as well as the highest offers matter for +romance. More than in former years, writers seek out the romance that +lies in the lives of the average man or woman. Having learned that the +Russian story of realism, with emphasis too frequently placed upon the +naturalistic and the sordid, is not a vehicle easily adapted to +conveying the American product, the American author of sincerity and +belief in the possibility of realistic material has begun to treat it +in romantic fashion, always the approved fashion of the short story in +this country. So Harry Anable Kniffin's "The Tribute" weaves in 1,700 +words a legend about the Unknown Soldier and makes emotionally vivid +the burial of Tommy Atkins. Commonplace types regarded in the past as +insufficiently drab, on the one hand, and insufficiently picturesque +on the other are reflected in this new romantic treatment. Sarah +Addington's "Another Cactus Blooms" prophesies colour in that hard and +prickly plant the provincial teacher at Columbia for a term of +graduate work. Humorously and sardonically the college professor is +served up in "The Better Recipe," by George Boas (_Atlantic Monthly_, +March); the doctorate degree method is satirized so bitterly, by +Sinclair Lewis, in "The Post Mortem Murder" (_Century_, May), as to +challenge wonder, though so subtly as to escape all save the +initiated. + +Sophie Kerr's "Wild Earth" makes capital in like legitimate manner of +the little shop girl and her farmer husband. Wesley Dean is as far +removed from the Down Easterner of a Mary Wilkins farm as his wife, +Anita, is remote from the Sallies and Nannies of the farmhouse. Of the +soil this story bears the fragrance in a happier manner; its theme of +wild passion belongs to the characters, as it might belong, also, to +the man and woman of another setting. "Here is a romance of the farm," +the author seems to say; not sordid realistic portrayal of earth +grubbers. So, too, Tristram Tupper's "Grit" reveals the inspiration +that flashed from the life of a junkman. So Cooper and Creagan evoke +the drama of the railroad man's world: glare of headlight, crash of +wreckage and voice of the born leader mingle in unwonted +orchestration. "Martin Gerrity Gets Even" is reprinted as their best +story of this _genre_. + +The stories of Ethel Watts Mumford declare her cosmopolitan ability +and her willingness to deal with lives widely diverse. At least three +rank high in the estimation of her fellow-committeemen. "Aurore," by +its terseness and poignant interpretation of the character of the +woman under the Northern Lights touches poetry and is akin to music in +its creative flight. The Committee voted to include it in Volume III, +under the author's protest and under her express stipulation that it +should not be regarded as a candidate for either prize. That another +of her stories might have found place in the collection is indicated +best by the following letter: + +The Players +16 Gramercy Park +New York City + +November 16th + +Re. O. HENRY MEMORIAL PRIZE. + +To Dr. B.C. Williams, +605 West 113 Street, +New York City. + +My Dear Doctor Williams, + +I mailed to you yesterday a copy of a story by Ethel Watts Mumford, +entitled "Funeral Frank," published in the _Detective Story Magazine_ +two weeks ago--for your consideration in awarding the O. Henry +Memorial prize. + +I think it is the best short story I have read in a long time both for +originality of subject and technical construction. + +The choice on the author's part of such an unsuspected (by the reader) +and seemingly insignificant agent for the working of Nemesis, I think +shows great skill. I say _seemingly_ insignificant because a little +dog seems such a small and unlikely thing to act the leading part in a +criminal's judgment and suggested regeneration--and yet all lovers of +animals know what such a tie of affection may mean, especially to one +who has no human friends--and even while it works, the victim of +Nemesis as the author says "is wholly unconscious of the irony of the +situation." + +Apart from this I think the tale is exceedingly well told in good +English and with the greatest possible economy of space. + +Yours very truly, +Oliver Herford. + + +"Waiting," by Helen R. Hull, stands first on the list of Grove E. +Wilson, who thinks its handling of everyday characters, its simplicity +of theme and its high artistry most nearly fulfil, among the stories +of the year, his ideal of short story requirements. Though admired as +literature by the Committee, it seemed to one or two members to +present a character study rather than a story. Certainly, in no other +work of the period have relations between a given mother and daughter +been psychologized with greater deftness and skill. + +Other members of society reflected in the year are preachers, judges, +criminals, actors, and actresses. For some years, it is true, actor +and actress have been treated increasingly as human beings, less as +puppets who walk about on the stage. This volume contains two stories +illustrating the statement: "The Urge," by Maryland Allen, which +marshalls the grimly ironic reasons for the success of the heroine who +is the most famous comedienne of her day; "Fifty-Two Weeks for +Florette," which touches with a pathos that gave the story instant +recognition the lives of vaudeville Florette and her son. It is not +without significance that these stories are the first their respective +authors have published. + +0.F. Lewis brings the judge to his own bar in "The Day of Judgment," +but had difficulty in finding a denouement commensurate with his +antecedent material. The Committee Preferred his "The Get-Away" and +its criminals, who are Presented objectively, without prejudice, save +as their own acts invoke it. Viciously criminal is Tedge, of "The Man +Who Cursed the Lilies," by Charles Tenney Jackson. The Committee value +this narrative for the power and intensity of its subject matter, for +its novel theme, for its familiar yet seldom-used setting, for its +poetic justice and for its fulfilment of short story structural laws. + +"The Victim of His Vision," by Gerald Chittenden, dramatizes the +missionary's reverse, unusual in fiction, and presents a convincing +demonstration of the powers of voodoo. Readers who care for +manifestations of the superstitious and the magical will appreciate +the reality of this story as they will that of "Rra Boloi," mentioned +above. They may also be interested in comparing these with Joseph +Hergesheimer's "Juju." Mr. Hergesheimer's story, however, fails to +maintain in the outcome the high level of the initial concept and the +execution of the earlier stages. + +A number of 1921 stories centre about a historic character. F. Scott +Fitzgerald's "Tarquin of Cheapside" (_Smart Set_, February) offers in +episode form the motivation of Shakespeare's "Rape of Lucrece"; Mary +Raymond Shipman Andrews parallels her "The Perfect Tribute" and eulogy +of Lincoln with "His Soul Goes Marching On" and warm reminiscence of +Roosevelt; Fleta Campbell Springer's "The Role of Madame Ravelles" is +apparently a tapestry in weaving the stately figure of Georgette +LeBlanc. Ranking highest among these personal narratives, however, is +Mildred Cram's "Stranger Things--" Besides calling up, under the name +of Cecil Grimshaw, the irresistible figure of Oscar Wilde, the author +has created a supernatural tale of challenging intricacy and +imaginative genius. The only other stories of the supernatural to find +place in the Committee's first list are Maxwell Struthers Burt's +"Buchanan Hears the Wind" and Mary Heaton Vorse's "The Halfway House." +In all of these, suggestion, delicately managed, is the potent element +of success. + +Animals figure in vaster numbers and under intensive psychological +study. That a race-horse owner goes nowadays to the astrologer for a +horoscope of his racer is a fact that insinuatingly elevates the beast +to the plane of his master. In the short story of 1921, the monkey, +the tiger, the elephant, the dog and all their kind are treated from +an anthropomorphic point of view. Courtney Ryley Cooper's +titles--"Love" and "Vengeance," for example--covering stories +dominated by the animal character, betray the author's ascription of +human attributes to his hero or villain. "Reynardine," by Donn Byrne, +retails with haunting charm the friendship between the Fitzpauls and +the fox, in an instance that tests the friendship. Foxes, for Morgan +of the story, "took on for him now a strange, sinister entity.... They +had become to him a quasi-human, hypernormal race.... They had tabus +as strict as a Maori's. Strange, mystical laws."--"Corkran of the +Clamstretch" uniquely portrays the ugly and heroic "R.T.C." throughout +as a gentleman, "who met triumph with boredom," and "defeat, as a +great gentleman should, with quiet courtesy and good humour." Samuel +A. Derieux adds "Comet" to his list of superintelligent dogs in a +story the Committee regard as one of his best. It should be compared +with R.G. Kirk's "Gun-Shy" (_Saturday Evening Post_, October 22). +Similar in theme, in sympathy and in the struggle--that of a trainer +to overcome a noble dog's fear of the powder roar--the stories diverge +in the matter of workmanship. Yet "Gun-Shy" is based on a plot +superior to that of "Comet." Oddly enough, the Committee preferred not +one of the humanized-beast stories, but Edison Marshall's "The Heart +of Little Shikara." The preference was because of a number of counts, +however; moreover, the man eater takes second place beside Little +Shikara, whose bravery and loyalty motivate the thrilling climax of +the narrative. And it is just this: a superb story, with underscoring +for "story." + +Anthropomorphism is found at its height in "A Life," by Wilbur Daniel +Steele. Dr. Edward J. Wheeler places this story first of the year's +brief fiction, on the score of originality, power, and satisfactory +evolution of the struggle, with its triumphant dramatic reverse. Other +members of the Committee, though sensible of its claim to high +distinction, believe it is a novelette, not to be classed as a short +story, and therefore barred from consideration. Its spirit, one +affirms, lacks something of the vigour which made of "Guiablesse" +(_Harper's_, 1919) so convincing a work of art. Another member finds +its value somewhat decreased in that its theme had been used similarly +in John Masefield's "The Wanderer." + +The child's place in the democracy of the short story was assured +years ago. No remarkably outstanding examples have come from the pen +of Booth Tarkington, amusing as are his adolescents and children of +the _Red Book_ tales. The best combinations of humour and childhood +appeared to the Committee to be "Wilfrid Reginald and the Dark Horse," +by James Mahoney, and "Mr. Downey Sits Down," by L.H. Robbins. For +laughter the reader is recommended to each of these, the latter of +which is reprinted in this volume. For humour plus a trifle more of +excitement, "Mummery," by Thomas Beer, is included. Mr. Beer has +succeeded in handling Mrs. Egg as Miss Addington manages Miss +Titwiler, the "Cactus"; that is, as the equal of author and reader, +but also--and still without condescension--as reason for twinkles and +smiles. + +Apart from consideration of impulses dominating the short story of +1921, impulses here summarized under the general idea of democracy, +the story is different in several particulars. First, its method of +referring to drink, strong drink, marks it of the present year. The +setting is frequently that of a foreign country, where prohibition is +not yet known; the date of the action may be prior to 1919; or the +apology for presence of intoxicating liquors is forthcoming in such +statement as "My cellar is not yet exhausted, you see." + +Second, the war is no longer tabu; witness "The Tribute," and "His +Soul Goes Marching On." Touched by the patina of time and mellowed +through the mellifluence of age, the war now makes an appeal +dissimilar to that which caused readers two or three years ago to +declare they were "fed up." + +Third, Freudian theories have found organic place in the substance of +the story. They have not yet found incorporation in many narratives +that preserve short story structure, however--although it is within +conceivability that the influence may finally burst the mould and +create a new--and the Committee agree in demanding both substance and +structure as short story essentials. + +Finally, the story reflects the changing ideals of a constantly +changing age. Not only are these ideals changing because of +cross-currents that have their many sources in racial springs far +asunder, not only because of contact or conflict between the ideals +and cosmic forces dimly apprehended; also they are changing because of +the undeniable influence of what Emerson called the Oversoul. The +youth of the time is different, as youth is always different. But now +and then a sharp cleavage separates the succeeding generations and it +separates them now. The youth of England has found interpretation in +Clemence Dane's play, "A Bill of Divorcement." In America, the +interpretation is only half articulate; but when the incoherent sounds +are wholly intelligible, the literature of the short story will have +entered, in definite respects, upon a new era. + +The Committee of Award wish once again to thank the authors, editors, +and publishers whose cooperation makes possible this annual volume and +the O. Henry Memorial Prizes. + +Blanche Colton Williams. + +New York City +January 10, 1922 + + + +_O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD PRIZE STORIES of 1921_ + + + +THE HEART OF LITTLE SHIKARA + +By EDISON MARSHALL + +From _Everybody's_ + + +I + +If it hadn't been for a purple moon that came peering up above the +dark jungle just at nightfall, it would have been impossible to tell +that Little Shikara was at his watch. He was really just the colour of +the shadows--a rather pleasant brown--he was very little indeed, and +besides, he was standing very, very still. If he was trembling at all, +from anticipation and excitement, it was no more than Nahar the tiger +trembles as he crouches in ambush. But the moon did show him--peering +down through the leaf-clusters of the heavy vines--and shone very +softly in his wide-open dark eyes. + +And it was a purple moon--no other colour that man could name. It +looked almost unreal, like a paper moon painted very badly by a clumsy +stage-hand. The jungle-moon quite often has that peculiar purplish +tint, most travellers know, but few of them indeed ever try to tell +what causes it. This particular moon probed down here and there +between the tall bamboos, transformed the jungle--just now +waking--into a mystery and a fairyland, glinted on a hard-packed +elephant trail that wound away into the thickets, and always came back +to shine on the coal-black Oriental eyes of the little boy beside the +village gate. It showed him standing very straight and just as tall as +his small stature would permit, and looked oddly silvery and strange +on his long, dark hair. Little Shikara, son of Khoda Dunnoo, was +waiting for the return of a certain idol and demigod who was even now +riding home in his _howdah_ from the tiger hunt. + +Other of the villagers would be down to meet Warwick Sahib as soon as +they heard the shouts of his beaters--but Little Shikara had been +waiting almost an hour. Likely, if they had known about it, they would +have commented on his badness, because he was notoriously bad, if +indeed--as the villagers told each other--he was not actually cursed +with evil spirits. + +In the first place, he was almost valueless as a herder of buffalo. +Three times, when he had been sent with the other boys to watch the +herds in their wallows, he had left his post and crept away into the +fringe of jungle on what was unquestionably some mission of +witchcraft. For small naked brown boys, as a rule, do not go alone and +unarmed into the thick bamboos. Too many things can happen to prevent +them ever coming out again; too many brown silent ribbons crawl in the +grass, or too many yellow, striped creatures, no less lithe, lurk in +the thickets. But the strangest thing of all--and the surest sign of +witchcraft--was that he had always come safely out again, yet with +never any satisfactory explanations as to why he had gone. He had +always looked some way very joyful and tremulous--and perhaps even +pale if from the nature of things a brown boy ever can look pale. But +it was the kind of paleness that one has after a particularly +exquisite experience. It was not the dumb, teeth-chattering paleness +of fear. + +"I saw the sergeant of the jungle," Little Shikara said after one of +these excursions. And this made no sense at all. + +"There are none of the King's soldiers here," the brown village folk +replied to him. "Either thou liest to us, or thine eyes lied to thee. +And didst thou also see the chevron that told his rank?" + +"That was the way I knew him. It was the black bear, and he wore the +pale chevron low on his throat." + +This was Little Shikara all over. Of course he referred to the black +Himalayan bear which all men know wears a yellowish patch, of chevron +shape, just in front of his fore legs; but why he should call him a +jungle-sergeant was quite beyond the wit of the village folk to say. +Their imagination did not run in that direction. It never even +occurred to them that Little Shikara might be a born jungle creature, +expatriated by the accident of birth--one of that free, strange breed +that can never find peace in the villages of men. + +"But remember the name we gave him," his mother would say. "Perhaps he +is only living up to his name." + +For there are certain native hunters in India that are known, far and +wide, as the Shikaris; and possibly she meant in her tolerance that +her little son was merely a born huntsman. But in reality Little +Shikara was not named for these men at all. Rather it was for a +certain fleet-winged little hawk, a hunter of sparrows, that is one of +the most free spirits in all the jungle. + +And it was almost like taking part in some great hunt himself--to be +waiting at the gate for the return of Warwick Sahib. Even now, the +elephant came striding out of the shadows; and Little Shikara could +see the trophy. The hunt had indeed been successful, and the boy's +glowing eyes beheld--even in the shadows--the largest, most beautiful +tiger-skin he had ever seen. It was the great Nahar, the royal tiger, +who had killed one hundred cattle from near-by fields. + +Warwick Sahib rode in his _howdah_, and he did not seem to see the +village people that came out to meet him. In truth, he seemed half +asleep, his muscles limp, his gray eyes full of thoughts. He made no +answer to the triumphant shouts of the village folk. Little Shikara +glanced once at the lean, bronzed face, the limp, white, thin hands, +and something like a shiver of ecstasy went clear to his ten toes. For +like many other small boys, all over the broad world, he was a +hero-worshipper to the last hair of his head; and this quiet man on +the elephant was to him beyond all measure the most wonderful living +creature on the earth. + +He didn't cry out, as the others did. He simply stood in mute worship, +his little body tingling with glory. Warwick Sahib had looked up now, +and his slow eyes were sweeping the line of brown faces. But still he +did not seem to see them. And then--wonder of wonders--his eyes rested +full on the eyes of his little worshipper beside the gate. + +But it was quite the way of Warwick Sahib to sweep his gray, tired-out +eyes over a scene and seemingly perceive nothing; yet in reality +absorbing every detail with the accuracy of a photographic plate. And +his seeming indifference was not a pose with him, either. He was just +a great sportsman who was also an English gentleman, and he had +learned certain lessons of impassiveness from the wild. Only one of +the brown faces he beheld was worth a lingering glance. And when he +met that one his eyes halted in their sweeping survey--and Warwick +Sahib smiled. + +That face was the brown, eager visage of Little Shikara. And the blood +of the boy flowed to the skin, and he glowed red all over through the +brown. + +It was only the faintest of quiet, tolerant smiles; but it meant more +to him than almost any kind of an honour could have meant to the +prematurely gray man in the _howdah_. The latter passed on to his +estate, and some of the villagers went back to their women and their +thatch huts. But still Little Shikara stood motionless--and it wasn't +until the thought suddenly came to him that possibly the beaters had +already gathered and were telling the story of the kill that with +startling suddenness he raced back through the gates to the village. + +Yes, the beaters had assembled in a circle under a tree, and most of +the villagers had gathered to hear the story. He slipped in among +them, and listened with both outstanding little ears. Warwick Sahib +had dismounted from his elephant as usual, the beaters said, and with +but one attendant had advanced up the bed of a dry creek. This was +quite like Warwick Sahib, and Little Shikara felt himself tingling +again. Other hunters, particularly many of the rich sahibs from across +the sea, shot their tigers from the security of the _howdah_; but this +wasn't Warwick's way of doing. The male tiger had risen snarling from +his lair, and had been felled at the first shot. + +Most of the villagers had supposed that the story would end at this +point. Warwick Sahib's tiger hunts were usually just such simple and +expeditious affairs. The gun would lift to his shoulder, the quiet +eyes would glance along the barrel--and the tiger, whether charging or +standing still--would speedily die. But to-day there had been a +curious epilogue. Just as the beaters had started toward the fallen +animal, and the white Heaven-born's cigarette-case was open in his +hand, Nahara, Nahar's great, tawny mate, had suddenly sprung forth +from the bamboo thickets. + +She drove straight to the nearest of the beaters. There was no time +whatever for Warwick to take aim. His rifle leaped, like a live thing, +in his arms, but not one of the horrified beaters had seen his eyes +lower to the sights. Yet the bullet went home--they could tell by the +way the tiger flashed to her breast in the grass. + +Yet she was only wounded. One of the beaters, starting, had permitted +a bough of a tree to whip Warwick in the face, and the blow had +disturbed what little aim he had. It was almost a miracle that he had +hit the great cat at all. At once the thickets had closed around her, +and the beaters had been unable to drive her forth again. + +The circle was silent thereafter. They seemed to be waiting for +Khusru, one of the head men of the village, to give his opinion. He +knew more about the wild animals than any mature native in the +assembly, and his comments on the hunting stories were usually worth +hearing. + +"We will not be in the honoured service of the Protector of the Poor +at this time a year from now," he said. + +They all waited tensely. Shikara shivered. "Speak, Khusru," they urged +him. + +"Warwick Sahib will go again to the jungles--and Nahara will be +waiting. She owes two debts. One is the killing of her mate--and ye +know that these two tigers have been long and faithful mates. Do ye +think she will let that debt go unpaid? She will also avenge her own +wound." + +"Perhaps she will die of bleeding," one of the others suggested. + +"Nay, or ye would have found her this afternoon. Ye know that it is +the wounded tiger that is most to be feared. One day, and he will go +forth in pursuit of her again; and then ye will not see him riding +back so grandly on his elephant. Perhaps she will come here, to carry +away _our_ children." + +Again Shikara tingled--hoping that Nahara would at least come close +enough to cause excitement. And that night, too happy to keep silent, +he told his mother of Warwick Sahib's smile. "And some time I--I, +thine own son," he said as sleepiness came upon him, "will be a killer +of tigers, even as Warwick Sahib." + +"Little sparrow-hawk," his mother laughed at him. "Little one of +mighty words, only the great sahibs that come from afar, and Warwick +Sahib himself, may hunt the tiger, so how canst thou, little +worthless?" + +"I will soon be grown," he persisted, "and I--I, too--will some time +return with such a tiger-skin as the great Heaven-born brought this +afternoon." Little Shikara was very sleepy, and he was telling his +dreams much more frankly than was his wont. "And the village folk will +come out to meet me with shoutings, and I will tell them of the +shot--in the circle under the tree." + +"And where, little hawk, wilt thou procure thine elephants, and such +rupees as are needed?" + +"Warwick Sahib shoots from the ground--and so will I. And sometimes he +goes forth with only one attendant--and I will not need even one. And +who can say--perhaps he will find me even a bolder man than Gunga +Singhai; and he will take me in his place on the hunts in the +jungles." + +For Gunga Singhai was Warwick Sahib's own personal attendant and +gun-carrier--the native that the Protector of the Poor could trust in +the tightest places. So it was only to be expected that Little +Shikara's mother should laugh at him. The idea of her son being an +attendant of Warwick Sahib, not to mention a hunter of tigers, was +only a tale to tell her husband when the boy's bright eyes were closed +in sleep. + +"Nay, little man," she told him. "Would I want thee torn to pieces in +Nahara's claws? Would I want thee smelling of the jungle again, as +thou didst after chasing the water-buck through the bamboos? Nay--thou +wilt be a herdsman, like thy father--and perhaps gather many rupees." + +But Little Shikara did not want to think of rupees. Even now, as sleep +came to him, his childish spirit had left the circle of thatch roofs, +and had gone on tremulous expeditions into the jungle. Far away, the +trumpet-call of a wild tusker trembled through the moist, hot night; +and great bell-shaped flowers made the air pungent and heavy with +perfume. A tigress skulked somewhere in a thicket licking an injured +leg with her rough tongue, pausing to listen to every sound the night +gave forth. Little Shikara whispered in his sleep. + +A half mile distant, in his richly furnished bungalow, Warwick Sahib +dozed over his after-dinner cigar. He was in evening clothes, and +crystal and silver glittered on his board. But his gray eyes were half +closed; and the gleam from his plate could not pass the long, dark +lashes. For his spirit was far distant, too--on the jungle trails with +that of Little Shikara. + + +II + +One sunlit morning, perhaps a month after the skin of Nahar was +brought in from the jungle, Warwick Sahib's mail was late. It was an +unheard-of thing. Always before, just as the clock struck eight, he +would hear the cheerful tinkle of the postman's bells. At first he +considered complaining; but as morning drew to early afternoon he +began to believe that investigation would be the wiser course. + +The postman's route carried him along an old elephant trail through a +patch of thick jungle beside one of the tributaries of the Manipur. +When natives went out to look, he was neither on the path nor drowned +in the creek, nor yet in his thatched hut at the other end of his +route. The truth was that this particular postman's bells would never +be heard by human ears again. And there was enough evidence in the wet +mould of the trail to know what had occurred. + +That night the circle under the tree was silent and shivering. "Who is +next?" they asked of one another. The jungle night came down, +breathless and mysterious, and now and then a twig was cracked by a +heavy foot at the edge of the thickets. In Warwick's house, the great +Protector of the Poor took his rifles from their cases and fitted them +together. + +"To-morrow," he told Gunga Singhai, "we will settle for that postman's +death." Singhai breathed deeply, but said nothing. Perhaps his dark +eyes brightened. The tiger-hunts were nearly as great a delight to him +as they were to Warwick himself. + +But while Nahara, lame from Warwick's bullet, could no longer overtake +cattle, she did with great skilfulness avoid the onrush of the +beaters. Again Little Shikara waited at the village gate for his hero +to return; but the beaters walked silently to-night. Nor were there +any tales to be told under the tree. + +Nahara, a fairly respectable cattle-killer before, had become in a +single night one of the worst terrors of India. Of course she was +still a coward, but she had learned, by virtue of a chance meeting +with a postman on a trail after a week of heart-devouring starvation, +two or three extremely portentous lessons. One of them was that not +even the little deer, drinking beside the Manipur, died half so easily +as these tall, forked forms of which she had previously been so +afraid. She found out also that they could neither run swiftly nor +walk silently, and they could be approached easily even by a tiger +that cracked a twig with every step. It simplified the problem of +living immensely; and just as any other feline would have done, she +took the line of least resistance. If there had been plenty of carrion +in the jungle, Nahara might never have hunted men. But the kites and +the jackals looked after the carrion; and they were much swifter and +keener-eyed than a lame tiger. + +She knew enough not to confine herself to one village; and it is +rather hard to explain how any lower creature, that obviously cannot +reason, could have possessed this knowledge. Perhaps it was because +she had learned that a determined hunt, with many beaters and men on +elephants, invariably followed her killings. It was always well to +travel just as far as possible from the scene. She found out also +that, just as a doe is easier felled than a horned buck, certain of +this new kind of game were more easily taken than the others. +Sometimes children played at the door of their huts, and sometimes old +men were afflicted with such maladies that they could not flee at all. +All these things Nahara learned; and in learning them she caused a +certain civil office of the British Empire to put an exceedingly large +price on her head. + +Gradually the fact dawned on her that unlike the deer and the buffalo, +this new game was more easily hunted in the daylight--particularly in +that tired-out, careless twilight hour when the herders and the +plantation hands came in from their work. At night the village folk +kept in their huts, and such wood-cutters and gipsies as slept without +wakened every hour to tend their fires. Nahara was deathly afraid of +fire. Night after night she would creep round and round a gipsy camp, +her eyes like two pale blue moons in the darkness, and would never +dare attack. + +And because she was taking her living in a manner forbidden by the +laws of the jungle, the glory and beauty of her youth quickly departed +from her. There are no prisons for those that break the jungle laws, +no courts and no appointed officers, but because these are laws that +go down to the roots of life, punishment is always swift and +inevitable. "Thou shall not kill men," is the first law of the wild +creatures; and everyone knows that any animal or breed of animals that +breaks this law has sooner or later been hunted down and slain--just +like any other murderer. The mange came upon her, and she lost flesh, +and certain of her teeth began to come out. She was no longer the +beautiful female of her species, to be sung to by the weaver-birds as +she passed beneath. She was a hag and a vampire, hatred of whom lay +deep in every human heart in her hunting range. + +Often the hunting was poor, and sometimes she went many days in a +stretch without making a single kill. And in all beasts, high and low, +this is the last step to the worst degeneracy of all. It instils a +curious, terrible kind of blood-lust--to kill, not once, but as many +times as possible in the same hunt; to be content not with one death, +but to slay and slay until the whole herd is destroyed. It is the +instinct that makes a little weasel kill all the chickens in a coop, +when one was all it could possibly carry away, and that will cause a +wolf to leap from sheep to sheep in a fold until every one is dead. +Nahara didn't get a chance to kill every day; so when the opportunity +did come, like a certain pitiable kind of human hunter who comes from +afar to hunt small game, she killed as many times as she could in +quick succession. And the British Empire raised the price on her head. + +One afternoon found her within a half mile of Warwick's bungalow, and +for five days she had gone without food. One would not have thought of +her as a royal tigress, the queen of the felines and one of the most +beautiful of all living things. And since she was still tawny and +graceful, it would be hard to understand why she no longer gave the +impression of beauty. It was simply gone, as a flame goes, and her +queenliness was wholly departed, too. In some vague way she had become +a poisonous, a ghastly thing, to be named with such outcasts as the +jackals or hyenas. + +Excessive hunger, in most of the flesh-eating animals, is really a +first cousin to madness. It brings bad dreams and visions, and, worst +of all, it induces an insubordination to all the forest laws of man +and beast. A well-fed wolf-pack will run in stark panic from a human +being; but even the wisest of mountaineers do not care to meet the +same gray band in the starving times of winter. Starvation brings +recklessness, a desperate frenzied courage that is likely to upset all +of one's preconceived notions as to the behaviour of animals. It also +brings, so that all men may be aware of its presence, a peculiar lurid +glow to the balls of the eyes. + +In fact, the two pale circles of fire were the most noticeable +characteristics of the long, tawny cat that crept through the bamboos. +Except for them, she would hardly have been discernible at all. The +yellow grass made a perfect background, her black stripes looked like +the streaks of shadow between the stalks of bamboo, and for one that +is lame she crept with an astounding silence. One couldn't have +believed that such a great creature could lie so close to the earth +and be so utterly invisible in the low thickets. + +A little peninsula of dwarf bamboos and tall jungle grass extended out +into the pasture before the village and Nahara crept out clear to its +point. She didn't seem to be moving. One couldn't catch the stir and +draw of muscles. And yet she slowly glided to the end; then began her +wait. Her head sunk low, her body grew tense, her tail whipped softly +back and forth, with as easy a motion as the swaying of a serpent. The +light flamed and died and flamed and died again in her pale eyes. + +Soon a villager who had been working in Warwick's fields came trotting +in Oriental fashion across the meadow. His eyes were only human, and +he did not see the tawny shape in the tall grass. If any one had told +him that a full-grown tigress could have crept to such a place and +still remained invisible, he would have laughed. He was going to his +thatched hut, to brown wife and babies, and it was no wonder that he +trotted swiftly. The muscles of the great cat bunched, and now the +whipping tail began to have a little vertical motion that is the final +warning of a spring. + +The man was already in leaping range; but the tiger had learned, in +many experiences, always to make sure. Still she crouched--a single +instant in which the trotting native came two paces nearer. Then the +man drew up with a gasp of fright. + +For just as the clear outlines of an object that has long been +concealed in a maze of light and shadow will often leap, with sudden +vividness, to the eyes, the native suddenly perceived the tiger. + +He caught the whole dread picture--the crouching form, the terrible +blue lights of the eyes, the whipping tail. The gasp he uttered from +his closing throat seemed to act like the fall of a firing-pin against +a shell on the bunched muscles of the animal; and she left her covert +in a streak of tawny light. + +But Nahara's leaps had never been quite accurate since she had been +wounded by Warwick's bullet, months before. They were usually straight +enough for the general purposes of hunting, but they missed by a long +way the "theoretical centre of impact" of which artillery officers +speak. Her lame paw always seemed to disturb her balance. By +remembering it, she could usually partly overcome the disadvantage; +but to-day, in the madness of her hunger, she had been unable to +remember anything except the terrible rapture of killing. This +circumstance alone, however, would not have saved the native's life. +Even though her fangs missed his throat, the power of the blow and her +rending talons would have certainly snatched away his life as a storm +snatches a leaf. But there was one other determining factor. The +Burman had seen the tiger just before she leaped; and although there +had been no time for conscious thought, his guardian reflexes had +flung him to one side in a single frenzied effort to miss the full +force of the spring. + +The result of both these things was that he received only an awkward, +sprawling blow from the animal's shoulder. Of course he was hurled to +the ground; for no human body in the world is built to withstand the +ton or so of shocking power of a three-hundred-pound cat leaping +through the air. The tigress sprawled down also, and because she +lighted on her wounded paw, she squealed with pain. It was possibly +three seconds before she had forgotten the stabbing pain in her paw +and had gathered herself to spring on the unconscious form of the +native. And that three seconds gave Warwick Sahib, sitting at the +window of his study, an opportunity to seize his rifle and fire. + +Warwick knew tigers, and he had kept the rifle always ready for just +such a need as this. The distance was nearly five hundred yards, and +the bullet went wide of its mark. Nevertheless, it saved the native's +life. The great cat remembered this same far-off explosion from +another day, in a dry creek-bed of months before, and the sing of the +bullet was a remembered thing, too. Although it would speedily return +to her, her courage fled and she turned and faced into the bamboos. + +In an instant, Warwick was on his great veranda, calling his beaters. +Gunga Singhai, his faithful gun-carrier, slipped shells into the +magazine of his master's high-calibered close-range tiger-rifle. "The +elephant, Sahib?" he asked swiftly. + +"Nay, this will be on foot. Make the beaters circle about the fringe +of bamboos. Thou and I will cross the eastern fields and shoot at her +as she breaks through." + +But there was really no time to plan a complete campaign. Even now, +the first gray of twilight was blurring the sharp outlines of the +jungle, and the soft jungle night was hovering, ready to descend. +Warwick's plan was to cut through to a certain little creek that +flowed into the river and with Singhai to continue on to the edge of +the bamboos that overlooked a wide field. The beaters would prevent +the tigress from turning back beyond the village, and it was at least +possible that he would get a shot at her as she burst from the jungle +and crossed the field to the heavier thickets beyond. + +"Warwick Sahib walks into the teeth of his enemy," Khusru, the hunter, +told a little group that watched from the village gate. "Nahara will +collect her debts." + +A little brown boy shivered at his words and wondered if the beaters +would turn and kick him, as they had always done before, if he should +attempt to follow them. It was the tiger-hunt, in view of his own +village, and he sat down, tremulous with rapture, in the grass to +watch. It was almost as if his dream--that he himself should be a +hunter of tigers--was coming true. He wondered why the beaters seemed +to move so slowly and with so little heart. + +He would have known if he could have looked into their eyes. Each +black pupil was framed with white. Human hearts grow shaken and +bloodless from such sights as this they had just seen, and only the +heart of a jungle creature--the heart of the eagle that the jungle +gods, by some unheard-of fortune, had put in the breast of Little +Shikara--could prevail against them. Besides, the superstitious +Burmans thought that Warwick was walking straight to death--that the +time had come for Nahara to collect her debts. + + +III + +Warwick Sahib and Singhai disappeared at once into the fringe of +jungle, and silence immediately fell upon them. The cries of the +beaters at once seemed curiously dim. It was as if no sound could live +in the great silences under the arching trees. Soon it was as if they +were alone. + +They walked side by side, Warwick with his rifle held ready. He had no +false ideas in regard to this tiger-hunt. He knew that his prey was +desperate with hunger, that she had many old debts to pay, and that +she would charge on sight. + +The self-rage that is felt on missing some particularly fortunate +chance is not confined to human beings alone. There is an old saying +in the forest that a feline that has missed his stroke is like a +jackal in dog-days--and that means that it is not safe to be anywhere +in the region with him. He simply goes rabid and is quite likely to +leap at the first living thing that stirs. Warwick knew that Nahara +had just been cheated out of her kill and someone in the jungle would +pay for it. + +The gaudy birds that looked down from the tree-branches could scarcely +recognize this prematurely gray man as a hunter. He walked rather +quietly, yet with no conscious effort toward stealth. The rifle rested +easily in his arms, his gray eyes were quiet and thoughtful as always. +Singularly, his splendid features were quite in repose. The Burman, +however, had more of the outer signs of alertness; and yet there was +none of the blind terror upon him that marked the beaters. + +"Where are the men?" Warwick asked quietly. "It is strange that we do +not hear them shouting." + +"They are afraid, Sahib," Singhai replied. "The forest pigs have left +us to do our own hunting." + +Warwick corrected him with a smile. "Forest pigs are brave enough," he +answered. "They are sheep--just sheep--sheep of the plains." + +The broad trail divided, like a three-tined candlestick, into narrow +trails. Warwick halted beside the centre of the three that led to the +creek they were obliged to cross. Just for an instant he stood +watching, gazing into the deep-blue dusk of the deeper jungle. +Twilight was falling softly. The trails soon vanished into +shadow--patches of deep gloom, relieved here and there by a bright +leaf that reflected the last twilight rays. A living creature coughed +and rustled away in the thickets beside him. + +"There is little use of going on," he said. "It is growing too dark. +But there will be killings before the dawn if we don't get her first." + +The servant stood still, waiting. It was not his place to advise his +master. + +"If we leave her, she'll come again before the dawn. Many of the +herders haven't returned--she'll get one of them sure. At least we may +cross the creek and get a view of the great fields. She is certain to +cross them if she has heard the beaters." + +In utter silence they went on. One hundred yards farther they came to +the creek, and both strode in together to ford. + +The water was only knee-deep, but Warwick's boots sank three inches in +the mud of the bottom. And at that instant the gods of the jungle, +always waiting with drawn scimitar for the unsuspecting, turned +against them. + +Singhai suddenly splashed down into the water, on his hands and knees. +He did not cry out. If he made any sound at all, it was just a +shivering gasp that the splash of water wholly obscured. But the thing +that brought home the truth to Warwick was the pain that flashed, +vivid as lightning, across his dark face; and the horror of death that +left its shadow. Something churned and writhed in the mud; and then +Warwick fired. + +Both of them had forgotten Mugger, the crocodile, that so loves to +wait in the mud of a ford. He had seized Singhai's foot, and had +already snatched him down into the water when Warwick fired. No living +flesh can withstand the terrible, rending shock of a high-powered +sporting rifle at close range. Mugger had plates of armour, but even +these could not have availed against it if he had been exposed to the +fire. As it was, several inches of water stood between, a more +effective armour than a two-inch steel plate on a battleship. Of +course the shock carried through, a smashing blow that caused the +reptile to release his hold on Singhai's leg; but before the native +could get to his feet he had struck again. The next instant both men +were fighting for their lives. + +They fought with their hands, and Warwick fought with his rifle, and +the native slashed again and again with the long knife that he carried +at his belt. To a casual glance, a crocodile is wholly incapable of +quick action. These two found him a slashing, darting, wolf-like +thing, lunging with astounding speed through the muddied water, +knocking them from their feet and striking at them as they fell. + +The reptile was only half grown, but in the water they had none of the +usual advantages that man has over the beasts with which he does +battle. Warwick could not find a target for his rifle. But even human +bodies, usually so weak, find themselves possessed of an amazing +reserve strength and agility in the moment of need. These men realized +perfectly that their lives were the stakes for which they fought, and +they gave every ounce of strength and energy they had. Their aim was +to hold the mugger off until they could reach the shore. + +At last, by a lucky stroke, Singhai's knife blinded one of the lurid +reptile eyes. He was prone in the water when he administered it, and +it went home just as the savage teeth were snapping at his throat. For +an instant the great reptile flopped in an impotent half-circle, +partly reared out of the water. It gave Warwick a chance to shoot, a +single instant in which the rifle seemed to whirl about in his arms, +drive to his shoulder, and blaze in the deepening twilight. And the +shot went true. It pierced the mugger from beneath, tearing upward +through the brain. And then the agitated waters of the ford slowly +grew quiet. + +The last echo of the report was dying when Singhai stretched his +bleeding arms about Warwick's body, caught up the rifle and dragged +them forty feet up on the shore. It was an effort that cost the last +of his strength. And as the stars popped out of the sky, one by one, +through the gray of dusk, the two men lay silent, side by side, on the +grassy bank. + +Warwick was the first to regain consciousness. At first he didn't +understand the lashing pain in his wrists, the strange numbness in one +of his legs, the darkness with the great white Indian stars shining +through. Then he remembered. And he tried to stretch his arm to the +prone form beside him. + +The attempt was an absolute failure. The cool brain dispatched the +message, it flew along the telegraph-wires of the nerves, but the +muscles refused to react. He remembered that the teeth of the mugger +had met in one of the muscles of his upper arm, but before +unconsciousness had come upon him he had been able to lift the gun to +shoot. Possibly infection from the bite had in some manner temporarily +paralyzed the arm. He turned, wracked with pain, on his side and +lifted his left arm. In doing so his hand crossed before his eyes--and +then he smiled wanly in the darkness. + +It was quite like Warwick, sportsman and English gentleman, to smile +at a time like this. Even in the gray darkness of the jungle night he +could see the hand quite plainly. It no longer looked slim and white. +And he remembered that the mugger had caught his fingers in one of its +last rushes. + +He paused only for one glance at the mutilated member. He knew that +his first work was to see how Singhai had fared. In that glance he was +boundlessly relieved to see that the hand could unquestionably be +saved. The fingers were torn, yet their bones did not seem to be +severed. Temporarily at least, however, the hand was utterly useless. +The fingers felt strange and detached. + +He reached out to the still form beside him, touching the dark skin +first with his fingers, and then, because they had ceased to function, +with the flesh of his wrist. He expected to find it cold. Singhai was +alive, however, and his warm blood beat close to the dark skin. + +But he was deeply unconscious, and it was possible that one foot was +hopelessly mutilated. + +For a moment Warwick lay quite still, looking his situation squarely +in the face. He did not believe that either he or his attendant was +mortally or even very seriously hurt. True, one of his arms had +suffered paralysis, but there was no reason for thinking it had been +permanently injured. His hand would be badly scarred, but soon as good +as ever. The real question that faced them was that of getting back to +the bungalow. + +Walking was out of the question. His whole body was bruised and +lacerated, and he was already dangerously weak from loss of blood. It +would take all his energy, these first few hours, to keep his +consciousness. Besides, it was perfectly obvious that Singhai could +not walk. And English gentlemen do not desert their servants at a time +like this. The real mystery lay in the fact that the beaters had not +already found and rescued them. + +He wore a watch with luminous dial on his left wrist, and he managed +to get it before his eyes. And then understanding came to him. A full +hour had passed since he and his servant had fought the mugger in the +ford. And the utter silence of early night had come down over the +jungle. + +There was only one thing to believe. The beaters had evidently heard +him shoot, sought in vain for him in the thickets, possibly passed +within a few hundred feet of him, and because he had been unconscious +he had not heard them or called to them, and now they had given him up +for lost. He remembered with bitterness how all of them had been sure +that an encounter with Nahara would cost him his life, and would thus +be all the more quick to believe he had died in her talons. Nahara had +her mate and her own lameness to avenge, they had said, attributing in +their superstition human emotions to the brute natures of animals. It +would have been quite useless for Warwick to attempt to tell them that +the male tiger, in the mind of her wicked mate, was no longer even a +memory, and that premeditated vengeance is an emotion almost unknown +in the animal world. Without leaders or encouragement, and terribly +frightened by the scene they had beheld before the village, they had +quickly given up any attempt to find his body. There had been none +among them coolheaded enough to reason out which trail he had likely +taken, and thus look for him by the ford. Likely they were already +huddled in their thatched huts, waiting till daylight. + +Then he called in the darkness. A heavy body brushed through the +creepers, and stepping falsely, broke a twig. He thought at first that +it might be one of the villagers, coming to look for him. But at once +the step was silenced. + +Warwick had a disturbing thought that the creature that had broken the +twig had not gone away, but was crouching down, in a curious manner, +in the deep shadows. Nahara had returned to her hunting. + + +IV + +"Some time I, too, will be a hunter of tigers," Little Shikara told +his mother when the beaters began to circle through the bamboos. "To +carry a gun beside Warwick Sahib--and to be honoured in the circle +under the tree!" + +But his mother hardly listened. She was quivering with fright. She had +seen the last part of the drama in front of the village; and she was +too frightened even to notice the curious imperturbability of her +little son. But there was no orderly retreat after Little Shikara had +heard the two reports of the rifle. At first there were only the +shouts of the beaters, singularly high-pitched, much running back and +forth in the shadows, and then a pell-mell scurry to the shelter of +the villages. + +For a few minutes there was wild excitement at the village gates. +Warwick Sahib was dead, they said--they had heard the shots and run to +the place of firing, and beat up and down through the bamboos; and +Warwick Sahib had surely been killed and carried off by the tigress. +This dreadful story told, most of the villagers went to hide at once +in their huts; only a little circle of the bravest men hovered at the +gate. They watched with drawn faces the growing darkness. + +But there was one among them who was not yet a man grown; a boy so +small that he could hover, unnoticed, in the very smallest of the +terrible shadow-patches. He was Little Shikara, and he was shocked to +the very depths of his worshipping heart. For Warwick had been his +hero, the greatest man of all time, and he felt himself burning with +indignation that the beaters should return so soon. And it was a +curious fact that he had not as yet been infected with the contagion +of terror that was being passed from man to man among the villagers. +Perhaps his indignation was too absorbing an emotion to leave room for +terror, and perhaps, far down in his childish spirit, he was made of +different stuff. He was a child of the jungle, and perhaps he had +shared of that great imperturbability and impassiveness that is the +eternal trait of the wildernesses. + +He went up to one of the younger beaters who had told and retold a +story of catching a glimpse of Nahara in the thickets until no one was +left to tell it to. He was standing silent, and Little Shikara thought +it possible that he might reach his ears. + +"Give ear, Puran," he pleaded. "Didst thou look for his body beside +the ford over Tarai stream?" + +"Nay, little one--though I passed within one hundred paces." + +"Dost thou not know that he and Singhai would of a certainty cross at +the ford to reach the fringe of jungle from which he might watch the +eastern field? Some of you looked on the trail beside the ford, but +none looked at the ford itself. And the sound of the rifle seemed to +come from thence." + +"But why did he not call out?" + +"Dead men could not call, but at least ye might have frightened Nahara +from the body. But perhaps he is wounded, unable to speak, and lies +there still--" + +But Puran had found another listener for his story, and speedily +forgot the boy. He hurried over to another of the villagers, Khusru +the hunter. + +"Did no one look by the ford?" he asked, almost sobbing. "For that is +the place he had gone." + +The native's eyes seemed to light. "_Hai_, little one, thou hast +thought of what thy elders had forgotten. There is level land there, +and clear. And I shall go at the first ray of dawn--" + +"But not to-night, Khusru--?" + +"Nay, little sinner! Wouldst thou have me torn to pieces?" + +Lastly Little Shikara went to his own father, and they had a moment's +talk at the outskirts of the throng. But the answer was nay--just the +same. Even his brave father would not go to look for the body until +daylight came. The boy felt his skin prickling all over. + +"But perhaps he is only wounded--and left to die. If I go and return +with word that he is there, wilt thou take others and go out and bring +him in?" + +"_Thou_ goest!" His father broke forth in a great roar of laughter. +"Why, thou little hawk! One would think that thou wert a hunter of +tigers thyself!" + +Little Shikara blushed beneath the laughter. For he was a very boyish +little boy in most ways. But it seemed to him that his sturdy young +heart was about to break open from bitterness. All of them agreed that +Warwick Sahib, perhaps wounded and dying, might be lying by the ford, +but none of them would venture forth to see. Unknowing, he was +beholding the expression of a certain age-old trait of human nature. +Men do not fight ably in the dark. They need their eyes, and they +particularly require a definite object to give them determination. If +these villagers knew for certain that the Protector of the Poor lay +wounded or even dead beside the ford, they would have rallied bravely, +encouraged one another with words and oaths, and gone forth to rescue +him; but they wholly lacked the courage to venture again into the +jungle on any such blind quest as Little Shikara suggested. + +But the boy's father should not have laughed. He should have +remembered the few past occasions when his straight little son had +gone into the jungle alone; and that remembrance should have silenced +him. The difficulty lay in the fact that he supposed his boy and he +were of the same flesh, and that Little Shikara shared his own great +dread of the night-curtained jungle. In this he was very badly +mistaken. Little Shikara had an inborn understanding and love of the +jungle; and except for such material dangers as that of Nahara, he was +not afraid of it at all. He had no superstitions in regard to it. +Perhaps he was too young. But the main thing that the laugh did was to +set off, as a match sets off powder, a whole heartful of unexploded +indignation in Shikara's breast. These villagers not only had deserted +their patron and protector, but also they had laughed at the thought +of rescue! His own father had laughed at him. + +Little Shikara silently left the circle of villagers and turned into +the darkness. + +At once the jungle silence closed round him. He hadn't dreamed that +the noise of the villagers would die so quickly. Although he could +still see the flame of the fire at the village gate behind him, it was +almost as if he had at once dropped off into another world. Great +flowers poured perfume down upon him, and at seemingly a great +distance he heard the faint murmur of the wind. + +At first, deep down in his heart, he had really not intended to go all +the way. He had expected to steal clear to the outer edge of the +firelight; and then stand listening to the darkness for such +impressions as the jungle would choose to give him. But there had been +no threshold, no interlude of preparation. The jungle in all its +mystery had folded about him at once. + +He trotted softly down the elephant trail, a dim, fleet shadow that +even the keen eyes of Nahara could scarcely have seen. At first he was +too happy to be afraid. He was always happy when the jungle closed +round him. Besides, if Nahara had killed, she would be full-fed by now +and not to be feared. Little Shikara hastened on, trembling all over +with a joyous sort of excitement. + +If a single bird had flapped its wings in the branches, if one little +rodent had stirred in the underbrush, Little Shikara would likely have +turned back. But the jungle-gods, knowing their son, stilled all the +forest voices. He crept on, still looking now and again over his +shoulder to see the village fire. It still made a bright yellow +triangle in the dusk behind him. He didn't stop to think that he was +doing a thing most grown natives and many white men would not have +dared to do--to follow a jungle trail unarmed at night. If he had +stopped to think at all he simply would have been unable to go on. He +was only following his instincts, voices that such forces as maturity +and grown-up intelligence and self-consciousness obscure in older +men--and the terror of the jungle could not touch him. He went +straight to do what service he could for the white sahib that was one +of his lesser gods. + +Time after time he halted, but always he pushed on a few more feet. +Now he was over halfway to the ford, clear to the forks in the trail. +And then he turned about with a little gasp of fear. + +The light from the village had gone out. The thick foliage of the +jungle had come between. + +He was really frightened now. It wasn't that he was afraid he couldn't +get back. The trail was broad and hard and quite gray in the +moonlight. But those far-off beams of light had been a solace to his +spirit, a reminder that he had not yet broken all ties with the +village. He halted, intending to turn back. + +Then a thrill began at his scalp and went clear to his bare toes. +Faint through the jungle silences he heard Warwick Sahib calling to +his faithless beaters. The voice had an unmistakable quality of +distress. + +Certain of the villagers--a very few of them--said afterward that +Little Shikara continued on because he was afraid to go back. They +said that he looked upon the Heaven-born sahib as a source of all +power, in whose protection no harm could befall him, and he sped +toward him because the distance was shorter than back to the haven of +fire at the village. But those who could look deeper into Little +Shikara's soul knew different. In some degree at least he hastened on +down that jungle trail of peril because he knew that his idol was in +distress, and by laws that went deep he knew he must go to his aid. + + +V + +The first few minutes after Warwick had heard a living step in the +thickets he spent in trying to reload his rifle. He carried other +cartridges in the right-hand trousers pocket, but after a few minutes +of futile effort it became perfectly evident that he was not able to +reach them. His right arm was useless, and the fingers of his left, +lacerated by the mugger's bite, refused to take hold. + +He had, however, three of the five shells the rifle held still in his +gun. The single question that remained was whether or not they would +be of use to him. + +The rifle lay half under him, its stock protruding from beneath his +body. With the elbow of his left arm he was able to work it out. +Considering the difficulties under which he worked, he made amazingly +few false motions; and yet he worked with swiftness. Warwick was a man +who had been schooled and trained by many dangers; he had learned to +face them with open eyes and steady hands, to judge with unclouded +thought the exact percentage of his chances. He knew now that he must +work swiftly. The shape in the shadow was not going to wait all night. + +But at that moment the hope of preserving his life that he had clung +to until now broke like a bubble in the sunlight. He could not lift +the gun to swing and aim it at a shape in the darkness. With his +mutilated hands he could not cock the strong-springed hammer. And if +he could do both these things with his fumbling, bleeding, lacerated +fingers, his right hand could not be made to pull the trigger. Warwick +Sahib knew at last just where he stood. Yet if human sight could have +penetrated that dusk, it would have beheld no change of expression in +the lean face. + +An English gentleman lay at the frontier of death. But that occasioned +neither fawning nor a loss of his rigid self-control. + +Two things remained, however, that he might do. One was to call and +continue to call, as long as life lasted in his body. He knew +perfectly that more than once in the history of India a tiger had been +kept at a distance, at least for a short period of time, by shouts +alone. In that interlude, perhaps help might come from the village. +The second thing was almost as impossible as raising and firing the +rifle; but by the luck of the gods he might achieve it. He wanted to +find Singhai's knife and hold it compressed in his palm. + +It wasn't that he had any vain hopes of repelling the tiger's attack +with a single knife-blade that would be practically impossible for his +mutilated hand to hold. Nahara had five or so knife-blades in every +paw and a whole set of them in her mouth. She could stand on four legs +and fight, and Warwick could not lift himself on one elbow and yet +wield the blade. But there were other things to be done with blades, +even held loosely in the palm, at a time like this. + +He knew rather too much of the way of tigers. They do not always kill +swiftly. It is the tiger way to tease, long moments, with half-bared +talons; to let the prey crawl away a few feet for the rapture of +leaping at it again; to fondle with an exquisite cruelty for moments +that seem endless to its prey. A knife, on the other hand, kills +quickly. Warwick much preferred the latter death. + +And even as he called, again and again, he began to feel about in the +grass with his lacerated hand for the hilt of the knife. Nahara was +steadily stealing toward him through the shadows. + +The great tigress was at the height of her hunting madness. The +earlier adventure of the evening when she had missed her stroke, the +stir and tumult of the beaters in the wood, her many days of hunger, +had all combined to intensify her passion. And finally there had come +the knowledge, in subtle ways, that two of her own kind of game were +lying wounded and helpless beside the ford. + +But even the royal tiger never forgets some small measure of its +caution. She did not charge at once. The game looked so easy that it +was in some way suggestive of a trap. She crept forward, a few feet at +a time. The wild blood began to leap through the great veins. The hair +went stiff on the neck muscles. + +But Warwick shouted; and the sound for an instant appalled her. She +lurked in the shadows. And then, as she made a false step, Warwick +heard her for the first time. + +Again she crept forward, to pause when Warwick raised his voice the +second time. The man knew enough to call at intervals rather than +continuously. A long, continued outcry would very likely stretch the +tiger's nerves to a breaking point and hurl her into a frenzy that +would probably result in a death-dealing charge. Every few seconds he +called again. In the intervals between the tiger crept forward. Her +excitement grew upon her. She crouched lower. Her sinewy tail had +whipped softly at first; now it was lashing almost to her sides. And +finally it began to have a slight vertical movement that Warwick, +fortunately for his spirit, could not see. + +Then the little light that the moon poured down was suddenly reflected +in Nahara's eyes. All at once they burned out of the dusk; two +blue-green circles of fire fifty feet distant in the darkness. At that +Warwick gasped--for the first time. In another moment the great cat +would be in range--and he had not yet found the knife. Nothing +remained to believe but that it was lost in the mud of the ford, fifty +feet distant, and that the last dread avenue of escape was cut off. + +But at that instant the gasp gave way to a whispered oath of wonder. +Some living creature was running lightly down the trail toward +him--soft, light feet that came with amazing swiftness. For once in +his life Warwick did not know where he stood. For once he was the +chief figure of a situation he did not entirely understand. He tried +to probe into the darkness with his tired eyes. + +"Here I am!" he called. The tiger, starting to creep forward once +more, halted at the voice. A small straight figure sped like an arrow +out of the thickets and halted at his side. + +It was such an astounding appearance as for an instant completely +paralyzes the mental faculties. Warwick's first emotion was simply a +great and hopeless astonishment. Long inured to the mystery of the +jungle, he thought he had passed the point where any earthly happening +could actually bewilder him. But in spite of it, in spite of the +fire-eyed peril in the darkness, he was quite himself when he spoke. +The voice that came out of the silence was wholly steady--a kindly, +almost amused voice of one who knows life as it is and who has +mastered his own destiny. + +"Who in the world?" he asked in the vernacular. + +"It is I--Little Shikara," a tremulous voice answered. Except for the +tremor he could not keep from his tone, he spoke as one man to +another. + +Warwick knew at once that Little Shikara was not yet aware of the +presence of the tiger fifty feet distant in the shadows. But he knew +nothing else. The whole situation was beyond his ken. + +But his instincts were manly and true. "Then run speedily, little +one," he whispered, "back to the village. There is danger here in the +dark." + +Little Shikara tried to speak, and he swallowed painfully. A lump had +come in his throat that at first would not let him talk. "Nay, +Protector of the Poor!" he answered. "I--I came alone. And I--I am thy +servant." + +Warwick's heart bounded. Not since his youth had left him to a gray +world had his strong heart leaped in just this way before. "Merciful +God!" he whispered in English. "Has a child come to save me?" Then he +whipped again into the vernacular and spoke swiftly; for no further +seconds were to be wasted. "Little Shikara, have you ever fired a +gun?" + +"No, Sahib--" + +"Then lift it up and rest it across my body. Thou knowest how it is +held--" + +Little Shikara didn't know exactly, but he rested the gun on Warwick's +body; and he had seen enough target practice to crook his finger about +the trigger. And together, the strangest pair of huntsmen that the +Indian stars ever looked down upon, they waited. + +"It is Nahara," Warwick explained softly. For he had decided to be +frank with Little Shikara, trusting all to the courage of a child. "It +all depends on thee. Pull back the hammer with thy thumb." + +Little Shikara obeyed. He drew it back until it clicked and did not, +as Warwick had feared, let it slip through his fingers back against +the breach. "Yes, Sahib," he whispered breathlessly. His little brave +heart seemed about to explode in his breast. But it was the test, and +he knew he must not waver in the sahib's eyes. + +"It is Nahara, and thou art a man," Warwick said again. "And now thou +must wait until thou seest her eyes." + +So they strained into the darkness; and in an instant more they saw +again the two circles of greenish, smouldering fire. They were quite +near now--Nahara was almost in leaping range. + +"Thou wilt look through the little hole at the rear and then along the +barrel," Warwick ordered swiftly, "and thou must see the two eyes +along the little notch in front." + +"I see, Sahib--and between the eyes," came the same breathless +whisper. The little brown body held quite still. Warwick could not +even feel it trembling against his own. For the moment, by virtue of +some strange prank of Shiv, the jungle-gods were giving their own +strength to this little brown son of theirs beside the ford. + +"Thou wilt not jerk or move?" + +"Nay, Sahib." And he spoke true. The world might break to pieces or +blink out, but he would not throw off his aim by any terror motions. +They could see the tiger's outline now--the lithe, low-hung body, the +tail that twitched up and down. + +"Then pull the trigger," Warwick whispered. + +The whole jungle world rocked and trembled from the violence of the +report. + +When the villagers, aroused by the roar of the rifle and led by Khusru +and Puran and Little Shikara's father, rushed down with their +firebrands to the ford, their first thought was that they had come +only to the presence of the dead. Three human beings lay very still +beside the stream, and fifty feet in the shadows something else, that +obviously was _not_ a human being, lay very still, too. But they were +not to have any such horror story to tell their wives. Only one of the +three by the ford, Singhai, the gun-bearer, was even really +unconscious; Little Shikara, the rifle still held lovingly in his +arms, had gone into a half-faint from fear and nervous exhaustion, and +Warwick Sahib had merely closed his eyes to the darting light of the +firebrands. The only death that had occurred was that of Nahara the +tigress--and she had a neat hole bored completely through her neck. To +all evidence, she had never stirred after Little Shikara's bullet had +gone home. + +After much confusion and shouting and falling over one another, and +gazing at Little Shikara as if he were some new kind of a ghost, the +villagers got a stretcher each for Singhai and the Protector of the +Poor. And when they got them well loaded into them, and Little Shikara +had quite come to himself and was standing with some bewilderment in a +circle of staring townspeople, a clear, commanding voice ordered that +they all be silent. Warwick Sahib was going to make what was the +nearest approach to a speech that he had made since various of his +friends had decoyed him to a dinner in London some years before. + +The words that he said, the short vernacular words that have a way of +coming straight to the point, established Little Shikara as a legend +through all that corner of British India. It was Little Shikara who +had come alone through the jungle, said he; it was Little Shikara's +shining eyes that had gazed along the barrel, and it was his own brown +finger that had pulled the trigger. Thus, said Warwick, he would get +the bounty that the British Government offered--British rupees that to +a child's eyes would be past counting. Thus in time, with Warwick's +influence, his would be a great voice through all of India. For small +as he was, and not yet grown, he was of the true breed. + +After the shouting was done, Warwick turned to Little Shikara to see +how he thought upon all these things. "Thou shalt have training for +the army, little one, where thy good nerve will be of use, and thou +shalt be a native officer, along with the sons of princes. I, myself, +will see to it, for I do not hold my life so cheap that I will forget +the thing that thou hast done to-night." + +And he meant what he said. The villagers stood still when they saw his +earnest face. "And what, little hawk, wilt thou have more?" he asked. + +Little Shikara trembled and raised his eyes. "Only sometimes to ride +with thee, in thy _howdah_, as thy servant, when thou again seekest +the tiger." + +The whole circle laughed at this. They were just human, after all. +Their firebrands were held high, and gleamed on Little Shikara's dusky +face, and made a lustre in his dark eyes. The circle, roaring with +laughter, did not hear the sahib's reply, but they did see him nod his +head. + +"I would not dare go without thee now," Warwick told him. + +And thus Little Shikara's dreams came true--to be known through many +villages as a hunter of tigers, and a brave follower and comrade of +the forest trails. And thus he came into his own--in those far-off +glades of Burma, in the jungles of the Manipur. + + + +THE MAN WHO CURSED THE LILIES + +By CHARLES TENNEY JACKSON + +From _Short Stories_ + + +Tedge looked from the pilot-house at the sweating deckhand who stood +on the stubby bow of the _Marie Louise_ heaving vainly on the pole +thrust into the barrier of crushed water hyacinths across the channel. + +Crump, the engineer, shot a sullen look at the master ere he turned +back to the crude oil motor whose mad pounding rattled the old bayou +stern-wheeler from keel to hogchains. + +"She's full ahead now!" grunted Crump. And then, with a covert glance +at the single passenger sitting on the fore-deck cattle pens, the +engineman repeated his warning, "Yeh'll lose the cows, Tedge, if you +keep on fightin' the flowers. They're bad f'r feed and water--they +can't stand another day o' sun!" + +Tedge knew it. But he continued to shake his hairy fist at the +deckhand and roar his anathemas upon the flower-choked bayou. He knew +his crew was grinning evilly, for they remembered Bill Tedge's +year-long feud with the lilies. Crump had bluntly told the skipper he +was a fool for trying to push up this little-frequented bayou from +Cote Blanche Bay to the higher land of the west Louisiana coast, where +he had planned to unload his cattle. + +Tedge had bought the cargo himself near Beaumont from a beggared +ranchman whose stock had to go on the market because, for seven +months, there had been no rain in eastern Texas, and the short-grass +range was gone. + +Tedge knew where there was feed for the starving animals, and the +_Marie Louise_ was coming back light. By the Intercoastal Canal and +the shallow string of bays along the Texas-Louisiana line, the bayou +boat could crawl safely back to the grassy swamp lands that fringe the +sugar plantations of Bayou Teche. Tedge had bought his living cargo so +ridiculously cheap that if half of them stood the journey he would +profit. And they would cost him nothing for winter ranging up in the +swamp lands. In the spring he would round up what steers had lived and +sell them, grass-fat, in New Orleans. He'd land them there with his +flap-paddle bayou boat, too, for the _Marie Louise_ ranged up and down +the Inter-coastal Canal and the uncharted swamp lakes and bays +adjoining, trading and thieving and serving the skipper's obscure +ends. + +Only now, when he turned up Cote Blanche Bay, some hundred miles west +of the Mississippi passes, to make the last twenty miles of swamp +channel to his landing, he faced his old problem. Summer long the +water hyacinths were a pest to navigation on the coastal bayous, but +this June they were worse than Tedge had ever seen. He knew the +reason: the mighty Mississippi was at high flood, and as always then, +a third of its yellow waters were sweeping down the Atchafalaya River +on a "short cut" to the Mexican Gulf. And somewhere above, on its west +bank, the Atchafalaya levees had broken and the flood waters were all +through the coastal swamp channels. + +Tedge grimly knew what it meant. He'd have to go farther inland to +find his free range, but now, worst of all, the floating gardens of +the coast swamps were coming out of the numberless channels on the +_crevasse_ water. + +He expected to fight them as he had done for twenty years with his +dirty bayou boat. He'd fight and curse and struggle through the _les +flotantes_, and denounce the Federal Government, because it did not +destroy the lilies in the obscure bayous where he traded, as it did on +Bayou Teche and Terrebonne, with its pump-boats which sprayed the +hyacinths with a mixture of oil and soda until the tops shrivelled and +the trailing roots then dragged the flowers to the bottom. + +"Yeh'll not see open water till the river cleans the swamps of +lilies," growled Crump. "I never seen the beat of 'em! The high +water's liftin' 'em from ponds where they never been touched by a +boat's wheel and they're out in the channels now. If yeh make the +plantations yeh'll have to keep eastard and then up the Atchafalaya +and buck the main flood water, Tedge!" + +Tedge knew that, too. But he suddenly broke into curses upon his +engineer, his boat, the sea and sky and man. But mostly the lilies. He +could see a mile up the bayou between cypress-grown banks, and not a +foot of water showed. A solid field of green, waxy leaves and upright +purple spikes, jammed tight and moving. That was what made the master +rage. They were moving--a flower glacier slipping imperceptibly to the +gulf bays. They were moving slowly but inexorably, and his dirty +cattle boat, frantically driving into the blockade, was moving +backward--stern first! + +He hated them with the implacable fury of a man whose fists had lorded +his world. A water hyacinth--what was it? He could stamp one to a +smear on his deck, but a river of them no man could fight. He swore +the lilies had ruined his whisky-running years ago to the Atchafalaya +lumber camps; they blocked Grand River when he went to log-towing; +they had cost him thousands of dollars for repairs and lost time in +his swamp ventures. + +Bareheaded under the semi-tropic sun, he glowered at the lily-drift. +Then he snarled at Crump to reverse the motor. Tedge would retreat +again! + +"I'll drive the boat clean around Southwest Pass to get shut of 'em! +No feed, huh, for these cows! They'll feed sharks, they will! Huh, Mr. +Cowman, the blisterin' lilies cost me five hundred dollars already!" + +The lone passenger smoked idly and watched the gaunt cattle +staggering, penned in the flat, dead heat of the foredeck. Tedge +cursed him, too, under his breath. Milt Rogers had asked to make the +coast run from Beaumont on Tedge's boat. Tedge remembered what Rogers +said--he was going to see a girl who lived up Bayou Boeuf above +Tedge's destination. Tedge remembered that girl--a Cajan girl whom he +once heard singing in the floating gardens while Tedge was battling +and cursing to pass the blockade. + +He hated her for loving the lilies, and the man for loving her. He +burst out again with his volcanic fury at the green and purple horde. + +"They're a fine sight to see," mused the other, "after a man's eyes +been burned out ridin' the dry range; no rain in nine months up +there--nothin' green or pretty in----" + +"Pretty!" Tedge seemed to menace with his little shifty eyes. "I wish +all them lilies had one neck and I could twist it! Jest one head, and +me stompin' it! Yeh!--and all the damned flowers in the world with it! +Yeh! And me watchin' 'em die!" + +The man from the dry lands smoked idly under the awning. His serenity +evoked all the savagery of Tedge's feud with the lilies. Pretty! A man +who dealt with cows seeing beauty in anything! Well, the girl did +it--that swamp angel this Rogers was going to visit. That Aurelie +Frenet who sang in the flower-starred river--that was it! Tedge +glowered on the Texan--he hated him, too, because this loveliness gave +him peace, while the master of the _Marie Louise_ must fume about his +wheelhouse, a perspiring madman. + +It took an hour for the _Marie_ even to retreat and find steerage-way +easterly off across a shallow lake, mirroring the marsh shores in the +sunset. Across it the bayou boat wheezed and thumped drearily, +drowning the bellowing of the dying steers. Once the deckhand stirred +and pointed. + +"Lilies, Cap'n--pourin' from all the swamps, and dead ahead there +now!" + +Scowling, Tedge held to the starboard. Yes, there they were--a phalanx +of flowers in the dusk. He broke into wild curses at them, his boat, +the staggering cattle. + +"I'll drive to the open gulf to get rid of 'em! Outside, to sea! Yeh! +Stranger, yeh'll see salt water, and lilies drownin' in it! I'll show +yeh 'em dead and dried on the sands like dead men's dried bones! +Yeh'll see yer pretty flowers a-dyin'!" + +The lone cowman ignored the sneer. "You better get the animals to feed +and water. Another mornin' of heat and crowdin'--" + +"Let 'em rot! Yer pretty flowers done it--pretty flowers--spit o' +hell! I knowed 'em--I fought 'em--I'll fight 'em to the death of 'em!" + +His little red-rimmed eyes hardly veiled his contempt for Milt Rogers. +A cowman, sailing this dusky purple bay to see a girl! A girl who sang +in the lily drift--a-sailing on this dirty, reeking bumboat, with +cattle dying jammed in the pens! Suddenly Tedge realized a vast +malevolent pleasure--he couldn't hope to gain from his perishing +cargo; and he began to gloat at the agony spread below his wheelhouse +window, and the cattleman's futile pity for them. + +"They'll rot on Point Au Fer! We'll heave the stink of them, dead and +alive, to the sharks of Au Fer Pass! Drownin' cows in dyin' lilies--" + +And the small craft of his brain suddenly awakened coolly above his +heat. Why, yes! Why hadn't he thought of it? He swung the stubby nose +of the _Marie_ more easterly in the hot, windless dusk. After a while +the black deckhand looked questioningly up at the master. + +"We're takin' round," Tedge grunted, "outside Au Fer!" + +The black stretched on the cattle-pen frame. Tedge was a master-hand +among the reefs and shoals, even if the flappaddle _Marie_ had no +business outside. But the sea was nothing but a star-set velvet ribbon +on which she crawled like a dirty insect. And no man questioned +Tedge's will. + +Only, an hour later, the engineman came up and forward to stare into +the faster-flowing water. Even now he pointed to a hyacinth clump. + +"Yeh!" the master growled. "I'll show yeh, Rogers! Worlds o' flowers! +Out o' the swamps and the tide'll send 'em back again on the reefs. +I'll show yeh 'em--dead, dried white like men's bones." Then he began +to whisper huskily to his engineer: "It's time fer it. Five hundred +fer yeh, Crump--a hundred fer the nigger, or I knock his head in. She +brushes the bar, and yer oil tank goes--yeh understand?" He watched a +red star in the south. + +Crump looked about. No sail or light or coast guard about Au Fer--at +low tide not even a skiff could find the passages. He nodded +cunningly: + +"She's old and fire-fitten. Tedge, I knowed yer mind--I was always +waitin' fer the word. It's a place fer it--and yeh say yeh carry seven +hundred on them cows? Boat an' cargo--three thousand seven hundred--" + +"They'll be that singed and washed in the sands off Au Fer that +nobody'll know what they died of!" retorted Tedge thickly. "Yeh, go +down, Crump, and lay yer waste and oil right. I trust yeh, Crump--the +nigger'll get his, too. She'll ride high and burn flat, hoggin' in the +sand----" + +"She's soaked with oil plumb for'ard to the pens now," grunted Crump. +"She's fitten to go like a match all along when she bumps--" + +He vanished, and the master cunningly watched the ember star +southeasterly. + +He was holding above it now, to port and landward. The white, hard +sands must be shoaling fast under the cattle-freighted _Marie_. It +little mattered about the course now; she would grind her nose in the +quiet reef shortly. + +Tedge merely stared, expectantly awaiting the blow. And when it came +he was malevolently disappointed. A mere slithering along over the +sand, a creak, a slight jar, and she lay dead in the flat, calm +sea--it was ridiculous that that smooth beaching would break an oil +tank, that the engine spark would flare the machine waste, leap to the +greasy beams and floors. + +The wheezy exhaust coughed on; the belt flapped as the paddle wheel +kept on its dead shove of the _Marie's_ keel into the sand. Hogjaw had +shouted and run forward. He was staring into the phosphorescent water +circling about the bow when Crump raised his cry: + +"Fire--amidships!" + +Tedge ran down the after-stairs. Sulphurously he began cursing at the +trickle of smoke under the motor frame. It was nothing--a child could +have put it out with a bucket of sand. But upon it fell Tedge and the +engineer, stamping, shouting, shoving oil-soaked waste upon it, and +covertly blocking off the astounded black deckman when he rushed to +aid. + +"Water, Hogjaw!" roared the master. "She's gainin' on us--she's under +the bilge floor now!" He hurled a bucket viciously at his helper. And +as they pretended to fight the fire, Crump suddenly began laughing and +stood up. The deckman was grinning also. The master watched him +narrowly. + +"Kick the stuff into the waste under the stairs," he grunted. "Hogjaw, +this here boat's goin'--yeh understand? We take the skiff and pull to +the shrimp camps, and she hogs down and burns--" + +The black man was laughing. Then he stopped curiously. "The cows--" + +"Damn the cows! I'll git my money back on 'em! Yeh go lower away on +the skiff davits. Yeh don't ask me nothin'--yeh don't know nothin'!" + +"Sho', boss! I don't know nothin', or see nothin'!" + +He swung out of the smoke already drifting greasily up from the foul +waist of the _Marie Louise_. A little glare of red was beginning to +reflect from the mirrored sea. The ripples of the beaching had +vanished; obscurely, undramatically as she had lived, the _Marie +Louise_ sat on the bar to choke in her own fetid fumes. + +Tedge clambered to the upper deck and hurried to his bunk in the +wheelhouse. There were papers there he must save--the master's +license, the insurance policy, and a few other things. The smell of +burning wood and grease was thickening; and suddenly now, through it, +he saw the quiet, questioning face of the stranger. + +He had forgotten him completely. Tedge's small brain had room but for +one idea at a time: first his rage at the lilies, and then the +wrecking of the _Marie_. And this man knew. He had been staring down +the after-companionway. He had seen and heard. He had seen the master +and crew laughing while the fire mounted. + +Tedge came to him. "We're quittin' ship," he growled. + +"Yes, but the cattle--" The other looked stupefiedly at him. + +"We got to pull inside afore the sea comes up--" + +"Well, break the pens, can't you? Give 'em a chance to swim for a bar. +I'm a cowman myself--I cain't let dumb brutes burn and not lift a +hand--" + +The fire in the waist was beginning to roar. A plume of smoke streamed +straight up in the starlight. The glare showed the younger man's +startled eyes. He shifted them to look over the foredeck rail down to +the cattle. Sparks were falling among them, the fire veered slightly +forward; and the survivors were crowding uneasily over the fallen +ones, catching that curious sense of danger which forewarns creatures +of the wild before the Northers, a burning forest, or creeping flood, +to move on. + +"You cain't leave 'em so," muttered the stranger. "No; I seen you--" + +He did not finish. Tedge had been setting himself for what he knew he +should do. The smaller man had his jaw turned as he stared at the +suffering brutes. And Tedge's mighty fist struck him full on the +temple. The master leaned over the low rail to watch quietly. + +The man who wished to save the cattle was there among them. A little +flurry of sparks drove over the spot he fell upon, and then a maddened +surge of gaunt steers. Tedge wondered if he should go finish the job. +No; there was little use. He had crashed his fist into the face of a +shrimp-seine hauler once, and the fellow's neck had shifted on his +spine--and once he had maced a woman up-river in a shantyboat drinking +bout--Tedge had got away both times. Now and then, boasting about the +shrimp camps, he hinted mysteriously at his two killings, and showed +his freckled, hairy right hand. + +"If they find anything of him--he got hurt in the wreck," the master +grinned. He couldn't see the body, for a black longhorn had fallen +upon his victim, it appeared. Anyhow, the cattle were milling +desperately around in the pen; the stranger who said his name was Milt +Rogers would be a lacerated lump of flesh in that mad stampede long +ere the fire reached him. Tedge got his tin document box and went aft. + +Crump and Hogjaw were already in the flat-bottomed bayou skiff, +holding it off the _Marie Louise's_ port runway, and the master +stepped into it. The heat was singeing their faces by now. + +"Pull off," grunted the skipper, "around east'ard. This bar sticks +clean out o' water off there, and you lay around it, Hogjaw. They +won't be no sea 'til the breeze lifts at sunup." + +The big black heaved on the short oars. The skiff was a hundred yards +out on the glassy sea when Crump spoke cunningly, "I knowed +something----" + +"Yeh?" Tedge turned from his bow seat to look past the oarsman's head +at the engineman. "Yeh knowed----" + +"This Rogers, he was tryin' to get off the burnin' wreck and he fell, +somehow or----" + +"The oil tank blew, and a piece o' pipe took him," grunted Tedge. "I +tried to drag him out o' the fire--Gawd knows I did, didn't I, Crump?" + +Crump nodded scaredly. The black oarsman's eyes narrowed and he +crouched dumbly as he rowed. Tedge was behind him--Tedge of the _Marie +Louise_ who could kill with his fists. No, Hogjaw knew nothing--he +never would know anything. + +"I jest took him on out o' kindness," mumbled Tedge. "I got no license +fer passenger business. Jest a bum I took on to go and see his swamp +girl up Des Amoureaux. Well, it ain't no use sayin' anything, is it +now?" + +A mile away the wreck of the _Marie Louise_ appeared as a yellow-red +rent in the curtain of night. Red, too, was the flat, calm sea, save +northerly where a sand ridge gleamed. Tedge turned to search for its +outlying point. There was a pass here beyond which the reefs began +once more and stretched on, a barrier to the shoal inside waters. When +the skiff had drawn about the sand spit, the reflecting waters around +the _Marie_ had vanished, and the fire appeared as a fallen meteor +burning on the flat, black belt of encircling reef. + +Tedge's murderous little eyes watched easterly. They must find the +other side of the tidal pass and go up it to strike off for the +distant shrimp camps with their story of the end of the _Marie +Louise_--boat and cargo a total loss on Au Fer sands. + +Upon the utter sea silence there came a sound--a faint bawling of +dying cattle, of trampled, choked cattle in the fume and flames. It +was very far off now; and to-morrow's tide and wind would find nothing +but a blackened timber, a swollen, floating carcass or two--nothing +more. + +But the black man could see the funeral pyre; the distant glare of it +was showing the whites of his eyes faintly to the master, when +suddenly he stopped rowing. A drag, the soft sibilance of a moving +thing, was on his oar blade. He jerked it free, staring. + +"Lilies, boss--makin' out dis pass, too, lilies--" + +"I see 'em--drop below 'em!" Tedge felt the glow of an unappeasable +anger mount to his temples. "Damn 'em--I see 'em!" + +There they were, upright, tranquil, immense hyacinths--their +spear-points three feet above the water, their feathery streamers +drifting six feet below; the broad, waxy leaves floating above their +bulbous surface mats--they came on silently under the stars; they +vanished under the stars seaward to their death. + +"Yeh!" roared Tedge. "Sun and sea to-morry--they'll be back on Au Fer +like dried bones o' dead men in the sand! Bear east'ard off of 'em!" + +The oarsman struggled in the deeper pass water. The skiff bow suddenly +plunged into a wall of green-and-purple bloom. The points brushed +Tedge's cheek. He cursed and smote them, tore them from the low bow +and flung them. But the engineman stood up and peered into the +starlight. + +"Yeh'll not make it. Better keep up the port shore. I cain't see +nothin' but lilies east'ard--worlds o'flowers comin' with the +_crevasse_ water behind 'em." He dipped a finger to the water, tasted +of it, and grumbled on: "It ain't hardly salt, the big rivers are +pourin' such a flood out o' the swamps. Worlds o' flowers comin' out +the passes--" + +"Damn the flowers!" Tedge arose, shaking his fist at them. "Back out +o' 'em! Pull up the Au Fer side, and we'll break through 'em in the +bay!" + +Against the ebb tide close along Au Fer reef, the oarsman toiled until +Crump, the lookout, grumbled again. + +"The shoal's blocked wi' 'em! They're stranded on the ebb. Tedge, +yeh'll have to wait for more water to pass this bar inside 'em. Yeh +try to cross the pass, and the lilies 'll have us all to sea in this +crazy skiff when the wind lifts wi' the sun." + +"I'm clean wore out," the black man muttered. "Yeh can wait fer day +and tide on the sand, boss." + +"Well, drive her in, then!" raged the skipper. "The in-tide'll set +before daylight. We'll take it up the bay." + +He rolled over the bow, knee-deep in the warm inlet water, and dragged +the skiff through the shoals. Crump jammed an oar in the sand; and +warping the headline to this, the three trudged on to the white dry +ridge. Tedge flung himself by the first stubby grass clump. + +"Clean beat," he muttered. "By day we'll pass 'em. Damn 'em--and I'll +see 'em dyin' in the sun--lilies like dried, dead weeds on the +sand--that's what they'll be in a couple o' days--he said they was +pretty, that fello' back there--" Lying with his head on his arm, he +lifted a thumb to point over his shoulder. He couldn't see the distant +blotch of fire against the low stars--he didn't want to. He couldn't +mark the silent drift of the sea gardens in the pass, but he gloated +in the thought that they were riding to their death. The pitiless sun, +the salt tides drunk up to their spongy bulbs, and their glory +passed--they would be matted refuse on the shores and a man could +trample them. Yes, the sea was with Tedge, and the rivers, too; the +flood waters were lifting the lilies from their immemorable +strongholds and forcing them out to their last pageant of death. + +The three castaways slept in the warm sand. It was an hour later that +some other living thing stirred at the far end of Au Fer reef. A +scorched and weakened steer came on through salt pools to stagger and +fall. Presently another, and then a slow line of them. They crossed +the higher ridge to huddle about a sink that might have made them +remember the dry drinking holes of their arid home plains. Tired, +gaunt cattle mooing lonesomely, when the man came about them to dig +with his bloody fingers in the sand. + +He tried another place, and another--he didn't know--he was a man of +the short-grass country, not a coaster; perhaps a sandy sink might +mean fresh water. But after each effort the damp feeling on his hands +was from his gashed and battered head and not life-giving water. He +wiped the blood from his eyes and stood up in the starlight. + +"Twenty-one of 'em--alive--and me," he muttered. "I got 'em off--they +trampled me and beat me down, but I got their pens open. Twenty-one +livin'--and me on the sands!" + +He wondered stupidly how he had done it. The stern of the _Marie +Louise_ had burned off and sogged down in deep water, but her bow hung +to the reef, and in smoke and flame he had fought the cattle over it. +They clustered now in the false water-hole, silent, listless, as if +they knew the uselessness of the urge of life on Au Fer reef. + +And after a while the man went on eastward. Where and how far the sand +ridge stretched he did not know. Vaguely he knew of the tides and sun +to-morrow. From the highest point he looked back. The wreck was a dull +red glow, the stars above it cleared now of smoke. The sea, too, +seemed to have gone back to its infinite peace, as if it had washed +itself daintily after this greasy morsel it must hide in its depths. + +A half hour the man walked wearily, and then before him stretched +water again. He turned up past the tide flowing down the pass--perhaps +that was all of Au Fer. A narrow spit of white sand at high tide, and +even over that, the sea breeze freshening, the surf would curl? + +"Ships never come in close, they said," he mused tiredly, "and miles +o' shoals to the land--and then just swamp for miles. Dumb brutes o' +cows, and me on this--and no water nor feed, nor shade from the sun." + +He stumbled on through the shallows, noticing apathetically that the +water was running here. Nearly to his waist he waded, peering into the +starlight. He was a cowman and he couldn't swim; he had never seen +anything but the dry ranges until he said he would go find the girl he +had met once on the upper Brazos--a girl who told him of sea and +sunken forests, of islands of flowers drifting in lonely swamp +lakes--he had wanted to see that land, but mostly the Cajan girl of +Bayou Des Amoureaux. + +He wouldn't see her now; he would die among dying cattle, but maybe it +was fit for a cattleman to go that way--a Texas man and Texas cows. + +Then he saw a moving thing. It rode out of the dark and brushed him. +It touched him with soft fingers and he drew them to him. A water +hyacinth, and its purple spike topped his head as he stood waist-deep. +So cool its leaves, and the dripping bulbs that he pressed them to his +bloody cheek. He sank his teeth into them for that coolness on his +parched tongue. The spongy bulb was sweet; it exhaled odorous +moisture. He seized it ravenously. It carried sweet water, redolent of +green forest swamps! + +He dragged at another floating lily, sought under the leaves for the +buoyant bulb. A drop or two of the fresh water a man could press from +each! + +Like a starving animal he moved in the shoals, seeing more drifting +garden clumps. And then a dark object that did not drift. He felt for +it slowly, and then straightened up, staring about. + +A flat-bottomed bayou skiff, and in it the oars, a riverman's +blanket-roll of greasy clothes, and a tin box! He knew the box. On one +end, in faded gilt, was the name "B. Tedge." Rogers had seen it on the +grimy shelf in the pilothouse on the _Marie Louise_. He felt for the +rope; the skiff was barely scraping bottom. Yes, they had moored it +here--they must be camped on the sands of Au Fer, awaiting the dawn. + +A boat? He didn't know what a Texas cowman could do with a boat on an +alien and unknown shore, but he slipped into it, raised an oar, and +shoved back from the sandy spit. At least he could drift off Au Fer's +waterless desolation. Tedge would kill him to-morrow when he found him +there; because he knew Tedge had fired the _Marie_ for the insurance. + +So he poled slowly off. The skiff drifted now. Rogers tried to turn to +the oar athwart, and awkwardly he stumbled. The oar seemed like a roll +of thunder when it struck the gunwale. + +And instantly a hoarse shout arose behind him. Tedge's voice--Tedge +had not slept well. The gaunt cattle burning or choking in the salt +tide, or perhaps the lilies of Bayou Boeuf--anyhow, he was up with a +cry and dashing for the skiff. In a moment Rogers saw him. + +The Texas man began driving desperately on the oars. He heard the +heavy rush of the skipper's feet in the deepening water. Tedge's voice +became a bull-like roar as the depth began to check him. To his waist, +and the slow skiff was but ten yards away; to his great shoulders, and +the clumsy oarsman was but five. + +And with a yell of triumph Tedge lunged out swimming. Whoever the +fugitive, he was hopeless with the oars. The skiff swung this way and +that, and a strong man at its stern could hurl it and its occupant +bottom-side up in Au Fer Pass. Tedge, swimming in Au Fer Pass, his +fingers to the throat of this unknown marauder! There'd be another one +go--and nothing but his hands--Bill Tedge's hands that the shrimp +camps feared. + +Just hold him under--that was all. Tread water, and hold the throat +beneath until its throbbing ceased. Tedge could; he feared no man. +Another overhand stroke, and he just missed the wobbling stern of the +light skiff. + +He saw the man start up and raise an oar as if to strike. Tedge +laughed triumphantly. Another plunge and his fingers touched the +gunwale. And then he dived; he would bring his back up against the +flat bottom and twist his enemy's footing from under him. Then in the +deep water Tedge lunged up for the flat keel, and slowly across his +brow an invisible hand seemed to caress him. + +He opened his eyes to see a necklace of opalescent jewels gathering +about his neck; he tore at it and the phosphorescent water gleamed all +about him with feathery pendants. And when his head thrust above +water, the moment's respite had allowed the skiff to straggle beyond +his reach. + +Tedge shouted savagely and lunged again--and about his legs came the +soft clasp of the drifting hyacinth roots. Higher, firmer; and he +turned to kick free of them. He saw the man in the boat poling +uncertainly in the tide not six feet beyond him. And now, in open +water, Tedge plunged on in fierce exultance. One stroke--and the stars +beyond the boatman became obscured; the swimmer struck the soft, +yielding barrier of the floating islands. This time he did not lose +time in drawing from them; he raised his mighty arms and strove to +beat them down, flailing the broad leaves until the spiked blossoms +fell about him. A circlet of them caressed his cheek. He lowered his +head and swam bull-like into the drift; and when he knew the pressure +ahead was tightening slowly to rubbery bands, forcing him gently from +his victim, Tedge raised his voice in wild curses. + +He fought and threshed the lilies, and they gave him cool, velvety +kisses in return. He dived and came up through them; and then, staring +upward, he saw the tall, purple spikes against the stars. And they +were drifting--they were sailing seaward to their death. He couldn't +see the boat now for the shadowy hosts; and for the first time fear +glutted his heart. It came as a paroxysm of new sensation--Tedge of +the _Marie Louise_ who had never feared. + +But this was different, this soft and moving web of silence. No, not +quite silence, for past his ear the splendid hyacinths drifted with a +musical creaking, leaf on leaf, the buoyant bulbs brushing each other. +The islets joined and parted; once he saw open water and plunged for +it--and over his shoulders there surged a soft coverlet. He turned and +beat it; he churned his bed into a furious welter, and the silken +curtain lowered. + +He shrank from it now, staring. The feathery roots matted across his +chest, the mass of them felt slimy like the hide of a drowned brute. + +"Drownin' cows"--he muttered thickly--"comin' on a man driftin' and +drownin'--no, no! Lilies, jest lilies--damn 'em!" + +The tall spiked flowers seemed nodding--yes, just lilies, drifting and +singing elfin music to the sea tide. Tedge roared once again his +hatred of them; he raised and battered his huge fists into their +beauty, and they seemed to smile in the starlight. Then, with a howl, +he dived. + +He would beat them--deep water was here in the pass, and he would swim +mightily far beneath the trailing roots--he would find the man with +the boat yet and hurl him to die in the hyacinth bloom. + +He opened his eyes in the deep, clear water and exulted. He, Tedge, +had outwitted the bannered argosies. With bursting lungs he charged +off across the current, thinking swiftly, coolly, now of the escape. +And as he neared the surface he twisted to glance upward. It was light +there--a light brighter than the stars, but softer, evanescent. Mullet +and squib were darting about or clinging to a feathery forest that +hung straight down upon him. Far and near there came little darts of +pale fire, gleaming and expiring with each stir in the phosphorescent +water. + +And he had to rise; a man could not hold the torturing air in his +lungs for ever. Yes, he would tear a path to the stars again and +breathe. His arms flailed into the first tenuous streamers, which +parted in pearly lace before his eyes. He breasted higher, and they +were all about him now; his struggles evoked glowing bubble-jewels +which drifted upward to expire. He grasped the soft roots and twisted +and sought to raise himself. He had a hand to the surface bulbs, but a +silken mesh seemed tightening about him. + +And it was drifting--everything was drifting in the deep pass of Au +Fer. He tried to howl in the hyacinth web, and choked--and then he +merely fought in his close-pressing cocoon, thrusting one hard fist to +grasp the broad leaves. He clung to them dumbly, his face so close to +the surface that the tall spiked flowers smiled down--but they drifted +inexorably with a faint, creaking music, leaf on leaf. + +Tedge opened his eyes to a flicker of myriad lights. The sound was a +roaring now--like the surf on the reefs in the hurricane month; or the +thunder of maddened steers above him across this flowery sea meadow. +Perhaps the man he had killed rode with this stampede? Tedge shrank +under the lilies--perhaps they could protect him now? Even the last +stroke of his hands made luminous beauty of the under-running tide. + +An outward-bound shrimp lugger saw the figures on Au Fer reef and came +to anchor beyond the shoals. The Cajan crew rowed up to where Milt +Rogers and Crump and the black deckhand were watching by a pool. The +shrimpers listened to the cowman, who had tied the sleeve of his shirt +about his bloody head. + +"You can get a barge down from Morgan City and take the cows off +before the sea comes high," said Rogers quietly. "They're eating the +lilies--and they find sweet water in 'em. Worlds o' lilies driftin' to +sea with sweet water in the bulbs!" And he added, watching Crump and +the black man who seemed in terror of him: "I want to get off, too. I +want to see the swamp country where worlds o' flowers come from!" + +He said no more. He did not even look in the pool where Crump pointed. +He was thinking of that girl of the swamps who had bid him come to +her. But all along the white surf line he could see the +green-and-purple plumes of the hyacinth warriors tossing in the +breeze--legion upon legion, coming to die gloriously on Au Fer's +sands. + +But first they sent a herald; for in Tedge's hand, as he lay in the +pool, one waxen-leafed banner with a purple spear-point glittered in +the sun. + + + +THE URGE + +By MARYLAND ALLEN + +From _Everybody's_ + + +She is now a woman ageless because she is famous. She is surrounded by +a swarm of lovers and possesses a great many beautiful things. She has +more than one Ming jar in the library at her country place; yards upon +yards of point de Venise in her top bureau-drawer. She is able to +employ a very pleasant, wholesome woman, whose sole duty it is to keep +her clothes in order. + +She wears superb clothes--the last word in richness and the elegance +of perfection--clothes that no man can declaim over, stimulating +himself the while with shot after shot of that most insidious of all +dope, self-pity. You see, she earns them all herself, along with the +Ming jars, the point de Venise, the country place, and countless other +things. She is the funniest woman in the world--not in her +press-agent's imagination, but in cold, sober fact. She can make +anybody laugh; she does make everybody. + +Night after night in the huge public theatres of the common people; in +the small private ones of the commoner rich; in Greek amphitheatres +where the laughter rolls away in thunderous waves to be echoed back by +distant blue hills; in institutions for the blind; in convalescent +wards; everywhere, every time, she makes them laugh. The day labourer, +sodden and desperate from too much class legislation, the ego in his +cosmos and the struggle for existence; the statesman, fearful of +losing votes, rendered blue and depressed by the unruliness of nations +and all the vast multitude of horrors that lie in between--all of +these, all of them, she makes laugh. She is queen of the profession +she has chosen--unusual for one of her sex. She is the funniest woman +in the world. + +When she is at home--which is seldom--she has many visitors and +strives, if possible, to see none of them. + +"You know, I entertain so much," she pleads in that vivid, whimsical +way of hers that holds as much of sadness as mirth. + +But this time, it being so early in the afternoon, she was caught +unawares. + +The girls--they were nothing but girls, three of them--found her out +upon the lawn, sitting on a seat where the velvety green turf fell +away in a steep hillside, and far beneath them they could see the +river moving whitely beyond the trees. They halted there before her, +happy but trembling, giggling but grave. They were gasping and +incoherent, full of apologies and absurd tremors. It had taken their +combined week's savings to bribe the gardener. And they only wanted to +know one thing: How had she achieved all this fame and splendour, by +what magic process had she become that rarest of all living creatures, +the funniest woman in the world? + +It was an easy enough question to ask and, to them, hovering +twittering upon high heels a trifle worn to one side, a simple one for +her to answer. She looked at them in that humorous, kindly way of +hers, looked at their silly, excited, made-up faces with noses +sticking out stark, like handles, from a too-heavy application of +purplish-white powder. Then her glance travelled down the velvety +green slope to the bright river glancing and leaping beyond the shady +trees. + +Did she think of that other girl? Sitting there with that strange +smile upon her face, the smile that is neither mirth nor sadness, but +a poignant, haunting compound of both, did she remember her and the +Urge that had always been upon her, racking her like actual pain, +driving her with a whip of scorpions, flaying her on and on with a far +more vivid sense of suffering than the actual beatings laid on by her +mother's heavy hand, the thing that found articulation in the words, +"I must be famous, I must!" + +She belonged in the rear of a batch of a dozen, and had never been +properly named. The wind was blowing from the stockyards on the dark +hour when she arrived. It penetrated even to the small airless chamber +where she struggled for her first breath--one of a "flat" in the +poorest tenement in the worst slum in Chicago. Huddled in smelly rags +by a hastily summoned neighbour from the floor above, the newcomer +raised her untried voice in a frail, reedy cry. Perhaps she did not +like the smell that oozed in around the tightly closed window to +combat the foul odours of the airless room. Whatever it was, this +protest availed her nothing, for the neighbour hurriedly departed, +having been unwilling from the first, and the mother turned away and +lay close against the stained, discoloured wall, too apathetic, too +utterly resigned to the fate life had meted out to her to accord this +most unwelcome baby further attention. This first moment of her life +might easily serve as the history of her babyhood. + +Her father was also indifferent. He brought home his money and gave it +to his wife--children were strictly none of his business. Her brothers +and sisters, each one busily and fiercely fending for himself, gave no +attention to her small affairs. + +Tossed by the careless hand of Fate into the dark sea of life to swim +or perish, she awoke to consciousness with but one thought--food; one +ruling passion--to get enough. And since, in her habitual half-starved +state, all food looked superlatively good to her, cake was the first +word she learned to speak. It formed her whole vocabulary for a +surprisingly long time, and Cake was the only name she was ever known +by in her family circle and on the street that to her ran on and on +and on as narrow and dirty, as crowded and as cruel as where it passed +the great dilapidated old rookery that held the four dark rooms that +she called home. + +Up to the age of ten her life was sketchy. A passionate scramble for +food, beatings, tears, slumber, a swift transition from one childish +ailment to another that kept her forever out of reach of the truant +officer. + +She lay upon the floor in a little dark room, and through the window +in the airless air-shaft, high up in one corner, she could see a +three-cornered spot of light. At first she wondered what it was, since +she lived in a tenement, not under the sky. Then it resolved itself +into a ball, white and luminous, that floated remote in that high +place and seemed to draw her, and was somehow akin to the queer, +gnawing pain that developed about that time beneath her breastbone. It +was all inarticulate, queer and confused. She did not think, she did +not know how. She only felt that queer gnawing beneath her breastbone, +distinct from all her other pains, and which she ascribed to hunger, +and saw the lovely, trembling globe of light. At first she felt it +only when she was ill and lay on the tumbled floor bed and looked up +through the dark window; afterward always in her dreams. + +After she passed her tenth birthday the confusion within her seemed to +settle as the queer pain increased, and she began to think, to wonder +what it could be. + +A year or two later her father died, and as she was the only child +over whom her mother could exercise any control, the report of her +death was successfully impressed upon the truant officer, so that she +might be put to work unhindered to help the family in its desperate +scramble for food, a scramble in which she took part with vivid +earnestness. She was hired to Maverick's to wash dishes. + +Maverick was a Greek and kept an open-all-night chop-house, a mean +hole in the wall two doors from the corner, where Cake's surpassing +thinness made her invaluable at the sink. Also the scraps she carried +home in her red, water-puckered hands helped out materially. Then her +mother took a boarder and rested in her endeavours, feeling she had +performed all things well. + +This boarder was a man with a past. And he had left it pretty far +behind, else he had never rented a room and meals from the mother of +Cake. In this boarder drink and debauchery had completely beaten out +of shape what had once been a very noble figure of a man. His body was +shrunken and trembling; the old, ragged clothes he wore flapped about +him like the vestments of a scarecrow. His cheeks had the bruised +congested look of the habitual drinker, his nose seemed a toadstool on +his face, and his red eyes were almost vanished behind puffy, purple, +pillow-like lids. His voice was husky and whispering, except when he +raised it. Then it was surprisingly resonant and mellow, with +something haunting in it like the echo of an echo of a very moving +sweetness. + +One night Cake, returning all weary and played-out from dish-washing +at Maverick's, heard him speaking in this loud voice of his, pushed +the door open a crack, and peeked in. He was standing in the middle of +the floor evidently speaking what the child called to herself "a +piece." Her big mouth crooked derisively in the beginning of what is +now her famous smile. The lodger went on speaking, being fairly well +stimulated at the time, and presently Cake pushed the door wider and +crept in to the dry-goods box, where her mother always kept a candle, +and sat down. + +The lodger talked on and on while Cake sat rapt, the flickering candle +in her hands throwing strange lights and shadows upon her gaunt face. +How was she to know she was the last audience of one of the greatest +Shakespearian actors the world had ever seen? + +It was a grave and wondering Cake that crept to her place to sleep +that night between her two older sisters. And while they ramped +against her and chewed and snorted in her ears, she listened all over +again to that wonderful voice and was awed by the colour and beauty of +the words that it had spoken. She slept, and saw before her the globe +of light, trembling and luminous, the one bright thing of beauty her +life had ever known, that seemed to draw her up from darkness slowly +and with great suffering. Trembling and weeping she awoke in the dawn, +and the strange pain that had tortured her so much and that she had +called hunger and sought to assuage with scraps from the plates that +came to the sink at Maverick's became articulate at last. With her +hands clasped hard against her breast she found relief in words. + +"I gotta be somebody," sobbed the child. "I mus' be famous, I mus'!" + +She arose to find life no longer a confused struggle for food, but a +battle and a march; a battle to get through one day to march on to the +next, and so on and on until, in that long line of days that stretched +out ahead of her like chambers waiting to be visited, she reached the +one where rested Fame, that trembling, luminous globe of beauty it was +so vitally necessary for her to achieve. "How come he c'n talk like +that?" she demanded of herself, musing on the lodger's wonderful +exhibition over the greasy dish-water at Maverick's. + +And that night she asked him, prefacing her question with the offering +of an almost perfect lamb-chop. Only one piece had been cut from it +since the purchaser, at that moment apprised by Maverick himself that +the arrival of the police was imminent, had taken a hasty departure. + +"Who learned you to talk that-a-way?" demanded Cake, licking a faint, +far-away flavour of the chop from her long, thin fingers. + +The lodger, for a moment, had changed places with the candle. That is +to say, he sat upon the dry-goods box, the candle burned upon the +floor. And, having been most unfortunate that day, the lodger was +tragically sober. He bit into the chop voraciously, like a dog, with +his broken, discoloured teeth. + +"A book 'learned' me," he said, "and practice and experience--and +something else." He broke off short. "They called it genius then," he +said bitterly. + +Cake took a short step forward. That thing beneath her prominent +breastbone pained her violently, forced her on to speak. + +"You learn me," she said. + +The lodger ceased to chew and stared, the chop bone uplifted in his +dirty hand. A pupil for him! + +"You want to do this perhaps," he began. "Pray do not mock me; I am a +very foolish, fond old man----" + +The disreputable, swollen-faced lodger with a nose like a poisoned +toadstool vanished. Cake saw an old white-haired man, crazy and +pitiful, yet bearing himself grandly. She gasped, the tears flew to +her eyes, blinding her. The lodger laughed disagreeably, he was +gnawing on the chop bone again. + +"I suppose you think because you've found me here it is likely I'll +teach you--you! You starved alley cat!" he snarled. + +Cake did not even blink. It is repetition that dulls, and she was +utterly familiar with abuse. + +"And suppose I did--'learn' you," he sneered, "what would _you_ do +with it?" + +"I would be famous," cried Cake. + +Then the lodger did laugh, looking at her with his head hanging down, +his swollen face all creased and purple, his hair sticking up rough +and unkempt. He laughed, sitting there a degraded, debauched ruin, +looking down from the height of his memories upon the gaunt, unlovely +child of the slums who was rendered even more unlovely by the very +courage that kept her waiting beside the broken door. + +"So you think I could learn you to be famous, hey?" Even the words of +this gutter filth he sought to construe into something nattering to +himself. + +Cake nodded. Really she had not thought of it that way at all. There +was no thinking connected with her decision. The dumb hours she had +spent staring up the air-shaft had resolved themselves with the +passing years into a strange, numb will to do. There was the light and +she must reach it. Indeed the Thing there behind the narrow walls of +her chest gave her no alternative. She did not think she wanted to be +an actress. It was a long time after that before she knew even what an +actress was. She did not know what the lodger had been. No. +Instinctively, groping and inarticulate, she recognized in him the +rags and shreds of greatness, knew him to be a one-time dweller in +that temple whither, willing or not, she was bound, to reach it or to +die. + +The lodger looked down at the naked chop bone in his hand. The juicy, +broiled meat was comforting to his outraged stomach. Meat. The word +stood out in his mind to be instantly followed by that other word +that, for him, had spelled ruin, made him a ragged panhandler, reduced +him to living among the poorest and most hopeless. Drink! He raised +his head and eyed Cake with crafty calculation. + +"What will you pay me for such teaching?" he demanded, and looked down +again at the bone. + +What he did in the end, Cake herself was satisfied came to him +afterward. At first he was actuated only by the desire to procure food +and drink--more especially the drink--at the cost of the least +possible effort to himself. + +Cake saw the look, and she knew. She even smiled a little in the +greatness of her relief. She saw she had been right to bring the chop, +and appreciated that her progress along road to fame would be as slow +or fast as she could procure food for him in lesser or larger +quantities. + +"I'll bring you eats," she said cunningly. "From Maverick's," she +added. By which she meant the eats would be "has-is"--distinctly +second class, quite possibly third. + +The lodger nodded. "And booze," he put in, watching her face. + +"And booze," Cake assented. + +So the bargain was struck in a way that worked the most cruel hardship +on the girl. Food she could steal and did, blithely enough, since she +had no monitor but the lure of brightness and that Thing within her +breast that hotly justified the theft and only urged her on. But booze +was a very different proposition. It was impossible to steal +booze--even a little. To secure booze she was forced to offer money. +Now what money Cake earned at Maverick's her mother snatched from her +hand before she was well within the door. If she held out even a dime, +she got a beating. And Cake's mother, in the later years of her life, +besides being a clever evader of the police and the truant officer, +developed into a beater of parts. Broken food the child offered in +abundance and piteous hope. But the lodger was brutally indifferent. + +"Food," he scoffed. "Why, it says in the Bible--you never heard of the +Bible, hey?" Cake shook her tangled head. + +"No? Well, it's quite a Book," commented the lodger. He had been +fortunate that day and was, for him, fairly intoxicated. "And it says +right in there--and some consider that Book an authority--man cannot +live by food alone. Drink--I drink when I have occasion, and sometimes +when I have no occasion--Don't you know what drink is, alley-cat? Very +well, then, wine is wont to show the mind of man, and you won't see +mine until you bring me booze. Get out!" + +And Cake got out. Also, being well versed in a very horrid wisdom, she +took the food with her. This was hardly what the lodger had expected, +and I think what respect he was capable of sprouted for her then. + +Behind a screen of barrels in the corner of the alley Cake ate the +broken meats herself, taking what comfort she could, and pondering the +while the awful problem of securing the booze, since she must be +taught, and since the lodger moved in her sphere as the only available +teacher. + +There was a rush up the alley past her hiding-place, a shout, and the +savage thud of blows. Very cautiously, as became one wise in the ways +of life in that place, Cake peered around a barrel. She saw Red Dan, +who sold papers in front of Jeer Dooley's place, thoroughly punishing +another and much larger boy. The bigger boy was crying. + +"Anybody c'n sell pipers," shouted Red Dan, pounding the information +home bloodily. "You hear me?--anybody!" + +Cake crept out of her hiding-place on the opposite side. + +She did not care what happened to the bigger boy, though she respected +Red Dan the more. She knew where the money was going to come from to +buy the lodger's booze. It meant longer hours for her; it meant care +to work only out of school hours; it meant harder knocks than even she +had experienced; it meant a fatigue there were no words to describe +even among the beautiful, wonderful, colourful ones the lodger taught +her. But she sold the papers and she purchased the booze. + +Her mother did not know where she spent this extra time. She did not +care since the money came in from Maverick's steadily each week. +Neither did the lodger care how the booze was procured; the big thing +to him was that it came. + +At first these lessons were fun for him; the big, gawky, half-starved, +overworked child seeing so vividly in pictures all that he told her in +words. Full-fed on the scraps from Maverick's--he was no longer +fastidious--well stimulated by the drink she brought, he took an ugly +sort of degraded pleasure in posturing before her, acting as he alone +could act those most wonderful of all plays, watching with hateful, +sardonic amusement the light and shadow of emotion upon her dirty +face. Oh, he was a magician, no doubt at all of that! Past master in +the rare art of a true genius, that of producing illusion. + +Then he would make Cake try, rave at her, curse her, strike her, kill +himself laughing, drink some more and put her at it again. + +Night after night, almost comatose from the fatigue of a day that +began while it was still dark, she carried a heaped-up plate and a +full bottle to the lodger's room and sat down upon the dry-goods box +with the candle beside her on the floor. And, having thus secured her +welcome, night after night she walked with him among that greatest of +all throngs of soldiers and lovers, kings and cardinals, queens, +prostitutes and thieves. + +If the liquor was short in the bottle a dime's worth, the lesson was +curtailed. At first Cake tried to coax him. "Aw, c'mon, yuh Romeo on +th' street in Mantua." + +But the lodger was never so drunk that he made the slightest +concession. + +"Yes, I'm Romeo all right--the lad's there, never fear, gutter-snipe. +But--the bottle is not full." + +After that she never attempted to change his ruling. She was letter +perfect in the bitter lesson, and if the sale of papers did not bring +in enough to fill the bottle, she accepted the hard fact with the calm +of great determination and did not go near the lodger's room, but went +to bed instead. + +Perhaps it was these rare occasions of rest that kept her alive. + +After the lodger had been teaching her for several years her mother +died and was buried in the potters' field. Cake managed to keep two +rooms of the wretched flat, and no word of his landlady's demise +reached the lodger's drink-dulled ears. Otherwise Cake feared he might +depart, taking with him her one big chance to reach the light. You +see, she did not know the lodger. Things might have been different if +she had. But he was never a human being to her, even after she knew +the truth; only a symbol, a means to the great end. + +Her brothers went away--to the penitentiary and other places. One by +one the flood of life caught her sisters and swept them out, she did +not know to what. She never even wondered. She had not been taught to +care. She had never been taught anything. The knowledge that she must +be famous danced through her dreams like a will-o'-the-wisp; had grown +within her in the shape of a great pain that never ceased; only eased +a little as she strove mightily toward the goal. + +So she still sold papers, a homely, gawky, long-legged girl in ragged +clothes much too small for her, and slaved at Maverick's for the +lodger's nightly dole that he might teach her and she be famous. + +At first he was keen on the meat and drink--more especially the drink. +Later, gradually, a change came over him. Only Cake did not notice +this change. She was too set on being taught so she could become +famous. At first the lodger was all oaths and blows with shouts of +fierce, derisive laughter intermingled. + +"My God!" he would cry. "If Noyes could only see this--if he only +could!" + +This Noyes, it appeared, was a man he furiously despised. When he was +in the third stage of drunkenness he would never teach Cake, but would +only abuse his enemies, and this Noyes invariably came in for a +fearful shower of epithets. It was he as Cake heard it, sitting +huddled on the old dry-goods box, the candle casting strange shadows +into her gaunt, unchildlike face, who was the cause of the lodger's +downfall. But for Noyes--with a blasting array of curses before the +name--he would now have what Cake so ardently strove for: Fame. But +for Noyes he would be acting in his own theatre, riding in his own +limousine, wearing his own diamonds, entertaining his own friends upon +his own gold plate. + +When he was still too sober to take a really vital interest in the +teaching, he was a misanthrope, bitter and brutal, with an astonishing +command of the most terrible words. At these times he made the gravest +charges against Noyes; charges for which the man should be made +accountable, even to such a one as the lodger. One evening Cake sat +watching him, waiting for this mood to pass so that the teaching might +begin. + +"If I was youse," she said at last, "and hated a guy like youse do +this Noyes, I'd fetch 'im a insult that'd get under his skin right. +I'd make evens wit' 'im, I would, not jes' talk about it." + +"Oh, you would!" remarked the lodger. He took a long pull at the +bottle. "You be _Queen Kathrine_, you alley-cat." + +So the nightly teaching began with the usual accompaniment of curses, +blows, and shouts of brutal laughter. But when it was over and the +lodger was sinking to the third stage that came inevitably with the +bottom of the bottle, he kept looking at his pupil queerly. + +"Oh, you would! Oh, you would, would you?" He said it over and over +again. "Oh, you would, would you?" + +And after that he was changed by the leaven of hate her suggestion had +started working in him. For one thing, he took a far greater interest +in the teaching for its own sake. Of that much the girl herself was +thankfully aware. And she thought, Cake did, that the dull husk of +self was wearing away from that part of her destined to be famous, +wearing away at last. The lodger's curses changed in tone as the +nights filed past, the blows diminished, the laughter became far more +frequent. + +Cake, as rapidly reaching the end of her girlhood as the lodger was +nearing the limits of his drink-sapped strength, redoubled her +efforts. It was very plain to her that he could not live much longer; +death in delirium tremens was inevitable. After that, she decided, +school would not keep, and she must try her fortune. + +Then one night in the midst of the potion scene when she felt herself +_Juliet_, soft, passionate, and beautiful, far away in the land of +tragic romance, she heard the lodger crying: + +"Stop--my God, stop! How do you get that way? Don't you know there's a +limit to human endurance, alley-cat?" + +He was fairly toppling from the dry-goods box. His eyes were popping +from his head, and in the flickering candlelight his face looked +strained and queer. In after life she became very familiar with that +expression; she saw it on all types of faces. In fact, she came to +expect to see it there. But she did not know how to analyze it then. +She glimpsed it only as a tribute to her performance, so immense that +she had to be halted in the middle, and felt correspondingly elated. +She was exactly right in her deduction. But Cake and the lodger +advanced along very different lines of thought. + +The next night he was shaky, came all too quickly to the teaching +period, and left it as speedily. Then he retired to the flock mattress +in the corner of the room and called Cake to bring the candle. + +"I've an idea I'm going to leave you, gutter-snipe," he said, "and I +doubt if I ever see you again. The end of life cancels all bands. And +the one that bound you to me, alley-cat, was very material, very +material indeed. The kind that runs easily in and out of a black +bottle." He laughed. + +"You Shakespearian actress!" He laughed again, longer this time. "But +I have not forgotten you," he resumed. "In addition to all that I have +taught you, I am going to leave you something. Here," he fumbled out a +square envelope and Cake took it between her hands. "Take that to the +address written on it," said the lodger, "and see what the gentleman +does." He began to laugh again. + +"Noyes----" he cried and broke off to curse feebly but volubly. Cake +did not even glance in his direction. She went away out of the room, +too utterly stunned with fatigue to look at the letter in her dingy +hand. + +The next morning the lodger was dead. He was buried in the potters' +field quite near his old landlady. + +This second funeral, such as it was, closed the shelter that Cake, for +want of a more fitting name, had called home. She decided to put all +her years of bitterly acquired learning to the test. And as she best +knew what she had bought and paid for it she felt she could not fail. +She unfolded from a scrap of newspaper the envelope presented her by +the lodger and carefully studied the address. + +Cake could both read and write, having acquired these arts from a +waiter at Maverick's, who also helped her steal the broken meats with +which she secured her artistic education. And, watching the steady +disappearance of the food, this waiter marvelled that she got no +fatter as she grew upward, hovering about in hope of becoming her +lover if she ever did. But even if that miracle had ever been +accomplished the helpful waiter would still have waited. Cake's +conception of a real lady was _Queen Katherine_; _Cleopatra_ her dream +of a dangerous, fascinating one. And what chance in the world for +either with a waiter? + +Cake read the name and address upon the envelope freely as the hopeful +bread-caster had taught her: Arthur Payson Noyes, National Theatre. +With the simplicity and dispatch that characterized her, she went to +that place. To the man reposing somnolently in the broken old chair +beside the door she said she had a letter for Mr. Noyes. The +doorkeeper saw it was a large, swanking envelope with very polite +writing. He straightened up in the chair long enough to pass her in, +and then slumped down again. + +Cake found herself in a queer, barnlike place, half room and half +hallway, feebly illumined by a single electric bulb suspended above +the door. Very composedly she looked about her. If Mr. Arthur Noyes +lived in this place, he was one of her own kind and there was no need +for any palpitation on her part. Anyway, she was looking solely for +her chance to become famous, and she brought to this second stage of +her search the same indifference to externals, the same calm, +unfaltering courage as she had to the first. + +"Now, then," said a voice briskly. "Say what you want. We have not +advertised for any extra people. At least--not this year." + +A short, stout man emerged from the shadows. He was very blond, with +his hair cut snapper, and his pale eyes popped perpetual astonishment. +She returned his look steadily and well. She knew she was born to be +famous, and fame has a certain beauty of dignity utterly lacking in +mere success. + +"I am not an extra person," she replied. "I have come to see Mr. +Noyes," and she displayed once more the large square envelope, her +legacy from the lodger, the knife with which she proposed to shuck +from its rough shell that oyster, the world. + +The man looked even more astonished, if the thing could have been +accomplished, and regarded her keenly--stared. + +"Come this way," he said. + +Cake followed him along a narrow passage that turned off to the right, +down five steps, across a narrow entry, up three more steps--although +it seems quite silly, she never in her life forgot the odd number of +those worn steps--and halted before a closed door. On this the fat man +knocked once and opened immediately without waiting. + +"Someone I think you'll see," he said, standing between Cake and the +interior. There came to her a murmur over his chunky shoulder. + +"She has a letter from----" The fat man dropped his voice and mumbled. +"Positive," he said, aloud, after a pause broken only by the vague +murmur within the room. "I'd know his fist anywhere. Yes." Then he +pushed the door open wide, stood aside, and looked at Cake. "Walk in," +he said. + +She did so. Beautifully. Poems have been written about her walk. Two +kinds. + +The room she entered was square, with concrete floor and rough walls. +But Cake did not notice the room for three reasons: The rug on the +floor, four pictures on the walls, and the man who looked at her as +she entered. + +They gazed at each other, Cake and this man, with sudden, intense +concentration. He was a genius in his line, she as surely one in hers. +And, instinctively, to that strange, bright flame each rendered +instant homage. What he saw he described long afterward when a million +voices were vociferously raised in a million different descriptions. +What she saw she likened in her mind to a dark sheath from which a +sword flashed gloriously. That sword was his soul. + +"He says your name is Plain Cake--is that true?" He referred to the +lodger's letter held open in his hand, and by that she knew he was +Arthur Noyes. And great. That last she had not needed any telling. + +"Yes," she replied. + +"He says you are the right Shakespearian actress for me," Noyes +referred to the letter again. "Do you know Shakespeare?" + +"All the way," said Cake. It was not quite the answer _Queen +Katherine_ might have made, perhaps, but her manner was perfect. + +"Come here"--he pointed to the centre of the rapturous rug--"and do +the potion scene for me." Cake stepped forward. + +Perhaps you have been so fortunate as to see her. If so you know that +to step forward is her only preparation. She was poised, she was gone. +Then suddenly she heard the lodger's voice crying: + +"Stop--my God, stop! How do you get that way? Don't you know there's a +limit to human endurance, alley-cat?" + +She broke off, staring confusedly into space just the height of his +debauched old figure crouching on the dry-goods box. Then with swift +realization of her surroundings, her vision cleared. It was the fat +man in the checked suit she saw leaning helplessly against the closed +door. His jaw sagged, his eyes were frightfully popped, his face wore +the same strained, queer look she had come to see so often on the +lodger's, and he made weak little flapping gestures with his hands. + +Cake looked then at Arthur Noyes. His face was white as the letter in +his hand, his dark eyes were dilated with a look of dreadful +suffering, the numb, unconscious reaction of one who has received a +mortal blow. + +"Come here, Crum," he cried as if there was no one else in the room. +And Crum fairly tottered forward. + +"What do you make of this?" asked Noyes, while Cake stood and +listened. + +"I--I--" stammered Crum exhaustedly. "My God," he groaned, "it's too +much for me. And training!" + +"Oh, trained," Cake heard Noyes say. "Such training as only he could +give. Years of it, that's plain. And then to send her to me. A +Shakespearean actress for me! To insult me like that--" + +"It's too much for me, Boss," said Crum again. "Still--Oh--oh, my!" +His back was turned, but Cake saw his whole body shake. + +"Telephone Meier," exclaimed Noyes suddenly. + +"Meier?" Crum became immediately composed, and Cake saw that he was +tremendously surprised. "You don't mean that you're going to--After +this? Why, she's in the know. Look at her. It's perfect!" + +And they both turned and looked at Cake standing unconscious and +serene on the other side of the room. You who have seen her know just +how perfect the pose was. + +"It _is_ perfect," Noyes said. "I'd be a pretty poor sport if I did +not acknowledge that." Then his voice dropped and Cake only caught +snatches here and there. "... such genius ... once in a century ... +get even with him in a way he least expects ... wipe off the slate +entirely ... no comeback to my play ... let him see that for himself. +Call Meier." Then he turned to Cake. + +"Sit down, please," he said courteously. "I have sent for a man who +may give you an engagement." + +She returned his gaze so quietly that he was puzzled. About her was +neither nervous anticipation nor flighty vivacity. The actions of her +audience of two left her in-curious and calm. You see, she was used to +the lodger. Also she had worked to be famous so long that all the +flowery borders of self were worn down to the keen edge of doing. Of +Plain Cake she thought not at all. But then, she never had. Only of +the light at the end of the passage that now loomed so bright to her +watching eyes. + +It seemed only a minute before Noyes spoke again: "This is Mr. Meier." +He regarded her shrewdly all the time. + +Cake bowed to Mr. Meier, a fat, gaudy gentleman with thick, hairy +hands. And Mr. Meier looked at Noyes and shook his head. She realized +they had already been talking together. + +"Never before," Mr. Meier said. + +"If you will repeat the potion scene," Arthur Noyes suggested. "This +time, I trust, you will not be interrupted," he added politely. + +And Cake stepped once more into that rich orgy of emotion. This time, +though dimly aware of noise and a confusion of shouting, she carried +the scene through to the end. "Romeo, I come! This do I drink to +thee." She lay for a moment where she had fallen close to the heavenly +colours of the rug. + +"Goo-hood Gaw-hud!" gasped Mr. Meier, and Cake sat up. + +She saw he was rather collapsed upon a chair near which he had been +standing up when she began. His fat face was purple, and tears stood +in his eyes. But Arthur Noyes had not changed. White, with that look +of mortal hurt, he still stood straight and slim against the table. + +"You cannot offer her less than two hundred a week to begin," he said +with the same air of being alone with Mr. Meier. + +"No, oh, no, no, no, no!" sighed Mr. Meier, wiping his eyes. + +He rose and bowed to Cake with the queerest respect, still wiping his +eyes with the back of his thick, hairy hands. It was a striking +commentary upon her years of training that both of these men, +successful from long and hard experience, paid her the compliment of +thinking her an old hand at the game. + +"Mine is the Imperial Theatre, Miss," said Meier. "You should be there +to-night by seven o'clock. It ain't necessary we should rehearse. No, +oh, no, no, no, no! And now, perhaps"--he looked her up and down, +oddly--"perhaps I can take you to your--hotel?" + +Cake looked him back, serene in her belief in what the lodger had +taught her. + +"I'll be there at seven," she said. "No, thank you." She walked out +and across into a small park where she sat until the appointed time. + +Then she went to the stage entrance of the Imperial Theatre, presented +the card Mr. Meier had given her, and entered. Once inside she was +taken to a dressing room by a fat, comfortable, middle-aged woman who +seemed to be waiting for her. After a very short and, to Cake, +tranquil period, Mr. Meier bustled in. + +"Of course, Miss, you know this is a Revue," he explained, rubbing his +hands with a deference that Cake shed utterly, because she did not +know it was there. + +She nodded, accepting his statement. "We make 'em laugh here," said +Mr. Meier. Again Cake nodded; she knew exactly as much about the show +as she did before. "You close the second act; it's the best place for +you. Leafy, here, will help you dress." + +Cake sat still while Leafy dressed her, very hushed and still. The +light blazed so near after all these hard, lean years of pursuit, +years in which the little affairs of life, like the business of +growing from a child to a woman, had simply passed her by. Of that +Urge to be famous she was even more burningly aware; herself she did +not know at all. + +Mr. Meier came and took her by the hand. His fat face was pale and +sweating, he seemed almost awestruck by Cake's calm. He drew her out +of the dressing room and through a crowd of people, men and women with +painted faces, some beautifully, some extravagantly and strangely +dressed. They all stared. One woman shook her head. A man said: +"Search me! I never saw _her_ before." + +Then Mr. Meier thrust her out in the face of a bright light. "Begin," +he said hoarsely. "Walk over there and begin." + +Quietly Cake obeyed. She had walked right into the bright light that +had drawn her so hard and so long. Of course it was time for her to +begin. And with this bright light in her face, which soon became to +her the candle in that dark room left so far behind, she fared away to +the magic land of beautiful make-believe. + +And only when _Juliet_, that precocious child, sank down poisoned did +she become aware of the uproar about her. The shouts of the lodger, +"Stop--my God, stop! How do you get that way?" augmented a million +times. It was this she heard. + +Slowly Cake lifted herself on her hands, dazedly she peered through +the heart of the great light that had caused her such suffering and +that she had followed faithfully so bitterly long. On the other side +she saw faces, rows and rows of them mounting up to the very roof. +Faces laughing; faces convulsed, streaming with tears; faces with eyes +fixed and wearing that same queer, strained look she had noticed +before; hundreds of faces topping each other in semicircular rows, all +different but all alike in that they were all laughing. + +She rose to her knees and rested there on all fours--staring. + +Laughter! A great clapping of hands rolled about her like thunder, +dying down and rising again to even greater volume. Cries of "Go on," +assailed her ears, mingled with, "Stop, stop! I can't bear it!" + +The curtain fell before her, blotting out the vision of those faces, +making the uproar slightly dimmer. Mr. Meier advanced and lifted her +to her feet. He moved weakly, exhausted with mirth. + +"Even Noyes," he gasped. "He--he can't help it. Oh, my goo-hood +Gaw-hud!" + +Cake looked away from him to the men and women that thronged about +her. The same faces that had turned to her such a short while ago; but +now, how different! + +"Oh, don't criticise," one woman cried. "Hand it to her! She can't be +beat. She's the one that comes once in a century to show the rest of +us what really can be done." + +"Meier," shouted a man. "Meier--she'll have to go back, Meier; she's +stopped the show." + +Quiet and very still, Cake drew away. + +It seemed to her only a moment later that Leafy touched her arm. + +"Mr. Meier has taken a suite for you here in this hotel," she said. +"Can't you eat a little, Miss?" + +Eat? She had never had enough to eat in her life. Her life? She had +spent her life securing food for the lodger that he might teach her to +be famous. Leafy lifted the spoon of hot soup to her lips and +immediately she drank--she who had never had enough to eat in her +life. Morsel by morsel from the bountifully filled table the kindly +dresser fed her. Obediently she ate, and the hot, rich food stimulated +her to swifter, more agonizing thought. + +Then, for the first time, she saw Arthur Noyes standing with his back +against a closed door. She read pity in his eyes, comprehension, great +wonder, and what she did not know then was the love that came to a +rare perfection between them and has never faded--and has no place in +this story. + +"Will you tell me," he said, "what your name is, where your home is, +and who are those that love you there?" + +Then he broke off and shrank a little against the door. "Oh, don't," +he protested. + +Yet she had only looked at him and smiled. But it came to her keenly +in her new awareness that his questions covered the whole of a woman's +life: Her name, her home, and the ones that loved her there. While +she--she had no name, she did not even know the lodger's name. She +looked down with strange astonishment at her grown-up figure, her +woman's hands. She saw herself a ragged, gaunt, bushy-headed child +moving on a tight rope above a dark abyss, intent only upon a luminous +globe floating just out of reach ahead of her, that she stretched out +for eagerly with both her hands. Suddenly the lovely bubble burst and +the child was a woman, falling and falling among rows of convulsed, +shining white faces to the sound of gargantuan laughter. + +"You tell me," Arthur Noyes pleaded gently. + +And she did so very simply and beautifully. She did know Shakespeare; +it was the only English that she had ever been taught. So Noyes heard +how she became an instrument in the hands of the man who hated him +mortally, and owed her debut and her terrible awakening to what he +considered the only sporting answer to that insult. While he listened +he pondered, awestruck, upon the fact that out of all this muck and +blackness, the degradation of hate by the lodger, the refinement of +hate by himself, had flowered that rarest of all human creatures--one +that could make the whole world laugh. + +"He always hated me," he said. "I told him he had traded his genius +for drink, and he never forgave me. Where is he now?" + +"Now?" Cake looked up at him in startled wonder. It came over her +suddenly that he counted upon the lodger's being in the Imperial +Theatre that night. + +"Now?" she repeated. "Why, he is dead." + +It took Noyes a minute to recover. "What will you do?" he asked her. +"Will you go on from this start, continue this--this sort of success?" +He felt it the basest cruelty, in the face of her story, to say it was +the only kind she was ever destined to make. He waited for her answer, +wondering, and a little awestruck. It seemed to him they had come to +the supreme test of her genius. + +And she looked up at him with such sadness and such mirth--such +tragic, humorous appreciation of the darkness in which she had been +born, the toilsome way she had travelled to the Great Light and what +it actually revealed when she arrived. + +"I will go on from this success," she said. Involuntarily she raised +her hand to her breast. "I must, since it is the only way for me. You +see," with a humour far more touching than the saddest tears, "I must +be famous." + +And she smiled that smile that hurt him, the smile the world loves and +will give anything to see. + +The most famous funmaker of her time looked away from the bright river +fleeting beyond the trees to her giggling, half-terrified visitors. + +"Fame," she said, "is a secret that cannot be told. It must be +discovered by the seeker. Let me offer you tea as a substitute." + + + +MUMMERY + +By THOMAS BEER + +From _Saturday Evening Post_ + + +On Monday Mrs. Egg put her husband on the east-bound express with many +orders. He was not to annoy Adam by kissing him when they met, if they +met in public. He was to let Adam alone in the choice of civil dress, +if Adam wanted to change his naval costume in New York. He was not to +get lost in Brooklyn, as he had done before. He was to visit the +largest moving-picture theatres and report the best films on his +return. She made sure that Egg had her written list of lesser commands +safe in his wallet, then folded him to her bosom, sniffed, and patted +him up the steps of the coach. + +A red-haired youth leaned through an open window and inquired, "Say, +lady, would you mind tellin' me just what you weigh?" + +"I ain't been on the scales in years, bub," said Mrs. Egg equably; +"not since about when you was born. Does your mamma ever wash out your +mouth with soap?" + +An immediate chorus of laughter broke from the platform loungers. The +train jerked forward. The youth pulled in his head. Mrs. Egg stood +puffing triumphantly with her hands on her hips. + +"It's a shame," the baggage-master told her, "that a lady can't be +kind of--kind of----" + +"Fat," said Mrs. Egg; "and bein' tall makes it worse. All the Packers +'ve always been tall. When we get fat we're holy shows. But if that +kid's mother's done her duty by him he'd keep his mouth shut." + +The dean of the loungers put in, "Your papa was always skinny, +Myrtle." + +"I can't remember him much," Mrs. Egg panted, "but he looks skinny in +his pictures. Well, I got to get home. There's a gentleman coming over +from Ashland to look at a bull." + +She trod the platform toward the motor at the hitching rails and +several loungers came along gallantly. Mrs. Egg cordially thanked them +as she sank into the driving seat, settled her black straw hat, and +drove off. + +Beholding two of her married daughters on the steps of the drug store, +she stopped the car and shouted: "Hey, girls, the fleet's gettin' in +to-morrow. Your papa's gone to meet Dammy. I just shoved him on the +train. By gee! I forgot to tell him he was to fetch home--no, I wrote +that down--well, you come out to supper Wednesday night." + +"But can Dammy get discharged all in one day?" a daughter asked. + +Mrs. Egg had no patience with such imbecility. She snapped, "Did you +think they'd discharge him a foot at a time, Susie?" and drove on up +the street, where horsechestnuts were ready to bloom, appropriately, +since Adam was fond of the blossoms. She stopped the car five times to +tell the boys that Adam would be discharged tomorrow, and made a sixth +stop at the candy shop, where a clerk brought out a chocolate ice +cream with walnut sauce. He did this mechanically. Mrs. Egg beamed at +him, although the fellow was a newcomer and didn't know Adam. + +"My boy'll be home Wednesday," she said, giving the dish back. + +"Been in the Navy three-four years, ain't he?" + +Mrs. Egg sighed. "April 14, 1917. He was twenty-one las' week, so he +gets discharged soon as the fleet hits New York. My gee, think of +Dammy being twenty-one!" + +She drove on, marvelling at time, and made her seventh stop at the +moving-picture theatre. The posters of the new feature film looked +dull. The heavily typed list of the current-events weekly took her +sharp eye. She read, "Rome Celebrates Anniversary--Fleet Sails from +Guantanamo," and chuckled. She must drive in to see the picture of the +fleet. She hadn't time to stop now, as lunch would be ready. +Anyhow, night was the time for movies. She drove on, and the brick +business buildings gave out into a dribble of small frame cottages, +mostly shabby. Edith Webb was coming out of her father's gate. + +Mrs. Egg made an eighth halt and yelled, "Hey, Edie, Dammy'll be home +Wednesday night," for the pleasure of seeing the pretty girl flush. +Adam had taken Edith to several dances at Christmas. Mrs. Egg chuckled +as the favoured virgin went red, fingering the top of the gatepost. +Edith would do. In fact, Edith was suitable, entirely. + +"Well, I'm glad," the girl said. "Oh, say, was it our house or the +next one you used to live in? Papa was wondering last night." + +"It was yours," Mrs. Egg declared; "and thank your stars you've got a +better father than I had, Edie. Yes, right here's where I lived when I +was your age and helped Mamma do sewin', and sometimes didn't get +enough to eat. I wonder if that's why--well, anyhow, it's a +solid-built house. I expect Dammy'll call you up Wednesday night." She +chuckled immensely and drove on again. + +From the edge of town she passed steadily a quarter of a mile between +her husband's fields. His cows were grazing in the pastures. His apple +trees were looking well. The red paint of his monstrous water tanks +soothed her by their brilliance. A farmhand helped her out of the car +and she took the shallow veranda steps one at a time, a little moody, +wishing that her mother was still alive to see Adam's glory. However, +there were six photographs of Adam about the green sitting room in +various uniforms, and these cheered her moment of sorrow. They weren't +altogether satisfactory. His hard size didn't show in single poses. He +looked merely beautiful. Mrs. Egg sniffled happily, patting the view +of Adam in white duck. The enlarged snapshot portrayed him sitting +astride a turret gun. It was the best of the lot, although he looked +taller in wrestling tights, but that picture worried her. She had +always been afraid that he might kill someone in a wrestling match. +She took the white-duck photograph to lunch and propped it against the +pitcher of iced milk. + +"It'll be awful gettin' him clothes," she told the cook; "except +shoes. Thank God, his feet ain't as big as the rest of him! Say, +remind me to make a coconut cake in the morning in the big pan. He +likes 'em better when they're two three days old so the icin's kind of +spread into the cake. I'd of sent a cake on with his papa, but Mr. Egg +always drops things so much. It does seem----" The doorbell rang. Mrs. +Egg wiped her mouth and complained, "Prob'ly that gentleman from +Ashland to look at that bull calf. It does seem a shame folks drop in +at mealtimes. Well, go let him in Sadie." + +The cook went out through the sitting room and down the hall. Mrs. Egg +patted her black hair, sighed at her third chop and got up. The cook's +voice mingled with a drawling man's tone. Mrs. Egg drank some milk and +waited an announcement. The cook came back into the dining room and +Mrs. Egg set down the milk glass swiftly, saying, "Why, Sadie!" + +"He--he says he's your father, Mis' Egg." + +After a moment Mrs. Egg said, "Stuff and rubbidge! My father ain't +been seen since 1882. What's the fool look like?" + +"Awful tall--kinda skinny--bald----" + +A tremor went down Mrs. Egg's back. She walked through the sitting +room and into the sunny hall. The front door was open. Against the +apple boughs appeared a black length, topped by a gleam. The sun +sparkled on the old man's baldness. A shivering memory recalled that +her father's hair had been thin. His dark face slid into a mass of +twisting furrows as Mrs. Egg approached him. + +He whispered, "I asked for Myrtle Packer down round the station. An +old feller said she was married to John Egg. You ain't Myrtle?" + +"I'm her," said Mrs. Egg. + +Terrible cold invaded her bulk. She laced her fingers across her +breast and gazed at the twisting face. + +The whisper continued: "They tell me your mamma's in the cem'tery, +Myrtle. I've come home to lay alongside of her. I'm grain for the grim +reaper's sickle. In death we sha'n't be divided; and I've walked half +the way from Texas. Don't expect you'd want to kiss me. You look awful +like her, Myrtle." + +Tears rolled out of his eyes down his hollowed cheeks, which seemed +almost black between the high bones. His pointed chin quivered. He +made a wavering gesture of both hands and sat down on the floor. +Behind Mrs. Egg the cook sobbed aloud. A farmhand stood on the grass +by the outer steps, looking in. Mrs. Egg shivered. The old man was +sobbing gently. His head oscillated and its polish repelled her. He +had abandoned her mother in 1882. + +"Mamma died back in 1910," she said. "I dunno--well----" + +The sobbing was thin and weak, like an ailing baby's murmur. It +pounded her breast. + +She stared at the ancient dusty suitcase on the porch and said, "Come +up from Texas, have you?" + +"There's no jobs lef for a man seventy-six years of age, Myrtle, +except dyin.' I run a saloon in San Antonio by the Plaza. Walked from +Greenville, Mississippi, to Little Rock. An old lady give me carfare, +there, when I told her I was goin' home to my wife that I'd treated so +bad. There's plenty Christians in Arkansaw. And they've pulled down +the old Presbyterian church your mamma and I was married in." + +"Yes; last year. Sadie, take Mr. Packer's bag up to the spare room. +Stop cryin', Papa." + +She spoke against her will. She could not let him sit on the floor +sobbing any longer. His gleaming head afflicted her. She had a queer +emotion. This seemed most unreal. The gray hall wavered like a +flashing view in a film. + +"The barn'd be a fitter place for me, daughter. I've been a----" + +"That's all right, Papa. You better go up and lie down, and Sadie'll +fetch you up some lunch." + +His hand was warm and lax. Mrs. Egg fumbled with it for a moment and +let it fall. He passed up the stairs, drooping his head. Mrs. Egg +heard the cook's sympathy explode above and leaned on the wall and +thought of Adam coming home Wednesday night. She had told him a +thousand times that he mustn't gamble or mistreat women or chew +tobacco "like your Grandfather Packer did." And here was Grandfather +Packer, ready to welcome Adam home! + +The farmhand strolled off, outside, taking the seed of this news. It +would be in town directly. + +"Oh, Dammy," she said, "and I wanted everything nice for you!" + +In the still hall her one sob sounded like a shout. Mrs. Egg marched +back to the dining room and drank a full glass of milk to calm +herself. + +"Says he can't eat nothin', Mis' Egg," the cook reported, "but he'd +like a cup of tea. It's real pitiful. He's sayin' the Twenty-third +Psalm to himself. Wasted to a shadder. Asked if Mr. Egg was as +Christian an' forbearin' as you. Mebbe he could eat some buttered +toast." + +"Try and see, Sadie; and don't bother me. I got to think." + +She thought steadily, eating cold rice with cream and apple jelly. Her +memory of Packer was slim. He had spanked her for spilling ink on his +diary. He had been a carpenter. His brothers were all dead. He had run +off with a handsome Swedish servant girl in 1882, leaving her mother +to sew for a living. What would the county say? Mrs. Egg writhed and +recoiled from duty. Perhaps she would get used to the glittering bald +head and the thin voice. It was all most unreal. Her mother had so +seldom talked of the runaway that Mrs. Egg had forgotten him as +possibly alive. And here he was! What did one do with a prodigal +father? With a jolt she remembered that there would be roast veal for +supper. + +At four, while she was showing the Ashland dairyman the bull calf, +child of Red Rover VII and Buttercup IV, Mrs. Egg saw her oldest +daughter's motor sliding across the lane from the turnpike. It held +all three of her female offspring. Mrs. Egg groaned, drawling +commonplaces to her visitor, but he stayed a full hour, admiring the +new milk shed and the cider press. When she waved him good-bye from +the veranda she found her daughters in a stalwart group by the +sitting-room fireplace, pink eyed and comfortably emotional. They +wanted to kiss her. Mrs. Egg dropped into her particular mission chair +and grunted, batting off embraces. + +"I suppose it's all over town? It'd travel fast. Well, what d'you +think of your grandpapa, girls?" + +"Don't talk so loud, Mamma," one daughter urged. + +Another said, "He's so tired he went off asleep while he was telling +us how he nearly got hung for shooting a man in San Antonio." + +Mrs. Egg reached for the glass urn full of chocolate wafers on the +table and put one in her mouth. She remarked, "I can see you've been +having a swell time, girls. A sinner that repenteth----" + +"Why, Mamma!" + +"Listen," said Mrs. Egg; "if there's going to be any forgiving done +around here, it's me that'll do it. You girls was raised with all the +comforts of home and then some. You never helped anybody do plain +sewin' at fifteen cents a hour nor had to borrow money to get a decent +dress to be married in. This thing of hearin' how he shot folks and +kept a saloon in Texas is good as a movie to you. It don't set so easy +on me. I'm old and tough. And I'll thank you to keep your mouths shut. +Here's Dammy comin' home Wednesday out of the Navy, and all this piled +up on me. I don't want every lazyjake in the country pilin' in here to +hear what a bad man he's been, and dirty the carpets up. Dammy likes +things clean. I'm a better Christian than a lot of folks I can think +of, but this looks to me like a good deal of a bread-and-butter +repentance. Been devourin' his substance in Texas and come home +to----" + +"Oh, Mamma, your own papa!" + +"That's as may be. My own mamma busted her eyesight and got heart +trouble for fifteen mortal years until your papa married me and gave +her a home for her old age, and never a whimper out of her, neither. +She's where she can't tell me what she thinks of him and I dunno what +to think. But I'll do my own thinkin' until Dammy and your papa gets +back and tell me what they think. This is your papa's place--and +Dammy's. It ain't a boardin' house for----" + +"Oh, Mamma!" + +"And it's time for my nap." + +Susan, the oldest daughter, made a tremulous protest. "He's +seventy-six years old, Mamma, and whatever he's done----" + +"For a young woman that talked pretty loud of leavin' her husband when +he came home kind of lit up from a club meetin'----" Mrs. Egg broke +in. Susan collapsed and drew her gloves on hastily. Mrs. Egg ate +another chocolate wafer and resumed: "This here's my business--and +your papa's and Dammy's. I've got it in my head that that movie weekly +picture they had of Buttercup Four with her price wrote out must have +been shown in San Antonio. And you'll recollect that your papa and me +stood alongside her while that fresh cameraman took the picture. If I +was needin' a meal and saw I'd got a well-off son-in-law----" + +"Mamma," said Susan, "you're perfectly cynical." + +Mrs. Egg pronounced, "I'm forty-five years of age," and got up. + +The daughters withdrew. Mrs. Egg covered the chocolate urn with a +click and went into the kitchen. Two elderly farmhands went out of the +porch door as she entered. + +Mrs. Egg told the cook: "Least said, soon'st mended, Sadie. Give me +the new cream. I guess I might's well make some spice cookies. Be +pretty busy Wednesday. Dammy likes 'em a little stale." + +"Mis' Egg," said the cook, "if this was Dammy that'd kind of strayed +off and come home sick in his old age----" + +"Give me the cream," Mrs. Egg commanded, and was surprised by the +fierceness of her own voice. "I don't need any help seein' my duty, +thanks!" + +At six o'clock her duty became highly involved. A friend telephoned +from town that the current-events weekly at the moving-picture theatre +showed Adam in the view of the dreadnoughts at Guantanamo. + +"Get out," said Adam's mother. "You're jokin'! ... Honest? Well, it's +about time! What's he doin'? ... Wrestlin'? My! Say, call up the +theatre and tell Mr. Rubenstein to save me a box for the evenin' +show." + +"I hear your father's come home," the friend insinuated. + +"Yes," Mrs. Egg drawled, "and ain't feelin' well and don't need +comp'ny. Be obliged if you'd tell folks that. He's kind of sickly. So +they've got Dammy in a picture. It's about time!" The tremor ran down +her back. She said "Good-night, dearie," and rang off. + +The old man was standing in the hall doorway, his head a vermilion +ball in the crossed light of the red sunset. + +"Feel better, Papa?" + +"As good as I'm likely to feel in this world again. You look real like +your mother settin' there, Myrtle." The whisper seemed likely to ripen +as a sob. + +Mrs. Egg answered, "Mamma had yellow hair and never weighed more'n a +hundred and fifty pounds to the day of her death. What'd you like for +supper?" + +He walked slowly along the room, his knees sagging, twitching from end +to end. She had forgotten how tall he was. His face constantly +wrinkled. It was hard to see his eyes under their long lashes. Mrs. +Egg felt the pity of all this in a cold way. + +She said, when he paused: "That's Adam, there, on the mantelpiece, +Papa. Six feet four and a half he is. It don't show in a picture." + +"The Navy's rough kind of life, Myrtle. I hope he ain't picked up bad +habits. The world's full of pitfalls." + +"Sure," said Mrs. Egg, shearing the whisper. "Only Dammy ain't got any +sense about cards. I tried to teach him pinochle, but he never could +remember none of it, and the hired men always clean him out shakin' +dice. He can't even beat his papa at checkers. And that's an awful +thing to say of a bright boy!" + +The old man stared at the photograph and his forehead smoothed for a +breath. Then he sighed and drooped his chin. + +"If I'd stayed by right principles when I was young----" + +"D'you still keep a diary, Papa?" + +"I did used to keep a diary, didn't I? I'd forgotten that. When you +come to my age, Myrtle, you'll find yourself forgettin' easy. If I +could remember any good things I ever did----" + +The tears dripped from his jaw to the limp breast of his coat. Mrs. +Egg felt that he must be horrible, naked, like a doll carved of +coconut bark Adam had sent home from Havana. He was darker than Adam +even. In the twilight the hollows of his face were sheer black. The +room was gray. Mrs. Egg wished that the film would hurry and show +something brightly lit. + +The dreary whisper mourned, "Grain for the grim reaper's sickle, +that's what I am. Tares mostly. When I'm gone you lay me alongside +your mamma and----" + +"Supper's ready, Mis' Egg," said the cook. + +Supper was odious. He sat crumbling bits of toast into a bowl of hot +milk and whispering feeble questions about dead folk or the business +of the vast dairy farm. The girls had been too kind, he said. + +"I couldn't help but feel that if they knew all about me----" + +"They're nice sociable girls," Mrs. Egg panted, dizzy with dislike of +her veal. She went on: "And they like a good cry, never havin' had +nothin' to cry for." + +His eyes opened wide in the lamplight, gray brilliance sparkled. Mrs. +Egg stiffened in her chair, meeting the look. + +He wailed, "I gave you plenty to cry for, daughter." The tears hurt +her, of course. + +"There's a picture of Dammy in the movies," she gasped. "I'm goin' in +to see it. You better come. It'll cheer you, Papa." + +She wanted to recall the offer too late. In the car she felt chilly. +He sank into a corner of the tonneau like a thrown laprobe. Mrs. Egg +talked loudly about Adam all the way to town and shouted directions to +the driving farmhand in order that the whisper might not start. The +manager of the theatre had saved a box for her and came to usher her +to its discomfort. But all her usual pleasure was gone. She nodded +miserably over the silver-gilt rail at friends. She knew that people +were craning from far seats. Her bulk and her shadow effaced the man +beside her. He seemed to cower a little. At eight the show began, and +Mrs. Egg felt darkness as a blessing, although the shimmer from the +screen ran like phosphorus over the bald head, and a flash of white +between two parts of the advertisement showed the dark wrinkles of his +brow. + +"Like the pictures, Papa?" + +"I don't see well enough to take much pleasure in 'em, Myrtle." + +A whirling globe announced the beginning of the weekly. Mrs. Egg +forgot her burdens. She was going to see Adam. She took a peppermint +from the bag in her hand and set her teeth in its softness, applauded +a view of the President and the arrival of an ambassador in New York. +Then the greenish letters declared: "The fleet leaves Guantanamo +training ground," and her eyes hurt with staring. The familiar lines +of anchored battleships appeared with a motion of men in white on the +gray decks. The screen showed a race of boats which melted without +warning to a mass of white uniforms packed about the raised square of +a roped-in Platform below guns and a turret clouded with men. Two +tanned giants in wrestling tights scrambled under the ropes. There was +a flutter of caps. + +"Oh!" said Mrs. Egg. "Oh!" + +She stood up. The view enlarged. Adam was plain as possible. He +grinned, too; straight from the screen at her. The audience murmured. +Applause broke out, Adam jerked his black head to his opponent--and +the view flicked off in some stupid business of admirals. Mrs. Egg sat +down and sobbed. + +"Was that Adam, daughter? The--the big feller with black hair?" + +"Yes," said Mrs. Egg; "yes." She was hot with rage against the makers +of pictures who'd taken him from her. It was a shame. She crammed four +peppermints into her mouth and groaned about them, "As if people +wouldn't rather look at some good wrestlin' than a lot of captains and +stuff!" + +"How long's the boy been in the Navy, Myrtle?" + +"April 14, 1917." + +The whisper restored her. Mrs. Egg yawned for an hour of nonsense +about a millionaire and his wife who was far too thin. Her father did +not speak, although he moved now and then. The show concluded. Mrs. +Egg lumbered wearily out to her car in the dull street and vaguely +listened to the whisper of old age. She couldn't pay attention. She +was going home to write the film company at length. This abuse of Adam +was intolerable. She told the driver so. The driver agreed. + +He reported, "I was settin' next to Miss Webb." + +"That's Dammy's girl, Papa. Go on, Sam. What did Edie say?" + +"Well," said the driver, "she liked seein' the kid. She cried, +anyhow." + +Mrs. Egg was charmed by the girl's good sense. The moon looked like a +quartered orange over the orchard. + +She sighed, "Well, he'll be home Wednesday night, anyhow. Edie ain't +old enough to get married yet. Hey, what's the house all lit up for? +Sadie ought to know better." + +She prepared a lecture for the cook. The motor shot up the drive into +a babble and halted at the steps. Someone immense rose from a chair +and leaped down the space in one stride. + +Adam said, "H'lo, Mamma," and opened the car door. + +Mrs. Egg squealed. The giant lifted her out of her seat and carried +her into the sitting room. The amazing muscles rose in the flat of his +back. She thought his overshirt ripped. The room spun. Adam fanned her +with his cap and grinned. + +"Worst of radiograms," he observed; "the boys say Papa went on to meet +me. Well, it'll give him a trip. Quit cryin', Mamma." + +"Oh, Dammy, and there ain't nothin' fit to eat in the house!" + +Adam grinned again. The farmhands dispersed at his nod. Mrs. Egg beat +down her sobs with both hands and decried the radio service that could +turn Sunday into Tuesday. Here was Adam, though, silently grinning, +his hands available, willing to eat anything she had in the pantry. +Mrs. Egg crowed her rapture in a dozen bursts. + +The whispering voice crept into a pause with, "You'll be wantin' to +talk to your boy, daughter. I'll go to bed, I guess." + +"Dammy," said Mrs. Egg, "this is----" + +Adam stopped rolling a cigarette and nodded to the shadow by the hall +door. He said, "How you? The boys told me you'd got here," and licked +the cigarette shut with a flash of his red tongue. He struck a match +on the blue coating of one lean thigh and lit the cigarette, then +stared at the shadow. Mrs. Egg hated the old man against reason as the +tears slid down the dark face. + +"Grain for the grim reaper's sickle, daughter. You'll be wantin' to +talk to your boy. I guess I'll say good-night." He faded into the +hall. + +"Well, come, let's see what there is to eat, Mamma," said Adam, and +pulled Mrs. Egg from her chair. + +He sat on the low ice chest in the pantry and ate chocolate cake. Mrs. +Egg uncorked pear cider and reached, panting, among apple-jelly +glasses. Adam seldom spoke. She didn't expect talk from him. He was +sufficient. He nodded and ate. The tanned surface of his throat +dimpled when he swallowed things. His small nose wrinkled when he +chewed. + +Mrs. Egg chattered confusedly. Adam grinned when she patted his smooth +hair and once said "Get out!" when she paused between two kisses to +assure him he was handsome. He had his father's doubts on the point +perhaps. He was not, she admitted, exactly beautiful. He was Adam, +perfect and hard as an oak trunk under his blue clothes. He finished +the chocolate cake and began to eat bread and apple jelly. + +He ate six slices and drank a mug of pear cider, then crossed his legs +and drawled, "Was a fellow on the _Nevada_ they called Frisco Cooley." + +"What about him, Dammy?" + +"Nothin'. He was as tall as me. Skinny, though. Used to imitate actors +in shows. Got discharged in 1919." + +"Was he a nice boy, Dammy?" + +"No," said Adam, and reached for the pear-cider bottle. He fell into +his usual calm and drank another mug of cider. Mrs. Egg talked of Edie +Webb. Adam grinned and kept his black eyes on the pantry ceiling. The +clock struck eleven. He said, "They called him Frisco Cooley 'cause he +came from San Francisco. He could wrinkle his face up like a monkey. +He worked in a gamblin' joint in San Francisco. That's him." Adam +jerked a thumb at the ceiling. + +"Dammy!" + +"That's him," said Adam. "It took me a time to think of him, but +that's him." + +Mrs. Egg fell back against the ice chest and squeaked: "You mean you +know this----" + +"Hush up, Mamma!" + +"But he walked part the way from San Antonio. He----" + +"He ain't your father," said Adam, "so don't cry. Is there any maple +sugar? The grub on the train was fierce." + +Mrs. Egg brought him the tin case of maple sugar. Adam selected a +chunk of the brown stuff and bit a lobe of it. He was silent. Mrs. Egg +marvelled at him. His sisters had hinted that he wasn't clever. She +stood in awe, although her legs ached. Adam finished the lump of maple +sugar and rose. He leaned on the shelves with his narrow waist curved +against them and studied a row of quince-preserve jars. His nose +wrinkled. + +He asked, "You been fumigatin'?" + +"Fumigatin'! Why, Dammy, there ain't been a disease in the house since +you had whoopin' cough." + +"Sulphur," Adam drawled. + +"Why, Dammy Egg! I never used sulphur for nothin' in my life!" + +He took a jar of preserves and ripped off the paraffin wafer that +covered the top. Then he set the jar aside and sat down on the floor. +Mrs. Egg watched him unlace his shoes. + +He commanded, "You sit still, Mamma. Be back in a minute." + +"Dammy, don't you go near that heathen!" + +"I ain't." + +He swung across the kitchen floor in two strides and bumped his head +on the top of the door. Mrs. Egg winced, but all her body seemed to +move after the boy. Shiverings tossed her. She lifted her skirts and +stepped after him. The veranda was empty. Adam had vanished, although +the moon covered the dooryard with silver. The woman stared and shook. +Then something slid down the nearest pillar and dropped like a black +column to the grass. Adam came up the steps and shoved Mrs. Egg back +to the pantry. + +He spread some quince preserve on a slab of bread and stated, "He's +sittin' up readin' a lot of old copybooks, kind of. Got oil all over +his head. It's hair remover. Sulphur in it." + +"How could you ever smell that far, Dammy?" + +"I wonder what's in those books?" Adam pondered. He sat cross-legged +on the ice chest and ate slowly for a time, then remarked, "You didn't +put up these quinces, Mamma." + +"No; they're Sadie's. Think of your noticin'!" + +"You got to teach Edie cookin'," he said. "She can't cook fit for a +Cuban. Lots of time, though. Now, Mamma, we can't let this goof stay +here all night. I guess he's a thief. I ain't goin' to let the folks +have a laugh on you. Didn't your father always keep a diary?" + +"Think of your rememberin' that, Dammy! Yes, always." + +"That's what Frisco's readin' up in. He's smart. Used to do im'tations +of actors and cry like a hose pipe. Spotted that. Where's the +strawb'ry jam?" + +"Right here, Dammy. Dammy, suppose he killed Papa somewheres off and +stole his diaries!" + +"Well," said Adam, beginning strawberry jam, "I thought of that. Mebbe +he did. I'd better find out. Y'oughtn't to kill folks even if they're +no good for nothin'." + +"I'll go down to the barn and wake some of the boys up," Mrs. Egg +hissed. + +"You won't neither, Mamma. This'd be a joke on you. I ain't goin' to +have folks sayin' you took this guy for your father. Fewer knows it, +the better. This is awful good jam." He grinned and pulled Mrs. Egg +down beside him on the chest. She forgot to be frightened, watching +the marvel eat. She must get larger jars for jam. He reflected: "You +always get enough to eat on a boat, but it ain't satisfyin'. Frisco +prob'ly uses walnut juice to paint his face with. It don't wash off. +Don't talkin' make a person thirsty?" + +"Wait till I get you some more cider, Dammy." + +Adam thoughtfully drank more pear cider and made a cigarette. +Wonderful ideas must be moving behind the blank brown of his forehead. +His mother adored him and planned a recital of his acts to Egg, who +had accused Adam of being slow witted. + +She wanted to justify herself, and muttered: "I just felt he wasn't +Papa all along. He was like one of those awful sorrowful persons in a +movie." + +"Sure," said Adam, patting her arm. "I wish Edie'd got as nice a +complexion as you, Mamma." + +"Mercy, Dammy!" his mother tittered and blushed. + +Adam finished a third mug of cider and got up to examine the shelves. +He scratched the rear of one calf with the other toe, and muscles +cavorted in both legs as he reached for a jar of grapefruit marmalade. +He peered through this at the lamp and put the jar back. Mrs. Egg felt +hurt. + +The paragon explained: "Too sour after strawb'ry, Mamma. I'd like some +for breakfast, though. Back in a minute." + +He trotted out through the kitchen and vanished on the veranda. She +shivered, being alone. + +Adam came back and nodded: "Light's out. Any key to that room?" + +"No." + +"I can always think better when I'm eatin'," he confessed, and lifted +down the plate of spiced cookies, rejected them as too fresh, and +pounced on a covered dish of apple sauce. + +This he absorbed in stillness, wriggling his toes on the oilcloth. +Mrs. Egg felt entirely comfortable and real. She could hear the cook +snoring. Behind her the curtain of the pantry window fluttered. The +cool breeze was pleasant on her neck. Adam licked the spoon and said, +"Back in a minute, Mamma," as he started for the veranda door. + +Mrs. Egg reposed on the ice chest thinking about Adam. He was like +Egg, in that nothing fattened him. She puzzled over to-morrow's lunch. +Baked ham and sweet potatoes, sugared; creamed asparagus; hot corn +muffins. Dessert perplexed her. Were there any brandied peaches left? +She feared not. They belonged on the upper shelf nearest the ice +chest. Anxiety chewed her. Mrs. Egg climbed the lid by the aid of the +window sill and reached up an arm to the shelf. + +Adam said, "Here y'are, Mamma." + +The pantry door shut. Mrs. Egg swung about. Adam stood behind a shape +in blue pajamas, a hand locked on either of its elbows. He grinned at +Mrs. Egg over the mummer's shoulder. As the woman panted sulphur +entered her throat. The lamp threw a glare into the dark face, which +seemed paler. + +"Go on, Frisco," said Adam, about the skull, "tell Mamma about her +father." + +A sharp voice answered, "Let go my arms. You're killin' me!" + +"Quit kiddin'," Adam growled. "Go on!" + +"He ran a joint in San Francisco and gave me a job after I got out the +Navy. Died last fall. I kind of nursed him. Told me to burn all these +books--diaries. I read 'em. He called himself Peterson. Left all his +money to a woman. She shut the joint. I looked some like him so I took +a chance. Leggo my arms, Egg!" + +"He'd ought to go to jail, Dammy," said Mrs. Egg. "It's just awful! I +bet the police are lookin' for him right now." + +"Mamma, if we put him in jail this'll be all over the county and +you'll never hear the end of it." + +She stared at the ape with loathing. There was a star tattooed on one +of his naked insteps. He looked no longer frail, but wiry and +snakelike. The pallor behind his dark tan showed the triangles of +black stain in his cheeks and eye sockets. + +"He's too smart to leave loose, Dammy." + +"It'll be an awful joke on you, Mamma." + +"I can't help it, Dammy. He----" + +The prisoner figure toppled back against Adam's breast and the mouth +opened hideously. The lean legs bent. + +"You squeezed him too tight, Dammy. He's fainted. Lay him down." + +Adam let the figure slide to the floor. It rose in a whirl of blue +linen. Mrs. Egg rocked on the chest. + +The man thrust something at Adam's middle and said in a rasp, "Get +your arms up!" + +Adam's face turned purple beyond the gleaming skull. His hands rose a +little and his fingers crisped. He drawled, + +"Fact. I ought have looked under your duds, you----" + +"Stick 'em up!" said the man. + +Mrs. Egg saw Adam's arms tremble. His lower lip drew down. He wasn't +going to put his arms up. The man would kill him. She could not +breathe. She fell forward from the ice chest and knew nothing. + +She roused with a sense of great cold and was sitting against the +shelves. Adam stopped rubbing her face with a lump of ice and grinned +at her. + +He cried, "By gee, you did that quick, Mamma! Knocked the wind clear +out of him." + +"Where is he, Dammy?" + +"Dunno. Took his gun and let him get dressed. He's gone. Say, that was +slick!" + +Mrs. Egg blushed and asked for a drink. Adam dropped the ice into a +mug of pear cider and squatted beside her with a shabby notebook. + +"Here's somethin' for October 10, 1919." He read: "'Talked to a man +from Ilium to-day in Palace Bar. Myrtle married to John Egg. Four +children. Egg worth a wad. Dairy and cider business. Going to build +new Presbyterian church.' That's it, Mamma. He doped it all out from +the diary." + +"The dirty dog!" said Mrs. Egg. She ached terribly and put her head on +Adam's shoulder. + +"I'll put all the diaries up in the attic. Kind of good readin.' Say, +it's after two. You better go to bed." + +In her dreams Mrs. Egg beheld a bronze menacing skeleton beside her +pillow. It whispered and rattled. She woke, gulping, in bright +sunlight, and the rattle changed to the noise of a motor halting on +the drive. She gave yesterday a fleet review, rubbing her blackened +elbows, but felt charitable toward Frisco Cooley by connotation; she +had once sat down on a collie pup. But her bedroom clock struck ten +times. Mrs. Egg groaned and rolled out of bed, reaching for a wrapper. +What had the cook given Adam for breakfast? She charged along the +upper hall into a smell of coffee, and heard Adam speaking below. His +sisters made some feeble united interjection. + +The hero said sharply: "Of course he was a fake! Mamma knew he was, +all along, but she didn't want to let on she did in front of folks. +That ain't dignified. She just flattened him out and he went away +quiet. You girls always talk like Mamma hadn't as much sense as you. +She's kind of used up this morning. Wait till I give her her +breakfast, and I'll come talk to you." + +A tray jingled. + +Mrs. Egg retreated into her bedroom, awed. Adam carried in her +breakfast and shut the door with a foot. + +He complained: "Went in to breakfast at Edie's. Of course she's only +sixteen, but I could make better biscuits myself. Lay down, Mamma." + +He began to butter slices of toast, in silence, expertly. Mrs. Egg +drank her coffee in rapture that rose toward ecstasy as Adam made +himself a sandwich of toast and marmalade and sat down at her feet to +consume it. + + + +THE VICTIM OF HIS VISION + +By GERALD CHITTENDEN + +From _Scribner's_ + + +I + +"There's no doubt about it," said the hardware drummer with the +pock-pitted cheeks. He seemed glad that there was no doubt--smacked +his lips over it and went on. "Obeah--that's black magic; and +voodoo--that's snake-worship. The island is rotten with 'em--rotten +with 'em." + +He looked sidelong over his empty glass at the Reverend Arthur +Simpson. Many human things were foreign to the clergyman: he was +uneasy about being in the _Arequipa's_ smoke-room at all, for +instance, and especially uneasy about sitting there with the drummer. + +"But--human sacrifice!" he protested. "You spoke of human sacrifice." + +"And cannibalism. _La chevre sans cornes_--the goat without +horns--that means an unblemished child less than three years old. It's +frequently done. They string it up by its heels, cut its throat, and +drink the blood. Then they eat it. Regular ceremony--the _mamaloi_ +officiates." + +"Who officiates?" + +"The _mamaloi_--the priestess." + +Simpson jerked himself out of his chair and went on deck. Occasionally +his imagination worked loose from control and tormented him as it was +doing now. There was a grizzly vividness in the drummer's description. +It was well toward morning before Simpson grasped again his usual +certainty of purpose and grew able to thank God that he had been born +into a very wicked world. There was much for a missionary to do in +Hayti--he saw that before the night grew thin, and was glad. + +Between dawn and daylight the land leaped out of the sea, all clear +blues and purples, incomparably fresh and incomparably 111 wistful in +that one golden hour of the tropic day before the sun has risen very +high--the disembodied spirit of an island. It lay, vague as hope at +first, in a jewel-tinted sea; the ship steamed toward it as through +the mists of creation's third morning, and all good things seemed +possible. Thus had Simpson, reared in an unfriendly land, imagined it, +for beneath the dour Puritanism that had lapped him in its armour +there still stirred the power of wonder and surprise that has so often +through the ages changed Puritans to poets. That glimpse of Hayti +would remain with him, he thought, yet within the hour he was striving +desperately to hold it. For soon the ruffle of the breeze died from +off the sea, and it became gray glass through which the anchor sank +almost without a sound and was lost. + +"Sweet place, isn't it, Mr. Simpson?" said Bunsen, the purser, pausing +on his way to the gangway. + +"So that," Simpson rejoined slowly--and because it was a port of his +desire his voice shook on the words--"is Port au Prince!" + +"That," Bunsen spat into the sea, "is Port au Prince." + +He moved away. A dirty little launch full of uniforms was coming +alongside. Until the yellow flag--a polite symbol in that port--should +be hauled down Simpson would be left alone. The uniforms had climbed +to the deck and were chattering in a bastard patois behind him; now +and then the smell of the town struck across the smells of the sea and +the bush like the flick of a snake's tail. Simpson covered his eyes +for a moment, and immediately the vision of the island as he had seen +it at dawn swam in his mind. But he could not keep his eyes forever +shut--there was the necessity of living and of doing his work in the +world to be remembered always. He removed his hand. A bumboat was made +fast below the well of the deck, and a boy with an obscenely twisted +body and a twisted black face was selling pineapples to the sailors. +Simpson watched him for a while, and because his education had been +far too closely specialized he quoted the inevitable: + + "Where every prospect pleases, + And only man is vile" + +The verse uplifted him unreasonably. He went below to pack his +baggage. He said good-bye to the officers, painfully conscious that +they were grinning behind his back, and was rowed ashore by the +deformed boy. + +The boy said something in abominable French. He repeated it--Simpson +guessed at its meaning. + +"I shall stay a long time," he answered in the same language. "I am a +minister of the gospel--a missionary." + +The cripple, bent revoltingly over his oar, suddenly broke out into +laughter, soulless, without meaning. Simpson, stung sharply in his +stiff-necked pride, sprang up and took one step forward, his fist +raised. The boy dropped the oars and writhed to starboard, his neck +askew at an eldritch angle, his eyes glaring upward. But he did not +raise a hand to ward off the blow that he feared, and that was more +uncanny still. + +The blow never fell. Simpson's hand unclinched and shame reddened in +his face. + +"Give me the oars," he said. "_Pauvre garcon_--did you think that I +would strike you?" + +The boy surrendered the oars and sidled aft like a crab, his eyes +still rolling at his passenger. + +"Why should the maimed row the sound?" said Simpson. + +He rowed awkwardly. The boy watched him for a moment, then grinned +uncertainly; presently he lolled back in the stern-sheets, personating +dignity. A white man was doing his work--it was splendid, as it should +be, and comic in the extreme. He threw back his head and cackled at +the hot sky. + +"Stop that!" Simpson, his nerves raw, spoke in English, but the +laughter jarred to a blunt end. The boy huddled farther away from him, +watching him with unwinking eyes which showed white all around the +pupil. Simpson, labouring with the clumsy oars, tried to forget him. +It was hot--hotter than it had seemed at first; sweat ran into his +eyes and he grew a little dizzy. The quarantine launch with its load +of uniforms, among which the purser's white was conspicuous, passed, +giving them its wake; there was no sound from it, only a blaze of +teeth and eyeballs. Simpson glanced over his shoulder at it. The +purser was standing in the stern, clear of the awning, his head +quizzically on one side and a cigarette in his fingers. + +The rowboat came abreast of a worm-eaten jetty. + +"_Ici_," said the cripple. + +Simpson, inexpert, bumped into it bow on, and sculled the stern +around. The cripple, hideously agile, scrambled out and held the boat; +Simpson gathered up his bag and followed. + +A Roman priest, black as the top of a stove, strode down the jetty +toward them. + +"You--you!" he shouted to the cripple when he was yet ten strides +away. His voice rose as he approached. "You let the m'sieu' row you +ashore! You----" A square, heavy boot shot out from beneath his +cassock into the boy's stomach. "_Cochon_!" said the priest, turning +to Simpson. His manner became suddenly suave, grandiose. "These +swine!" he said. "One keeps them in their place. I am Father Antoine. +And you?" + +"Simpson--Arthur Simpson." He said his own name slowly as thought +there was magic in it, magic that would keep him in touch with his +beginnings. + +"Simpson?" The priest gave it the French sound; suspicion struggled +for expression on his black mask; his eyes took in the high-cut +waistcoat, the unmistakable clerical look. "You were sent?" + +"By the board of foreign missions." + +"I do not know it. Not by the archbishop?" + +"There is no archbishop in my Church." + +"In your Church?" Father Antoine's eyes sprang wide--wide as they had +been when he kicked the boatman. "In your Church? You are not of the +true faith, then?" + +Pride of race, unchastened because he had not till that moment been +conscious that it existed in him, swelled in Simpson. + +"Are you?" he asked. + +Father Antoine stared at him, not as an angry white man stares, but +with head thrown back and mouth partly open, in the manner of his +race. Then, with the unreasoned impetuousness of a charging bull, he +turned and flung shoreward down the pier. The cripple, groaning still, +crawled to Simpson's feet and sat there. + +"_Pauvre garcon_!" repeated Simpson dully. "_Pauvre garcon_!" + +Suddenly the boy stopped groaning, swung Simpson's kit-bag on his +shoulder, and sidled up the pier. His right leg bent outward at the +knee, and his left inward; his head, inclined away from his burden, +seemed curiously detached from his body; his gait was a halting sort +of shuffle; yet he got along with unexpected speed. Simpson, still +dazed, followed him into the Grand Rue--a street of smells and piled +filth, where gorged buzzards, reeking of the tomb, flapped upward +under his nose from the garbage and offal of their feast. Simpson +paused for a moment at the market-stalls, where negroes of all shades +looked out at him in a silence that seemed devoid of curiosity. The +cripple beckoned him and he hurried on. On the steps of the cathedral +he saw Father Antoine, but, although the priest must have seen him, he +gave no sign as he passed. He kept to what shade there was. Presently +his guide turned down a narrow alley, opened a dilapidated picket +gate, and stood waiting. + +"_Maman_!" he called. "_Oh! Maman_!" + +Simpson, his curiosity faintly stirring, accepted the invitation of +the open gate, and stepped into an untidy yard, where three or four +pigs and a dozen chickens rooted and scratched among the bayonets of +yucca that clustered without regularity on both sides of the path. The +house had some pretensions; there were two stories, and, although the +blue and red paint had mostly flaked away, the boarding looked sound. +In the yard there was less fetor than there had been outside. + +"_Maman_!" called the boy again. + +A pot-lid clashed inside the house, and a tall negress, dressed in a +blue-striped Mother Hubbard, came to the door. She stared at Simpson +and at the boy. + +"_Qui_?" was all she said. + +The boy sidled nearer her and dropped the bag on the threshold. + +"_Qui_?" she said again. + +Simpson waited in silence. His affairs had got beyond him somehow, and +he seemed to himself but the tool of circumstance. It did occur to +him, though dimly, that he was being introduced to native life rather +quickly. + +The cripple, squatting with his back against the bag, launched into a +stream of patois, of which Simpson could not understand a word. +Gestures explained somewhat; he was reenacting the scenes of the last +half hour. When he had finished, the negress, not so hostile as she +had been but by no means friendly, turned to Simpson and looked at him +a long time without speaking. He had all he could do not to fidget +under her gaze; finally, she stood aside from the door and said, +without enthusiasm: + +"_B'en venu. C'est vo' masson_." + +Simpson entered automatically. The kitchen, with its hard earth floor +and the sunlight drifting in through the bamboo sides, was not +unclean, and a savoury smell came from the stew-pot on the ramshackle +stove. In one of the bars of sunlight a mango-coloured child of two +years or so was playing with his toes--he was surprisingly clean and +perfectly formed. + +"_Aha, mon petit_!" exclaimed Simpson. He loved children. "He is +handsome," he added, addressing the woman. + +"Mine!" She turned the baby gently with her foot; he caught at the hem +of her dress, laughing. But she did not laugh. "Neither spot nor +blemish," she said, and then: "He is not yet three years old." + +Simpson shuddered, recalling the pock-marked drummer on the +_Arequipa_. That was momentary--a coincidence, he told himself. The +woman was looking down at the child, her eyes softer than they had +been, and the child was lying on its back and playing with her Mother +Hubbard. + +The woman lifted the lid from the pot and peered into it through the +sun-shot steam. + +"It is ready," she said. She lifted it from the stove and set it on +the earthen floor. The cripple placed a handful of knives and spoons +on the table and three tin plates; he thrust a long fork and a long +spoon into the pot and stood aside. + +"Seat yourself," said the woman, without looking at Simpson, "and +eat." + +She explored the pot with the fork, and stabbed it firmly--there was a +suggestion of ruthlessness about her action that made Simpson shudder +again--into a slab of meat, which she dropped on a plate, using a +callous thumb to disengage it from the tines. She covered it with +gravy and began to eat without further ceremony. The cripple followed +her example, slobbering the gravy noisily; some of it ran down his +chin. Neither of them paid any attention to Simpson. + +He took the remaining plate from the table and stood irresolute with +it in his hand. He was hungry, but his essential Puritan +fastidiousness, combined with that pride of race which he knew to be +un-Christian, rendered him reluctant to dip into the common pot or to +eat on equal terms with these people. Besides, the sun and his amazing +introduction to the island had given him a raging headache: he could +not think clearly nor rid himself of the sinister suggestion of the +town, of the house, of its three occupants in particular. + +The child touched a ringer to the hot lip of the pot, burned itself, +and began to cry. + +"_Taise_," said the woman. Her voice was low but curt, and she did not +raise her eyes from her plate. The child, its finger in its mouth, +stopped crying at once. + +Simpson shook himself; his normal point of view was beginning to +assert itself. He must not--must not hold himself superior to the +people he expected to convert; nothing, he insisted to himself, was to +be gained, and much might be lost by a refusal to meet the people "on +their own ground." Chance--he did not call it chance--had favoured him +incredibly thus far, and if he failed to follow the guidance that had +been vouchsafed him he would prove himself but an unworthy vessel. He +took up the long fork--it chattered against the pot as he seized +it--and, overcoming a momentary and inexplicable nausea, impaled the +first piece of meat that rolled to the surface. There were yams also +and a sort of dumpling made of manioc. When he had filled his plate he +rose and turned suddenly; the woman and the cripple had stopped eating +and were watching him. They did not take their eyes away at once but +gave him stare for stare. He sat down; without a word they began to +eat once again. + +The stew was good, and once he had begun Simpson ate heartily of it. +The tacit devilry fell away from his surroundings as his hunger grew +less, and his companions became no more than a middle-aged negress in +a turban, a black boy pitifully deformed, and a beautiful child. He +looked at his watch--he had not thought of the time for hours--and +found that it was a little after noon. It was time that he bestirred +himself and found lodgings. + +"Is there a hotel?" he asked cheerfully. He had noticed that the +islanders understood legitimate French, though they could not speak +it. + +"There is one," said the woman. She pushed away her plate and became +suddenly dourly communicative. "But I doubt if the _proprietaire_ +would find room for m'sieu'." + +"Has he so many guests, then?" + +"But no. M'sieu' has forgotten the priest." + +"The priest? What has he to do with it?" + +"My son tells me that m'sieu' offended him, and the _proprietaire_ is +a good Catholic. He will close his house to you." + +She shaved a splinter to a point with a table knife and picked her +teeth with it, both elbows on the table and her eyes on Simpson. +"There is nowhere else to stay," she said. "Unless--here." + +"I should prefer that," said Simpson--quickly, for reluctance and +distrust were rising in him again. "But have you a room?" + +She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at a door behind her. + +"There," she said. Simpson waited for her to move, saw that she had no +intention of doing so, and opened the door himself. + +The room was fairly large, with two windows screened but unglazed; a +canvas cot stood in one corner, a packing-box table and a decrepit +chair in another. Like the kitchen it was surprisingly clean. He +returned to his hostess, who showed no anxiety about his intentions. + +"How much by the week?" he asked. + +"Eight _gourdes_." + +"And you will feed me for how much?" + +"Fifteen _gourdes_." + +"I will take it." He forced himself to decision again; had he +hesitated he knew he would have gone elsewhere. The price also--less +than four dollars gold--attracted him, and he could doubtless buy some +furniture in the town. Moreover, experienced missionaries who had +talked before the board had always emphasized the value of living +among the natives. + +"_B'en_," said the negress. She rose and emptied the remains from her +plate into a tin pail, sponging the plate with a piece of bread. + +"I have a trunk on the steamer," said Simpson. "The boy--can he----" + +"He will go with you," the negress interrupted. + +The cripple slid from his chair, scraped his plate and Simpson's, put +on his battered straw hat, and shambled into the yard. Simpson +followed. + +He turned at the gate and looked back. The child had toddled to the +door and was standing there, holding on to the door-post. Inside, the +shadow of the woman flickered across the close bars of bamboo. + + +II + +Bunsen was standing on the jetty when they reached it talking +excitedly with a tall bowed man of fifty or so whose complexion showed +the stippled pallor of long residence in the tropics. + +"Here he is now!" Bunsen exclaimed as Simpson approached. "I was just +getting anxious about you. Stopped at the hotel--you hadn't been +there, they said. Port au Prince is a bad place to get lost in. +Oh--this gentleman is our consul. Mr. Witherbee--Mr. Simpson." + +Simpson shook hands. Witherbee's face was just a pair of dull eyes +behind a ragged moustache, but there was unusual vigour in his grip. + +"I'll see a lot of you, if you stay long," he said. He looked at +Simpson more closely. "At least, I hope so. But where have you been? I +was getting as anxious as Mr. Bunsen--afraid you'd been sacrificed to +the snake or something." + +Simpson raised a clerical hand, protesting. His amazing morning swept +before his mind like a moving-picture film; there were so many things +he could not explain even to himself, much less to these two Gentiles. + +"I found lodgings," he said. + +"Lodgings?" Witherbee and Bunsen chorused the word. "Where, for +heaven's sake?" + +"I don't know the name of the street," Simpson admitted. "I don't even +know the name of my hostess. That"--indicating the cripple--"is her +son." + +"Good God!" Witherbee exclaimed. "Madame Picard! The _mamaloi_!" + +"The--the what?" But Simpson had heard well enough. + +"The _mamaloi_--the _mamaloi_--high priestess of voodoo." + +"Her house is fairly clean," Simpson said. He was hardly aware of his +own inconsequence. It was his instinct to defend any one who was +attacked on moral grounds, whether they deserved the attack or not. + +"Ye-es," Witherbee drawled. "I dare say it is. It's her company that's +unsavoury. Especially for a parson. Eh? What's the matter now?" + +Simpson had flared up at his last words. His mouth set and his eyes +burned suddenly. Bunsen, watching him coolly, wondered that he could +kindle so; until that moment he had seemed but half alive. When he +spoke his words came hurriedly--were almost unintelligible; yet there +was some quality in his voice that compelled attention, affecting the +senses more than the mind. + +"Unsavoury company? That's best for a parson. 'I come not to bring the +righteous but sinners to repentance.' And who are you to brand the +woman as common or unclean? If she is a heathen priestess, yet she +worships a god of some sort. Do you?" He stopped suddenly; the +humility which men hated in him again blanketed his fanaticism. "It is +my task to give her a better god--the only true God--Christ." + +Bunsen, his legs wide apart, kept his eyes on the sea, for he did not +want to let Simpson see him smiling, and he was smiling. Witherbee, +who had no emotions of any sort, pulled his moustache farther down and +looked at the clergyman as though he were under glass--a curiosity. + +"So you're going to convert the whole island?" he said. + +"I hope to make a beginning in the Lord's vineyard." + +"Humph! The devil's game-preserve, you mean," Bunsen suddenly broke +in. + +"The devil's game-preserve, then!" Simpson was defiant. + +"The ship calls here every other Saturday," was all Bunsen said to +that. "You may need to know. I'll send your trunk ashore." + +He stepped into the cripple's boat and started for the ship. Witherbee +did not speak; Simpson, still raging, left him, strode to the end of +the pier, and stood there, leaning on a pile. + +His gust of emotion had left him; a not unfamiliar feeling of +exaltation had taken its place. It is often so with the extreme +Puritan type; control relaxed for however brief a moment sends their +slow blood whirling, and leaves them light-headed as those who breathe +thin air. From boyhood Simpson had been practised in control, until +repression had become a prime tenet of his faith. The cheerful and +generally innocent excursions of other men assumed in his mind the +proportions of crime, of sin against the stern disciplining of the +soul which he conceived to be the goal of life. Probably he had never +in all his days been so shocked as once when a young pagan had scorned +certain views of his, saying; "There's more education--soul education, +if you will have it--in five minutes of sheer joy than in a century of +sorrow." It was an appalling statement, that--more appalling because +he had tried to contradict it and had been unable to do so. He himself +had been too eager to find his work in life--his pre-ordained +work--ever to discover the deep truths that light-heartedness only can +reveal; even when he heard his call to foreign missions--to Hayti, in +particular--he felt no such felicity as a man should feel who has +climbed to his place in the scheme of things. His was rather the +sombre fury of the Covenanters--an intense conviction that his way was +the only way of grace--a conviction that transcended reason and took +flight into the realm of overmastering emotion--the only overmastering +emotion, by the way, that he had ever experienced. + +His choice, therefore, was in itself a loss of control and a dangerous +one, for nothing is more perilous to sanity than the certainty that +most other people in the world are wrong. Such conviction leads to a +Jesuitical contempt of means; in cases where the Puritan shell has +grown to be impregnable from the outside it sets up an internal +ferment which sometimes bursts shell and man and all into disastrous +fragments. Until old age kills them, the passions and emotions never +die in man; suppress them how we will, we can never ignore them; they +rise again to mock us when we think we are done with them forever. And +the man of Simpson's type suffers from them most of all, for he dams +against them all normal channels of expression. + +Simpson, standing at the pier-end, was suffering from them now. His +exaltation--a thing of a moment, as his fervour had been--had gone out +of him, leaving him limp, uncertain of his own powers, of his own +calling, even--the prey to the discouragement that precedes action, +which is the deepest discouragement of all. Except for himself and +Witherbee the pier was deserted; behind him the filthy town slept in +its filth. Four buzzards wheeled above it, gorged and slow; the +harbour lay before him like a green mirror, so still that the ship was +reflected in it down to the last rope-yarn. Over all, the sun, +colourless and furnace-hot, burned in a sky of steel. There was +insolence in the scorched slopes that shouldered up from the bay, a +threatening permanence in the saw-edged sky-line. The indifference of +it all, its rock-ribbed impenetrability to human influence, laid a +crushing weight on Simpson's soul, so that he almost sank to his knees +in sheer oppression of spirit. + +"Do you know much about Hayti?" asked Witherbee, coming up behind him. + +"As much as I could learn from books." Simpson wanted to be angry at +the consul--why he could not tell--but Witherbee's voice was so +carefully courteous that he yielded perforce to its persuasion and +swung around, facing him. Suddenly, because he was measuring himself +against man and not against Nature, his weakness left him, and +confidence in himself and his mission flooded back upon him. "As much +as I could get from books." He paused. "You have lived here long?" + +"Long enough," Witherbee answered. "Five years." + +"You know the natives, then?" + +"Can't help knowing them. There are quite a lot of them, you see, and +there's almost no one else. Do you know negroes at all?" + +"Very little." + +"You'd better study them a bit before you--before you do anything you +have it in mind to do--the Haytian negro in particular. They're not +like white men, you know." + +"Like children, you mean?" + +"Like some children. I'd hate to have them for nephews and nieces." + +"Why?" + +"We-ell"--Witherbee, looking sidelong at Simpson, bit off the end of a +cigar--"a number of reasons. They're superstitious, treacherous, +savage, cruel, and--worst of all--emotional. They've gone back. +They've been going back for a hundred years. The West Coast--I've been +there--is not so bad as Hayti. It's never been anything else than what +it is now, you see, and if it moves at all it must move forward. +There's nothing awful about savagery when people have never known +anything else. Hayti has. You know what the island used to be before +Desalines." + +"I've read. But just what do you mean by West Coast savagery--here?" + +"Snake-worship. Voodoo." Witherbee lit the cigar "Human sacrifice." + +"And the Roman Church does nothing!" There was exultation in Simpson's +voice. His distrust of the Roman Church had been aggravated by his +encounter with the black priest that morning. + +"The Roman Church does what it can. It's been unfortunate in its +instruments. Especially unfortunate now." + +"Father Antoine?" + +"Father Antoine. You met him?" + +"This morning. A brute, and nothing more." + +"Just that." Witherbee let a mouthful of smoke drift into the +motionless air. "It's curious," he said. + +"What is?" + +"Father Antoine will make it unpleasant for you. He may try to have +you knifed, or something." + +"Impossible!" + +"Not at all. Human life is worth nothing here. No wonder--it's not +really worth living. But you're safe enough, and that's the curious +thing." + +"Why am I safe?" + +"Because your landlady is who she is." Witherbee glanced over his +shoulder, and, although they were the only people on the pier, from +force of habit he dropped his voice. "The _mamaloi_ has more power +than the Church." He straightened and looked out toward the ship. +"Here's her idiot with your trunk. My office is the first house on the +left after you leave the pier. Don't forget that." + +He turned quickly and was gone before the cripple's boat had reached +the landing. + + +III + +The town, just stirring out of its siesta as Simpson followed the +cripple through the streets, somehow reassured him. Men like Bunsen +and Witherbee, who smiled at his opinions and remained cold to his +rhapsodies, always oppressed him with a sense of ineffectuality. He +knew them of old--knew them superficially, of course, for, since he +was incapable of talking impersonally about religion, he had never had +the chance to listen to the cool and yet often strangely mystical +opinions which such men hold about it. He knew, in a dim sort of way, +that men not clergymen sometimes speculated about religious matters, +seeking light from each other in long, fragmentary conversations. He +knew that much, and disapproved of it--almost resented it. It seemed +to him wrong to discuss God without becoming angry, and very wrong for +laymen to discuss God at all. When circumstances trapped him into talk +with them about things divine, he felt baffled by their silences and +their reserves, seemed to himself to be scrabbling for entrance to +their souls through some sort of a slippery, impenetrable casing; he +never tried to enter through their minds, where the door stood always +open. The trouble was that he wanted to teach and be listened to; +wherefore he was subtly more at home among the ignorant and in such +streets as he was now traversing than with educated men. He had been +born a few decades too late; here in Hayti he had stepped back a +century or so into the age of credulity. Credulity, he believed, was a +good thing, almost a divine thing, if it were properly used; he did +not carry his processes far enough to realize that credulity could +never become fixed--that it was always open to conviction. A receptive +and not an inquiring mind seemed to him the prerequisite for a +convert. And black people, he had heard, were peculiarly receptive. + +The question was, then, where and how to start his work. Hayti +differed from most mission fields, for, so far as he knew, no one had +ever worked in it before him. The first step was to cultivate the +intimacy of the people, and that he found difficult in the extreme. He +had one obvious channel of approach to them; when buying necessary +things for his room, he could enter into conversation with the +shopkeepers and the market-women, but this he found it difficult to +do. They did not want to talk to him, even seemed reluctant to sell +him anything; and when he left their shops or stalls, did not answer +his "Au revoir." He wondered how much the priest had to do with their +attitude. They had little also that he wanted--he shopped for a week +before he found a gaudy pitcher and basin and a strip of matting for +his floor. Chairs, bureaus, bookcases, and tables did not exist. He +said as much to Madame Picard, and gathered from her growled response +that he must find a carpenter. The cripple, his constant companion in +his first days on the island, took him to one--a gray old negro who +wore on a shoe-string about his neck a pouch which Simpson thought at +first to be a scapular, and whom age and his profession had made +approachable. He was garrulous even; he ceased working when at length +he understood what Simpson wanted, sat in his doorway with his head in +the sun and his feet in the shade, and lit a pipe made out of a tiny +cocoanut. Yes--he could build chairs, tables, anything m'sieu' wanted +There was wood also--black palm for drawer-knobs and cedar and +mahogany and rosewood, but especially mahogany. An excellent wood, +pleasant to work in and suave to the touch. Did they use it in the +United States, he wondered? + +"A great deal," answered Simpson. "And the San Domingo wood is the +best, I believe." + +"San Domingo--but yes," the carpenter said; "the Haytian also--that is +excellent. Look!" + +He led Simpson to the yard at the rear of his house and showed him +half a dozen boards, their grain showing where the broad axe had hewed +them smooth. Was it not a beautiful wood? And what furniture did +m'sieu' desire? + +Simpson had some little skill with his pencil--a real love for drawing +was one of the instincts which his austere obsessions had crushed out +of him. He revolved several styles in his mind, decided at length on +the simplest, and drew his designs on a ragged scrap of wrapping +paper, while the carpenter, leaning down from his chair by the door, +watched him, smoking, and now and then fingering the leather pouch +about his neck. Simpson, looking up occasionally to see that his +sketch was understood, could not keep his eyes away from the +pouch--whatever it was, it was not a scapular. He did not ask about +it, though he wanted to; curiosity, he had heard, should be repressed +when one is dealing with barbarians. But he knew that that was not his +real reason for not asking. + +"But it is easy," said the carpenter, picking up the paper and +examining it. "And the seats of the chairs shall be of white hide, is +it not?" + +Simpson assented. He did not leave the shop at once, but remained +seated on the threshold, following his usual policy of picking up +acquaintances where he could. + +"M'sieu' is a priest?" the old man asked, squinting at he filled the +cocoanut pipe again and thrust it between his ragged yellow teeth. + +"Not a priest. A minister of the gospel." + +"_Quoi_?" said the carpenter. + +Simpson saw that he must explain. It was difficult. He had on the one +hand to avoid suggesting that the Roman Church was insufficient--that +denunciation he intended to arrive at when he had gained firmer ground +with the people--and on the other to refrain from hinting that Haytian +civilization stood in crying need of uplift. That also could come +later. He wallowed a little in his explanation, and then put the whole +matter on a personal basis. + +"I think I have a message--something new to say to you about Christ. +But I have been here a week now and have found none to listen to me." + +"Something new?" the carpenter rejoined. "But that is easy if it is +something new. In Hayti we like new things." + +"No one will listen to me," Simpson repeated. + +The carpenter reflected for a moment, or seemed to be doing so. + +"Many men come here about sunset," he said. "We sit and drink a little +rum before dark; it is good against the fever." + +"I will come also," said Simpson, rising. "It is every evening?" + +"Every evening." The carpenter's right hand rose to the pouch which +was not a scapular and he caressed it. + +"Au revoir," said Simpson suddenly. + +"'_Voir_," the carpenter replied, still immobile in his chair by the +door. + +Up to now a walk through the streets had been a night-mare to Simpson, +for the squalor of them excited to protest every New England nerve in +his body, and the evident hostility of the people constantly +threatened his success with them. He had felt very small and lonely, +like a man who has undertaken to combat a natural force; he did not +like to feel small and lonely, and he did not want to believe in +natural forces. Chosen vessel as he believed himself to be, thus far +the island had successfully defied him, and he had feared more than +once that it would do so to the end. He had compelled himself to +frequent the markets, hoping always that he would find in them the key +to the door that was closed against him; he had not found it, and, +although he recognized that three weeks was but a fractional moment of +eternity, and comforted himself by quoting things about the "mills of +God," he could not approach satisfaction with what he had accomplished +so far. + +His interview with the carpenter had changed all that, and on his way +home he trod the Grand Rue more lightly than he had ever done. Even +the cathedral, even the company of half-starved conscripts that +straggled past him in the tail of three generals, dismayed him no +longer, for the cathedral was but the symbol of a frozen Christianity +which he need no longer fear, and the conscripts were his +people--his--or soon would be. All that he had wanted was a start; he +had it now, though he deplored the rum which would be drunk at his +first meeting with the natives. One must begin where one could. + +Witherbee, sitting in the window of the consulate, called twice before +Simpson heard him. + +"You look pretty cheerful," he said. "Things going well?" + +"They've just begun to, I think--I think I've found the way to reach +these people." + +"Ah?" The monosyllable was incredulous though polite. "How's that?" + +"I've just been ordering some furniture from a carpenter," Simpson +answered. It was the first time since the day of his arrival that he +had seen Witherbee to speak to, and he found it a relief to speak in +his own language and without calculating the result of his words. + +"A carpenter? Vieux Michaud, I suppose?" + +"That's his name. You know him?" + +"Very well." The consul tipped back his chair and tapped his lips with +a pencil. "Very well. He's a clever workman. He'll follow any design +you give him, and the woods, of course, are excellent." + +"Yes. He showed me some. But he's more than a carpenter to me. He's +more--receptive--than most of the natives, and it seems that his shop +is a gathering place--a centre. He asked me to come in the evenings." + +"And drink rum?" Witherbee could not resist that. + +"Ye-es. He said they drank rum. I sha'n't do that, of course, but one +must begin where one can." + +"I suppose so," Witherbee answered slowly. The office was darkened to +just above reading-light, and the consul's face was in the shadow. +Evidently he had more to say, but he allowed a long silence to +intervene before he went on. Simpson, imaging wholesale conversions, +sat quietly; he was hardly aware of his surroundings. + +"Don't misunderstand what I'm going to say," the consul began at +length. Simpson straightened, on his guard at once. "It may be of use +to you--in your work," he added quickly. "It's this. Somehow--by +chance perhaps, though I don't think so--you've fallen into strange +company--stranger than any white man I've ever known." + +"I am not afraid of voodoo," said Simpson rather scornfully. + +"It would be better if you were a little afraid of it. I am--and I +know what I'm talking about. Look what's happened to you. There's the +Picard woman--she's the one who had President Simon Sam under her +thumb. Did you know he carried the symbols of voodoo next his heart? +And now Michaud, who's her right hand and has been for years. Looks +like deep water to me." + +"I must not fear for my own body." + +"That's not what I mean exactly, though I wish you were a little more +afraid for it. It might save me trouble--possibly save our government +trouble--in the end. But the consequences of letting voodoo acquire +any more power than it has may be far-reaching." + +"I am not here to give it more power." Simpson, thoroughly angry, rose +to go. "It is my business to defeat it--to root it out." + +"Godspeed to you in that"--Witherbee's voice was ironical. "But +remember what I tell you. The Picard woman is subtle, and Michaud is +subtle." Simpson had crossed the threshold, and only half heard the +consul's next remark. "Voodoo is more subtle than both of them +together. Look out for it." + +Witherbee's warning did no more than make Simpson angry; he attributed +it to wrong motives--to jealousy perhaps to hostility certainly, and +neither jealousy nor hostility could speak true words. In spite of all +that he had heard he could not believe that voodoo was so powerful in +the island; this was the twentieth century, he insisted, and the most +enlightened country in the world was less than fifteen hundred miles +away; he forgot that opinions and not figures number the centuries, +and refused to see that distance had nothing to do with the case. +These were a people groping through the dark; when they saw the light +they could not help but welcome it, he thought. The idea that they +preferred their own way of life and their own religion, that they +would not embrace civilization till they were forced to do so at the +point of benevolent bayonets, never entered his head. His own way of +life was so obviously superior. He resolved to have nothing more to do +with Witherbee. + +When he returned to the carpenter's house at about six that evening he +entered the council of elders that he found there with the +determination to place himself on an equality with them. It was to his +credit that he accomplished this feat, but it was not surprising for +the humility of his mind at least was genuine. He joined in their +conversation, somewhat stiffly at first, but perhaps no more so than +became a stranger. Presently, because he saw that he could not refuse +without offending his host, he conquered prejudice and took a little +rum and sugar and water. It went to his head without his knowing it, +as rum has a habit of doing; he became cheerfully familiar with the +old men and made long strides into their friendship--or thought he +did. He did not once mention religion to them at that first meeting, +though he had to exercise considerable self-restraint to prevent +himself from doing so. + +On his way home he met Father Antoine not far from Michaud's door. The +priest would have passed with his usual surly look if Simpson had not +stopped him. + +"Well?" Antoine demanded. + +"Why should we quarrel--you and I?" Simpson asked. "Can we not work +together for these people of yours?" + +"Your friends are not my people, heretic!" Father Antoine retorted." +Rot in hell with them!" + +He plunged past Simpson and was gone down the darkling alley. + +"You are late, m'sieu'," remarked Madame Picard as he came into the +kitchen and sat down in a chair near the cripple. Her manner was less +rough than usual. + +"I've been at Michaud's," he answered. + +"Ah? But you were there this morning." + +"He asked me to come this evening, when his friends came, madame. +There were several there." + +"They are often there," she answered. There was nothing significant in +her tone, but Simpson had an uneasy feeling that she had known all the +time of his visit to the carpenter. + +"I met Father Antoine on the way home," he said. + +"A bad man!" She flamed into sudden violence. "A bad man!" + +"I had thought so." Her loquacity this evening was amazing. Simpson +thought he saw an opening to her confidence and plunged in. "And he is +a priest. It is bad, that. Here are sheep without a shepherd." + +"_Quoi_?" + +"Here are many people--all good Christians." Simpson, eager and +hopeful, leaned forward in his chair. His gaunt face with the +down-drawn mouth and the hungry eyes--grown more hungry in the last +three weeks--glowed, took on fervour; his hand shot out expressive +fingers. The woman raised her head slowly, staring at him; more slowly +still she seated herself at the table that stood between them. She +rested her arms on it, and narrowed her eyelids as he spoke till her +eyes glittered through the slits of them. + +"All good Christians," Simpson went on; "and there is none to lead +them save a black----" He slurred the word just in time. The woman's +eyes flashed open and narrowed again. "Save a renegade priest," +Simpson concluded. "It is wrong, is it not? And I knew it was wrong, +though I live far away and came--was led--here to you." His voice, +though it had not been loud, left the room echoing. "It was a real +call." He whispered that. + +"You are a Catholic?" asked Madame Picard. + +"Yes. Of the English Catholic Church." He suspected that the +qualifying adjective meant nothing to her, but let the ambiguity rest. + +"I was not sure," she said slowly, "though you told the boy." Her +eyes, velvet-black in the shadow upcast by the lamp, opened slowly. +"There has been much trouble with Father Antoine, and now small +numbers go to mass or confession." Her voice had the effect of +shrillness though it remained low; her hands flew out, grasping the +table-edge at arms' length with an oddly masculine gesture. "He +deserved that! To tell his _canaille_ that I--that we----He dared! But +now--now--we shall see!" + +Her voice rasped in a subdued sort of a shriek; she sprang up from her +chair, and stood for the fraction of a second with her hands raised +and her fists clinched. Simpson, puzzled, amazed, and a little scared +at last, had barely time to notice the position before it dissolved. +The child, frightened, screamed from the floor. + +"_Taisez-vous--taisez-vous, mon enfant. Le temps vient_." + +She was silent for a long time after that. Simpson sat wondering what +she would do next, aware of an uncanny fascination that emanated from +her. It seemed to him as though there were subterranean fires in the +ground that he walked on. + +"You shall teach us," she said in her usual monotone. "You shall teach +us--preach to many people. No house will hold them all." She leaned +down and caressed the child. "_Le temps vient, mon petit. Le temps +vient_." + +Under Simpson's sudden horror quivered an eerie thrill. He mistook it +for joy at the promised fulfilment of his dreams. He stepped to his +own doorway and hesitated there with his hand on the latch. + +"To many people? Some time, I hope." + +"Soon." She looked up from the child; there was a snakiness in the +angle of her head and neck. "Soon." + +He opened the door, slammed it behind him, and dropped on tense knees +beside his bed. In the kitchen the cripple laughed--laughed for a long +time. Simpson's tightly pressed palms could not keep the sound from +his ears. + + +IV + +Each night the gathering at Vieux Michaud's became larger; it grew too +large for the house, and presently overflowed into the yard behind, +where Michaud kept his lumber. Generally thirty or forty natives +collected between six and seven in the evening, roosting on the piled +boards or sitting on the dusty ground in little groups, their +cigarettes puncturing the blue darkness that clung close to the earth +under the young moon. There were few women among them at first and +fewer young men; Simpson, who knew that youth ought to be more +hospitable to new ideas than age, thought this a little strange and +spoke to Michaud about it. + +"But they are my friends, m'sieu'," answered Michaud. + +The statement might have been true of the smaller group that Simpson +had first encountered at the carpenter's house; it was not true of the +additions to it, for he was evidently not on intimate terms with them. +Nor did he supply rum for all of them; many brought their own. That +was odd also, if Simpson had only known it; the many _cantinas_ +offered attractions which the carpenter's house did not. That fact +occurred to him at length. + +"They have heard of you, m'sieu'--and that you have something new to +say to them. We Haytians like new things." + +Thus, very quietly, almost as though it had been a natural growth of +interest, did Simpson's ministry begin. He stepped one evening to the +platform that overhung the carpenter's backyard, and began to talk. +Long study had placed the missionary method at his utter command, and +he began with parables and simple tales which they heard eagerly. +Purposely, he eschewed anything striking or startling in this his +first sermon. It was an attempt to establish a sympathetic +understanding between himself and his audience, and not altogether an +unsuccessful one, for his motives were still unmixed. He felt that he +had started well; when he was through speaking small groups gathered +around him as children might have done, and told him inconsequent, +wandering tales of their own--tales which were rather fables, folklore +transplanted from another hemisphere and strangely crossed with +Christianity. He was happy; if it had not been that most of them wore +about their necks the leather pouches that were not scapulars he would +have been happier than any man has a right to be. One of these +pouches, showing through the ragged shirt of an old man with thin lips +and a squint, was ripped at the edge, and the unmistakable sheen of a +snake's scale glistened in the seam. Simpson could not keep his eyes +from it. + +He dared to be more formal after that, and on the next night preached +from a text--the Macedonian cry, "Come over and help us." That sermon +also was effective: toward the end of it two or three women were +weeping a little, and the sight of their tears warmed him with the +sense of power. In that warmth certain of his prejudices and +inhibitions began to melt away; the display of feelings and +sensibilities could not be wicked or even undesirable if it prepared +the way for the gospel by softening the heart. He began to dabble in +emotion himself, and that was a dangerous matter, for he knew nothing +whatever about it save that, if he felt strongly, he could arouse +strong feeling in others. Day by day he unwittingly became less sure +of the moral beauty of restraint, and ardours which he had never +dreamed of began to flame free of his soul. + +He wondered now and then why Madame Picard, who almost from the first +had been a constant attendant at his meetings, watched him so closely, +so secretly--both when he sat with her and the cripple at meals and at +the carpenter's house, where he was never unconscious of her eyes. He +wondered also why she brought her baby with her, and why all who came +fondled it so much and so respectfully. He did not wonder at the +deference, almost the fear, which all men showed her--that seemed +somehow her due. She had shed her taciturnity and was even voluble at +times. But behind her volubility lurked always an inexplicable +intensity of purpose whose cause Simpson could never fathom and was +afraid to seek for. It was there, however--a nervous determination, +not altogether alien to his own, which he associated with religion and +with nothing else in the world. Religiosity, he called it--and he was +not far wrong. + +Soon after his first sermon he began little by little to introduce +ritual into the meetings at Michaud's, so that they became decorous; +rum-drinking was postponed till after the concluding prayer, and that +in itself was a triumph. He began to feel the need of hymns, and, +since he could find in French none that had associations for himself, +he set about translating some of the more familiar ones, mostly those +of a militant nature. Some of them, especially "The Son of God goes +forth to war," leaped into immediate popularity and were sung two or +three times in a single service. He liked that repetition; he thought +it laid the groundwork for the enthusiasm which he aroused more and +more as time went on, and which he took more pains to arouse. +Nevertheless, the first time that his feverish eloquence brought tears +and incoherent shoutings from the audience, he became suddenly fearful +before the ecstasies which he had touched to life, he faltered, and +brought his discourse to an abrupt end. As the crowd slowly quieted +and reluctantly began to drift away there flashed on him with blinding +suddenness the realization that his excitement had been as great as +their own; for a moment he wondered if such passion were godly. Only +for a moment, however, of course it was godly, as any rapture informed +by religion must be. He was sorry he had lost courage and stopped so +soon. These were an emotional and not an intellectual people--if they +were to be reached at all, it must be through the channels of their +emotions. Thus far he thought clearly, and that was as far as he did +think, for he was discovering in himself a capacity for religious +excitement that was only in part a reflex of the crowd's fervour, and +the discovery quickened and adorned the memory of the few great +moments of his life. Thus had he felt when he resolved to take orders, +thus, although in a less degree, because he had been doubtful and +afraid, had he felt when he heard the Macedonian cry from this West +Indian island. He had swayed the crowd also as he had always believed +that he could sway crowds if only the spirit would burn in him +brightly enough; he had no doubt that he could sway them again, govern +them completely perhaps. That possibility was cause for prayerful and +lonely consideration, for meditation among the hills, whence he might +draw strength. He hired a pony forthwith and set out for a few days in +the hinterland. + +It was the most perilous thing he could have done. There is neither +sanctity nor holy calm in the tropic jungle, nothing of the hallowed +quietude that, in northern forests, clears the mind of life's muddle +and leads the soul to God. There lurks instead a poisonous anodyne in +the heavy, scented air--a drug that lulls the spirit to an evil repose +counterfeiting the peacefulness whence alone high thoughts can spring. +In the North, Nature displays a certain restraint even in her most +flamboyant moods: the green fires of spring temper their sensuousness +in chill winds, and autumn is rich in suggestion not of love, but of +gracious age, having the aloof beauty of age and its true estimates of +life. The perception of its loveliness is impersonal and leaves the +line between the aesthetic and the sensuous clearly marked. Beneath a +straighter sun the line is blurred and sometimes vanishes: no +orchid-musk, no azure and distant hill, no tinted bay but accosts the +senses, confusing one with another, mingling all the emotions in a +single cup, persuading man that he knows good from evil as little as +though he lived still in Eden. From such stealthy influences the man +of rigid convictions is often in more danger than the man of no +convictions at all, for rigid convictions rather often indicate +inexperience and imperfect observation; experience, +therefore--especially emotional experience--sometimes warps them into +strange and hideous shapes. + +Simpson did not find in the bush the enlightenment that he had hoped +for. He did, however, anaesthetize his mind into the belief that he +had found it. Returning, he approached Port au Prince by a route new +to him. A well-beaten trail aroused his curiosity and he followed it +into a grove of ceiba and mahogany. It was clear under foot, as no +tropic grove uncared for by man can be clear; in the middle of it lay +the ashes of a great fire, and three minaca-palm huts in good repair +huddled almost invisible under the vast trees. The ground, bare of +grass, was trodden hard, as though a multitude had stamped it +down--danced it down, perhaps--and kept it bare by frequent use. + +"What a place for a camp-meeting!" thought Simpson as he turned to +leave it. "God's cathedral aisles, and roofed by God's blue sky." + +His pony shied and whirled around, a long snake--a +fer-de-lance--flowed across the path. + +The desire to hold his services in the grove remained in his mind; the +only reason he did not transfer them there at once was that he was not +yet quite sure of his people. They came eagerly to hear him, they +reflected his enthusiasm at his behest, they wept and praised God. +Yet, underneath all his hopes and all his pride in what he had done +ran a cold current of doubt, an undefined and indefinable fear of +something devilish and malign that might thwart him in the end. He +thrust it resolutely out of his mind. + + +V + +"I have told your people--your _canaille_," said Father Antoine, "that +I shall excommunicate them all." + +The priest had been graver than his wont--more dignified, less +volcanic, as though he was but the mouthpiece of authority, having +none of it himself. + +"They are better out of your Church than in it," Simpson answered. + +Father Antoine trembled a little; it was the first sign he had given +that his violent personality was still alive under the perplexing new +power that had covered it. + +"You are determined?" Simpson nodded with compressed lips. "Their +damnation be on your head, then." + +The priest stood aside. Simpson squeezed by him on the narrow +sidewalk; as he did so, Antoine drew aside the skirts of his cassock. + +From the beginning Simpson had preached more of hell than of heaven; +he could not help doing so, for he held eternal punishment to be more +imminent than eternal joy, and thought it a finer thing to scare +people into heaven than to attract them thither. He took an inverted +pleasure also in dwelling on the tortures of the damned, and had +combed the minor prophets and Revelation for threatening texts to hurl +at his congregation. Such devil-worship, furthermore, gave him greater +opportunity for oratory, greater immediate results also; he had used +it sometimes against his better judgment, and was not so far gone that +he did not sometimes tremble at the possible consequences of its use. +His encounter with the priest, however, had driven all doubts from his +mind, and that evening he did what he had never done before--he openly +attacked the Roman Church. + +"What has it done for you?" he shouted, and his voice rang in the +rafters of the warehouse where a hundred or so Negroes had gathered to +hear him. "What has it done for you? You cultivate your ground, and +its tithes take the food from the mouths of your children. Does the +priest tell you of salvation, which is without money and without +price, for all--for all--for all? Does he live among you as I do? Does +he minister to your bodies? Or your souls?" + +There was a stir at the door, and the eyes of the congregation turned +from the platform. + +"Father Antoine!" shrieked a voice. It was Madame Picard's; Simpson +could see her in the gloom at the far end of the hall and could see +the child astride of her hip. "Father Antoine! He is here!" + +In response to the whip of her voice there was a roar like the roar of +a train in a tunnel. It died away; the crowd eddied back upon the +platform. Father Antoine--he was robed, and there were two acolytes +with him, one with a bell and the other with a candle--began to read +in a voice as thundering as Simpson's own. + +"_Excommunicado_ ----" + +The Latin rolled on, sonorous, menacing. It ceased; the candle-flame +snuffed out, the bell tinkled, there was the flash of a cope in the +doorway, and the priest was gone. + +"He has excommunicated you!" Simpson shouted, almost shrieked. "Thank +God for that, my people!" + +They faced him again; ecstatic, beside himself, he flung at them +incoherent words. But the Latin, mysterious as magic, fateful as a +charm, had frightened them, and they did not yield to Simpson +immediately. Perhaps they would not have yielded to him at all if it +had not been for Madame Picard. + +From her corner rose an eerie chant in broken minors; it swelled +louder, and down the lane her people made for her she came dancing. +Her turban was off, her dress torn open to the breasts; she held the +child horizontally and above her in both hands. Her body swayed +rhythmically, but she just did not take up the swing of the votive +African dance that is as old as Africa. Up to the foot of the platform +she wavered, and there the cripple joined her, laughing as always. +Together they shuffled first to the right and then to the left, their +feet marking the earth floor in prints that overlapped like scales. +She laid the baby on the platform, sinking slowly to her knees as she +did so; as though at a signal the wordless chant rumbled upward from +the entire building, rolled over the platform like a wave, engulfing +the white man in its flood. + +"Symbolism! Sacrifice!" Simpson yelled. "She offers all to God!" + +He bent and raised the child at arm's length above his head. Instantly +the chanting ceased. + +"To the grove!" screamed the _mamaloi_. She leaped to the platform, +almost from her knees it seemed, and snatched the child. "To the +grove!" + +The crowd took up the cry; it swelled till Simpson's ears ached under +the impact of it. + +"To the grove!" + +Doubt assailed him as his mind--a white man's mind--rebelled. + +"This is wrong," he said dully; "wrong." + +Madame Picard's fingers gripped his arm. Except for the spasms of the +talons which were her fingers she seemed calm. + +"No, m'sieu'," she said. "You have them now. Atonement--atonement, +m'sieu'. You have many times spoken of atonement. But they do not +understand what they cannot see. They are behind you--you cannot leave +them now." + +"But--the child?" + +"The child shall show them--a child shall lead them, m'sieu'. They +must see a _theatre_ of atonement--then they will believe. Come." + +Protesting, he was swept into the crowd and forward--forward to the +van of it, into the Grand Rue. Always the thunderous rumble of the mob +continued; high shrieks flickered like lightning above it; the name of +Christ dinned into his ears from foul throats. On one side of him the +cripple appeared; on the other strode the _mamaloi_--the child, +screaming with fear, on her hip. A hymn-tune stirred under the +tumult--rose above it. + + "_Le fils de Dieu se va Pen guerre + Son drapeau rouge comme sang_." + +Wild quavers adorned the tune obscenely; the mob marched to it, +falling into step. Torches came, flaming high at the edges of the +crowd, flaming wan and lurid on hundreds of black faces. + + "_Il va pour gagner sa couronne + Qui est-ce que suit dans son train_?" + +"A crusade!" Simpson suddenly shouted. "It is a crusade!" + +Yells answered him. Somewhere a drum began, reverberating as though +unfixed in space; now before them, now behind; now, it seemed, in the +air. The sound was maddening A swaying began in the crowd that took on +cadence, became a dance. Simpson, his brain drugged, his senses +perfervid marched on in exultation. These were his people at last. + +The drum thundered more loudly, became unbearable. They were clear of +the town and in the bush at last; huge fires gleamed through the +trees, and the mob spilled into the grove. The cripple and the +_mamaloi_ were beside him still. + +In the grove, with the drums--more than one of them now--palpitating +unceasingly, the dancing became wilder, more savage. In the light of +the fire the _mamaloi_ swayed, holding the screaming child, and close +to the flames crouched the cripple. The hymn had given place to the +formless chant, through which the minors quivered like the wails of +lost souls. + +The scales fell from Simpson's eyes. He rose to his full height and +stretched out his arm, demanding silence; there was some vague hope in +him that even now he might guide them. His only answer was a louder +yell than ever. + +It took form. Vieux Michaud sprang from the circle into the full +firelight, feet stamping, eyes glaring. + +"_La ch vre_!" he yelled. "_La chevre sans cornes_!" + +The drums rolled in menacing crescendo, the fire licked higher. All +sounds melted into one. + +"_La chevre sans cornes_!" + +The _mamaloi_ tore the child from her neck and held it high by one +leg. Simpson, seeing clearly as men do before they die, flung himself +toward her. + +The cripple's knife, thrust from below, went home between his ribs +just as the _mamaloi's_ blade crossed the throat of the sacrifice. + +"So I signed the death-certificate," Witherbee concluded. "Death at +the hands of persons unknown." + +"And they'll call him a martyr," said Bunsen. + +"Who knows?" the consul responded gravely. "Perhaps he was one." + + + +MARTIN GARRITY GETS EVEN + +By COURTNEY RYLEY COOPER and LEO. F. CREAGAN + +From _American Magazine_ + + +The entrance of Martin Garrity, superintendent of the Blue Ribbon +Division of the O.R.& T. Railroad, had been attended by all the +niceties of such an occasion, when Martin, grand, handsome, and +magnificent, arrived at his office for the day. True to form, he had +cussed out the office boy, spoken in fatherly fashion to the +trainmaster over the telephone about the lateness of No. 210, remarked +to the stenographer that her last letter had looked like the exquisite +tracks of a cow's hoof--and then he had read two telegrams. A moment +later, white, a bit stooped, a little old in features, he had left the +office, nor had he paused to note the grinning faces of those in his +wake, those who had known hours before! + +Home, and stumbling slightly as he mounted the steps of the veranda, +he faced a person in screaming foulard and a red toque, Mrs. Jewel +Garrity, just starting for the morning's assault upon the market. +Wordlessly he poked forward the first of the telegrams as he pulled +her within the hall and shut the door. And with bulging eyes Jewel +read it aloud: + +Chicago, April 30. +GARRITY, +Montgomery City: + +Effective arrival successor J.P. Aldrich must dispense your valuable +services. Kindly forward resignation by wire confirming this telegram. + +W.W. WALKER, +Vice-President & General +Manager. + +"And who is this Walker person?" Jewel asked, with a vindictive gasp. +"'Tis me that never heard of him. Why should he sign hisself vice +prisident and giniral manager when the whole world knows Mr. Barstow, +bless his soul, is the----" + +"Will ye listen?" Martin bellowed with sorrowful asperity. "Somethin's +happened. And now: + +GARRITY, +Montgomery City. + +Alabaster abound celebrity conglomerate commensurate constituency +effective arrival successor. Meet me Planters Hotel St. Louis this +P.M. + LEMUEL C. BARSTOW." + +And while Jewel gasped Martin went on: + +"'Tis code it is, from Barstow. It says Walker's taken his place--and +I'm out." + +Mouth drawn at the corners, hand trembling slightly, Jewel reached for +the message and stared blankly at the railroad code. Then silently she +turned and thumped up the stairs. In a moment she was down again; the +screaming foulard had given place to a house dress; the red toque had +been substituted by a shawl. But the lips were drawn no longer--a +smile was on them, and a soft hand touched Martin's white cheek as she +reached the door. + +"'Tis me that's goin' to the cash-carry, Marty darlin'," came quietly. +"I never liked that high-toned market annyhow. About--about that +other, Marty, me bye, 'tis all right, it is, it is. We can always +start over again." + +Over again! It had opened the doors of memory for Martin Garrity as, +at the window, he stared after her with eyes that saw in the portly, +middle-aged figure a picture of other days, when the world had centred +about a fluttering honour flag, which flew above a tiny section house +at a bit of a place called Glen Echo, when the rotund form of Jewel +Garrity was slender and graceful, when Martin's freckled face was +thinner and more engaging, and when---- + +Visions of the old days floated before him, days on the section with +his crew of "snipes" back in the Honour Flag times. Memories returned +to him, of blazing hours in the summer, when even the grease-lizards +panted and died, when the heat rays curled in maddening serpent-like +spirals before his glazed eyes. + +And why? Why had he been willing to sacrifice, to work for wages +pitiful indeed, compared to the emoluments of other lines of +endeavour? Why had she, his Jewel, accepted the loneliness, the +impoverishment of those younger days with light-heartedness? He never +had thought of it before. Now, deposed, dethroned, defeated at the +very pinnacle of his life, the answer came, with a force that brought +a lump to his throat and a tear to his eyes. Why? Because they had +loved this great, human, glistening thing of shining steel and +thundering noise, loved it because the Blue Ribbon division had +included the Blue Ribbon section, their section, which they had built +together. + +Now, all they had worked for, lived for, longed for, and enjoyed +together had been taken away, without warning, without reason, and +given to another! Martin groaned with the thought of it. Three hours +later he kissed his Jewel good-bye, roaring at her because a tear +stood in each eye--to cover the fact that tears were in his own. That +night, still grim, still white, he faced Lemuel C. Barstow, former +vice-president and general manager of the O.R.& T. in his hotel room +in St. Louis. That person spoke with biting directness. + +"Politics, Martin," came his announcement. "They shelved me because I +wouldn't play the tricks of a clique that got into power before I +could stop 'em. You were my pet appointee, so you went, too. It wasn't +because we weren't efficient. They lifted the pin on me, and that +meant you. So here we are. But"--and a fist banged on the +table--"they're going to pay for it! This new crowd knows as much +about railroading as a baby does about chess. I tried to tell that to +the men with the money. They wouldn't listen. So I went to men who +could hear, the Ozark Central. I'm to be the new president of that +road." + +"That wooden axle outfit?" Martin squinted. "Sure, Mr. Barstow, I'm +not knockin' the new deal, or----" + +"Never mind that." Lemuel C. Barstow smiled genially. "That's where +your part of the job comes in. That's why I need you. But we'll let +that go for the present. Go back to Montgomery City, turn over the +reins to this new fish, who doesn't know an air brake from a boiler +tube, and keep quiet until I send for you." + +Then ensued two weeks of nothing to do but wait. Nothing to do but to +pace the floor like some belligerent, red-faced caged animal, daring +his Jewel to feel hurt because sneering remarks had been made about +her husband's downfall. Two weeks--then came the summons. + +"Careful now, Martin! No wild throws, remember!" Lemuel Barstow was +giving the final instructions. "We've got a big job ahead. I've +brought you down here because you have the faculty of making men think +they hate you--then going out and working their heads off for you, +because well, to be frank, you're the biggest, blunderingest, +hardest-working blusterer that I ever saw--and you're the only man who +can pull me through. This road's in rotten shape, especially as +concerns the roadbed. The steel and ties are all right, but the +ballast is rotten. You've got to make it the best in Missouri, and +you've got only eight months to do it in. So tear loose. Your job's +that of special superintendent, with no strings on it. Pay no +attention to any one but me. If you need equipment, buy it and tell +the purchasing agent to go to the hot place. By March 1st, and no +later, I want the track from St. Louis to Kansas City to be as smooth +as a ballroom floor." + +"And why the rush?" + +"Just this: The O.R.& T. treated me like a dirty dog. I'm going to +make 'em pay for it; I'm after my pound of flesh now! There's just one +thing that road prizes above all else--it's St. Louis-Kansas City mail +contracts. The award comes up again in March. The system that can make +the fastest time in the government speed trials gets the plum. +Understand?" + +"I do!" answered Martin, with the first real enthusiasm he had known +in weeks. "'Tis me budget I'll be fixin' up immejiate at once. Ye'll +get action, ye will." He departed for a frenzied month. Then he +returned at the request of President Barstow. + +"You're doing wonderful work, Martin," said that official. "It's +coming along splendidly. But--but----I understand there's a bit of a +laugh going around among the railroad men about you." + +"About me?" Garrity's chest bulged aggressively. "An' who's laughin?" + +"Nearly everybody in the railroad game in Missouri. They say you let +some slick salesman sting you for a full set of Rocky Mountain +snow-fighting machinery, even up to a rotary snow plough. I----" + +"Sting me?" Martin bellowed the words. "That I did not!" + +"Good! I knew----" + +"I ordered it of me own free will. And if annybody laughs----" + +"But, Martin"--and there was pathos in the voice--"a rotary snow +plough? On a Missouri railroad? Flangers, jull-ploughs, wedge +ploughs--tunnel wideners--and a rotary? Here? Why--I--I thought better +of you than that. We haven't had a snow in Missouri that would require +all of those things, not in the last ten years. What did they cost?" + +"Eighty-three thousand, fi'hunnerd an' ten dollars," answered Martin +gloomily. He _had_ pulled a boner. Mr. Barstow figured on a sheet of +paper. + +"At three dollars a day, that would hire nearly a thousand track +labourers for thirty days. A thousand men could tamp a lot of ballast +in a month, Martin." + +"That they could, sir," came dolefully. Then Garrity, the old lump in +his throat, waited to be excused, and backed from the office. That +rotary snow plough had been his own, his pet idea--and it had been +wrong! + +Gloomily he returned to Northport, his headquarters, there to observe +a group of grinning railroad men gathered about a great, bulky object +parked in front of the roundhouse. Behind it were other contraptions +of shining steel, all of which Martin recognized without a second +glance--his snow-fighting equipment, just arrived. Nor did he approach +for a closer view. Faintly he heard jeering remarks from the crowd; +then laughter. He caught the mention of his own name, coupled with +derisive comment. His hands clenched. His red neck bulged. His big +lungs filled--then slowly deflated; and Martin went slowly homeward, +in silence. + +"And is it your liver?" asked Jewel Garrity as they sat at dinner. + +"It is not!" bawled Martin. He rose. He pulled his napkin from his +chin with Garrity emphasis and dropped it in the gravy. He thumped +about the table, then stopped. + +One big freckled paw reached uncertainly outward and plunked with +intended gentleness upon the woman's shoulder, to rest, trembling +there, a second. Then silently Martin went on upstairs. For that touch +had told her that it was--his heart! + +A heart that ached with a throbbing sorrow which could not be downed +as the summer passed and Martin heard again and again the reflexes +brought about by the purchase of his snow ploughs. Vainly he stormed +up and down the line of the Ozark Central with its thousands of +labourers. Vainly he busied himself with a thousand intricacies of +construction, in the hope of forgetfulness. None of it could take from +his mind the fact that railroad men were laughing at him, that +chuckling train-butchers were pointing out the giant machinery to +grinning passengers, that even the railroad journals were printing +funny quips about Barstow's prize superintendent and his mountain snow +plough. Nor could even the news that Aldrich, over on the Blue Ribbon +division, was allowing that once proud bit of rail to degenerate into +an ordinary portion of a railroad bring even a passing cheer. They, +too, were laughing! In a last doglike hope Martin looked up the +precipitation reports. It only brought more gloom. Only four times in +thirty years had there been a snowfall in Missouri that could block a +railroad! + +The summer crept into autumn; autumn to early winter, bringing with it +the transformation of the rickety old Ozark Central to a smooth, +well-cushioned line of gleaming steel, where the trains shot to and +fro with hardly a tremor, where the hollow thunder of culvert and +trestle spoke of sturdy strength, where the trackwalker searched in +vain for loose plates or jutting joints; but to Garrity, it was only +the fulfilment or the work of a mechanical second nature. December was +gliding by in warmth and sunshine. January came, with no more than a +hatful of snow, and once more Martin found himself facing the +president. + +"We'll win that contract, Martin!" It almost brought a smile to the +superintendent's face. "I've just been over the road--on the quiet. We +made eighty miles an hour with hardly a jolt!" + +"Thankee, sir." A vague sense of joy touched Martin's aching +heart--only to depart. + +"By the way, I noticed when I went through Northport that you've still +got that rotary where everybody can see it. I wish you'd move that +stuff--behind the roundhouse, out of sight." + +Then Martin, heavier at heart than ever, went back to Northport. There +he said a quaking good-bye to his last hope--and executed the +president's orders, trying not to notice the grins of the "goat" crew +as they shunted the machinery into hiding. That night, after Jewel was +asleep, and the cat outside had ceased yowling, Martin climbed +stealthily out of bed and went on his knees, praying with all the +fervour of his big being for snow. And the prayer was answered---- + +By the worst rain that a Missouri January had known in years, +scattering the freshly tamped gravel, loosening the piles of trestles, +sending Martin forth once more to bawl his orders with the thunder of +the old days back at Glen Echo, even to leap side by side with the +track labourers, a tamping bar in his big hands, that one more blow +might be struck, one more impression made upon the giant task ahead. + +January slid by; February went into the third week before the job was +finished. Martin looked at the sky with hopeful eyes. It was useless. +March the first--and Martin went into St. Louis to make his report, +and to spend an uneasy, restless night with the president in his room +at the hotel. + +"It's only a few days off now"--they were in bed the next morning, +finishing the conversation begun the night before--"and I want you to +keep your eyes open every second! The mail marathon agreement reads +that no postponement can be made on account of physical or mechanical +obstacles. If a trestle should happen to go out--that would be our +finish." + +"I wish"--Martin rolled out of bed and groped for his shoes--"we'd +been workin' with me old Blue Ribbon division. I know every foot o' +----" + +"Oh, chase the Blue Ribbon division! Every time I see you you've got +something on your chest about it. Why, man, don't you know it's the +Blue Ribbon division that I'm counting on! Aldrich has let it run down +until it's worse than a hog trail. If they can make forty-five an hour +on it, I'm crazy. You can't win mail contracts with that. So forget +it. Anyhow, you're working for the Ozark Central now." + +Martin nodded, then for a long moment crouched silent humiliated, his +thick fingers fumbling with the laces of his shoes. At last, with a +sigh, he poked his shirt into his trousers and thumped across the room +to raise the drawn shades. + +He stared. He gulped. He yelped--with an exclamation of joy, of +deliverance, of victory! The outside world was white! A blinding, +swirling veil shrouded even the next building. The street below was +like a stricken thing; the vague forms of the cars seemed to no more +than crawl. Wildly Martin pawed for the telephone and bawled a number. +Barstow sat up in bed. + +"Snow!" he gasped. "A blizzard!" + +"Order the snow ploughs!" Garrity had got the chief dispatcher, and +was bawling louder than ever. "All of thim! Put an injine on each and +keep thim movin'! Run that rotary till the wheels drop off!" + +Then he whirled, grasping wildly at coat, hat, and overcoat. + +"And now will ye laugh?" he roared, as he backed to the door. "Now +will ye laugh at me snow plough?" + +Twenty-four hours later, when trains were limping into terminals hours +behind time, when call after call was going forth to summon aid for +the stricken systems of Missouri, when double-headers, frost-caked +wheels churning uselessly, bucked the drifts in a constantly losing +battle; when cattle trains were being cut from the schedules, and +every wire was loaded with the messages of frantic officials, someone +happened to wonder what that big boob Garrity was doing with his snow +ploughs. The answer was curt and sharp--there on the announcement +board of the Union Station: + +OZARK CENTRAL ALL TRAINS ON TIME + +But Martin had only one remark to make, that it still was snowing. +Noon of the third day came, and the Ozark Central became the detour +route of every cross-Missouri mail train. Night, and Martin Garrity, +snow-crusted, his face cut and cracked by the bite of wind and the +sting of splintered, wind-driven ice, his head aching from loss of +sleep, but his heart thumping with happiness, took on the serious +business of moving every St. Louis-Kansas City passenger and express +train, blinked vacuously when someone called him a wizard. + +Railroad officials gave him cigars, and slapped him on his snow-caked +shoulders. He cussed them out of the way. The telephone at Northport +clanged and sang with calls from President Barstow; but Martin only +waved a hand in answer as he ground through with the rotary. + +"Tell him to send me tilegrams!" he blustered. "Don't he know I'm +busy?" + +Twelve hours more. The snow ceased. The wind died. Ten miles out of +Kansas City Martin gave the homeward-bound order for Northport, then +slumped weakly into a corner. Five minutes before he had heard the +news--news that hurt. The O.R.& T., fighting with every available man +it could summon, had partially opened its line, with the exception of +one division, hopelessly snowed under--his old, his beloved Blue +Ribbon. + +"Tis me that would have kept 'er open," he mused bitterly. "And they +fired me!" + +He nodded and slept. He awoke--and he said the same thing again. He +reached Northport, late at night, to roar at Jewel and the hot water +she had heated for his frost-bitten feet--then to hug her with an +embrace that she had not known since the days when her Marty wore a +red undershirt. + +"And do ye be hearin?" she asked. "The Blue Ribbon's tied up! Not a +wheel----" + +"Will ye shut up?" Martin suddenly had remembered something. The mail +test! Not forty-eight hours away! He blinked. One big hand smacked +into the other. "The pound of flesh!" he bellowed. "Be gar! The pound +of flesh!" + +"And what are ye talkin' ----" + +"Woman, shut up," said Martin Garrity. "'Tis me that's goin' to bed. +See that I'm not disturbed. Not even for Mr. Barstow." + +"That I will," said Jewel--but that she didn't. It was Martin himself +who answered the pounding on the door four hours later, then, in the +frigid dining room, stared at the message which the chief dispatcher +had handed him: + +GARRITY, NORTHPORT: If line is free of snow assemble all snow-fighting +equipment and necessary locomotives to handle same, delivering same +fully equipped and manned with your own force to Blue Ribbon Division +O.R. & T. Accompany this equipment personally to carry out +instructions as I would like to have them carried out. Everything +depends on your success or failure to open this line. + +LEMUEL C. BARSTOW. + +So! He was to make the effort; but if he failed that mail contract +came automatically to the one road free to make the test, the Ozark +Central! That was what Barstow meant! Make the effort, appear to fight +with every weapon, that the O.R. & T. might have no claim in the +future of unfairness but to fail! Let it be so! The O.R. & T. had +broken his heart. Now, at last, his turn had come! + +He turned to the telephone and gave his orders. Then up the stairs he +clambered and into his clothes. Jewel snorted and awoke. + +"Goo'by!" roared Martin as he climbed into his coat. "They've sent for +me to open the Blue Ribbon." + +"And have they?" Jewel sat up, her eyes beaming. "I'd been wishin' +it--and ye'll do it, Marty; I've been thinkin' about the old section +snowed under--and all the folks we knew----" + +"Will ye shut up?" This was something Martin did not want to hear. Out +of the house he plumped, to the waiting double-header of locomotives +attached to the rotary, and the other engines, parked on the switches, +with their wedge ploughs, jull-ploughs, flangers, and tunnel wideners. +The "high-ball" sounded. At daybreak, boring his way through the +snow-clogged transfer at Missouri City, Martin came out upon the main +line of the O.R. & T.--and to his duty of revenge. + +On they went, a slow, deliberate journey, steam hissing, black smoke +curling, whistles tooting, wheels crunching, as the rotary bucked the +bigger drifts and the smaller ploughs eliminated the slighter raises, +a triumphant procession toward that thing which Martin knew he could +attack with all the seeming ferocity of desperation and yet fail--the +fifty-foot thickness of Bander Cut. + +Face to face, in the gaunt sun of early morning he saw it--a little +shack, half covered with snow, bleak and forbidding in its loneliness, +yet all in all to the man who stared at it with eyes suddenly +wistful--his little old section house, where once the honour flag had +flown. + +He gulped. Suddenly his hand tugged at the bell cord. Voices had come +from without, they were calling his name! He sought the door, then +gulped again. The steps and platform of his car were filled with +eager, homely-faced men, men he had known in other days, his old crew +of section "snipes." + +All about him they crowded; Martin heard his voice answering their +queries, as though someone were talking far away. His eyes had turned +back to that section house, seeking instinctively the old flag, his +flag. It spoke for a man who gave the best that was in him, who +surpassed because he worked with his heart and with his soul in the +every task before him. But the flag was not there. The pace had not +been maintained. Then the louder tones of a straw boss called him +back: + +"You'll sure need that big screw and all the rest of them babies, +Garrity. That ole Bander Cut's full to the sky--and Sni-a-bend Hill! +Good-night! But you'll make 'er. You've got to, Garrity; we've made up +a purse an' bet it down in Montgomery that you'll make 'er!" + +Martin went within and the crew waited for a high-ball order that did +not come. In his private car, alone, Martin Garrity was pacing the +floor. The call of the old division, which he had loved and built, was +upon him, swaying him with all the force of memory. + +"I guess we could sell the flivver----" he was repeating. "Then I've +got me diamond ... and Jewel ... she's got a bit, besides what we've +saved bechune us. And he'll win the test, anyhow ... they'll never +beat him over this division ... if I give him back what I've earned +... and if he wins anyhow------" + +Up ahead they still waited. Fifteen minutes. Twenty. At last a figure +appeared in the cab of the big rotary, looking for a last time at that +bleak little section house and the bare flagpole. Then: + +"Start 'er up and give 'er hell!" + +Martin was on the job once more, while outside his old section snipes +cheered, and reminded him that their hopes and dreams for a division +still beloved in spite of a downfall rested upon his shoulders. The +whistles screamed. The bells clanged. Smoke poured from the stacks of +the double-header, and the freshening sun, a short time later, glinted +upon the white-splotched equipment, as the great auger followed by its +lesser allies, bored into the mass of snow at Bander Cut. + +Hours of backing and filling, of retreats and attacks, hours in which +there came, time after time, the opportunity to quit. But Martin did +not give the word. Out the other side they came, the steam shooting +high, and on toward the next obstacle, the first of forty, lesser and +greater, which lay between them and Montgomery City. + +Afternoon ... night. Still the crunching, whining roar of the rotary +as it struck the icy stretches fought against them in vain, then +retreated until pick and bar and dynamite could break the way for its +further attack. Midnight, and one by one the exhausted crew approached +the white-faced, grim-lipped man who stood tense and determined in the +rotary cab. One by one they asked the same question: + +"Hadn't we better tie up for the night?" + +"Goon! D'ye hear me? Goon! What is it ye are, annyhow, a bunch of +white-livered cowards that ye can't work without rest?" + +The old, dynamic, bulldozing force, the force that had made men hate +Martin Garrity only to love him, had returned into its full power, the +force that had built him from a section snipe to the exalted possessor +of the blue pennon which once had fluttered from that flagpole, was +again on the throne, fighting onward to the conclusion of a purpose, +no matter what it might wreck for him personally, no matter what the +cost might be to him in the days to come. He was on his last job--he +knew that. The mail contract might be won a thousand times over, but +there ever would rest the stigma that he had received a telegram which +should have been plain to him, and that he had failed to carry out its +hidden orders. But with the thought of it Martin straightened, and he +roared anew the message which carried tired, aching men through the +night: + +"Go on! Go on! What's stoppin' ye? Are ye going to let these +milk-an'-water fellys over here say that ye tried and quit?" + +Early morning--and there came Sni-a-bend Hill, with the snow packed +against it in a new plane which obliterated the railroad as though it +had never been there. Hot coffee came from the containers, sandwiches +from the baskets, and the men ate and drank as they worked--all but +Garrity. This was the final battle, and with it came his battle cry: + +"Keep goin'! This is the tough one--we've got to go on--we've got to +go on!" + +And on they went. The streaking rays of dawn played for a moment upon +an untroubled mound of white, smooth and deep upon the eastern end of +Sni-a-bend. Then, as though from some great internal upheaval, the +mass began to tremble. Great heaps of snow broke from their place and +tumbled down the embankment. From farther at the rear, steam, +augmented by the vapours of melting snow and the far-blown gushes of +spitting smoke, hissed upward toward the heights of the white-clad +hill. Then a bulging break--the roar of machinery, and a monster came +grinding forth, forcing its way hungrily onward, toward the next and +smaller contest. Within the giant auger a man turned to Garrity. + +"Guess it's over, Boss. They said up at Glen Echo--" + +A silent nod. Then Garrity turned, and reaching into the +telegram-blank holder at the side of the cab, brought forth paper and +an envelope. Long he wrote as the rotary clattered along, devouring +the smaller drifts in steady succession, a letter of the soul, a +letter which told of an effort that had failed, of a decision that +could not hold. And it told, too, of the return of all that Martin had +worked for--Mr. Barstow had been good to him, and he, Martin Garrity, +could not take his money and disobey him. He'd pay him back. + +Whistles sounded, shrieking in answer to the tooting of others from +far away, the wild eerie ones of yard engines, the deeper, throatier +tones of factories. It was the end. Montgomery City! + +Slowly Martin addressed the envelope, and as the big bore came to a +stop, evaded the thronging crowds and sought the railroad mail box. He +raised the letter.... + +"Mr. Garrity!" He turned. The day agent was running toward him. "Mr. +Garrity, Mr. Barstow wants to see you. He's here--in the station. He +came to see the finish." + +So the execution must be a personal one! The letter was crunched into +a pocket. Dimly, soddenly, Martin followed the agent. As through a +haze he saw the figure of Barstow, and felt that person tug at his +sleeve. + +"Come over here, where we can talk in private!" There was a queer ring +in the voice and Martin obeyed. Then--"Shake, Old Kid!" + +Martin knew that a hand was clasping his. But why? + +"You made it! I knew you would. Didn't I tell you we'd get our pound +of flesh?" + +"But--but the contract----" + +"To thunder with the contract!" came the happy answer of Barstow. "If +you had only answered the 'phone, you wouldn't be so much in the dark. +What do I care about mail contracts now--with the best two lines in +Missouri under my supervision? Don't you understand? This was the hole +that I had prayed for this O.R. & T. bunch to get into from the first +minute I saw that snow. They would have been tied up for a week +longer--if it hadn't been for us. Can't you see? It was the argument I +needed--that politics isn't what counts--it's brains and doing things! +Now do you understand? Well"--and Barstow stood off and laughed--"if I +have to diagram things for you, the money interests behind the O.R. & +T. have seen the light. I'll admit it took about three hours of +telephoning to New York to cause the illumination; but they've seen +it, and that's enough. They also have agreed to buy the Ozark Central +and to merge the two. Further, they have realized that the only +possible president of the new lines is a man with brains like, for +instance, Lemuel C. Barstow, who has working directly with him a +general superintendent--and don't overlook that general part--a +_general_ superintendent named Martin Garrity!" + + + +STRANGER THINGS + +By MILDRED CRAM + +From _Metropolitan Magazine_ + + +We were seated in the saloon of a small steamer which plies between +Naples and Trieste on irregular schedule. Outside, the night was +thickly black and a driving rain swept down the narrow decks. + +"You Englishmen laugh at ghosts," the Corsican merchant said. "In my +country, we are less pretentious. Frankly, we are afraid. You, too, +are afraid, and so you laugh! A difference, it seems to me, which +lies, not in the essence but in the manner." + +Doctor Fenton smiled queerly. "Perhaps. What do any of us know about +it, one way or the other? Ticklish business! We poke a little too far +beyond our ken and get a shock that withers our souls. Cosmic force! +We stumble forward, bleating for comfort, and fall over a charged +cable. It may have been put there to hold us out--or in." + +Aldobrandini, the Italian inventor, was playing cards with a German +engineer. He lost the game to his opponent, and turning about in his +chair, came into the conversation. + +"You are talking about ghosts. I have seen them. Once in the Carso. +Again on the campagna near Rome. I met a company of Caesar's +legionaries tramping through a bed of asphodels. The asphodels lay +down beneath those crushing sandals, and then stood upright again, +unharmed." + +The engineer shuffled the cards between short, capable fingers. +"Ghosts. Yes, I agree; there are such things. Created out of our +subconscious selves; mirages of the mind; photographic spiritual +projections; hereditary memories. There are always explanations." + +Doctor Fenton poked into the bowl of his pipe with a broad thumb. "Did +any of you happen to know the English poet, Cecil Grimshaw? No? I'll +tell you a story about him if you care to listen. A long story, I warn +you. Very curious. Very suggestive. I cannot vouch for the entire +truth of it, since I got the tale from many sources--a word here, a +chance encounter there, and at last only the puzzling reports of men +who saw Grimshaw out in Africa. He wasn't a friend of mine, or I +wouldn't tell these things." + +Aldobrandini's dark eyes softened. He leaned forward. "Cecil Grimshaw +... We Latins admire his work more than that of any modern +Englishman." + +The doctor tipped his head back against the worn red velvet of the +lounge. An oil lamp, swinging from the ceiling, seemed to isolate him +in a pool of light. Outside, the invisible sea raced astern, hissing +slightly beneath the driving impact of the rain. + +I first heard of Grimshaw [the doctor began] in my student days in +London. He was perhaps five years my senior, just beginning to be +famous, not yet infamous, but indiscreet enough to get himself talked +about. He had written a little book of verse, "Vision of Helen," he +called it, I believe.... The oblique stare of the hostile Trojans. +Helen coifed with flame. Menelaus. Love ... Greater men than Grimshaw +had written of Priam's tragedy. His audacity called attention to his +imperfect, colourful verse, his love of beauty, his sense of the +exotic, the strange, the unhealthy. People read his book on the sly +and talked about it in whispers. It was indecent, but it was +beautiful. At that time you spoke of Cecil Grimshaw with disapproval, +if you spoke of him at all, or, if you happened to be a prophet, you +saw in him the ultimate bomb beneath the Victorian literary edifice. +And so he was. + +I saw him once at the Alhambra--poetry in a top hat! He wore evening +clothes that were a little too elaborate, a white camellia in his +buttonhole, and a thick-lensed monocle on a black ribbon. During the +entr'acte he stood up and surveyed the house from pit to gallery, as +if he wanted to be seen. He was very tall and the ugliest man in +England. Imagine the body of a Lincoln, the hands of a woman, the jaw +and mouth of Disraeli, an aristocratic nose, unpleasant eyes, and then +that shock of yellow hair--hyacinthine--the curly locks of an insane +virtuoso or a baby prodigy. + +"Who is that?" I demanded. + +"Grimshaw. The chap who wrote the book about naughty Helen. _La belle +Helene_ and the shepherd boy." + +I stared. Everyone else stared. The pit stopped shuffling and giggling +to gaze at that prodigious monstrosity, and people in the boxes turned +their glasses on him. Grimshaw seemed to be enjoying it. He spoke to +someone across the aisle and smiled, showing a set of huge white +teeth, veritable tombstones. + +"Abominable," I said. + +But I got his book and read it. He was the first Englishman to dare +break away from literary conventions. Of course he shocked England. He +was a savage aesthete. I read the slim volume through at one sitting; +I was horrified and fascinated. + +I met Grimshaw a year later. He was having a play produced at the +Lyceum--"The Labyrinth"--with Esther Levenson as Simonetta. She +entertained for him at her house in Chelsea and I got myself invited +because I wanted to see the atrocious genius at close range. He wore a +lemon-coloured vest and lemon-yellow spats. + +"How d'you do?" he said, gazing at me out of those queer eyes of his. +"I hear that you admire my work." + +"You have been misinformed," I replied. "Your work interests me, +because I am a student of nervous and mental diseases." + +"Ah. Psychotherapy." + +"All of the characters in your poem, 'The Vision of Helen,' are +neurotics. They suffer from morbid fears, delusions, hysteria, violent +mental and emotional complexities. A text-book in madness." + +Grimshaw laughed. "You flatter me. I am attracted by neurotic types. +Insanity has its source in the unconscious, and we English are afraid +of looking inward." He glanced around the crowded room with an amused +and cynical look. "Most of these people are as bad as my Trojans, +Doctor Fenton. Only they conceal their badness, and it isn't good for +them." + +We talked for a few moments. I amused him, I think, by my diagnosis of +his Helen's mental malady. But he soon tired of me and his restless +gaze went over my head, searching for admiration. Esther Levenson +brought Ellen Terry over and he forgot me entirely in sparkling for +the good lady--showing his teeth, shaking his yellow locks, bellowing +like a centaur. + +"The fellow's an ass," I decided. + +But when "The Labyrinth" was produced, I changed my mind. There again +was that disturbing loveliness. It was a story of the passionate +Florence of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and Esther Levenson drifted +through the four long acts against a background of Tuscan walls, +scarlet hangings, oaths, blood-spilling, dark and terrible vengeance. +Grimshaw took London by the throat and put it down on its knees. + +Then for a year or two he lived on his laurels, lapping up admiration +like a drunkard in his cups. Unquestionably, Esther Levenson was his +mistress, since she presided over his house in Cheyne Walk. They say +she was not the only string to his lute. A Jewess, a Greek poetess, +and a dancer from Stockholm made up his amorous medley at that time. +Scandalized society flocked to his drawing-room, there to be received +by Simonetta herself, wearing the blanched draperies and tragic pearls +of the labyrinth he had made for her. Grimshaw offered no apologies. +He was the uncrowned laureate and kings can do no wrong. He was +painted by the young Sargent, of course, and by the aging +Whistler--you remember the butterfly's portrait of him in a yellow +kimono leaning against a black mantel? I, for one, think he was vastly +amused by all this fury of admiration; he despised it and fed upon it. +If he had been less great, he would have been utterly destroyed by it, +even then. + +I went to Vienna, and lost track of him for several years. Then I +heard that he had married a dear friend of mine--Lady Dagmar Cooper, +one of the greatest beauties and perhaps the sternest prude in +England. She wrote me, soon after that unbelievable mating: "I have +married Cecil Grimshaw. I know you won't approve; I do not altogether +approve myself. He is not like the men I have known--not at all +_English_. But he intrigues me; there is a sense of power behind his +awfulness--you see I know that he is awful! I think I will be able to +make him look at things--I mean visible, material things--my way. We +have taken a house in town and he has promised to behave--no more +Chelsea parties, no dancers, no yellow waistcoats and chrysanthemums. +That was all very well for his 'student' days. Now that he is a +personage, it will scarcely do. I am tremendously interested and +happy...." + +Interested and happy! She was a typical product of Victoria's reign, a +beautiful creature whose faith was pinned to the most unimportant +things--class, position, a snobbish religion, a traditional morality +and her own place in an intricate little world of ladies and +gentlemen. God save us! What was Cecil Grimshaw going to do in an +atmosphere of titled bores, bishops, military men, and cautious +statesmen? I could fancy him in his new town house, struggling through +some endless dinner party--his cynical, stone-gray eyes sweeping up +and down the table, his lips curled in that habitual sneer, his mind, +perhaps, gone back to the red-and-blue room in Chelsea, where he had +been wont to stand astride before the black mantel, bellowing +indecencies into the ears of witty modernists. Could he bellow any +longer? + +Apparently not. I heard of him now and then from this friend and that. +He was indeed "behaving" well. He wrote nothing to shock the +sensibilities of his wife's world--a few fantastic short stories, +touched with a certain childish spirituality, and that was all. They +say that he bent his manners to hers--a tamed centaur grazing with a +milk-white doe. He grew a trifle fat. Quite like a model English +husband, he called Dagmar "My dear" and drove with her in the Park at +the fashionable hour, his hands crossed on the head of his cane, his +eyes half closed. She wrote me: "I am completely happy. So is Cecil. +Surely he can have made no mistake in marrying me." + +You all know that this affectation of respectability did not last +long--not more than five years; long enough for the novelty to wear +off. The genius or the devil that was in Cecil Grimshaw made its +reappearance. He was tossed out of Dagmar's circle like a burning rock +hurled from the mouth of a crater; he fell into Chelsea again. Esther +Levenson had come back from the States and was casting about for a +play. She sought out Grimshaw and with her presence, her grace and +pallor and seduction, lured him into his old ways. "The leaves are +yellow," he said to her, "but still they dance in a south wind. The +altar fires are ash and grass has grown upon the temple floor---- I +have been away too long. Get me my pipe, you laughing dryad, and I +will play for you." + +He played for her and all England heard. Dagmar heard and pretended +acquiescence. According to her lights, she was magnificent--she +invited Esther Levenson to Broadenham, the Grimshaw place in Kent, nor +did she wince when the actress accepted. When I got back to England, +Dagmar was fighting for his soul with all the weapons she had. I went +to see her in her cool little town house, that house so typical of +her, so untouched by Grimshaw. And, looking at me with steady eyes, +she said: "I'm sorry Cecil isn't here. He's writing again--a play--for +Esther Levenson, who was Simonetta, you remember?" + +I promised you a ghost story. If it is slow in coming, it is because +all these things have a bearing on the mysterious, the extraordinary +things that happened---- + +You probably know about the last phase of Grimshaw's career--who +doesn't? There is something fascinating about the escapades of a +famous man, but when he happens also to be a great poet, we cannot +forget his very human sins--in them he is akin to us. + +Not all you have heard and read about Grimshaw's career is true. But +the best you can say of him is bad enough. He squandered his own +fortune first--on Esther Levenson and the production of "The Sunken +City"--and then stole ruthlessly from Dagmar; that is, until she found +legal ways to put a stop to it. We had passed into Edward's reign and +the decadence which ended in the war had already set in--Grimshaw was +the last of the "pomegranate school," the first of the bolder, more +sinister futurists. A frank hedonist. An intellectual voluptuary. He +set the pace, and a whole tribe of idolaters and imitators panted at +his heels. They copied his yellow waistcoats, his chrysanthemums, his +eye-glass, his bellow. Nice young men, otherwise sane, let their hair +grow long like their idol's and professed themselves unbelievers. +Unbelievers in what? God save us! Ten years later most of them were +wading through the mud of Flanders, believing something pretty +definite---- + +One night I was called to the telephone by the Grimshaws' physician. +I'll tell you his name, because he has a lot to do with the rest of +the story--Doctor Waram, Douglas Waram--an Australian. + +"Grimshaw has murdered a man," he said briefly. "I want you to help +me. Come to Cheyne Walk. Take a cab. Hurry." + +Of course I went, with a very clear vision of the future of Dagmar, +Lady Cooper, to occupy my thoughts during that lurching drive through +the slippery streets. I knew that she was at Broadenham, holding up +her head in seclusion. + +Grimshaw's house was one of a row of red brick buildings not far from +the river. Doctor Waram himself opened the door to me. + +"I say, this is an awful mess," he said, in a shocked voice. "The +woman sent for me--Levenson, that actress. There's some mystery. A man +dead--his head knocked in. And Grimshaw sound asleep. It may be +hysterical, but I can't wake him. Have a look before I get the +police." + +I followed him into the studio, the famous Pompeian room, on the +second floor. I shall never forget the frozen immobility of the three +actors in the tragedy. Esther Levenson, wrapped in peacock-blue +scarves, stood upright before the black mantel, her hands crossed on +her breast. Cecil Grimshaw was lying full length on a brick-red satin +couch, his head thrown back, his eyes closed. The dead man sprawled on +the floor, face down, between them. Two lamps made of sapphire glass +swung from the gilded ceiling.... Bowls of perfumed, waxen flowers. A +silver statuette of a nude girl. A tessellated floor strewn with rugs. +Orange trees in tubs. Cigarette smoke hanging motionless in the still, +overheated air.... + +I stooped over the dead man. "Who is he?" + +"Tucker. Leading man in 'The Sunken City.' Look at Grimshaw, will you? +We mustn't be too long--" + +I went to the poet. The inevitable monocle was still caught and held +by the yellow thatch of his thick brow. He was breathing slowly. + +"Grimshaw," I said, touching his forehead, "open your eyes." + +He did so, and I was startled by the expression of despair in their +depths. "Ah," he-said, "it's the psychopathologist." + +"How did this happen?" + +He sat up--I am convinced that he had been faking that drunken +sleep--and stared at the sprawling figure on the floor. "Tucker +quarrelled with me," he said. "I knocked him down and his forehead +struck against the table. Then he crawled over here and died. From +fright, d'you think?" He shuddered. "Take him away, Waram, will you? +I've got work to do." + +Suddenly Esther Levenson spoke in a flat voice, without emotion: "It +isn't true! He struck him with that silver statuette. Like this----" +She made a violent gesture with both arms. "And before God in heaven, +I'll make him pay for it. I will! I will! I will!" + +"Keep still," I said sharply. + +Grimshaw looked up at her. He made a gesture of surrender. Then he +smiled. "Simonetta," he said, "you are no better than the rest." + +She sobbed, ran over to him, and went down on her knees, twisting her +arms about his waist. There was a look of distaste in Grimshaw's eyes; +he stared into her distraught face a moment, then he freed himself +from her arms and got to his feet. + +"I think I'll telephone to Dagmar," he said. + +But Waram shook his head. "I'll do that. I'm sorry, Grimshaw; the +police will have to know. While we're waiting for them, you might +write a letter to Mrs. Grimshaw. I'll see that she gets it in the +morning." + +I don't remember whether the poet wrote to Dagmar then or not. But +surely you remember how she stayed by him during the trial--still +Victorian in her black gown and veil, mourning for the hope that was +dead, at least! You remember his imprisonment; the bitter invective of +his enemies; the defection of his followers; the dark scandals that +filled the newspapers, offended public taste, and destroyed Cecil +Grimshaw's popularity in an England that had worshipped him! + +Esther Levenson lied to save him. That was the strangest thing of all. +She denied what she had told us that night of the tragedy. Tucker, she +said, had been in love with her; he followed her to Grimshaw's house +in Chelsea and quarrelled violently with the poet. His death was an +accident. Grimshaw had not touched the statuette. When he saw what had +happened, he telephoned to Doctor Waram and then lay down on the +couch--apparently fainted there, for he did not speak until Doctor +Fenton came. Waram perjured himself, too--for Dagmar's sake. He had +not, he swore, heard the actress speak of a silver statuette, or of +revenge before God.... And since there was nothing to prove how the +blow had been struck, save the deep dent in Tucker's forehead, +Grimshaw was set free. + +He had been a year in prison. He drove away from the jail in a cab +with Doctor Waram, and when the crowd saw that he was wearing the old +symbol--a yellow chrysanthemum--a hiss went up that was like a geyser +of contempt and ridicule. Grimshaw's pallid face flushed. But he +lifted his hat and smiled into the host of faces as the cab jerked +forward. + +He went at once to Broadenham. Years later, Waram told me about the +meeting between those two--the centaur and the milk-white doe! Dagmar +received him standing and she remained standing all during the +interview. She had put aside her mourning for a dress made of some +clear blue stuff, and Waram said that as she stood in the breakfast +room, with a sun-flooded window behind her, she was very lovely +indeed. + +Grimshaw held out his hands, but she ignored them. Then Grimshaw +smiled and shrugged his shoulders and said: "I have made two +discoveries this past year: That conventionalized religion is the most +shocking evil of our day, and that you, my wife, are in love with +Doctor Waram." + +Dagmar held her ground. There was in her eyes a look of inevitable +security. She was mistress of the house, proprietor of the land, +conscious of tradition, prerogative, position. The man she faced had +nothing except his tortured imagination. For the first time in her +life she was in a position to hurt him. So she looked away from him to +Waram and confirmed his discovery with a smile full of pride and +happiness. + +"My dear fellow," Grimshaw shouted, clapping Waram on the back, "I'm +confoundedly pleased! We'll arrange a divorce for Dagmar. Good heaven, +she deserves a decent future. I'm not the sort for her. I hate the +things she cares most about. And now I'm done for in England. Just to +make it look conventional--nice, Victorian, _English_, you +understand--you and I can go off to the Continent together while +Dagmar's getting rid of me. There'll be no trouble about that. I'm +properly dished. Besides, I want freedom. A new life. Beauty, without +having to buck this confounded distrust of beauty. Sensation, without +being ashamed of sensation. I want to drop out of sight. Reform? No! I +am being honest." + +So they went off together, as friendly as you please, to France. Waram +was still thinking of Dagmar; Grimshaw was thinking only of himself. +He swaggered up and down the Paris boulevards showing his tombstone +teeth and staring at the women. "The Europeans admire me," he said to +Waram. "May England go to the devil." He groaned. "I despise +respectability, my dear Waram. You and Dagmar are well rid of me. I +see I'm offending you here in Paris--you look nauseated most of the +time. Let's go on to Switzerland and climb mountains." + +Waram _was_ nauseated. They went to Salvan and there a curious thing +happened. + +They were walking one afternoon along the road to Martigny. The valley +was full of shadows like a deep green cup of purple wine. High above +them the mountains were tipped with flame. Grimshaw walked slowly--he +was a man of great physical laziness--slashing his cane at the +tasselled tips of the crowding larches. Once, when a herd of little +goats trotted by, he stood aside and laughed uproariously, and the +goatherd's dog, bristling, snapped in passing at his legs. + +Waram was silent, full of bitterness and disgust. They went on again, +and well down the springlike coils of the descent of Martigny they +came upon the body of a man--one of those wandering vendors of +pocket-knives and key-rings, scissors and cheap watches. He lay on his +back on a low bank by the roadside. His hat had rolled off into a pool +of muddy water. Doctor Waram saw, as he bent down to stare at the +face, that the fellow looked like Grimshaw. Not exactly, of course. +The nose was coarser--it had not that Wellington spring at the bridge, +nor the curved nostrils. But it might have been a dirty, unshaven, +dead Grimshaw lying there. Waram told me that he felt a shock of +gratification before he heard the poet's voice behind him: "What's +this? A drunkard?" He shook his head and opened the dead man's shirt +to feel for any possible flutter of life in the heart. There was none. +And he thought: "If this were only Grimshaw! If the whole miserable +business were only done with." + +"By Jove!" Grimshaw said. "The chap looks like me! I thought I was the +ugliest man in the world. I know better... D'you suppose he's German, +or Lombardian? His hands are warm. He must have been alive when the +goatherd passed just now. Nothing you can do?" + +Waram stayed where he was, on his knees. He tore his eyes away from +the grotesque dead face and fixed them on Grimshaw. He told me that +the force of his desire must have spoken in that look because Grimshaw +started and stepped back a pace, gripping his cane. Then he laughed. +"Why not?" he said. "Let this be me. And I'll go on, with that +clanking hardware store around my neck. It can be done, can't it? +Better for you and for Dagmar. I'm not being philanthropic. I'm +looking, not for a reprieve, but for release. No one knows this fellow +in Salvan--he probably came up from the Rhone and was on his way to +Chamonix. What d'you think was the matter with him?" + +"Heart," Doctor Waram answered. + +"Well, what d'you say? This pedlar and I are social outcasts. And +there is Dagmar in England, weeping her eyes out because of divorce +courts and more public washing of dirty linen. You love her. I don't! +Why not carry this fellow to the _rochers_, to-night after dark? +To-morrow, when I have changed clothes with him, we can throw him into +the valley. It's a good thousand feet or more. Would there be much +left of that face, for purposes of identification? I think not. You +can take the mutilated body back to England and I can go on to +Chamonix, as he would have gone." Grimshaw touched the pedlar with his +foot. "Free." + +That is exactly what they did. The body, hidden near the roadside +until nightfall, was carried through the woods to the _rochers du +soir_, that little plateau on the brink of the tremendous wall of rock +which rises from the Rhone valley to the heights near Salvan. There +the two men left it and returned to their hotel to sleep. + +In the morning they set out, taking care that the proprietor of the +hotel and the professional guide who hung about the village should +know that they were going to attempt the descent of the "wall" to the +valley. The proprietor shook his head and said: "_Bonne chance, +messieurs_!" The guide, letting his small blue eyes rest for a moment +on Grimshaw's slow-moving hulk, advised them gravely to take the road. +"The tall gentleman will not arrive," he remarked. + +"Nonsense," Grimshaw answered. + +They went off together, laughing. Grimshaw was wearing his conspicuous +climbing clothes--tweed jacket, yellow suede waistcoat, +knickerbockers, and high-laced boots with hob-nailed soles. His green +felt hat, tipped at an angle, was ornamented with a little orange +feather. He was in tremendous spirits. He bellowed, made faces at +scared peasant children in the village, swung his stick. They stopped +at a barber shop in the place and those famous hyacinthine locks were +clipped. Waram insisted upon this, he told me, because the pedlar's +hair was fairly short and they had to establish some sort of a +tonsorial alibi. When the floor of the little shop was thick with the +sheared "petals," Grimshaw shook his head, brushed off his shoulders, +and smiled. "It took twenty years to create that visible +personality--and behold, a Swiss barber destroys it in twenty minutes! +I am no longer a living poet. I am already an immortal--halfway up the +flowery slopes of Olympus, impatient to go the rest of the way. + +"Shall we be off?" + +"By all means," Waram said. + +They found the body where they had hidden it the night before, and in +the shelter of a little grove of larches Grimshaw stripped and then +reclothed himself in the pedlar's coarse and soiled under-linen, the +worn corduroy trousers, the flannel shirt, short coat, and old black +velvet hat. Waram was astounded by the beauty and strength of +Grimshaw's body. Like the pedlar, he was blonde-skinned, thin-waisted, +broad of back. + +Grimshaw shuddered as he helped to clothe the dead pedlar in his own +fashionable garments. "Death," he said. "Ugh! How ugly. How +terrifying. How abominable." + +They carried the body across the plateau. The height where they stood +was touched by the sun, but the valley below was still immersed in +shadow, a broad purple shadow threaded by the shining Rhone. + +"Well?" Waram demanded. "Are you eager to die? For this means death +for you, you know." + +"A living death," Grimshaw said. He glanced down at the replica of +himself. A convulsive shudder passed through him from head to foot; +his face twisted; his eyes dilated. He made a strong effort to control +himself and whispered: "I understand. Go ahead. Do it. I can't. It is +like destroying me myself.... I can't. Do it--" + +Waram lifted the dead body and pushed it over the edge. Grimshaw, +trembling violently, watched it fall. I think, from what Doctor Waram +told me many years later, that the poet must have suffered the +violence and terror of that plummet drop, must have felt the tearing +clutch of pointed rocks in the wall face, must have known the leaping +upward of the earth, the whine of wind in his bursting ears, the dizzy +spinning, the rending, obliterating impact at last.... + +The pedlar lay in the valley. Grimshaw stood on the brink of the +"wall." He turned, and saw Doctor Waram walking quickly away across +the plateau without a backward glance. They had agreed that Waram was +to return at once to the village and report the death of "his friend, +Mr. Grimshaw." The body, they knew, would be crushed beyond +recognition--a bruised and broken fragment, like enough to Cecil +Grimshaw to pass whatever examination would be given it. Grimshaw +himself was to go through the wood to the highroad, then on to Finhaut +and Chamonix and into France. He was never again to write to Dagmar, +to return to England, or to claim his English property.... + +Can you imagine his feelings--deprived of his arrogant personality, +his fame, his very identity, clothed in another man's dirty garments, +wearing about his neck a clattering pedlar's outfit, upon his feet the +clumsy boots of a peasant? Grimshaw--the exquisite futurist, the +daffodil, apostle of the aesthetic! + +He stood for a moment looking after Douglas Waram. Once, in a panic, +he called. But Waram disappeared between the larches, without, +apparently, having heard. Grimshaw wavered, unable to decide upon the +way to the highroad. He could not shake off a sense of loneliness and +terror, as if he himself had gone whirling down to his death. Like a +man who comes slowly back from the effects of ether, he perceived, one +by one, the familiar aspects of the landscape--the delicate flowers +powdering the plateau, the tasselled larches on the slope, the lofty +snow-peaks still suffused with rosy morning light. This, then, was the +world. This clumsy being, moving slowly toward the forest, was +himself--not Cecil Grimshaw but another man. His mind sought clumsily +for a name. Pierre--no, not Pierre; too common-place! Was he still +fastidious? No. Then Pierre, by all means! Pierre Pilleux. That would +do. Pilleux. A name suggestive of a good amiable fellow, honest and +slow. When he got down into France he would change his identity +again--grow a beard, buy some decent clothes. A boulevardier... gay, +perverse, witty.... The thought delighted him and he hurried through +the forest, anxious to pass through Salvan before Doctor Waram got +there. He felt extraordinarily light and exhilarated now, intoxicated, +vibrant. His spirit soared; almost he heard the rushing of his old +self forward toward some unrecognizable and beautiful freedom. + +When he struck the road the sun was high and it was very hot. Little +spirals of dust kicked up at his heels. He was not afraid of +recognition. Happening to glance at his hands, he became aware of +their whiteness, and stooping, rubbed them in the dust. + +Then a strange thing happened. Another herd of goats trotted down from +the grassy slopes and spilled into the road-way. And another dog with +lolling tongue and wagging tail wove in and out, shepherding the +little beasts. They eddied about Grimshaw, brushing against him, their +moon-stone eyes full of a vague terror of that barking guardian at +their heels. The dog drove them ahead, circled, and with a low whine +came back to Grimshaw, leaping up to lick his hand. + +Grimshaw winced, for he had never had success with animals. Then, with +a sudden change of mood, he stooped and caressed the dog's head. + +"A good fellow," he said in French to the goatherd. + +The goatherd looked at him curiously. "Not always," he answered. "He +is an unpleasant beast with most strangers. For you, he seems to have +taken a fancy.... What have you got there--any two-bladed knives?" + +Grimshaw started and recovered himself with: "Knives. Yes. All sorts." + +The goatherd fingered his collection, trying the blades on his broad +thumb. + +"You come from France," he said. + +Grimshaw nodded. "From Lyons." + +"I thought so. You speak French like a gentleman." + +Grimshaw shrugged. "That is usual in Lyons." + +The peasant paid for the knife he fancied, placing two francs in the +poet's palm. Then he whistled to the dog and set off after his flock. +But the dog, whining and trembling, followed Grimshaw, and would not +be shaken off until Grimshaw had pelted him with small stones. I think +the poet was strangely flattered by this encounter. He passed through +Salvan with his head in the air, challenging recognition. But there +was no recognition. The guide who had said "The tall monsieur will not +arrive" now greeted him with a fraternal: "How is trade?" + +"Very good, thanks," Grimshaw said. + +Beyond the village he quickened his pace, and easing the load on his +back by putting his hands under the leather straps, he swung toward +Finhaut. Behind him he heard the faint ringing of the church bells in +Salvan. Waram had reported the "tragedy." Grimshaw could fancy the +excitement--the priest hurrying toward the "wall" with his crucifix in +his hands; the barber, a-quiver with morbid excitement; the stolid +guide, not at all surprised, rather gratified, preparing to make the +descent to recover the body of that "tall monsieur" who had, after +all, "arrived." The telegraph wires were already humming with the +message. In a few hours Dagmar would know. + +He laughed aloud. The white road spun beneath him. His hands, pressed +against his body by the weight of the leather straps, were hot and +wet; he could feel the loud beating of his heart. + +His senses were acute; he had never before felt with such +gratification the warmth of the sun or known the ecstasy of motion. He +saw every flower in the roadbank, every small glacial brook, every new +conformation of the snow clouds hanging above the ragged peaks of the +Argentieres. He sniffed with delight the pungent wind from off the +glaciers, the short, warm puffs of grass-scented air from the fields +in the Valley of Trient. He noticed the flight of birds, the lazy +swinging of pine boughs, the rainbow spray of waterfalls. Once he +shouted and ran, mad with exuberance. Again he flung himself down by +the roadside and, lying on his back, sang outrageous songs and laughed +and slapped his breast with both hands. + +That night he came to Chamonix and got lodging in a small hotel on the +skirts of the town. His spirits fell when he entered the room. He put +his pedlar's pack on the floor and sat down on the narrow bed, +suddenly conscious of an enormous fatigue. His feet burned, his legs +ached, his back was raw where the heavy pack had rested. He thought: +"What am I doing here? I have nothing but the few hundred pounds Waram +gave me. I'm alone. Dead and alive." + +He scarcely looked up when the door opened and a young girl came in, +carrying a pitcher of water and a coarse towel. She hesitated and said +rather prettily: "You'll be tired, perhaps?" + +Grimshaw felt within him the tug of the old personality. He stared at +her, suddenly conscious that she was a woman and that she was smiling +at him. Charming, in her way. Bare arms. A little black bodice laced +over a white waist. Straight blonde hair, braided thickly and twisted +around her head. A peasant, but pretty.... You see, his desire was to +frighten her, as he most certainly would have frightened her had he +been true to Cecil Grimshaw. But the impulse passed, leaving him sick +and ashamed. He heard her saying: "A sad thing occurred to-day down +the valley. A gentleman.... Salvan ... a very famous gentleman.... And +they have telegraphed his wife.... I heard it from Simon Ravanel.... +It seems that the gentleman was smashed to bits--_brise en morceau. +Epouvantable, n'est ce pas_?" + +Grimshaw began to tremble. "Yes, yes," he said irritably. "But I am +tired, little one. Go out, and shut the door!" + +The girl gave him a startled glance, frightened at last, but for +nothing more than the lost look in his eyes. He raised his arms, and +she fled with a little scream. + +Grimshaw sat for a moment staring at the door. Then with a violent +gesture he threw himself back on the bed, buried his face in the dirty +pillow and wept as a child weeps, until, just before dawn, he fell +asleep.... + +As far as the public knows, Cecil Grimshaw perished on the +"wall"--perished and was buried at Broadenham beneath a pyramid of +chrysanthemums. Perished, and became an English immortal--his sins +erased by his unconscious sacrifice. Perished, and was forgiven by +Dagmar. Yet hers was the victory--he belonged to her at last. She had +not buried his body at Broadenham, but she had buried his work there. +He could never write again.... + +During those days of posthumous whitewashing he read the papers with a +certain contemptuous eagerness. Some of them he crumpled between his +hands and threw away. He hated his own image, staring balefully from +the first page of the illustrated reviews. He despised England for +honouring him. Once, happening upon a volume of the "Vision of +Helen"--the first edition illustrated by Beardsley--in a book-stall at +Aix-les-Bains, he read it from cover to cover. + +"Poor stuff," he said to the bookseller, tossing it down again. "Give +me 'Ars ne Lupin'." And he paid two sous for a paper-covered, +dog-eared, much-thumbed copy of the famous detective story, not +because he intended to read it, but in payment for his hour of +disillusionment. Then he slung his pack over his shoulders and tramped +out into the country. He laughed aloud at the thought of Helen and her +idolaters. A poetic hoax. Overripe words. Seductive sounds. Nonsense! + +"Surely I can do better than that to-day," he thought. + +He saw two children working in a field, and called to them. + +"If you will give me a cup of cold water," he said, "I'll tell you a +story." + +"Gladly, monsieur." + +The boy put down his spade, went to a brook which threaded the field +and came back with an earthenware jug full to the brim. The little +girl stared gravely at Grimshaw while he drank. Grimshaw wiped his +mouth with the back of his hand. + +"What story shall it be?" he demanded. + +The little girl said quickly: "The black king and the white princess +and the beast who lived in the wood." + +"Not that one," the boy cried. "Tell us about a battle." + +"I will sing about life," Grimshaw said. + +It was hot in the field. A warm, sweet smell rose from the spaded +earth and near by the brook rustled through the grass like a beautiful +silver serpent. Grimshaw sat cross-legged on the ground and words spun +from his lips--simple words. And he sang of things he had recently +learned--the gaiety of birds, the strength of his arms, the scent of +dusk, the fine crystal of a young moon, wind in a field of wheat.... + +At first the children listened. Then, because he talked so long, the +little girl leaned slowly over against his shoulder and fell asleep, +while the boy fingered the knives, jangled the key-rings, clipped +grass stalks with the scissors, and wound the watches one after the +other. The sun was low before Grimshaw left them. "When you are grown +up," he said, "remember that Pierre Pilleux sang to you of life." + +"_Oui, monsieur_," the boy said politely. "But I should like a watch." + +Grimshaw shook his head. "The song is enough." + +Thereafter he sang to any one who would listen to him. I say that he +sang--I mean, of course, that he spoke his verses; it was a minstrel's +simple improvisation. But there are people in the villages of southern +France who still recall that ungainly, shambling figure. He had grown +a beard; it crinkled thickly, hiding his mouth and chin. He laughed a +great deal. He was not altogether clean. And he slept wherever he +could find a bed--in farmhouses, cheap hotels, haylofts, stables, open +fields. Waram's few hundred pounds were gone. The poet lived by his +wits and his gift of song. And for the first time in his remembrance +he was happy. + +Then one day he read in _Le Matin_ that Ada Rubenstein was to play +"The Labyrinth" in Paris. Grimshaw was in Poitiers. He borrowed three +hundred francs from the proprietor of a small cafe in the Rue Carnot, +left his pack as security, and went to Paris. Can you imagine him in +the theatre--it was the Odeon, I believe--conscious of curious, amused +glances--a peasant, bulking conspicuously in that scented auditorium? + +When the curtain rose, he felt again the familiar pain of creation. A +rush of hot blood surged around his heart. His temples throbbed. His +eyes filled with tears. Then the flood receded and left him trembling +with weakness. He sat through the rest of the performance without +emotion of any sort. He felt no resentment, no curiosity. + +This was the last time he showed any interest in his old existence. He +went back to Poitiers, and then took to the road again. People who saw +him at that time have said that there was always a pack of dogs at his +heels. Once a fashionable spaniel followed him out of Lyons and he was +arrested for theft. You understand, he never made any effort to +attract the little fellows--they joined on, as it were, for the +journey. And it was a queer fact that after a few miles they always +whined, as if they were disappointed about something, and turned +back.... + +He finally heard that Dagmar had married Waram. She had waited a +decent interval--Victorian to the end! A man who happened to be in +Marseilles at the time told me that "that vagabond poet, Pilleux, +appeared in one of the cafes, roaring drunk, and recited a marriage +poem--obscene, vicious, terrific. A crowd came in from the street to +listen. Some of them laughed. Others were frightened. He was an ugly +brute--well over six feet tall, with a blonde beard, a hooked nose, +and a pair of eyes that saw beyond reality. He was fascinating. He +could turn his eloquence off and on like a tap. He sat in a drunken +stupor, glaring at the crowd, until someone shouted: "_Eh bien, +Pilleux_--you were saying?" Then the deluge! He had a peasant's +acceptance of the elemental facts of life--it was raw, that hymn of +his! The women of the streets who had crowded into the caf listened +with a sort of terror; they admired him. One of them said: "Pilleux's +wife betrayed him." He lifted his glass and drank. "No, _ma petite_," +he said politely, "she buried me." + +That night his pack was stolen from him. He was too drunk to know or +to care. They say that he went from cafe to cafe, paying for wine with +verse, and getting it, too! At his heels a crowd of loafers, frowsy +women and dogs. His hat gone. His eyes mad. A trickle of wine through +his beard. Bellowing. Bellowing again--the untamed centaur cheated of +the doe! + +And now, perhaps, I can get back to the reasons for this story. And I +am almost at the end of it.... + +In the most obscure alley in Marseilles there is a caf frequented by +sailors, riff-raff from the waterfront and thieves. Grimshaw appeared +there at midnight. A woman clung to his arm. She had no eyes for any +one else. Her name, I believe, was Marie--a very humble Magdalen of +that tragic back-water of civilization. Putting her cheek against +Grimshaw's arm, she listened to him with a curious patience as one +listens to the eloquence of the sea. + +"This is no place for thee," he said to her. "Leave me now, _ma +petite_." + +But she laughed and went with him. Imagine that room--foul air, sanded +floor, kerosene lamps, an odour of bad wine, tobacco, and stale +humanity. Grimshaw pushed his way to a table and sat down with a surly +Gascon and an enormous Negro from some American ship in the harbour. + +They brought the poet wine but he did not drink it--sat staring at the +smoky ceiling, assailed by a sudden sharp vision of Dagmar and Waram +at Broadenham, alone together for the first time, perhaps on the +terrace in the starlight, perhaps in Dagmar's bright room which had +always been scented, warm, remote---- + +He had been reciting, of course, in French. Now he broke abruptly into +English. No one but the American Negro understood. The proprietor +shouted: "Hi, there, Pilleux--no gibberish!" The woman, her eyes on +Grimshaw's face, said warningly: "Ssh! He speaks English. He is +clever, this poet! Pay attention." And the Negro, startled, jerked his +drunken body straight and listened. + +I don't know what Grimshaw said. It must have been a poem of home, the +bitter longing of an exile for familiar things. At any rate, the Negro +was touched--he was a Louisianian, a son of New Orleans. He saw the +gentleman, where you and I, perhaps, would have seen only a maudlin +savage. There is no other explanation for the thing that happened.... + +The Gascon, it seems, hated poetry. He tipped over Grimshaw's glass, +spilling the wine into the woman's lap. She leaped back, trembling +with rage, swearing in the manner of her kind. + +"Quiet," Grimshaw said. And her fury receded before his glance; she +melted, acquiesced, smiled. Then Grimshaw smiled, too, and putting the +glass to rights with a leisurely gesture, said, "Cabbage. Son of pig," +and flipped the dregs into the Gascon's face. + +The fellow groaned and leaped. Grimshaw didn't stir--he was too drunk +to protect himself. But the Negro saw what was in the Gascon's hand. +He kicked back his chair, stretched out his arms--too late. The +Gascon's knife, intended for Grimshaw, sliced into his heart. He +coughed, looked at the man he had saved with a strange questioning, +and collapsed. + +Grimshaw was sobered instantly. They say that he broke the Gascon's +arm before the crowd could separate them. Then he knelt down by the +dying Negro, turned him gently over and lifted him in his arms, +supporting that ugly bullet head against his knee. The Negro coughed +again, and whispered: "I saw it comin', boss." Grimshaw said simply: +"Thank you." + +"I'm scared, boss." + +"That's all right. I'll see you through." + +"I'm dyin', boss." + +"Is it hard?" + +"Yessir." + +"Hold my hand. That's right. Nothing to be afraid of." + +The Negro's eyes fixed themselves on Grimshaw's face--a sombre look +came into their depths. "I'm goin', boss." + +Grimshaw lifted him again. As he did so, he was conscious of feeling +faint and dizzy. The Negro's blood was warm on his hands and wrists, +but it was not wholly that--He had a sensation of rushing forward; of +pressure against his ear-drums; a violent nausea; the crowd of curious +faces blurred, disappeared--he was drowning in a noisy darkness.... He +gasped, struggled, struck out with his arms, shouted, went down in +that suffocating flood of unconsciousness.... + +Opening his eyes after an indeterminate interval, he found himself in +the street. The air was cool after the fetid staleness of that room. +He was still holding the Negro's hand. And above them the stars +burned, remote and calm, like beacon lamps in a dark harbour.... + +The Negro whimpered: "I don't know the way, boss. I'm lost." + +"Where is your ship?" + +"In the _Vieux Port_, near the fort." + +They walked together through the silent streets. I say that they +walked. It was rather that Grimshaw found himself on the quay, the +Negro still at his side. A few prowling sailors passed them. But for +the most part the waterfront was deserted. The ships lay side by +side--an intricate tangle of bowsprits and rigging, masts and chains. +Around them the water was black as basalt, only that now and again a +spark of light was struck by the faint lifting of the current against +the immovable hulls. + +The Negro shuffled forward, peering. A lantern flashed on one of the +big schooners. Looking up, Grimshaw saw the name: "_Anne Beebe, New +Orleans_." A querulous voice, somewhere on the deck, demanded: "That +you, Richardson?" And then, angrily: "This damned place--dark as +hell.... Who's there?" + +Grimshaw answered: "One of your crew." + +The man on deck stared down at the quay a moment. Then, apparently +having seen nothing, he turned away, and the lantern bobbed aft like a +drifting ember. The Negro moaned. Holding both hands over the deep +wound in his breast, he slowly climbed the side ladder, turned once, +to look at Grimshaw, and disappeared.... + +Grimshaw felt again the rushing darkness. Again he struggled. And +again, opening his eyes after a moment of blankness, he found himself +kneeling on the sanded floor of the cafe, holding the dead Negro in +his arms. He glanced down at the face, astounded by the look of placid +satisfaction in those wide-open eyes, the smile of recognition, of +gratification, of some nameless and magnificent content.... + +The woman Marie touched his shoulder. "The fellow's dead, _m'sieur_. +We had better go." + +Grimshaw followed her into the street. He noticed that there were no +stars. A bitter wind, forerunner of the implacable _mistral_, had come +up. The door of the cafe slammed behind them, muffling a sudden uproar +of voices that had burst out with his going.... + +Grimshaw had a room somewhere in the Old Town; he went there, followed +by the woman. He thought: "I am mad! Mad!" He was frightened, not by +what had happened to him, but because he could not understand. Nor can +I make it clear to you, since no explanation is final when we are +dealing with the inexplicable.... + +When they reached his room, Marie lighted the kerosene lamp and, +smoothing down her black hair with both hands, said simply: "I stay +with you." + +"You must not," Grimshaw answered. + +"I love you," she said. "You are a great man. _C'est ca_. That is +that! Besides, I must love someone--I mean, do for someone. You think +that I like pleasure. Ah! Perhaps. I am young. But my heart follows +you. I stay here." + +Grimshaw stared at her without hearing. "I opened the door. I went +beyond.... I am perhaps mad. Perhaps privileged. Perhaps what they +have always called me--an incorrigible poet." Suddenly he jumped to +his feet and shouted: "I went a little way with his soul! Victory! +Eternity!" + +The woman Marie put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back +into his chair again. She thought, of course, that he was drunk. So +she attempted a simple seduction, striving to call attention to +herself by the coquetries of her kind. Grimshaw pushed her aside and +lay down on the bed with his arms crossed over his eyes. Had he +witnessed a soul's first uncertain steps into a new state? One thing +he knew--he had himself suffered the confusion of death, and had +shared the desperate struggle to penetrate the barrier between the +mortal and the immortal, the known and the unknown, the real and the +incomprehensible. With that realization, he stepped finally out of his +personality into that of the mystic philosopher, Pierre Pilleux. He +heard the woman Marie saying: "Let me stay. I am unhappy." And without +opening his eyes, simply making a brief gesture, he said: "_Eh bien_." +And she stayed. + +She never left him again. In the years that followed, wherever +Grimshaw was, there also was Marie--little, swarthy, broad of cheek +and hip, unimaginative, faithful. She had a passion for service. She +cooked for Grimshaw, knitted woollen socks for him, brushed and mended +his clothes, watched out for his health--often, I am convinced, she +stole for him. As for Grimshaw, he didn't know that she existed, +beyond the fact that she was there and that she made material +existence endurable. He never again knew physical love. That I am sure +of, for I have talked with Marie. "He was good to me," she said. "But +he never loved me." And I believe her. + +That night of the Negro's death Grimshaw stood in a wilderness of his +own. He emerged from it a believer in life after death. He preached +this belief in the slums of Marseilles. It began to be said of him +that his presence made death easy, that the touch of his hand steadied +those who were about to die. Feverish, terrified, reluctant, they +became suddenly calm, wistful, and passed quietly as one falls asleep. +"Send for Pierre Pilleux" became a familiar phrase in the Old Town. + +I do not believe that he could have touched these simple people had he +not looked the part of prophet and saint. The old Grimshaw was gone. +In his place an emaciated fanatic, unconscious of appetite, unaware of +self, with burning eyes and tangled beard! That finished ugliness +turned spiritual--a self-flagellated aesthete. He claimed that he +could enter the shadowy confines of the "next world." Not heaven. Not +hell. A neutral ground between the familiar earth and an inexplicable +territory of the spirit. Here, he said, the dead suffered +bewilderment; they remembered, desired, and regretted the life they +had just left, without understanding what lay ahead. So far he could +go with them. So far and no farther.... + +Personal immortality is the most alluring hope ever dangled before +humanity. All of us secretly desire it. None of us really believe in +it. As you say, all of us are afraid and some of us laugh to hide our +fear. Grimshaw wasn't afraid. Nor did he laugh. He _knew_. And you +remember his eloquence--seductive words, poignant, delicious, +memorable words! In his Chelsea days, he had made you sultry with +hate. Now, as Pierre Pilleux, he made you believe in the shining +beauty of the indestructible, the unconquerable dead. You saw them, a +host of familiar figures, walking fearlessly away from you toward the +brightness of a distant horizon. You heard them, murmuring together, +as they passed out of sight, going forward to share the common and +ineffable experience. + +Well.... The pagan had disappeared in the psychic! Cecil Grimshaw's +melancholy and pessimism, his love of power, his delight in cruelty, +in beauty, in the erotic, the violent, the strange, had vanished! +Pierre Pilleux was a humanitarian. Cecil Grimshaw never had been. +Grimshaw had revolted against ugliness as a dilettante objects to the +mediocre in art. Pierre Pilleux was conscious of social ugliness. +Having become aware of it, he was a potent rebel. He began to write in +French, spreading his revolutionary doctrine of facile spiritual +reward. He splintered purgatory into fragments; what he offered was an +earthly paradise--humanity given eternal absolution, freed of fear, +prejudice, hatred--above all, of fear--and certain of endless life. + +Now that we have entered the cosmic era, we look back at him with +understanding. Then, he was a radical and an atheist. + +Of course he had followers--seekers after eternity who drank his +promises like thirsty wanderers come upon a spring in the desert. To +some of them he was a god. To some, a mystic. To some, a healer. To +some--and they were the ones who finally controlled his destiny--he +was simply a dangerous lunatic. + +Two women in Marseilles committed suicide--they were followers, +disciples, whatever you choose to call them. At any rate, they +believed that where it was so simple a matter to die, it was foolish +to stay on in a world that had treated them badly. One had lost a son, +the other a lover. One shot herself; the other drowned herself in the +canal. And both of them left letters addressed to Pilleux--enough to +damn him in the eyes of authority. He was told that he might leave +France, or take the consequences--a mild enough warning, but it +worked. He dared not provoke an inquiry into his past. So he shipped +on board a small Mediterranean steamer as fireman, and disappeared, no +one knew where. + +Two years later he reappeared in Africa. Marie was with him. They were +living in a small town on the rim of the desert near Biskra. Grimshaw +occupied a native house--a mere hovel, flat-roofed, sun-baked, bare as +a hermit's cell. Marie had hired herself out as _femme de chambre_ in +the only hotel in the place. "I watched over him," she told me. "And +believe me, _monsieur_, he needed care! He was thin as a ghost. He had +starved more than once during those two years. He told me to go back +to France, to seek happiness for myself. But for me happiness was with +him. I laughed and stayed. I loved him--magnificently, _monsieur_." + +Grimshaw was writing again--in French--and his work began to appear in +the Parisian journals, a strange poetic prose impregnated with +mysticism. It was Grimshaw, sublimated. I saw it myself, although at +that time I had not heard Waram's story. The French critics saw it. +"This Pilleux is as picturesque as the English poet, Grimshaw. The +style is identical." Waram saw it. He read everything that Pilleux +wrote--with eagerness, with terror. Finally, driven by curiosity, he +went to Paris, got Pilleux's address from the editor of _Gil Blas_, +and started for Africa. + +Grimshaw is a misty figure at the last. You see him faintly--an exile, +racially featureless, wearing a dirty white native robe, his face +wrinkled by exposure to the sun, his eyes burning. Marie says that he +prowled about the village at night, whispering to himself, his head +thrown back, pointing his beard at the stars. He wrote in the cool +hours before dawn, and later, when the village quivered in heat fumes +and he slept, Marie posted what he had written to Paris. + +One day he took her head between his hands and said very gently: "Why +don't you get a lover? Take life while you can." + +"You say there is eternal life," she protested. + +"_N'en doutez-pas_! But you must be rich in knowledge. Put flowers in +your hair. And place your palms against a lover's palms and kiss him +with generosity, _ma petite_. I am not a man; I am a shadow." + +Marie slipped her arms around him and, standing on tiptoe, put her +lips against his. "_Je t'aime_," she said simply. + +His eyes deepened. There flashed into them the old, mad humour, the +old vitality, the old passion for beauty. The look faded, leaving his +eyes "like flames that are quenched." Marie shivered, covered her face +with her hands, and ran out. "There was no blood in him," she told me. +"He was like a spirit--a ghost. So meagre! So wan! Waxen hands. Yellow +flesh. And those eyes, in which, _monsieur_, the flame was quenched!" + +And this is the end of the curious story.... Waram went to Biskra and +from there to the village where Grimshaw lived. Grimshaw saw him in +the street one evening and followed him to the hotel. He lingered +outside until Waram had registered at the _bureau_ and had gone to his +room. Then he went in and sent word that "Pierre Pilleux was below and +ready to see Doctor Waram." + +He waited in the "garden" at the back of the hotel. No one was about. +A cat slept on the wall. Overhead the arch of the sky was flooded with +orange light. Dust lay on the leaves of the potted plants and bushes. +It was breathless, hot, quiet. He thought: "Waram has come because +Dagmar is dead. Or the public has found me out!" + +Waram came immediately. He stood in the doorway a moment, staring at +the grotesque figure which faced him. He made a terrified gesture, as +if he would shut out what he saw. Then he came into the garden, +steadying himself by holding on to the backs of the little iron garden +chairs. The poet saw that Waram had not changed so very much--a little +gray hair in that thick, black mop, a few wrinkles, a rather stodgy +look about the waist. No more. He was still Waram, neat, +self-satisfied, essentially English.... Grimshaw strangled a feeling +of aversion and said quietly: "Well, Waram. How d'you do? I call +myself Pilleux now." + +Waram ignored his hand. Leaning heavily on one of the chairs, he +stared with a passionate intentness. "Grimshaw?" he said at last. + +"Why, yes," Grimshaw answered. "Didn't you know?" + +Waram licked his lips. In a whisper he said: "I killed you in +Switzerland six years ago. Killed you, you understand." + +Grimshaw touched his breast with both hands. "You lie. + +"Here I am." + +"You are dead." + +"Dead?" + +"Before God, I swear it." + +"Dead?" + +Grimshaw felt once more the on-rushing flood of darkness. His thoughts +flashed back over the years. The "wall." His suffering. The dog. The +song in the field. The Negro. The door that opened. The stars. His own +flesh, fading into spirit, into shadows.... + +"Dead?" he demanded again. + +Waram's eyes wavered. He laughed unsteadily and looked behind him. +"Strange," he said. "I thought I saw----" He turned and went quickly +across the garden into the hotel. Grimshaw called once, in a loud +voice: "Waram!" But the doctor did not even turn his head. Grimshaw +followed him, overtook him, touched his shoulder. Waram paid no +attention. Going to the _bureau_ he said to the proprietor: "You told +me that a Monsieur Pilleux wished to see me." + +"_Oui, monsieur_. He was waiting for you in the garden." + +"He is not there now." + +"But just a moment ago----" + +"I am _here_," Grimshaw interrupted. + +The proprietor brushed past Waram and peered into the garden. It was +twilight out there now. The cat still slept on the wall. Dust on the +leaves. Stillness.... + +"I'm sorry, _monsieur_. He seems to have disappeared." + +Doctor Waram straightened his shoulders. "Ah," he said. "Disappeared. +Exactly." And passing Grimshaw without a glance he went upstairs. + +Grimshaw spoke to the proprietor. But the little man bent over the +desk, and began to write in an account book. His pen went on +scratching, inscribing large, flourishing numbers in a neat column.... + +Grimshaw shrugged and went into the street. The crowds paid no +attention to him--but then, they never had. A dog sniffed at his +heels, whined, and thrust a cold nose into his hand. + +He went to his house. "I'll ask Marie," he thought.... She was sitting +before a mirror, her hands clasped under her chin, smiling at +herself.... She had put a flower in her hair. Her lips were parted. +She smiled at some secret thought. Grimshaw watched her a moment; then +with a leap of his heart he touched her shoulder. And she did not +turn, did not move.... + +He knew! He put his fingers on her cheek, her neck, the shining braids +of her coarse black hair. Then he walked quickly out of the house, out +of the village, toward the desert. + +Two men joined him. One of them said: "I have just died." They went on +together, their feet whispering in the sand, walking in a globe of +darkness until the stars came out--then they saw one another's pale +faces and eager, frightened eyes. Others joined them. And others. Men. +Women. A child. Some wept and some murmured and some laughed. + +"Is this death?" + +"Where now, brother?" + +Grimshaw thought: "The end. What next? Beauty. Love. Illusion. +Forgetfulness." + +He clasped his hands behind his back, lifted his face to the stars, +walked steadily forward with that company of the dead, into the +desert, out of the story at last. + + + +COMET [Published originally under title, "The Comet."] + +By SAMUEL A. DERIEUX + +From _American Magazine_ + + +No puppy ever came into the world under more favourable conditions +than Comet. He was descended from a famous family of pointers. Both +his mother and father were champions. Before he opened his eyes, while +he was still crawling about over his brothers and sisters, blind as +puppies are at birth, Jim Thompson, Mr. Devant's kennel master, picked +him out. + +"That's the best un in the bunch." + +When he was only three weeks old he pointed a butterfly that lit in +the yard in front of his nose. + +"Come here, Molly," yelled Jim to his wife. "Pointed--the little +cuss!" + +When Thompson started taking the growing pups out of the yard, into +the fields to the side of the Devants' great southern winter home, Oak +Knob, it was Comet who strayed farthest from the man's protecting +care. And when Jim taught them all to follow when he said "Heel," to +drop when he said "Drop," and to stand stock-still when he said "Ho," +he learned far more quickly than the others. + +At six months he set his first covey of quail, and remained perfectly +staunch. "He's goin' to make a great dog," said Thompson. +Everything--size, muscle, nose, intelligence, earnestness--pointed to +the same conclusion. Comet was one of the favoured of the gods. + +One day, after the leaves had turned red and brown and the mornings +grown chilly, a crowd of people, strangers to him, arrived at Oak +Knob. Then out of the house with Thompson came a big man in tweed +clothes, and the two walked straight to the curious young dogs, who +were watching them with shining eyes and wagging tails. + +"Well, Thompson," said the big man, "which is the future champion +you've been writing me about?" + +"Pick him out for yourself, sir," said Thompson confidently. + +After that they talked a long time planning for the future of Comet. +His yard training was now over (Thompson was only yard trainer), and +he must be sent to a man experienced in training and handling for +field trials. + +"Larsen's the man to bring him out," said the big man in tweeds, who +was George Devant himself. "I saw his dogs work in the Canadian +Derby." + +Thompson spoke hesitatingly, apologetically, as if he hated to bring +the matter up. "Mr. Devant, ... you remember, sir, a long time ago +Larsen sued us for old Ben." + +"Yes, Thompson; I remember, now that you speak of it." + +"Well, you remember the court decided against him, which was the only +thing it could do, for Larsen didn't have any more right to that dog +than the Sultan of Turkey. But, Mr. Devant, I was there, and I saw +Larsen's face when the case went against him." + +Devant looked keenly at Thompson. + +"Another thing, Mr. Devant," Thompson went on, still hesitatingly; +"Larsen had a chance to get hold of this breed of pointers and lost +out, because he dickered too long, and acted cheesy. Now they've +turned out to be famous. Some men never forget a thing like that. +Larsen's been talkin' these pointers down ever since, sir." + +"Go on," said Devant. + +"I know Larsen's a good trainer. But it'll mean a long trip for the +young dog to where he lives. Now, there's an old trainer lives near +here, Wade Swygert. There never was a straighter man than him. He used +to train dogs in England." + +Devant smiled. "Thompson, I admire your loyalty to your friends; but I +don't think much of your business sense. We'll turn over some of the +others to Swygert, if he wants 'em. Comet must have the best. I'll +write Larsen to-night, Thompson. To-morrow, crate Comet and send him +off." + +Just as no dog ever came into the world under more favourable +auspices, so no dog ever had a bigger "send-off" than Comet. Even the +ladies of the house came out to exclaim over him, and Marian Devant, +pretty, eighteen, and a sports-woman, stooped down, caught his head +between her hands, looked into his fine eyes, and wished him "Good +luck, old man." In the living-room the men laughingly drank toasts to +his future, and from the high-columned portico Marian Devant waved him +good-bye, as in his clean padded crate he was driven off, a bewildered +youngster, to the station. + +Two days and two nights he travelled, and at noon of the third day, at +a lonely railroad station in a prairie country that rolled like a +heavy sea, he was lifted, crate and all, off the train. A lean, +pale-eyed, sanctimonious-looking man came toward him. + +"Some beauty that, Mr. Larsen," said the agent as he helped Larsen's +man lift the crate onto a small truck. + +"Yes," drawled Larsen in a meditative voice, "pretty enough to look +at--but he looks scared--er--timid." + +"Of course he's scared," said the agent; "so would you be if they was +to put you in some kind of a whale of a balloon an' ship you in a +crate to Mars." + +The station agent poked his hands through the slats and patted the +head. Comet was grateful for that, because everything was strange. He +had not whined nor complained on the trip, but his heart had pounded +fast, and he had been homesick. + +And everything continued to be strange: the treeless country through +which he was driven, the bald house and huge barns where he was lifted +out, the dogs that crowded about him when he was turned into the +kennel yard. These eyed him with enmity and walked round and round +him. But he stood his ground staunchly for a youngster, returning +fierce look for fierce look, growl for growl, until the man called him +away and chained him to a kennel. + +For days Comet remained chained, a stranger in a strange land. Each +time at the click of the gate announcing Larson's entrance he sprang +to his feet from force of habit, and stared hungrily at the man for +the light he was accustomed to see in human eyes. But with just a +glance at him the man would turn one or more of the other dogs loose +and ride off to train them. + +But he was not without friends of his own kind. Now and then another +young dog (he alone was chained up) would stroll his way with wagging +tail, or lie down near by, in that strange bond of sympathy that is +not confined to man. Then Comet would feel better and would want to +play, for he was still half puppy. Sometimes he would pick up a stick +and shake it, and his partner would catch the other end. They would +tug and growl with mock ferocity, and then lie down and look at each +other curiously. + +If any attention had been paid him by Larsen, Comet would have quickly +overcome his feeling of strangeness. He was no milksop. He was like an +overgrown boy, off at college or in some foreign city. He was +sensitive, and not sure of himself. Had Larsen gained his confidence, +it would all have been different. And as for Larsen--he knew that +perfectly well. + +One fine sunny afternoon Larsen entered the yard, came straight to +him, and turned him loose. In the exuberance of his spirits he ran +round and round the yard, barking in the faces of his friends. Larsen +let him out, mounted a horse, and commanded him to heel. He obeyed +with wagging tail. + +A mile or more down the road Larsen turned off into the fields. Across +his saddle was something the young pointer had had no experience +with--a gun. That part of his education Thompson had neglected, at +least put off, for he had not expected that Comet would be sent away +so soon. That was where Thompson had made a mistake. + +At the command "Hi on" the young pointer ran eagerly around the horse, +and looked up into the man's face to be sure he had heard aright. At +something he saw there the tail and ears drooped momentarily, and +there came over him again a feeling of strangeness, almost of dismay. +Larsen's eyes were mere slits of blue glass, and his mouth was set in +a thin line. + +At a second command, though, he galloped off swiftly, boldly. Round +and round an extensive field of straw he circled, forgetting any +feeling of strangeness now, every fibre of his being intent on the +hunt, while Larsen, sitting on his horse, watched him with appraising +eyes. + +Suddenly there came to Comet's nose the smell of game birds, strong, +pungent, compelling. He stiffened into an earnest, beautiful point. +Heretofore in the little training he had had Thompson had come up +behind him, flushed the birds, and made him drop. And now Larsen, +having quickly dismounted and tied his horse, came up behind him, just +as Thompson had done, except that in Larsen's hand was the gun. + +The old-fashioned black powder of a generation ago makes a loud +explosion. It sounds like a cannon compared with the modern smokeless +powder now used by all hunters. Perhaps it was only an accident that +had caused Larsen before he left the house to load his pump gun with +black powder shells. + +As for Comet he only knew that the birds rose; then above his head +burst an awful roar, almost splitting his tender eardrums, shocking +every sensitive nerve, filling him with terror such as he had never +felt before. Even then, in the confusion and horror of the surprise, +he turned to the man, head ringing, eyes dilated. A single reassuring +word, and he would have steadied. As for Larsen, though, he declared +afterward (to others and to himself even) that he noticed no +nervousness in the dog; that he was only intent on getting several +birds for breakfast. + +Twice, three times, four times, the pump gun bellowed in its +cannon-like roar, piercing the eardrums, shattering the nerves. Comet +turned; one more glance backward at a face, strange, exultant--and +then the puppy in him conquered. Tail tucked, he ran away from that +shattering noise. + +Miles he ran. Now and then, stumbling over briars, he yelped. Not once +did he look back. His tail was tucked, his eyes crazy with fear. +Seeing a house, he made for that. It was the noon hour, and a group of +farm hands was gathered in the yard. One of them, with a cry "Mad +dog!" ran into the house after a gun. When he came out, they told him +the dog was under the porch. And so he was. Pressed against the wall, +in the darkness, the magnificent young pointer with the quivering soul +waited, panting, eyes gleaming, the horror still ringing in his ears. + +Here Larsen found him that afternoon. A boy crawled underneath the +porch and dragged him out. He, who had started life favoured of the +gods, who that morning even had been full of high spirits, who had +circled a field like a champion, was now a cringing, shaking creature, +like a homeless cur. + +And thus it happened that Comet came home, in disgrace--a gun-shy dog, +a coward, expelled from college, not for some youthful prank, but +because he was--yellow. And he knew he was disgraced. He saw it in the +face of the big man, Devant, who looked at him in the yard where he +had spent his happy puppyhood, then turned away. He knew it because of +what he saw in the face of Jim Thompson. + +In the house was a long and plausible letter, explaining how it +happened: + +I did everything I could. I never was as surprised in my life. The +dog's hopeless. + +As for the other inhabitants of the big house, their minds were full +of the events of the season: de luxe hunting parties, more society +events than hunts; lunches in the woods served by uniformed butlers; +launch rides up the river; arriving and departing guests. Only one of +them, except Devant himself, gave the gun-shy dog a thought. Marian +Devant came out to visit him in his disgrace. She stooped before him +as she had done on that other and happier day, and again caught his +head between her hands. But his eyes did not meet hers, for in his dim +way he knew he was not now what he had been. + +"I don't believe he's yellow--inside!" she declared, looking up at +Thompson, her cheeks flushed. + +Thompson shook his head. + +"I tried him with a gun, Miss Marian," he declared. "I just showed it +to him, and he ran into his kennel." + +"I'll go get mine. He won't run from me." + +But at sight of her small gun it all came back. Again he seemed to +hear the explosion that had shattered his nerves. The Terror had +entered his very soul. In spite of her pleading, he made for his +kennel. Even the girl turned away from him now. And as he lay panting +in the shelter of his kennel he knew that never again would men look +at him as they had looked, or life be sweet to him as it had been. + +Then there came to Oak Knob an old man to see Thompson. He had been on +many seas, he had fought in a dozen wars, and had settled at last on a +little truck farm near by. Somewhere, in his life full of adventure +and odd jobs, he had trained dogs and horses. His face was lined and +seamed, his hair was white, his eyes piercing, blue and kind. Wade +Swygert was his name. + +"There's been dirty work," he said, when he looked at the dog. "I'll +take him if you're goin' to give him away." + +Give him away--who had been Championship hope! + +Marian Devant came out and looked into the face of the old man, +shrewdly, understandingly. + +"Can you cure him?" she demanded. + +"I doubt it, miss," was the sturdy answer. + +"You will try?" + +The blue eyes lighted up. "Yes, I'll try." + +"Then you can have him. And--if there's any expense----" + +"Come, Comet," said the old man. + +That night, in a neat, humble house, Comet ate supper placed before +him by a stout old woman, who had followed this old man to the ends of +the world. That night he slept before their fire. Next day he followed +the old man all about the place. Several days and nights passed this +way, then, while he lay before the fire, old Swygert came in with a +gun. At sight of it Comet sprang to his feet. He tried to rush out of +the room, but the doors were closed. Finally, he crawled under the +bed. + +Every night after that Swygert got out the gun, until he crawled under +the bed no more. Finally, one day the man fastened the dog to a tree +in the yard, then came out with a gun. A sparrow lit in a tree, and he +shot it. Comet tried to break the rope. All his panic had returned; +but the report had not shattered him as that other did, for the gun +was loaded light. + +After that, frequently the old man shot a bird in his sight, loading +the gun more and more heavily, and each time after the shot coming to +him, showing him the bird, and speaking to him kindly, gently. But for +all that the Terror remained in his heart. + +One afternoon the girl, accompanied by a young man, rode over on +horseback, dismounted, and came in. She always stopped when she was +riding by. + +"It's mighty slow business," old Swygert reported; "I don't know +whether I'm makin' any headway or not." + +That night old Mrs. Swygert told him she thought he had better give it +up. It wasn't worth the time and worry. The dog was just yellow. + +Swygert pondered a long time. "When I was a kid," he said at last, +"there came up a terrible thunderstorm. It was in South America. I was +water boy for a railroad gang, and the storm drove us in a shack. +While lightnin' was hittin' all around, one of the grown men told me +it always picked out boys with red hair. My hair was red, an' I was +little and ignorant. For years I was skeered of lightnin'. I never +have quite got over it. But no man ever said I was yellow." + +Again he was silent for a while. Then he went on: "I don't seem to be +makin' much headway, I admit that. I'm lettin' him run away as far as +he can. Now I've got to shoot an' make him come toward the gun +himself, right while I'm shootin' it." + +Next day Comet was tied up and fasted, and next, until he was gaunt +and famished. Then, on the afternoon of the third day, Mrs. Swygert, +at her husband's direction, placed before him, within reach of his +chain, some raw beefsteak. As he started for it, Swygert shot. He drew +back, panting, then, hunger getting the better of him, started again. +Again Swygert shot. + +After that for days Comet "Ate to music," as Swygert expressed it. +"Now," he said, "he's got to come toward the gun when he's not even +tied up." + +Not far from Swygert's house is a small pond, and on one side the +banks are perpendicular. Toward this pond the old man, with the gun +under his arm and the dog following, went. Here in the silence of the +woods, with just the two of them together, was to be a final test. + +On the shelving bank Swygert picked up a stick and tossed it into the +middle of the pond with the command to "fetch." Comet sprang eagerly +in and retrieved it. Twice this was repeated. But the third time, as +the dog approached the shore, Swygert picked up the gun and fired. + +Quickly the dog dropped the stick, then turned and swam toward the +other shore. Here, so precipitous were the banks, he could not get a +foothold. He turned once more and struck out diagonally across the +pond. Swygert met him and fired. + +Over and over it happened. Each time, after he fired, the old man +stooped down with extended hand and begged him to come on. His face +was grim now, and, though the day was cool, sweat stood out on his +brow. "You'll face the music," he said, "or you'll drown. Better be +dead than called yellow." + +The dog was growing weary now. His head was barely above water. His +efforts to clamber up the opposite bank were feeble, frantic. Yet, +each time as he drew near the shore Swygert fired. + +He was not using light loads now. He was using the regular load of the +bird hunter. Time had passed for temporizing. The sweat was standing +out all over his face. The sternness in his eyes was terrible to see, +for it was the sternness of a man who is suffering. + +A dog can swim a long time. The sun dropped over the trees. Still the +firing went on, regularly, like a minute gun. + +Just before the sun set an exhausted dog staggered toward an old man +almost as exhausted as he. The dog had been too near death and was too +faint to care now for the gun that was being fired over his head. On +and on he came, toward the man, disregarding the noise of the gun. It +would not hurt him, that he knew at last. He might have many enemies, +but the gun, in the hands of this man, was not one of them. Suddenly +old Swygert sank down and took the dripping dog in his arms. + +"Old boy," he said, "old boy." + +That night Comet lay before the fire, and looked straight into the +eyes of a man, as he used to look in the old days. + +Next season Larsen, glancing over his sporting papers, was astonished +to see that among promising Derbys the fall trials had called forth +was a pointer named Comet. He would have thought it some other dog +than the one who had disappointed him so by turning out gun-shy, in +spite of all his efforts to prevent, had it not been for the fact that +the entry was booked as: "Comet; owner, Miss Marian Devant; handler, +Wade Swygert." + +Next year he was still more astonished to see in the same paper that +Comet, handled by Swygert, had won first place in a Western trial, and +was prominently spoken of as a National Championship possibility. As +for him, he had no young entries to offer, but was staking everything +on the National Championship, where he was to enter Larsen's Peerless +II. + +It was strange how things fell out--but things have a habit of turning +out strangely in field trials, as well as elsewhere. When Larsen +reached the town where the National Championship was to be run, there +on the street, straining at the leash held by old Swygert, whom he +used to know, was a seasoned young pointer, with a white body, a brown +head, and a brown saddle spot--the same pointer he had seen two years +before turn tail and run in that terror a dog never quite overcomes. + +But the strangest thing of all happened that night at the drawing, +when, according to the slips taken at random from a hat, it was +declared that on the following Wednesday Comet, the pointer, was to +run with Peerless II. + +It gave Larsen a strange thrill, this announcement. He left the +meeting and went straightway to his room. There for a long time he sat +pondering. Next day at a hardware store he bought some black powder +and some shells. + +The race was to be run next day, and that night in his room he loaded +half-a-dozen shells. It would have been a study in faces to watch him +as he bent over his work, on his lips a smile. Into the shells he +packed all the powder they could stand, all the powder his trusted gun +could stand, without bursting. It was a load big enough to kill a +bear, to bring down a buffalo. It was a load that would echo and +reecho in the hills. + +On the morning that Larsen walked out in front of the judges and the +field, Peerless II at the leash, old Swygert, with Comet at his side, +he glanced around at the "field," or spectators. Among them was a +handsome young woman, and with her, to his amazement, George Devant. +He could not help chuckling inside himself as he thought of what would +happen that day, for once a gun-shy dog, always a gun-shy dog--that +was _his_ experience. + +As for Comet, he faced the straw fields eagerly, confidently, already +a veteran. Long ago fear of the gun had left him, for the most part. +There were times when at a report above his head he still trembled, +and the shocked nerves in his ear gave a twinge like that of a bad +tooth. But always at the quiet voice of the old man, his god, he grew +steady, and remained staunch. + +Some disturbing memory did start within him to-day as he glanced at +the man with the other dog. It seemed to him as if in another and an +evil world he had seen that face. His heart began to pound fast, and +his tail drooped for a moment. Within an hour it was all to come back +to him--the terror, the panic, the agony of that far-away time. + +He looked up at old Swygert, who was his god, and to whom his soul +belonged, though he was booked as the property of Miss Marian Devant. +Of the arrangements he could know nothing, being a dog. Old Swygert, +having cured him, could not meet the expenses of taking him to field +trials. The girl had come to the old man's assistance, an assistance +which he had accepted only under condition that the dog should be +entered as hers, with himself as handler. + +"Are you ready, gentlemen?" the judges asked. + +"Ready," said Larsen and old Swygert. + +And Comet and Peerless II were speeding away across that field, and +behind them came handlers, and judges and spectators, all mounted. + +It was a race people still talk about, and for a reason, for strange +things happened that day. At first there was nothing unusual. It was +like any other field trial. Comet found birds, and Swygert, his +handler, flushed them and shot. Comet remained steady. Then Peerless +II found a covey, and Larsen flushed them and shot. And so for an hour +it went. + +Then Comet disappeared, and old Swygert, riding hard and looking for +him, went out of sight over a hill. But Comet had not gone far. As a +matter of fact, he was near by, hidden in some high straw, pointing a +covey of birds. One of the spectators spied him, and called the +judges' attention to him. Everybody, including Larsen, rode up to him, +but still Swygert had not come back. + +They called him, but the old man was a little deaf. Some of the men +rode to the top of the hill but could not see him. In his zeal he had +got a considerable distance away. Meanwhile, here was his dog, +pointed. + +If any one had looked at Larsen's face he would have seen the +exultation there, for now his chance had come--the very chance he had +been looking for. It's a courtesy one handler sometimes extends +another who is absent from the spot, to go in and flush his dog's +birds. + +"I'll handle this covey for Mr. Swygert," said Larsen to the judges, +his voice smooth and plausible, on his face a smile. + +And thus it happened that Comet faced his supreme ordeal without the +steadying voice of his god. + +He only knew that ahead of him were birds, and that behind him a man +was coming through the straw, and that behind the man a crowd of +people on horseback were watching him. He had become used to that, but +when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the face of the advancing +man, his soul began to tremble. + +"Call your dog in, Mr. Larsen," directed the judge. "Make him +back stand." + +Only a moment was lost, while Peerless, a young dog himself, came +running in and at a command from Larsen stopped in his tracks behind +Comet, and pointed. Larsen's dogs always obeyed, quickly, +mechanically. Without ever gaining their confidence, Larsen had a way +of turning them into finished field-trial dogs. They obeyed, because +they were afraid not to. + +According to the rules the man handling the dog has to shoot as the +birds rise. This is done in order to test the dog's steadiness when a +gun is fired over him. No specification is made as to the size of the +shotgun to be used. Usually, however, small-gauge guns are carried. +The one in Larsen's hands was a twelve gauge, and consequently large. + +All morning he had been using it over his own dog. Nobody had paid any +attention to it, because he shot smokeless powder. But now, as he +advanced, he reached into the left-hand pocket of his hunting coat, +where six shells rattled as he hurried along. Two of these he took out +and rammed into the barrels. + +As for Comet, still standing rigid, statuesque, he heard, as has been +said, the brush of steps through the straw, glimpsed a face, and +trembled. But only for a moment. Then he steadied, head high, tail +straight out. The birds rose with a whir--and then was repeated that +horror of his youth. Above his ears, ears that would always be tender, +broke a great roar. Either because of his excitement, or because of a +sudden wave of revenge, or of a determination to make sure of the +dog's flight, Larsen had pulled both triggers at once. The combined +report shattered through the dog's eardrums, it shivered through his +nerves, he sank in agony into the straw. + +Then the old impulse to flee was upon him, and he sprang to his feet, +and looked about wildly. But from somewhere in that crowd behind him +came to his tingling ears a voice--clear, ringing, deep, the voice of +a woman--a woman he knew--pleading as his master used to plead, +calling on him not to run, but to stand. + +"Steady," it said. "Steady, Comet!" + +It called him to himself, it soothed him, it calmed him, and he turned +and looked toward the crowd. With the roar of the shotgun the usual +order observed in field trials was broken up. All rules seemed to have +been suspended. Ordinarily, no one belonging to "the field" is allowed +to speak to a dog. Yet the girl had spoken to him. Ordinarily, the +spectators must remain in the rear of the judges. Yet one of the +judges had himself wheeled his horse about and was galloping off, and +Marian Devant had pushed through the crowd and was riding toward the +bewildered dog. + +He stood staunch where he was, though in his ears was still a +throbbing pain, and though all about him was this growing confusion he +could not understand. The man he feared was running across the field +yonder, in the direction taken by the judge. He was blowing his +whistle as he ran. Through the crowd, his face terrible to see, his +own master was coming. Both the old man and the girl had dismounted +now, and were running toward him. + +"I heard," old Swygert was saying to her. "I heard it! I might 'a' +known! I might 'a' known!" + +"He stood," she panted, "like a rock--oh, the brave, beautiful thing!" + +"Where is that----" Swygert suddenly checked himself and looked +around. + +A man in the crowd (they had all gathered about now), laughed. + +"He's gone after his dog," he said. "Peerless has run away!" + + + +FIFTY-TWO WEEKS FOR FLORETTE + +By ELIZABETH ALEXANDER HEERMANN [ELIZABETH ALEXANDER in _Saturday +Evening Post_, August 13,1921.] + + +It had been over two months since Freddy Le Fay's bill had been paid, +and Miss Nellie Blair was worried. She had written to Freddy's mother +repeatedly, but there had been no answer. + +"It's all your own fault, sister. You should never have taken Freddy," +Miss Eva said sharply. "I told you so at the time, when I saw his +mother's hair. And of course Le Fay is not her real name. It looks to +me like a clear case of desertion." + +"I can't believe it. She seemed so devoted," faltered Miss Nellie. + +"Oh, a girl like that!" Miss Eva sniffed. "You should never have +consented." + +"Well, the poor thing was so worried, and if it meant saving a child +from a dreadful life----" + +"There are other schools more suitable." + +"But, sister, she seemed to have her heart set on ours. She begged me +to make a little gentleman out of him." + +"As if you could ever do that!" + +"Why not?" asked Mary, their niece. + +"That dreadful child!" + +"Freddy isn't dreadful!" cried Mary hotly. + +"With that atrocious slang! Won't eat his oatmeal! And he's such a +queer child--queer! So pale, never laughs, doesn't like any one. Why +should you take up for him? He doesn't even like you. Hates me, I +suppose." + +"It's because we are so different from the women he has known," said +Mary. + +"I should hope so! Well, sister, what are you going to do about it?" + +"I don't know what to do," sighed Miss Nellie. "He hasn't any other +relatives as far as I know. And the summer coming on, what shall we +do?" + +"Nothing for it but to send him to an orphanage if she doesn't write +soon," said Miss Eva. + +"Oh, auntie, you wouldn't!" + +"Why not? How can we afford to give children free board and +education?" + +"It's only one child." + +"It would be a dozen, if we once started it." + +"I'll wait another month," said Miss Nellie, "and then, really, +something will have to be done." + +The girl looked out of the window. + +"There he is now," she said, "sitting on the stone wall at the end of +the garden. It's his favourite spot." + +"What on earth he wants to sit there for--away from all the other +children! He never plays. Look at him! Just sitting there--not moving. +How stupid!" exclaimed Miss Eva impatiently. + +"I do declare, I believe he's fallen asleep," said Miss Nellie. + +Freddy was not asleep. He had only to close his eyes and it would all +come back to him. Memories that he could not put into words, +sensations without definite thought, crowded in upon him. The +smell--the thick smell of grease paint, choking powder, dust, gas, old +walls, bodies, and breath, and sharp perfume; the sickening, +delicious, stale, enchanting, never-to-be-forgotten odour of the +theatre; the nerves' sudden tension at the cry of "Ov-a-chure"; their +tingling as the jaded music blares; the lift of the heart as the +curtain rises; the catch in the throat as Florette runs on to do her +turn. + +Florette was a performer on the trapeze in vaudeville. Her figure was +perfect from the strenuous daily exercise. She was small, young, and a +shade too blonde. First she appeared in a sort of blue evening dress, +except that it was shorter even than a d butante's. She ran out +quickly from the wings, bowed excessively, smiled appealingly, and, +skipping over to the trapeze, seized the two iron rings that hung from +ropes. Lifting her own weight by the strength in her slender wrists, +she flung her legs upward and hooked her knees into the rings. Then +hanging head downward she swung back and forth; flung herself upright +again, sat and swung; climbed to the topmost bar of the trapeze and +hung down again. Her partner ran on and repeated her monkeylike +manoeuvres. Then Florette held his hands while he swung upside down, +he held Florette while she swung upside down. They turned head over +heels, over and over each other, up and down, catching and slipping, +and adjusting their balance, in time to gay tunes. + +Sometimes the audience clapped. Sometimes they were too familiar with +their kind of flirtation with death to clap. Then Florette and her +partner would invent something a little more daring. They would learn +to balance themselves on chairs tilted on two legs on the trapeze, or +Florette would hang by only one hand, or she would support her partner +by a strap held in her teeth. Sometimes Florette's risks were great +enough to thrill the audience with the thought of death. + +The thought of a slip, broken bones, delighted the safe people in +comfortable chairs. They laughed. Florette laughed, too, for Freddy +was waiting in the wings. + +There were mothers in the audience who cooked and mended, swept and +dusted, ran up and down innumerable stairs, washed greasy dishes, wore +ugly house dresses, slaved and scolded and got chapped hands, all for +their children. Florette, always dainty and pretty, had nothing to do +but airily, gracefully swing, and smile. Other mothers spent their +lives for their little boys. Florette only risked hers twice a day. + +While the partner played an accordion Florette ran out for her quick +change. Freddy was waiting, with her dress hung over a chair. He flew +to meet her. His eager, nimble fingers unfastened the blue frock. He +slipped the next costume over her head without mussing a single +beloved blonde hair. The second costume was a tight-fitting silver +bodice with a fluff of green skirt underneath. Freddy had it fastened +up in a twinkling. Florette ran out again and pulled herself up into +the trapeze. + +While Florette went through the second part of her act Freddy folded +up the blue costume and trudged upstairs with it. Florette's dressing +room was usually up four flights. Freddy put the blue dress on a coat +hanger and wrapped a muslin cover about it. Then he trudged down the +four flights again, with the third costume over his arm. It was a +Chinese jacket and a pair of tight, short blue satin trousers, and +Freddy was very proud of this confection. He stood as a screen for +Florette while she put on the trousers, and there are not many little +boys who have a mamma who could look so pretty in them. + +Florette skipped out lightly and finished her act by swinging far out +over the audience, back and forth, faster and faster, farther and +farther out, until it seemed as if she were going to fling herself +into the lap of some middle-aged gentleman in the third row. His wife +invariably murmured something about a hussy as Florette's pretty bare +legs flashed overhead. The music played louder, ended with a boom from +the drum. Florette flung herself upright, kissed her hands, the +curtain fell, and the barelegged hussy ran up to the dressing room +where her little son waited. + +Freddy had already hung up and shrouded the silver-and-green costume, +and was waiting for the Chinese one. He pounced upon it, muttered +about some wrinkles, put it into place, and went to the dressing table +to hand Florette the cold cream. He found her make-up towel, all caked +with red and blue, which she had flung down on the floor. He patted +her highly glittering hair and adjusted a pin. He marshalled the jars +and little pans and sticks of grease paint on her shelf into an +orderly row and blew off the deep layers of powder she had scattered. +Then he took down her street dress from its hook and slipped it deftly +over her shoulders and had it buttoned up before Florette could yawn. +He handed her her saucy bright hat. He flung himself into his own +coat. + +"Well, le's go, Florette!" cried Freddy gayly, with dancing eyes. He +had never called her mamma. She was too little and cute. + +Then they would go to the hotel, never the best, where they were +stopping. The room with its greenish light, its soiled lace curtains, +the water pitcher always cracked, the bed always lumpy, the sheets +always damp, was home to Freddy. Florette made it warm and cozy even +when there was no heat in the radiator. She had all sorts of clever +home-making tricks. She toasted marshmallows over the gas jet; she +spread a shawl on the trunk; or she surprised Freddy by pinning +pictures out of the funny page on the wall. She could make the nicest +tea on a little alcohol stove she carried in her trunk. There was +always a little feast after the theatre on the table that invariably +wabbled. Freddy would pretend that the foot of the iron bed was a +trapeze. How they laughed. On freezing nights in Maine or Minnesota, +Florette would let Freddy warm his feet against hers, or she would get +up and spread her coat that looked just like fur over the bed. + +When they struck a new town at the beginning of each week Freddy and +Florette would go bumming and see all the sights, whether it was +Niagara Falls or just the new Methodist Church in Cedar Rapids. Freddy +would have been sorry for little boys who had to stay in one home all +the time--that is, if he had known anything at all about them. But the +life of the strolling player was all that he had ever known, and he +found it delightful, except for the dreaded intervals of "bookin' the +ac'." + +The dream of every vaudevillian is to be booked for fifty-two unbroken +weeks in the year, but few attain such popularity. Florette's seasons +were sometimes long, sometimes short; but there always came the +tedious worrying intervals when managers and agents must be besought +for work. Perhaps she would find that people were tired of her old +tricks, and she would have to rehearse new ones, or interpolate new +songs and gags. Then the new act would be tried out at some obscure +vaudeville house, and if it didn't go the rehearsals and trampings to +agents must begin all over again. Freddy shared the anxieties and +hardships of these times. But the only hardship he really minded was +the loss of Florette, for of course the pretty Miss Le Fay, who was +only nineteen on the agents' books, could not appear on Broadway with +a great big boy like Freddy. + +However, the bad times always ended, and Florette and Freddy would set +out gayly once more for Oshkosh or Atlanta, Dallas or Des Moines. +Meals expanded, Florette bought a rhinestone-covered comb, and the two +adventurers indulged in an orgy of chocolate drops. With the optimism +of the actor, they forgot all about the dismal past weeks, and saw the +new tour as never ending. + +Freddy felt himself once more a real and important human being with a +place in the sun, not just a child to be shushed by a dingy landlady +while his mother was out looking for a job. He knew that he was as +necessary a part of Florette's act as her make-up box. He believed +himself to be as necessary a part of her life as the heart in her +breast, for Florette lavished all her beauty, all her sweetness on +him. No Johns for Florette, pretty and blonde though she was. To the +contempt of her contemporaries Florette refused every chance for a +free meal. Freddy was her sweetheart, her man. She had showered so +many pretty love words on him, she had assured him so often that he +was all in the world she wanted, that Freddy was stunned one day to +hear that he was to have a papa. + +"I don' wan' one," said Freddy flatly. "I ain't never had one, an' I +ain't got no use for one." + +Florette looked cross--an unusual thing. + +"Aw, now, Freddy, don't be a grouch," she said. + +"I don' wan' one," repeated Freddy. + +"You ought to be glad to get a papa!" cried Florette. + +"Why?" + +"Makes you respectable." + +"What's that?" + +"Who'd believe I was a widow--in this profession?" + +Freddy still looked blank. + +"Well," said Florette, "you're goin' to get a nice papa, so there +now!" + +Then the cruel truth dawned on Freddy. It was Florette who wanted a +papa. He had not been enough for her. In some way Florette had found +him lacking. + +Tactfully, Freddy dropped the subject of papas, wooed Florette, and +tried to atone for his shortcomings. He redoubled his compliments, +trotted out all the love words he knew, coaxed Florette with +everything she liked best in him. He even offered to have his nails +filed. At night, in bed, he kissed Florette's bare back between the +shoulder blades, and snuggled close to her, hugging her desperately +with his little thin arms. + +"Flo," he quavered, "you--you ain't lonesome no more, are you?" + +"Me? Lonesome? Whatcher talkin' about, kid?" sleepily murmured +Florette. + +"You ain't never lonesome when you got me around, are you, Flo?" + +"Sure I ain't. Go to sleep, honey." + +"But, Florette----" + +Florette was dozing. + +"Oh, Florette! Florette!" + +"Florette, if you ain't lonesome----" + +"Sh-h-h, now, sh-h-h! Le's go to sleep." + +"But, Florette, you don' wan'--you don' wan'--a pop----" + +"Sh-h-h! Sh-h-h! I'm so tired, honey." + +Florette slept. Freddy lay awake, but he lay still so as not to +disturb her. His arms ached, but he dared not let her go. Finally he +slept, and dreamed of a world in which there was no Florette. He +shuddered and kicked his mother. She gave him a little impatient +shove. He woke. Day was dawning. It was Florette's wedding day. Freddy +did not know it until Florette put on her best coral-velvet hat with +the jet things dangling over her ears. + +"You ain' gonna wear that hat," said Freddy severely. "It's rainin'." + +"Yeah, I'm gonna wear this hat," said Florette, pulling her blonde +earbobs into greater prominence. "An' you put on your best suit an' +new necktie. We're goin' to a weddin'." + +Her tone was gay, arch, her eyes were happy. + +"Who--whose?" Freddy faltered. + +"Mine!" chirped Florette. "I'm goin' to get you that papa I promised +you." + +Freddy turned away. + +"Sulkin'!" chided Florette. "Naughty, jealous boy!" + +The new papa did not appear so formidable as Freddy had expected. In +fact, he turned out to be only Howard, Florette's acrobatic partner. +Freddy philosophically reflected that if one must have a new papa, far +better so to call Howard, who necessarily encroached on Florette's +time, than a stranger who might take up some of her leisure hours. + +But Freddy received a distinct shock when the new papa joined them +after the evening performance and accompanied them up to their room. + +Freddy had always regarded Florette's room as his, too. He felt that +the new papa was an intruder in their home. Alas! It soon became all +too apparent that it was Freddy who was _de trop_, or, as he would +have expressed it, a Mister Buttinski. + +They were having a little supper of pickles and cheese and liver +sausage and jam. Florette and the papa drank out of a bottle by turns +and laughed a great deal. Florette seemed to think the papa very +clever and funny. She laughed at everything he said. She looked at him +with shining eyes. She squeezed his hand under the table. Freddy tried +in vain to attract her attention. Finally he gave up and sat staring +at the oblivious couple with a stupid expression. + +"That kid's half asleep," said the new papa. + +Florette looked at Freddy and was annoyed by his vacant eyes. + +"Go to bed right away," she commanded. + +Freddy looked at her in amazement. + +"Ain't you goin', too, Florette?" he asked. + +"No, you go on--go to sleep." + +"Git into that nice li'l cot an' go by-by," said the new papa +genially. + +Freddy had not seen the cot before. It had been moved in during his +absence at the theatre, and stood white, narrow, and lonely, partly +concealed by a screen. + +"I--I always slep' with Florette," faltered Freddy. + +This seemed to amuse the new papa. But Florette flushed and looked +annoyed. + +"Now, Freddy, are you goin' to be a grouch?" she wailed. + +Freddy was kissed good-night, and went to sleep in the cot. He found +it cold and unfriendly. But habit, the much maligned, is kind as well +as cruel; if it can accustom us to evil, so can it soften pain. Freddy +was beginning to assume proprietary airs toward the cot, which +appeared in every town, and even to express views as to the relative +values of cots in Springfield, Akron, or Joliet--when one night he +woke to hear Florette sobbing. + +Freddy lay awake listening. He had sobbed, too, when he was first +banished to the cot. Was Florette missing him as he had missed her? +Ah, if she at last had seen that papas were not half so nice as +Freddy's, he would not be hard on her. His heart swelled with +forgiveness and love. He stole on tiptoe to Florette's bedside. + +"Flo," he whispered. + +The sobbing ceased. Florette held her breath and pretended to be +asleep. Freddy wriggled his little thin body under the covers and +threw his arms around Florette. With a gulp, she turned and threw her +arms around him. They clasped each other tight and clung without +speaking. They lay on the edge of the bed, holding their breath in +order not to wake the papa who snored loudly. Freddy's cheeks and hair +were wet, a cold tear trickled down his neck, his body ached from the +hard edge of the bed; but he was happy, as only a child or a lover can +be, and Freddy was both. + +In the morning the papa was cross. He did not seem to care for his own +breakfast, but concentrated his attention on Freddy's. Freddy had +always been accustomed to a nice breakfast of tea and toast and jam, +but Howard insisted on ordering oatmeal for him. + +"Naw, Freddy can't stand oatmeal," Florette objected. + +"It's good for him," said Howard, staring severely at his son across +the white-topped restaurant table. + +"I don' see no use forcin' a person to eat what they can't stomach," +said Florette. + +"Yeah, tha's the way you've always spoiled that kid. Look a' them pale +cheeks! Li'l ole pale face!" Howard taunted, stretching a teasing hand +toward Freddy. "Mamma's boy! Reg'lar sissy, he is!" + +He gave Freddy a poke in the ribs. Freddy shrank back, made himself as +small as possible in his chair, looked mutely at Florette. + +"Aw, cut it out, Howard," she begged. "Quit raggin' the kid, can't +you?" + +"Mamma's blessed sugar lump!" jeered Howard, with an ugly gleam in his +eye. "Ought to wear a bib with pink ribbons, so he ought. Gimme a +nursin' bottle for the baby, waiter!" + +The impertinence of this person amazed Freddy. He could only look at +his tormentor speechlessly. Freddy and Florette had been such great +chums that she had never used the maternal prerogative of rudeness. He +had never had any home life, so he was unaware of the coolness with +which members of a family can insult one another. Howard's tones, +never low, were unusually loud this morning, and people turned around +to laugh at the blushing child. The greasy waiter grinned and set the +oatmeal which Howard had ordered before Freddy. + +"Now, then, young man," commanded Howard sternly, "you eat that, and +you eat it quick!" + +Freddy obeyed literally, swallowing as fast as he could, with painful +gasps and gulps, fighting to keep the tears back. Florette reached +under the table and silently squeezed his knee. He flashed her a smile +and swallowed a huge slimy mouthful. + +"You ain't eatin' nothin' yourse'f, Howard," said Florette acidly. +"W'y don' you have some oatmeal?" + +"Tha's right!" shouted Howard. "Side with the kid against me! Tha's +all the thanks I get for tryin' to make a man out o' the li'l sissy. +Oughta known better'n to marry a woman with a spoiled brat." + +"Sh-h-h!" whispered Florette. "Don't tell the whole resterunt about +your fam'ly troubles." + +"Say," hissed Howard, bending down toward her and thrusting out his +jaw, "lay off o' me, will yer?" + +"Lay off yourse'f!" retorted Florette under her breath. "If you wanna +fight le's go back to the hotel where it's private." + +"I don' min' tellin' the world I bin stung!" roared Howard. + +Florette flushed up to the slightly darker roots of her too-blonde +hair. + +"You?" she gasped furiously. "After all I've put up with!" + +"Say, you ain't got any kick comin'! I treated you white, marryin' +you, an' no questions asked." + +"What-ta you mean?" breathed Florette, growing deathly pale. + +Freddy, alarmed, half rose from his chair. + +"Sit down there you!" roared Howard. "What-ta I mean, Miss Innocence?" +he said, mimicking Florette's tone. "Oh, no, of course you ain't no +idea of what I mean!" + +"Come on, Freddy," Florette broke in quickly. "It's a katzenjammer. He +ain't got over last night yet." + +She seized Freddy's hand and walked rapidly toward the door. Howard +lurched after her, followed by the interested stares of the +spectators. On the street he caught up with her and the quarrel +recommenced. + +The act went badly that afternoon. It must be hard to frolic in midair +with a heavy heart. Under cover of the gay music there were angry +muttered words and reproaches. + +"Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!" Florette would trill happily to the audience as +she poised on one toe. "What-ta you tryin' to do--shake me off'n the +bar?" she would mutter under her breath to her partner. + +"That's right! Leggo o' me an' lemme bus' my bean, damn you!" snarled +Howard. And to the audience he sang, "Oh, ain't it great to have a +little girlie you can trust for--life!" + +They were still muttering angrily as they came off. The handclapping +had been faint. + +"Aw, for God's sake, stop your jawin'!" half screamed Florette. "It +ain't no more my fault than it is yours. If they don' like us they +don' like us, tha's all." + +She ran up the stairs, sobbing. Howard followed her. They shared a +dressing room now. It was small, and Freddy was in the way, although +he tried to squeeze himself into the corner by the dingy stationary +washstand. Howard shoved Freddy. Florette protested. The quarrelling +broke out afresh. Howard tipped over a bottle of liquid white. +Florette screamed at him, and he raised his fist. Freddy darted out of +his corner. + +"Say, ya big stiff, cut out that rough stuff, see?" cried little +Freddy in the only language of chivalry that he knew. + +Howard whirled upon him furiously, calling him a name that Freddy did +not understand, but Florette flung herself between them and caught the +blow. + + * * * * * + +"He certainly looks as if he had fallen asleep," Miss Nellie Blair +repeated. "Better run out and get him, Mary. He might tumble off the +wall." + +As Mary went out a maid came in. + +"A gen'l'mun to see you, Miss Blair," she announced. + +"Is it a parent?" asked Miss Nellie. + +The maid's eyebrows twitched, and she looked faintly grieved, as all +good servants do when they are forced to consider someone whom they +cannot acknowledge as their superior. + +"No, ma'am, he doesn't look like a parent," she complained. + +"He really is a very queer-lookin' sort of person, ma'am. I wouldn't +know exactly where to place him. Shall I say you are out, ma'am?" + +"Yes," said Miss Eva. "No doubt he wants to sell an encyclopedia." + +"No, let him come in," said Miss Nellie. "It might be a reporter about +Madame d'Avala," she added, turning to her sister. "Sometimes they +look queer." + +"If it turns out to be an encyclopedia I shall leave you at once," +said Miss Eva. "You are so kind-hearted that you will look through +twenty-four volumes, and miss your dinner----" + +But the gentleman who came in carried no books, nor did he look like +one who had ever been associated with them. Carefully dressed in the +very worst of taste from his scarfpin to his boots, he had evidently +just been too carefully shaved, for there were scratches on his wide, +ludicrous face, and his smile was as rueful as a clown's. + +"The Misses Blair, I presume?" he asked in what was unmistakably his +society manner, and he held out a card. + +Miss Eva took it and read aloud, "Mr. Bert Brannigan, Brannigan and +Bowers, Black-Face Comedians." + +"Ah?" murmured Miss Nellie, who was always polite even in the most +trying circumstances. + +But Miss Eva could only stare at the rich brown suit, the lavender tie +and matching socks and handkerchief. + +"Well?" said Miss Eva. + +Mr. Brannigan cleared his throat and looked cautiously about the room. +His heavy, clownlike face was troubled. + +"Where's the kid?" he asked in a hoarse whisper. + +"What child?" Miss Eva snapped. + +"You've come to see one of our pupils?" Miss Nellie faltered. + +"Yeah. Hers." + +"Hers?" + +"W'y, Miss Le Fay's li'l boy." + +"Oh, Freddy?" + +"Sure! Does he--he don't--you ain't tole 'im yet, have you?" + +"Told him what?" + +"My God! don't you know?" + +Bert Brannigan stared at the ladies, mopping his brow with the +lavender handkerchief. + +"Please explain yourself, Mr. Brannigan," said Miss Eva. + +"She's dead. I thought you knew." + +"Miss Le Fay is dead?" gasped Miss Nellie. + +"Why weren't we told?" asked Miss Eva. + +"It was in the papers," said Bert. "But they didn't give Florette no +front-page headlines, an' maybe you don't read the theatrical news." + +"No," said Miss Eva. + +"Well, not bein' in the profession," Mr. Brannigan said as if he were +apologizing for her. + +He sat down and continued to mop his brow mechanically. The two +sisters stared in dismay at the clown who had brought bad news. + +"W'at I don' know is how to tell the kid," said Bert. "He was nutty +about Florette; didn't give a darn for no one else. I bin on the bill +with them two lots of times, an' I seen how it was. The money ain't +goin' to be no comfort to that kid!" + +"The money?" + +"Florette's insurance--made out to him. Tha's w'y I come. She wan'ed +him to stay on here, see, till he was all educated. They's enough, +too. She was always insured heavy for the kid. They's some back money +comin' to you, too. She tole me. The reason w'y she didn't sen' it on +was because she was out of luck an' broke, see?" + +"But why didn't Miss Le Fay write to us?" asked Miss Nellie. "If she +was in difficulties we----" + +"Naw, Florette wasn' that kind; nev' put up any hard-luck story y' +un'erstan'. But she'd bin outa work, sick. An' w'en she come back it +looked like her ac' was a frost. I run up on her in K.C., an'----" + +"What is K.C.?" + +"Why, Kansas City! We was on the bill there two weeks ago. Me an' +Florette was ole friends, see? No foolishness, if you know what I +mean. I'm a married man myse'f--Bowers there on the card's my +wife--but me an' Florette met about five years ago, an' kep' on +runnin' on to one another on the bill, first one place an' then +another. So she was glad to see me again, an' me her. 'W'y, w'ere's +Freddy?' I says, first thing. An' then I never seen any person's face +look so sad. But she begun tellin' me right off w'at a fine place the +kid was at, an' how the theayter wasn't no place for a chile. An' she +says, 'Bert, I wan' him to stay w'ere he's happy an' safe,' she says. +'Even if I nev' see him again,' she says. Well, it give me the shivers +then. Psychic, I guess." + +Bert paused, staring into space. + +"And then?" Miss Nellie asked gently. + +"Well, like I was tellin' you, Florette had been playin' in hard luck. +Now I don' know whether you ladies know anything about the vodvil +game. Some ac's is booked out through the circuit from N' Yawk; others +is booked up by some li'l fly-by-night agent, gettin' a date here an' +a date there, terrible jumps between stands, see?--and nev' knowin' +one week where you're goin' the nex', or whether at all. Well, +Florette was gettin' her bookin' that way. An' on that you gotta make +good with each house you play, get me? An' somethin' had went wrong +with the ac' since I seen it las'. It useter be A Number I, y' +un'erstan', but looked like Florette had lost int'rust or somethin'. +She didn't put no pep into it, if you know what I mean. An' vodvil's +gotta be all pep. Then, too, her an' that partner of hers jawin' all +the time somethin' fierce. I could hear him raggin' her that af'noon, +an' me standin' in the wings, an' they slipped up on some of their +tricks terrible, an' the audience laughed. But not with 'em, at 'em, +y' un'erstan'! Well, so the ac' was a fros', an' they was cancelled." + +"Cancelled?" + +"Fired, I guess you'd call it. They was to play again that night an' +then move on, see?" + +"Oh, yes." + +"An' they didn't have no bookin' ahead. Florette come an' talked to me +again, an' she says again she wanted Freddy to be happy, an' git a +better start'n she'd had an' all. 'An,' Bert,' she says, 'if anything +ev' happens to me, you go an' give 'um the money for Freddy,' she +says." + +"Poor thing! Perhaps she had a premonition of her death," murmured +Miss Nellie. + +Bert gave her a queer look. + +"Yeah--yes, ma'am, p'raps so. I was watchin' her from the wings that +night," he went on. "The ac' was almos' over, an' I couldn't see +nothin' wrong. Howard had run off an' Florette was standin' up on the +trapeze kissin' her ban's like she always done at the finish. But all +of a sudden she sort of trem'led an' turned ha'f way roun' like she +couldn't make up her min' what to do, an' los' her balance, an' caught +holt of a rope--an' let go--an' fell." + +Miss Nellie covered her face with her hands. Miss Eva turned away to +the window. + +"She was dead w'en I got to her," said Bert. + +"Be careful!" said Miss Eva sharply. "The child is coming in." + +"Freddy wasn't asleep at all," said Mary, opening the door. "He was +just playing a game, but he won't tell me----Oh, I beg your pardon! I +didn't know any one was here." + +Freddy had stopped round-eyed, open-mouthed with incredulous delight. + +"Bert!" he gasped. "The son of a gun!" + +"Freddy!" cried the Misses Blair. + +But Bert held out his arms and Freddy ran into them. + +"Gee, Bert, I'm glad to see ya!" rejoiced Freddy. + +"Me, too, kid, glad to see you! How's the boy, huh? Gettin' educated, +huh? Swell school, ain't it?" babbled Bert, fighting for time. + +"Aw, it's all right, I guess," Freddy replied listlessly, glancing at +the Misses Blair. Then turning again with eager interest to Bert, "But +say, Bert, what in the hell a----I mean what-ta you doin' here?" + +"Why--ah--ah--jus' stoppin' by to say howdy, see, an'----" + +"Playin'in N'Yawk?" + +"No." + +"Jus'come in?" + +"Yeah." + +Freddy drew his breath in quickly. + +"Say, Bert, you--you ain't seen Florette anywheres?" + +"Why, ye-yeah." + +"Where is she, Bert?" + +There was a deathly hush. + +Then Miss Eva motioned to Miss Nellie and said, "If you will excuse +us, Mr. Brannigan, we have some arrangements to make about the concert +to-night. Madame d'Avala is to sing in the school auditorium, a +benefit performance," and she went out, followed by her sister and +niece. + +"Where's Florette?" Freddy asked again, his voice trembling with +eagerness. + +"I--seen her in K.C., sonny." + +"How's the ac'?" + +"Fine! Fine! Great!" + +"No kiddin'?" + +"No kiddin'." + +"Florette--all right?" + +"Why, what made you think any different?" + +"Who hooks her up now, Bert?" + +"She hires the dresser at the theatre." + +"I could 'a' kep' on doin' it," said Freddy, with a sigh. + +"Aw, now, kid, it's better for you here, gettin' educated an' all." + +"I don't like it, Bert." + +"You don't like it?" + +"Naw." + +"You don't like it! After all she done!" + +"I hate this ole school. I wanna leave. You tell Florette." + +"Aw, now, Freddy----" + +"I'm lonesome. I don't like nobody here." His voice dropped. "An'--an' +they don't like me." + +"Aw, now, Freddy----" + +"Maybe Miss Mary does. But Miss Eva don't. Anyway, I ain't no use to +anybody here. What's the sense of stayin' where you ain't no use? An' +they're always callin' me down. I don't do nothin' right. I can't even +talk so's they'll like it. Florette liked the way I talked all right. +An' you get what I mean, don't you, Bert? But they don't know nothin'. +Why, they don't know nothin', Bert! Why, there's one boy ain't ever +been inside a theatre! What-ta you know about that, Bert? Gee, Bert, +I'm awful glad you come! I'd 'a' bust not havin' somebody to talk to." + +Bert was silent. He still held Freddy in his arms. His heart reeled at +the thought of what he must tell the child. He cleared his throat, +opened his mouth to speak, but the words would not come. + +Freddy chattered on, loosing the flood gates of his accumulated +loneliness. He told how Florette had bidden him "learn to be a li'l +gem'mum," and how he really tried; but how silly were the rules that +governed a gentlemanly existence; how the other li'l gem'mum laughed +at him, and talked of things he had never heard of, and never heard of +the things he talked of, until at last he had ceased trying to be one +of them. + +"You tell Florette I gotta leave this place," he concluded firmly. +"Bert, now you tell Florette. Will you, Bert? Huh?" + +"Freddy--I----Freddy, lissen now. I got somethin' to tell you." + +"What?" + +"I--I come on to tell you, Freddy. Tha's why I come out to tell you, +see?" + +"Well, spit it out," Freddy laughed. + +Bert groaned. + +"Whassa matter, Bert? What's eatin' you?" + +"I--I----Say, Freddy, lissen--lissen, now, Freddy. I----" + +"Florette! She ain't sick? Bert, is Florette sick?" + +"No! No, I----" + +"You tell me, Bert! If it's bad news about Florette----" + +His voice died out. His face grew white. Bert could not meet his eyes. + +"No, no, now, Freddy," Bert mumbled, turning away his head. "You got +me all wrong. It--it's good news, sonny." + +Like a flash Freddy's face cleared. + +"What about, Bert? Good news about what?" + +"Why--ah--why, the ac's goin' big, like I tole you. An'--an' say, boy, +out at one place--out at K.C., it--why, it stopped the show!" + +"Stopped the show!" breathed Freddy in awe. "Oh, Bert, we never done +that before!" + +"An' so--so she--ah, Florette--y'see, kid, account of the ac' goin' so +big, why, she--has to--go away--for a little while." + +"Go away, Bert! Where?" + +"To--to--Englund, an'--Australia." + +"To Englund, an'--Australia?" + +"Yeah, they booked her up 'count o' the ac' goin' so great." + +"Oh, Bert!" + +"Yeah. An' lissen. She's booked for fifty-two weeks solid!" + +"Fifty-two weeks! Oh, Bert, that ain't never happened to us before!" + +"I know. It's--great!" + +Bert blew out his breath loudly, mopped his forehead. He could look at +Freddy now, and he saw a face all aglow with love and pride. + +"When she comin' to get me, Bert?" the child asked confidently. + +"Why--why, Freddy--now--you---" + +Bert could only flounder and look dismayed. + +"She ain't goin' off an' leave me!" wailed the child. + +"Now, lissen! Say, wait a minute! Lissen!" + +"But, Bert! Bert! She--" + +"Say, don't you wanna help Florette, now she's got this gran' bookin' +an' all?" + +"Sure I do, Bert. I wanna he'p her with her quick changes like I +useter." + +"You he'p her! Say, how would that look in all them swell places she's +goin' to? W'y, she'll have a maid!" + +"Like the headliners, Bert?" + +"Sure!" + +"A coon, Bert?" + +"Sure! Like a li'l musical com'dy star." + +"Honest?" + +"Honest!" + +"But, Bert, w'y can't I go, too?" + +"Aw, now, say--w'y--w'y, you're too big!" + +"What-ta y' mean, Bert?" + +"W'y, kid, you talk's if you never bin in the p'fession. How ole does +Miss Le Fay look? Nineteen, tha's all. But with a great big boy like +you taggin' on--W'y, say, you'd queer her with them English managers +right off. You don' wanna do that now, Freddy?" + +"No, but I--" + +"I knew you'd take it sensible. You always bin a lot of help to +Florette." + +"Did she tell you, Bert?" + +"Sure!" + +"A' right. I'll stay. When--when's she comin' to tell me goo'-by?" + +"Why--why--look-a-here. Brace up, ole man. She had to leave a'ready." + +"She's gone?" + +"Say, you don' think bookin' like that can wait, do you? It was take +it or leave it--quick. You didn't wan' her to throw away a chancet +like that, huh, Freddy? Huh?" + +Freddy's head sank on his chest. His hands fell limp. "A' right," he +murmured without looking up. + +The big man bent over the child clumsily and tried to raise his +quivering chin. + +"Aw, now, Freddy," he coaxed, "wanna come out with me an'--an' have a +soda?" + +Freddy shook his head. + +"Buy ya some candy, too. Choc'late drops! An' how about one o' them +li'l airyplane toys I seen in the window down the street? Huh? Or some +marbles? Huh? Freddy, le's go buy out this here dinky li'l ole town. +What-ta ya say, huh? Le's paint this li'l ole town red! What-ta ya +say, sport?" + +Freddy managed a feeble smile. + +"How come you so flush, Brudder Johnsing?" he asked in what he +considered an imitation of darky talk. "Mus' 'a' bin rollin' dem +bones!" + +"Tha's a boy!" shouted Bert with a great guffaw. "There's a comeback +for you! Game! Tha's what I always liked about you, Freddy. You was +always game." + +"I wanna be game!" said Freddy, stiffening his lips. "You tell +Florette. You write to her I was game. Will ya, Bert?" + +A bell rang. + +"Aw, I gotta go dress for supper, Bert. They dress up for supper +here." + +"A' right, kid. Then I'll be goin'----" + +"Goo'-by, Bert. You tell her, Bert." + +"So long, kid." + +"Will ya tell her I was game, Bert?" + +"Aw, she'll know!" + +Madame Margarita d'Avala found herself in a situation all the more +annoying because it was so absurd. She had promised to sing at the +Misses Blair's School for the benefit of a popular charity, and she +had motored out from New York, leaving her maid to do some errands and +to follow by train. But it was eight o'clock and the great Madame +d'Avala found herself alone in the prim guest room of the Misses +Blair's School, with her bag and dressing case, to be sure, but with +no one to help her into the complicated draperies of her gown. There +was no bell. She could not very well run down the corridor, half nude, +shouting for help, especially as she had no idea of where the Misses +Blair kept either themselves or their servants. The Misses Blair had +been so fatiguingly polite on her arrival. Perhaps she had been a +little abrupt in refusing their many offers of service and saying that +she wanted to rest quite alone. Now, of course, they were afraid to +come near her. And, besides, they would think that her maid was with +her by this time. They had given orders to have Madame d'Avala's maid +shown up to her as soon as she arrived, and of course their maid would +be too stupid to know that Madame d'Avala's maid had never come. + +Margarita d'Avala bit her lips and paced the floor, looked out of the +window, opened the door, but there was no one in sight. Well, no help +for it. She must try to get into the gown alone. She stepped into it +and became entangled in the lace; stepped out again, shook the dress +angrily and pushed it on over her head, giving a little impatient +scream as she rumpled her hair. Then she reached up and back, +straining her arms to push the top snap of the corsage into place. But +with the quiet glee of inanimate things the snap immediately snapped +out again. Flushing, Madame d'Avala repeated her performance, and the +snap repeated its. Madame d'Avala stamped both feet and gave a little +gasp of rage. She attacked the belt with no better luck. Chiffon and +lace became entangled in hooks, snaps flew out as fast as she could +push them in. Her arms ached, and the dress assumed strange humpy +outlines as she fastened it up all wrong. + +She would like to rip the cursed thing from her shoulders and tear it +into a million pieces! She felt hysteria sweeping over her. She knew +that she was going to have one of her famous fits of temper in a +minute. + +"Oh! Oh! Oh!" Madame d'Avala screamed aloud, stamping her feet up and +down as fast as they could go. "Oh! Oh! Oh! Damn! Damn! Damn!" + +She did not swear in Italian, because she was not an Italian except by +profession. Her name had been Maggie Davis, but that was a secret +between herself and her press agent. + +"Oh! Damn!" screamed Madame d'Avala again. + +"Ain't it hell?" remarked an interested voice, and Madame d'Avala saw +a small pale face staring at her through the door which she had left +ajar. + +"Come in!" she ordered, and a small thin boy entered, quite unabashed, +looking at her with an air of complete understanding. + +"Who are you?" asked Madame d'Avala. + +"Freddy." + +"Well, Freddy, run at once and find a maid for me, please. Mine hasn't +come, and I'm frantic, simply frantic. Well, why don't you go?" + +"I'll hook you up," said Freddy. + +"You!" + +"Sure! I kin do it better'n any maid you'd get in this helluva +school." + +"Why, Freddy!" + +"Aw, I heard you sayin' damn! You're in the p'fession, +huh? Me, too." + +"You, too?" + +His face clouded. + +"Oh! And now--you have retired?" + +"Yeah--learnin' to be a gem'mum. Lemme there," said Freddy, stepping +behind Madame d'Avala. "Say, you've got it all started wrong." He +attacked the stubborn hooks with light, deft fingers. + +"Why, you can really do it!" cried Madame d'Avala. + +"Sure! This ain't nothin'." Freddy's fingers flew. + +"Careful of that drapery. It's tricky." + +"Say, drapery's pie to me. I fastened up lots harder dresses than +this." + +"Really?" + +"Sure! Florette had swell clo'es. This'n's swell, too. My! ain't it +great to see a classy gown again!" + +Madame d'Avala laughed and Freddy joined her. + +"Say, you seen the teachers at this school?" he asked. "You seen 'em?" + +Madame d'Avala nodded. + +"Nice ladies," said Freddy in an effort to be fair. "But no class--you +know what I mean. Way they slick their hair back, an' no paint or +powder. Gee, Florette wouldn't wear their clo'es to a dog fight!" + +"Nor I," said Madame d'Avala; "I love dogs." + +"I tole Miss Eva she ought to put peroxide in the rinsin' water for +her hair like Florette useter, but it made her mad. I b'lieve in a +woman fixin' herself up all she can, don't you?" asked Freddy +earnestly. + +"Indeed, I do! But tell me, who is Florette?" + +So Freddy told her all about his mother, and about the good fortune +that had come to her. + +"Fifty-two weeks solid! Some ac' to get that kinda bookin, huh?" he +ended. + +"Yes! Oh, yes, indeed!" + +"There y'ah now! Look at youse'f! See if it's a'right." + +Madame d'Avala turned to the mirror. Her gown fell in serene, lovely +folds. It seemed incredible that it was the little demon of a few +minutes before. + +"Perfect! Freddy, you're a wonder. How can I thank you?" + +"Tha's a'right. You're welcome." + +He was regarding her with worshipful eyes. + +"You're awful pretty," he breathed. + +"Thank you," said Madame d'Avala. "Are you coming to my concert?" + +"No, they put us to bed!" cried Freddy in disgust. "Puttin' me to bed +at 8:30 every night! What-ta y' know about that! Jus' w'en the +orchestra would be tunin' up for the evenin' p'formance." + +"What a shame! I'd like to have you see my act." + +"I bet it's great. You got the looks, too. Tha's what it takes in this +p'fession. Make a quick change?" + +"No, I wear the same dress all through." + +"Oh! Well," he sighed deeply--"well, it's been great to see you, +anyway. Goo'-bye." + +The great lady bent down to him and kissed his forehead. + +"Good-bye, Freddy," she said. "You've helped me so much." + +Freddy drew in a long breath. + +"M-m," he sighed, "you know how I come to peek in your door like +that?" + +"Because you heard me screaming 'damn'?" + +"No, before that. Comin' all the way down the hall I could smell it. +Smelled so nice. Don't none of these ladies use perfume. I jus' knew +somebody I'd like was in here soon's I got that smell." + +"Oh, Freddy, I like you, too! But I've got to hurry now. Good-bye. And +thanks so much, dear." + +She started out the door. + +"Oh, gee! I can't go to bed!" Freddy wailed. + +"Come along, then!" cried Madame d'Avala, impetuously seizing his +hand. "I'll make them let you go to the concert. They must!" + +They ran down the hall together hand in hand, Freddy directing the way +to the Misses Blair's study. Miss Eva and Miss Nellie and Mary were +there, and they looked at Freddy compassionately. And though Miss Eva +said it was most unusual, Miss Nellie agreed to Madame d'Avala's +request. + +"For," said gentle Miss Nellie, drawing Madame d'Avala aside and +lowering her voice--"for we are very sorry for Freddy now. His +mother----" + +"Oh, yes, she has gone to England." + +"Why, no! She--is dead!" + +"Oh, _mio povero bambino_! And how he adores her!" + +"Yes." + +"And what will he do then?" + +"He can stay on here. But I am afraid he doesn't like us," Miss Nellie +sighed. + +"Has he no one else?" + +"No--that is, a stepfather. But his mother put him here to save him +from the stepfather's abuse, and--and all the coarsening influences of +stage life, if you understand." + +"Ah, yes, I understand," said Madame d'Avala. "And yet I think I +understand the little one, too. He and I--we have the same nature. We +cannot breathe in the too-high altitudes. For us there must be dancing +in the valley, laughter and roses, perfume and sunshine--always +sunshine." + +"Oh--er--yes," replied Miss Nellie, taken aback by this effusiveness, +which she could only explain as being foreign. + +"It's 8:30," said Miss Eva, looking at her watch. + +"Ah, then I must fly," cried Madame d'Avala. + +"Goo'-bye!" said Freddy wistfully. + +"_Au revoir_," said Madame d'Avala, and electrified the Misses Blair +by adding, "See you after the show, kid." + +"I am very lonely, too," said Margarita d'Avala after the +concert--"lonely and sad." + +"You are?" Freddy cried in amazement. Then, practically, "What about?" + +"It's about a man," confessed the lady. + +"Aw, g'wan!" exclaimed Freddy incredulously. "Say," lowering his voice +confidentially, "lemme tell you something! They ain't a man on earth +worth crying for." + +"How did you know?" asked Margarita. + +"Flo--Florette used to say so." Then a cloud passed over his face. +"She used to say so," he added. + +There was a moment's silence, while the lady watched him. Then +Freddy's mobile face cleared, his eyes shone with their old gay +confidence. + +"Say, I'm telln' you!" said Freddy, spreading his feet apart, +thrusting his hands in his pockets. "I ain't got no use for men +a-tall! An' you take my advice--don't bother over 'em!" + +Margarita laughed. She laughed so hard that Freddy had joined her, and +without knowing how, he was by her side, holding on to her hand while +they both rocked with merriment. When they could laugh no more he +snuggled up to the shoulder that smelled so nice. His face became +babyish and wistful. He stroked the satin of the lovely gown with one +timid finger, while his blue eyes implored hers. + +"Ladies an' children is nicest, ain't they?" he appealed. + +Suddenly the great Margarita d'Avala caught him in her arms and drew +him to that warm, beautiful breast where no child's head had ever +rested. + +"Oh, Freddy, Freddy!" she cried. "You are right, and I must have you!" + +"You kin, s' long's Florette's away," said Freddy. + + + +WILD EARTH + +By SOPHIE KERR + +From _Saturday Evening Post_ + + +The big department store so terrified Wesley Dean that he got no +farther than five steps beyond the entrance. Crowds of well-dressed +ladies milling round like cattle, the noise of many feminine voices, +the excessive warmth and the heady odour of powder and perfume--the +toilet goods were grouped very near the door--all combined to bewilder +and frighten him. He got out before the floorwalker of the centre +aisle could so much as ask him what he wanted. + +Once outside he stood in the spring wind and meditated. There must be +other stores in Baltimore, little ones, where a man could buy things +in quiet and decency. Until the four-o'clock motor stage started for +Frederick he had nothing to do. + +He stuck his hands in his pockets and started down the crowded +crookedness of Lexington Street. He reached the market and strolled +through it leisurely, feeling very much at home with the meats and +vegetables and the good country look of many of the stall keepers. Its +size amazed him; but then he'd always heard that Baltimore was a big +city, and so many people must take a lot to eat. He went on, all the +way through, and after a little hesitation struck down a quiet street +to the right. But he saw no shops of the sort he was looking for, and +he had thoughts of going back and braving the big store again. He +turned again and again, pleased by the orderly rows of +red-brick-with-white-trim houses, homey-looking places in spite of +their smallness and close setting. At last, right in the middle of a +row of these, he saw a large window set in place of the two usual +smaller ones, a window filled with unmistakable feminine stuff, and +the sign, small, neatly gilt lettered: Miss Tolman's Ladies' Shop. +Hemstitching Done. + +There wasn't a soul going in or out, so he braved it, and was happier +still when he found himself the sole customer. The opening of the door +made a bell tinkle in a back room. + +A girl came through parted green wool curtains, a girl so +flaxen-haired, with such blue eyes--like a friendly kitten--that +Wesley Dean almost forgot the errand that had brought him so far. + +As for the girl, she was surprised to see a man, and particularly a +young country man, among the gloves and stockings, cheap pink +underthings, and embroideries of Miss Tolman's shop. + +"You got any--any aprons?" he stammered. + +"White aprons or gingham?" The girl's smile helped Wesley a great +deal. A very nice girl, he decided; but she made him feel queer, +light-headed. + +"I'm not sure, ma'am. When I come away from home this morning I asked +Aunt Dolcey did she need anything, and she said 'yes, a couple of +aprons,' but she didn't say what kind." + +The girl thought it over. "I reckon maybe if she's your auntie she'd +want white aprons." + +Her mistake gave him a chance for the conversation which he felt a +most surprising wish to make. + +"No'm, she's not my auntie. She's the old coloured woman keeps house +for me." + +Oh, she was a very nice girl; something about the way she held her +head made Wesley think of his spunky little riding mare, Teeny. + +"H'm. Then I think you'd be safe to get a gingham; anyway, a gingham +apron comes in handy to anybody working round a kitchen. We got some +nice big ones." + +"Aunt Dolcey's not so awful big; not any bigger'n you, but heavier +set, like." + +There is a distinct advance in friendly intimacy when one has one's +size considered in relation to a customer's needs, particularly when +the consideration shows how little a man knows about women's garments. +The girl reached beneath the counter and brought up an armful of +blue-and-white-checked aprons. She unfolded them deftly, and Wesley +saw that she had small strong hands and round wrists. + +"These got bibs and nice long strings, cover you all up while you're +cooking. They're a dollar." + +His gaze, intent on her rather than the aprons, brought her eyes to +his. + +"Good-looking, but country," was her swift appraisal, adding to it, +"And what a funny mark he's got on his forehead." + +It was true. His young hawklike face, tanned brown by sun and wind, +was made strangely grim by a dark vein on his brow, which lent a +frowning shadow to his whole visage. Yet the eyes she had looked into +were shy and gentle and reassuringly full of open admiration. + +"If you think she'll like 'em I'll take two," he said after an +instant's pause. + +"I'm sure she'll like 'em. They're good gingham and real well made. We +don't keep shoddy stuff. You could go into one of the big stores and +get aprons for fifty, sixty cents, but they wouldn't be good value." + +The soft cadence of her voice gave Wesley a strange and stifled +feeling around the heart. He must--he must stay and talk to her. +Hardly knowing what he said, he burst into loquacity. + +"I did go into one of the big stores, and it sort of scared +me--everything so stuffy and heaped up, and such a lot of people. I +don't get down to Baltimore very often, you see. I do most of my +buying right in Frederick, but I'd broke my disker, and if you send, +it's maybe weeks before the implement house will 'tend to you. So I +just come down and got the piece, so there won't be but one day lost." + +The girl looked up at him again, and he could feel his heart pound +against his ribs. This time she was a little wistful. + +"They say it's real pretty country out round Frederick. I've never +been out of Baltimore, 'cept to go down the bay on +excursions--Betterton and Love Point, and places like that. It makes a +grand sail in hot weather." + +She handed him the package and picked up the two bills he had laid +down on the counter. There was plainly no reason for his further +lingering. But he had an artful idea. + +"Look here--maybe I ought to get Aunt Dolcey a white apron, too. Maybe +she won't want the gingham ones at all." + +The girl looked surprised at such extravagance. + +"But if she doesn't you can bring 'em back when you come to Baltimore +again, and we'd exchange 'em," she argued mildly. + +"No, I better get a white one now. She puts on a white apron +evenings," he added craftily. + +A box of white aprons was lifted from the shelf and a choice made, but +even that transaction could not last forever, as Wesley Dean was +desperately aware. + +"Look here, are you Miss Tolman?" he burst out. "I saw the name +outside on the window." + +"Mercy, no! Miss Tolman's a kind of cousin of mine. She's fifty-two, +and she can't hardly get through that door there." + +He disregarded the description, for the second bundle was being tied +up fast. He had never seen any one tie so fast, he thought. + +"My name's Wesley Dean, and I got a farm in the mountains back of +Frederick. Say--I don't want you to think I'm fresh, but--but--say, +would you go to the movies with me to-night?" + +It had come to him in a flash that he could disregard the seat in the +four-o'clock bus and go back to-morrow morning. Sweat stood out on his +forehead and on his curving, clean-shaven upper lip. His boy's eyes +hung on hers, pleading. All the happiness of his life, he felt, waited +for this girl's answer, this little yellow-haired girl whom he had +never seen until a quarter of an hour before. + +"We-ell," she hesitated, "I--I don't like to have you think I'd pick +up like this with any fellow that come along----" + +"I don't think so!" he broke in fiercely. "If I thought so I'd +never've asked you." + +There was a strange breathless moment in the tiny cluttered shop, a +moment such as some men and women are lucky enough to feel once in a +lifetime. It is the moment when the heart's wireless sends its clear +message, "This is my woman" and "This is my man." The flaxen-haired +girl and the dark boy were caught in the golden magic of it and, half +scared, half ecstatic, were thrown into confusion. + +"I'll go," she whispered breathlessly. "There's a little park a block +down the street. I'll be there at seven o'clock, by the statue." + +"I'll be there, waiting for you," he replied, and because he could not +bear the strange sweet pain that filled him he plunged out of the +shop, jerking the door so that the little bell squealed with surprise. +He had forgotten his packages. + +Also, as he remembered presently, he did not know her name. + +He was at the feet of the statue in the park by half-past six, and +spent a restless half hour there in the cool spring twilight. Perhaps +she would not come! Perhaps he had frightened her, even as he had +frightened himself, by this inexplicable boldness. Other girls passed +by, and some of them glanced with a coquettish challenge at the +handsome tall youth with his frowning brow. But he did not see them. +Presently--and it was just on the stroke of seven--he saw her coming, +hesitantly, and with an air of complete and proper primness. She had +on a plain little shabby suit and hat, but round her throat was a +string of beads of a blue to match her eyes, an enticing, naive +harmony. + +She carried the forgotten aprons, and handed them to him gravely. + +"You left these," she said; and then, to regularize the situation, "My +name's Anita Smithers. I ought've told you this afternoon, but--I +guess I was kind of forgetful, too." + +That made them both smile, and the smile left them less shy. He +stuffed the forgotten aprons into his overcoat pocket. + +"I was so afraid you wouldn't come. Where can we go? I don't know +anything much about the city. I'd like to take you to a nice picture +show, the best there is." + +She flushed with the glory of it. + +"There's a real nice picture house only a little ways from here. They +got a Pauline Frederick film on. I'm just crazy about Pauline +Frederick." + +By this time they were walking sedately out of the park, not daring to +look at each other. She watched him while he bought the tickets and +then a box of caramels from the candy stand inside. + +"He knows what to do," she thought proudly. "He's not a bit of a +hick." + +"D'you go to the pictures a lot?" he asked when they were seated. + +"'Most every night. I'm just crazy about 'em." + +"I expect you've got steady company, then?" The question fairly jerked +out of him. + +She shook her head. "No, I almost always go by myself. My girl friend, +she goes with me sometimes." + +He sighed with relief. "They got good picture shows in Frederick. I go +'most every Saturday night." + +"But you don't live right in Frederick, you said." + +He seized the chance to tell her about himself. + +"Oh, my, no. I live back in the mountains. Say, I just wish you could +see my place. It's up high, and you can look out, ever so +far--everything kind of drops away below, and you can see the river +and the woods, and it takes different colours, 'cording to the season +and the weather. Some days when I'm ploughing or disking and I get up +on the ridge, it's so high up and far away seems like I'm on top the +whole world. It's lonesome--it's off the pike, you see--but I like it. +Here in the city everything crowds on you so close." + +She had listened with the keenest interest. + +"That's so. It must be grand to get off by yourself and have plenty +room. I get so tired of that squinched-in, narrow, stuffy shop; and +the place where I board is worse. I don't make enough to have a room +by myself. There's two other girls in with me, and seems like we're +always under-foot to each other. And there isn't any parlour, and we +got only one bureau for the three of us, and you can guess what a mess +that is. And the closet's about as big as a pocket handkerchief." + +"Ain't you got any folks?" + +The blue eyes held a sudden mist. + +"Nobody but Miss Tolman, and she's only a distant cousin. Ma died two +years ago. She used to sew, but she wasn't strong, and we never could +get ahead." + +"My folks are all gone, too." + +How little and alone she was, but how much nearer to him her aloneness +brought her. He wanted to put his hand over hers and tell her that he +would take care of her, that she need never be alone again. But the +beginning of the film choked back the words. He poked the box of +caramels at her, and she took it, opened it with a murmured "Oh, my, +thank you!" Presently they both had sweetly bulging cheeks. Where +their elbows touched on the narrow chair arm made tingling thrills run +all over him. Once she gave him an unconscious nudge of excitement. + +Out of the corner of his eye he studied her delicate side face as she +sat, with her lips parted, intent on the film. + +"She's pretty--and she's good," thought Wesley Dean. "I expect she's +too good for me." + +But that unwontedly humble thought did not alter it a hair's breadth +that she must be his. The Deans had their way always. The veins in his +wrists and the vein in his forehead beat with his hot purpose. He +shifted so that his arm did not touch hers, for he found the nearness +of her disturbing; he could not plan or think clearly while she was so +close. And he must think clearly. + +When the last flicker of the feature was over and the comic and the +news had wrung their last laugh and gasp of interest from the crowd, +they joined the slow exit of the audience in silence. On the sidewalk, +however, she found her voice. + +"It was an awful nice picture," she said softly. "'Most the nicest I +ever saw." + +"Look here, let's go somewhere and have a hot choc'late, or some soda, +or ice cream," he broke in hurriedly. He could not let her go with so +much yet unsaid. "Or would you like an oyster stew in a reg'lar +restaurant? Yes, that'd be better. Come on; it isn't late." + +"Well, after all those caramels, I shouldn't think an oyster stew----" + +"You can have something else, then." The main thing was to get her at +a table opposite him, where they wouldn't have to hurry away. "Let's +go in there." + +He pointed toward a small restaurant across the street where red +candlelights glimmered warmly through panelled lace. + +"But that looks like such a stylish place," she protested, even as she +let him guide her toward it. + +But it was not so stylish when they got inside, and the appearance of +the stout woman, evidently both proprietor and cashier, who presided +over the scene at a table on a low platform near the door reassured +them both. And the red candleshades were only crinkled paper; the lace +curtains showed many careful darns. A rebellious boy of fourteen, in a +white jacket and apron, evidently the proprietor's son, came to take +their order. After a good bit of urging Anita said that she would take +a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee. + +Wesley ordered an oyster stew for himself, and coffee, and then +grandly added that they would both have vanilla and chocolate ice +cream. + +"He looks as if he just hated being a waiter," said Anita, indicating +the departing boy servitor. + +"Sh'd think he would," said Wesley. He put his arms on the table and +leaned toward her. "I was going home this afternoon till I saw you. I +stayed over just to see you again. I've got to go back in the morning, +for I've not got my spring work done; but--you're going with me." + +The vein on his forehead heightened his look of desperate +determination. He was not so much a suitor as a commander. + +"You haven't got any folks and neither have I, so that makes it easy. +I'll come for you in the morning, about eight o'clock, and we'll go +get a license and get married, and then we can get the ten-o'clock bus +out to Frederick. Oh, girl, I never saw any one like you! I--I'll be +good to you--I'll take care of you. It don't matter if I didn't ever +see you till this afternoon, I'd never find anybody else that I want +so much in a hundred thousand years. I've not got a lot of money, but +the farm's mine, all free and clear, and if my wheat turns out all +right I'll have a thousand dollars' cash outright come the end of the +year, even after the taxes are paid and everything. Won't you look at +me, Anita--won't you tell me something? Don't you like me?" + +The girl had listened with her eyes cast down, her hands nervously +picking at the edge of the tablecloth. But he was not mistaken in her. +She had wherewith to meet him, and her gaze was honest, without +coquetry or evasion. + +"Oh, I do like you!" she cried with quick colour. "I do! I do! I +always thought somebody like you'd come along some day, just like +this, and then--it just seemed foolish to expect it. But look here. I +told you a story, right off. My name's not Anita--it's Annie. I took +to pretending it's Anita because--it does seem sort of silly, but I +got to tell you--because I saw it in the movies, and it seemed sort of +cute and different, and Annie's such a plain, common name. But I +couldn't let you go on talking like that and calling me by it, now +could I?" + +The mutinous young waiter brought their food and thumped it +truculently down before them. + +"Look out!" said Dean with sudden violent harshness, the vein in his +forehead darkening ominously. "What do you think you're doing, feeding +cattle?" + +The boy drew back in confusion, and Annie exclaimed: "Oh, he didn't +mean it anything against us--he's just mad because he has to be a +waiter." + +"Well, he'd better be careful; kids can be too smart Aleck." + +The little gust had deflected them away from their own affairs. But +Annie brought them back. She leaned toward him. + +"You make me kind of afraid of you. If you ever spoke to me like that +it'd just about kill me." + +He was contrite. "Why, I couldn't ever speak to you like that, honey; +it just made me mad the way he banged things down in front of you. I +don't want people to treat you like that." + +"And you look so fierce, too--scowling so all the time." + +He put up a brown finger and touched his savage vein. + +"Now, now--you mustn't mind my look. All the Dean men are marked like +that; it's in the blood. It don't mean a thing." He smiled winningly. +"I reckon if you're beginning to scold me you're going to marry me, +huh?" + +Something very sweet and womanly leaped in Annie's blue eyes. + +"I--I reckon I am," she said, and then confessed herself a brave +adventurer and philosopher in one. "Yes, I'd be a fool to sit round +and make excuses and pretend it wouldn't do to be so out of the +ordinary when here you are and here I am, and it means--our whole +lives. I don't care, either, if I didn't ever set eyes on you till +to-day--I know you're all right and that what you say's true. And I +feel as if I'd known you for years and years." + +"That's the way I felt about you the minute I looked at you. Oh"--he +gave a vast and shaking sigh--"I can't hardly believe my luck. Eat up +your supper and let's get out of here. Maybe there's some stores open +yet and I could buy you a ring." + +"And I have to be in my boarding house by half-past ten," offered +Annie, "or I'll be locked out. What the girls are going to say when I +come in and tell 'em----" She looked at him with intense and piteous +question--the question that every woman at the moment of surrender +asks sometimes with her lips, but always with her heart: "It is going +to be all right, isn't it? And you'll be good to me?" + +"So help me God," said young Wesley Dean. + + * * * * * + +The farm lay high, as Wesley had said. Indeed, all the way from +Baltimore they had seemed to be going into the hills, those placidly +rounding friendly Maryland hills that rise so softly, so gradually +that the traveller is not conscious of ascent. The long straight road +dips across them gallantly, a silver band of travel to tie them to the +city, with little cities or towns pendent from it at wide intervals. +Trees edge it with a fringe of green; poor trees, maimed by the +trimmers' saws and shears into twisted caricatures of what a tree +should be, because the telegraph wires and telephone wires must pass, +and oaks and locusts, pines and maples, must be butchered of their +spreading branches to give them room. + +It was along this highway that the motor bus, filled with passengers +and baggage and driven with considerably more haste than discretion, +carried the newly married pair. Annie's eyes grew wide at the wonder +and beauty of it. She was not at all afraid. She snuggled her hand +into Wes's and loved it--and loved him, too, with his look of pride +and joy in her. She was content to be silent and let him talk. Now and +then she looked at the little turquoise ring on her finger above the +shiny new wedding ring, and loved that, too, for he had chosen it at +once from the trayful offered them, blurting out that she must have it +because it matched her eyes. + +"All this country out here's rich," he bragged, "but Fred'rick +County's far the richest land of all. Richest in the state. Maybe +richest in the whole United States, I dunno. And all the farms are +big. Great big farms--and great big teams to till 'em. People don't +use mules here s'much as they do over on the Eastern Shore. And +there's not any sand, like there is over there--in spots, that is." + +"What's that man doing?" asked Annie alertly. + +"Ploughin'. Say, didn't you ever see a man ploughin' before?" "Only in +the movies," said Annie, unabashed. "Do you ever plough?" + +He laughed outright. + +"Say, you're going to be some little farmer's wife. I can see that. +Yes'm, I plough a little now and then. It's like fancywork--awful +fascinating--and once you get started you don't want to stop till you +get a whole field done." + +"Quit kidding." + +"Say, Annie, do you know a chicken when you see it walking round? Or a +turkey? Or a guinea keet? We got 'em all. Aunt Dolcey, she takes care +of 'em." + +"I'd like to take care of 'em. I'll feed 'em, if she'll show me how." + +"Aunt Dolcey'll show you. She'll be tickled to death to have somebody +feed 'em when she's got the mis'ry." + +At Frederick they left the big motor bus and got into Wes's own +rackety flivver, the possession of which delighted Annie's heart. + +"My land, I never thought I'd get married to a man that owned an +automobile," she confessed with flattering frankness in her voice. + +"This ain't an automobile," said Wes. "It's a coffeepot, and an awful +mean one. Sometimes she won't boil, no matter what I do." + +The coffeepot on this particular day chose to boil. They rattled +merrily out of Frederick and off into the higher hills beyond. It was +a little after noon when they reached the farm. + +They had had to turn off the pike and take a winding wood road, rough +and muddy from the spring rains. All through the budding green of the +trees dogwood had hung out white bridal garlands for them, and there +were violets in all the little mossy hollows. At last they came +through to the clearing, where lay the farm, right on the ridge, its +fields smiling in the sun, a truce of Nature with man's energy and +persistence. Yet not a final truce. For all around, the woods crept up +to the open and thrust in tentative fingers--tiny pine trees, sprouts +and seedlings of hardwood, scraps of underbrush--all trying to gain a +foothold and even when cut and overturned by the sharp plough still +clinging tenaciously to their feeble rooting. + +"It looks somehow," said Annie, vaguely understanding this, "as if the +trees and things were just waiting to climb over the walls." + +"And that's what they are," said Wesley Dean. "The time I put in +grubbing! Well--let's go in and see Aunt Dolcey." + +He had told her, coming out, that he was afraid she would find the +house sort of plain, but just the space of it delighted her. The rooms +were bare and square, whitewashed exquisitely, the furniture dark old +cherry and walnut of a style three generations past. + +There were no blinds or curtains, and in the streaming sunlight Annie +could see that everything was clean and polished to the last flicker +of high light. Here and there were bits of colour--crimson and blue in +the rag carpet, golden brass candlesticks on the mantel, a red-beaded +mat on the table under the lamp, the lamp itself clear glass and +filled with red kerosene that happily repeated the tint of the mat. It +all pleased Annie, touching some hitherto untwanged chord of beauty in +her nature. And there was about it the unmistakable atmosphere of +home. + +"Old-fashioned but sort of swell, too," she decided. "Looks kind of +like some of the parlours of those old houses on Charles Street that I +used to rubber into in the evenings when the lights were lit and +they'd forgot to put the blinds down." + +She liked the impassive almost Egyptian face of Aunt Dolcey, too. The +old coloured woman had received her with a serious regard but +friendly. + +"Mist' Wes, he stahtle me mighty frequen', but he nevah stahtle me +with no marryin' befo'," she said. "Honey, it'll be mighty nice to +have a pret' young gal in de house. I'll serve you de bes' I kin, +faithful an' stiddy, like I always serve him. Ef I'd 'a' known you was +a-comin' I'd sho' had somethin' fo' dinneh to-day besides greens an' +po'k, cracklin' pone an' apple dumplin's. That's nuffin' fo' a weddin' +dinneh." + +But when they came to eat it, it was delicious--the greens delicately +seasoned, not greasy, the salt pork home-cured and sweet, the +cracklin' pone crumbling with richness, and the apple dumpling a +delight of spicy flavour. + +They sat opposite each other, in as matter-of-fact fashion as if they +had been married for years. They were young and exceedingly hungry, +and hunger destroys self-consciousness. + +The china was very old--white plates with a curving pattern of blue +leaves and yellow berries. The knives and forks were polished steel +with horn handles. The spoons were silver; old handmade rat-tail +spoons they were, with the mark of the smith's mallet still upon them +and the initials W.D. cut in uneven letters. + +"Those were my great-granddad's," said Wesley. "Same name as mine. He +had 'em made out of silver money by a man down in Frederick. They must +be nearly a hundred years old. My great-granddad, he was the man that +bought this land and began to clear it. He wanted to be away off from +everybody." + +"Why?" asked Annie, interested in the story. + +The vein on Wesley's forehead seemed to grow larger and darker as he +answered: + +"Oh, he got into trouble--knocked a man down, and the fellow struck +his head on a stone and died. It didn't come to trial--it really was +an accident--but it didn't make granddad popular. Not that he cared. +He was a hard-headed, hard-fisted old son of a gun, if there ever was +one, according to the stories they tell about him." + +"What were they fighting about?" + +"Oh, I dunno--granddad was high-tempered, and this fellow was sort of +smart Aleck; give him some lip about something and dared him to touch +him. And quick's a wink granddad punched him. At least that's the way +I always heard it. Prob'ly they'd both been taking too much hard +cider. Bring me another dumplin', Aunt Dolcey, please." + +As the old woman entered, bringing the dumpling, Annie fancied there +were both warning and sympathy in her eyes. Why, she couldn't imagine. +In a moment she forgot it, for Wesley was looking at her hard. + +"It's funny," he said, "to think I only saw you yesterday, and that we +got married this morning. Seems as if you'd been here for years and +years. Does it seem awful strange to you, honey?" + +"No," said Annie. "No, it doesn't. It is queer, but all the way here, +and when I come into the house, I had a sense of having been here +before sometime; kind of as if it was my home all along and I hadn't +known about it." + +"So it was--and if I hadn't ever met you I'd been an old bach all my +life." + +"Yes, you would." + +"Yes, I wouldn't." + +They were both laughing now. He got up and stretched himself. + +"Well, Mrs. Dean," he said, "I gotta go out and fix my disker, and you +gotta come along. I don't want to let you out of my sight. You might +fly off somewhere, and I'd never find you again." + +"Don't you worry about that. You couldn't lose me if you tried." + +They went through the kitchen, and there a tall gaunt old coloured man +rose and bowed respectfully. He and Aunt Dolcey were having their own +dinner at the kitchen table. + +"This here's Unc' Zenas," said Wesley. "He's Aunt Dolcey's husband, +and helps me on the place." + +And again Annie saw, this time in the old man's eyes, the flicker of +sympathy and apprehension that she had marked in Aunt Dolcey's. + +"And right glad to welcome y', Missy," said Unc' Zenas. "We didn' +'spect Marse Wes to bring home a wife whenas he lef', but that ain' no +sign that it ain' a mighty fine thing." + +They went out into the mellow spring day. Wesley Dean, now in his blue +overalls and working shirt, became a king in his own domain, a part of +the fair primitiveness about them. It was as if he had sprung from +this dark fertile soil, was made of its elements, at one with it. Here +he belonged, and the very spring of the earth beneath his feet was +repeated in the measured beating of his blood. The land could not warp +or break him, as it does so many, for he belonged to it as essentially +and as completely as it belonged to him. Dimly the little town girl +beside him felt this, and dimly she hoped that she, too, might prove +to be of the same mould. + +"Look at the barn, and the stables, and the corncrib," he was saying. +"See how they're all built? Hand-hewn logs chinked with plaster. +Great-granddad built them all, helped by his two slaves. That's all +the slaves he had, just two and one of 'em was Unc' Zenas's +grandfather. Everything's strong and sound as the day he finished it." + +"That one looks newer," said Annie, pointing. + +Wesley looked a little shamefaced, as does every typical Anglo-Saxon +discovered in sentiment. + +"I built that," he confessed. "It's a chicken house. Somehow I didn't +want to go down to the sawmill and get planks and build with 'em +'mongst all these old log things. So I got the logs out in the woods +and build same as great-granddad. Maybe it was foolish, but I couldn't +help it." + +"It wasn't foolish; it was nice," she affirmed. + +She perched on the tongue of a wagon while he mended the disker, +dividing her attention between him and the live things of the +barnyard. A string of decorative white ducks marched in single file +about the edge of the cow pound. Beyond them a proud red-wattled cock +paraded and purred among his harem of trim hens, now and then +disturbed in his dignity by the darting nervousness of a pair of +malicious guineas, acknowledged brigands of the feathered tribes. Trim +iridescent pigeons toddled about on their coral feet, looking for +leftovers from the chickens' table. + +"Say, Wes, I should think you'd have a dog," she said suddenly. "A +nice big dog lazying round here would sort of complete it." + +He bent suddenly over his disker and gave the nut he was working on a +mighty twist, but he had tossed aside his hat, and she could see the +sudden jump and darkening of his menacing vein. + +"I had a dog," he said in a low voice, "but he died." + +A curious restraint fell on them, and for the first time Annie felt +herself an alien, a stranger, far adrift from familiar shores. +She shivered in the light wind. + +"You cold? You better go in the house and get something round you," +Wes said to her. + +"I guess I'd better." And she left him hammering. + +In the house she found Aunt Dolcey in the big bedroom over the living +room. She had just finished remaking the bed--an old maple +four-poster, the wood a soft and mellowed orange, fine and colourful +against the white quilt, the lace-edged pillow slips. + +"I put on clean sheets," said Aunt Dolcey as Annie hesitated on the +threshold. "Yes'm, I put on everything clean, an' the bes'. I know +what's fitten. My chile, dish yer de third bridal bed I made up for +wives of de Dean men." + +Something caught in Annie's throat, terrified her. This old black +woman, with her remoteness, her pitying wise eyes, what did she mean? +Annie wanted terribly to ask her. But how begin? How get through this +wall of inscrutability which the black and yellow races have raised +for their protection? + +She fluttered nearer to the old woman. + +"Look," she began tremulously--"look--it's all right, isn't it, my +marrying him so quick? I haven't got any folks, and--and I suppose I +haven't got much sense; but there was something about him that just +made me trust him and--and want him. But it was all so quick, and--now +I'm here it seems like maybe--there was--something----Oh, you'd tell +me, wouldn't you? It is all right, isn't it?" + +The old woman considered. "It's all right ef you're all right," she +pronounced at length. + +"But--but what do you mean? And--and look here--Aunt Dolcey--tell +me--what'd he do to that dog he had?" + +"What you know 'bout any dog?" + +"I don't know--anything; but when I asked him why he didn't have a +dog--he was queer. It scared me." + +"Doan be skeered. They ain' nuffin' to be skeered of 'bout Marse Wes. +Eve'ything all right ef you got patience, an' ef you got sense, an' ef +you got haht enough. Sperrit an' sense go far, but the haht gwine +carry you froo. Now I said my say"--her tone mellowed into unctuous +kindness--"what you want, Missy? Som'n Aun' Dolcey c'n fotch you? +Temme what it is, f'r I got to be up an' erbout my wuk. I got er +weddin' cake to mek yit this ebenin'. Yes, ma'am--I gwi' mek you +weddin' cake fill de bigges' pan in de kitchen." + +She helped Annie rummage in her trunk and get out the sweater she had +come in for, and it was not until the girl was running back to the +barns that she realized Aunt Dolcey had not answered her question. But +the old woman's words had steadied her, reassured her. + +And Wes received her gayly. His repairs were done, his team in +harness, ready to start. + +"It's a shame," he said. "We ought to go off down to town and play +round and have a big time, but I'm so behind with my disking, Annie, +honey. You see I had to stay over a day in Baltimore. Fact. Important +business." He winked at her jocosely. "So I've got to work rest of the +day. That's what comes of marrying a farmer. Farm work don't even wait +on a bride, not even the prettiest bride in the world." + +He stooped to kiss her, and she held tight to his arm. + +"I don't mind. You go on about your business and I'll get all unpacked +and settled. But don't be late to supper--Aunt Dolcey's making us a +wedding cake." + +She watched him as he drove down the lane and turned into the field +and steadied the first straining rush of his team. Again she felt her +abandonment, her utter forlornity, her distance from everything she +had known and been accustomed to. But once more she proved herself an +adventurer and a philosopher. + +Shrugging her shoulders, she turned back to the house. + +"It may be a funny way to get married; but everything's all right +until it stops being all right, and--and I like it here." + + * * * * * + +She had been married a week now, and the week had been the fairest of +fair weather, indoors as well as out. Now she sat at the clumsy old +secretary desk to write a letter to Miss Tolman. + + ... For all you said, and hought I was crazy, I am just as happy as I +can be. Wes is kind and full of fun, and he works very hard. This farm +is a pretty place, and the house is ten times as big as your shop. I +am learning to cook and churn butter, and Aunt Dolcey, the old +coloured woman, teaches me and doesn't laugh when I am dumb. She says, +and Wes does, too, that I am a born farmer's wife, and I think maybe I +am, for I like it in the country more than I ever thought I'd like any +place, and I don't get a bit lonely. You ought to see our wheat--it's +like green satin, only prettier. + +I hope the rheumatism in your hands is better, and that you have got +somebody good in my place. Cousin Lorena, I am a very lucky girl to +fall in love with such a nice man, with a piece of property and a +flivver, even if it is an old one; but better than all that he has is +Wes himself, for you never saw a better, kinder man. He is not rough +and does not chew tobacco as you thought maybe he did, only smokes a +pipe once in a while. I made a sweet-potato custard yesterday, and he +said it was the best he ever tasted. He says I must not do anything +that is too hard for me, but I am going to drop seed corn. We have +been down to town once, and went to the movies and bought some candy, +and he wanted to buy me a new hat, but I wouldn't let him. He is so +kind.... + + * * * * * + +She had written in a glow of happiness, trying to tell everything and +finding it hard to get it into words that would allay Cousin Lorena's +forebodings and impress her properly. Annie frowned at the paper. How +inform a bilious, middle-aged prophet of evil that she had not only +wedded prosperity and industry but also a glorious young demigod whose +tenderness and goodness passed belief? + +Suddenly she heard a voice, loud, angry, incoherent. She dropped the +pen and ran out to the kitchen door. + +Wes stood there, confronting Uncle Zenas--a Wes she had never dreamed +could exist. The vein on his forehead was black and swollen; indeed +his whole face was distorted with rage. + +"You damned old liar--don't you tell me again you put that pitchfork +away when I found it myself in the stable behind the mare's stall. +Pretty business if she'd knocked it down and run one of the tines into +her." + +"Marse Wes, you haddat pitchfo'k dere yo'se'f dis mawnin'; I ain't +nevah touch dat pitchfo'k." Unc' Zenas's voice was low and even. + +Behind Wes's back Aunt Dolcey made signs to her husband for silence. + +"I tell you you're a liar, and by rights I ought to cut your lying +tongue out of your head! I haven't even seen that pitchfork for three +days, and when I went to look for it just now I found it in the stable +where you'd had it cleaning out the stalls. Now shut up and get out +about your work! Don't let me hear another word out of you!" + +Unc' Zenas turned away and Wes, without a word or look at the two +women, strode after him. Annie, shaken, caught Aunt Dolcey's arm. + +"Oh, Aunt Dolcey," she breathed, "what on earth was the matter?" + +Aunt Dolcey drew her into the kitchen. + +"Nuffin' but Marse Wes flyin' int' one his bad Dean temper fits, +honey," said the old woman "No use to min' him. No use payin' any +'tention. Dat why I waggle my head at Zenas to say nuffin' back. Talk +back to Marse Wes when he's high-flyin' on'y meks things worse." + +Annie beheld an abyss yawning beneath her feet. + +"Yes, but, Aunt Dolcey--what's the sense in talking that way? It +wasn't anything, just a pitchfork out of place. And he went on so. And +he looked so dreadful." + +Aunt Dolcey rattled her pans. + +"I been dreadin' dis moment, whenas you firs' see Marse Wes in his +anger. Zenas an' me, we's use to it. Marse Wes dataway; som'n go wrong +he fly off de handle. Zenas ain't mislay no pitchfo'k--I seed Marse +Wes mahse'f wid dat pitchfo'k dis mawnin'. But eve'y once in a while +he git a temper fit an' blow off he mouf like dat. Sometimes he strike +some-buddy--but he doan often strike Zenas. Sometimes he git mad at +oner de hosses an' frail it proper. Dat high temper run in de Dean +fambly, chile. Dey gits mad, an' dey flies off, an' you just got to +stan' it." + +"But does he--does he get over it quick?" + +The old negress shook her head. + +"He'll be mighty quiet come suppeh-time, not talkin' much, lookin' +dahk. Walk light, an' don't say nuffin' rile him up, eve'ything all +right. T'-morrow mawnin' come, he's outer it." Her voice rose into a +minor cadence, almost a chant. "Chile, it's a dahk shadder on all de +Deans--dey all mahked wid dat frown on deir foreheads, an' dey all got +dahk hours come to um. Marse Wes's maw she fade out an' die caze she +cain' stan' no such. His grammaw, she leave his grampaw. An' so on +back. Ontell some ooman marry a Dean who kin chase dat debbil outer +him, jes so long de Dean men lib in de shadder. I tole you, ain' I, de +day you come, sperrit an' sense carry you fur, but it's de haht gwine +carry you froo. Now you un'stan'." + +Yes, Annie understood, imperfectly. So might Red Riding Hood have +understood when the wolf suddenly appeared beside her peaceful +pathway. She asked one more question, "Does he get mad often?" and +waited, trembling, for the answer. + +Aunt Dolcey stuck out her underlip. "Sometime he do, en den again, +sometime he doan'. Mos' giner'ly he do." + +Annie walked back to her letter, and looked at its last phrase. She +picked up the pen, but did not write. + +Then with a quick intake of breath she took her first conscious step +in the path of loyal wifehood. + +She added, writing fast: "He is the best man that ever lived, I do +believe," and signed her name, folded the letter and sealed it in its +envelope as quickly as she could. + +At supper she watched Wes. He was, as Aunt Dolcey had predicted, very +silent; the vein in his forehead still twitched menacingly and the +pupils of his eyes were distended until the colour about them +disappeared in blackness. After he had eaten he went outside and +smoked, while Annie sat fiddling with a bit of sewing and dreading she +knew not what. + +But nothing happened. Presently he came in, announced that he was +tired and had a hard day before him to-morrow, and thought he'd go to +bed. + +Long after he had fallen into immobile slumber Annie lay beside him, +awake, marvelling how suddenly he had become a stranger, almost an +ogre. Yet she loved him and yearned to him. The impulse that had made +her finish the letter to Cousin Lorena in the same spirit in which she +had begun it called her to pity and help him. She must conceal his +weakness from their world. She listened to his deep, regular +breathing, she put her hand against his hard palm. + +"I'm his wife," thought Annie Dean with inarticulate tenderness. "I'm +going to try to be everything a wife ought to be." + +The next morning he was his old self again, laughing, joking, teasing +her as usual. The scene of yesterday seemed to have gone utterly from +his memory, though he must have known that she had seen and heard it. +But he made no allusion to it, nor did she. The farm work was +pressing; the warm spring days foretold an early season. + +As he went whistling out toward the barn Annie heard him salute Unc' +Zenas with familiar friendliness: + +"How's tricks this morning? Think the Jersey'll be fresh next week?" + +Aunt Dolcey heard him, too, and she and Annie exchanged long glances. +The old woman's said, "You see--what I told you was true"; and the +young woman's answered, "Yes, I see, and I understand. I'm going to +see it through." + +But something in her youth had definitely vanished, as it always does +when responsibility lays its heavy hand on us. She went about her new +life questioningly eager for understanding. There was so much for her +to see and learn--the erratic ways of setting hens, the care of +foolish little baby chicks; the spring house, cool and damp and +gray-walled, with its trickle of cold water forever eddying about the +crocks of cream-topped milk; the garden making, left to her and Aunt +Dolcey after the first spading; the various messes and mashes to be +prepared for cows with calf; the use of the stored vegetables and +fruits, and meat dried and salted in such generous quantity that she +marvelled at it. All the farm woman's primer she learned, bit by bit, +seeing how it supplemented and harmonized with that life of the fields +that so engrossed and commanded Wes. + +But through it all, beneath it all, she found herself waiting, with +dread, for another outburst. Against whom would it be this time--Unc' +Zenas again--Aunt Dolcey--one of the animals--or perhaps herself? She +wondered if she could bear it if he turned on her. + +She was working in the spring house mixing cream with curd for cottage +cheese, very busy and anxious over it, for this was her first essay +alone, when she heard Wes again in anger. She dropped her spoon, but +did not go to look, only concentrated herself to listen. + +This time he was cursing one of his horses, and she could hear the +stinging whish of a whip, a wicked and sinister emphasis to the +beast's snorting and frenzied thumping of hoofs. Her blue eyes dilated +with fear; she knew in what pain and fright the horse must be lunging +under those blows. And Wes, raucous, violent, his mouth foul with +unclean words--only this morning he had told her that when Sunday came +they'd go into the woods and find a wild clematis to plant beside the +front door. Wild clematis! She could have laughed at the irony of it. + +At last she could bear it no longer; she put her hands to her ears to +shut out the hideousness of it. After an interminable wait she took +them down. He had stopped--there was silence--but she heard footsteps +outside, and she literally cowered into the darkest corner of the +spring house. But it was only Aunt Dolcey, her lips set in a line of +endurance. + +"I was lookin' erbout foh you, honey," she said reassuringly. "I di'n' +know where you was, en den I remembah you come off down heah. Let Aunt +Dolcey finish up dat cheese." + +"What--what started him?" asked Annie piteously. + +"I doan' jes' know--sound' like one de big team di'n' go inter his +right stall, er som'n like dat. It's always som'n triflin', en no +'count. But land, he'll be ovah it come night. Doan' look so white en +skeer, chile." + +"But--but I been thinking--what if he might turn on me--what if he'd +strike me? Aunt Dolcey--did he ever strike you?" + +"Oncet." + +"Oh, Aunt Dolcey, what did you do?" + +Something flared in Aunt Dolcey's eyes that was as old as her race. +She looked past Annie as if she saw something she rather relished; +just so her ancestors must have looked when they were dancing before a +bloodstained Congo fetish. + +"You see dat big white scar on Marse Wes' lef' wris'? When he struck +me I mahk him dere wid my hot flatiron. Am' no man eveh gwine lif' his +hand to Dolcey, no matter who." + +A shrewd question came to Annie: + +"Aunt Dolcey, did he ever strike you again?" + +"No, ma'am, no 'ndeedy, he didn'. Wil' Marse Wes may be, but he ain' +no crazy man. It's dat ole debbil in his nature, Miss Annie, honey. En +ef ever once som'n tremenjus happen to Marse Wes, dat debbil'll be +cas' out. But hit's got to be stronger en mo' pow'ful dan he is. Not +'ligion, fer 'ligion goes f'm de outside in. Som'n got to come from +inside Marse Wes out befo' dat ole debbil is laid." + +This was meagre comfort, and Annie did not follow the primitive +psychology of it. She only knew that into her happiness there had come +again the darkening of a fear, fear that was to be her devil, no less +terrible because his presence was for the most part veiled. + +But again she steeled her courage. "I won't let him spoil everything; +I won't let him make me afraid of him," she vowed, seeing Wes in his +silent mood that night. "I won't be afraid of him. I wish I could cut +that old vein out of his forehead. I hate it--it's just as if it was +the thing that starts him. Never seems as if it was part of the real +Wes, my Wes." + +In the depths of the woods, on Sunday, she stood by while he dug up +the wild clematis--stood so he could not see her lips quiver--and she +put her clenched hands behind her for fear they, too, would betray +her. + +"Wes," she asked, "what made you get so mad last Thursday and beat old +Pomp so?" + +He turned toward her in genuine surprise. + +"I wasn't mad; not much, that is. And all I laid on Pomp's tough old +hide couldn't hurt him. He's as mean as a mule, that old scoundrel. +Gets me riled every once in a while." + +"I wish you wouldn't ever do it again. It scared me almost to death." + +"Scared you!" he laughed. "Oh, Annie, you little silly--you aren't +scared of me. Now don't let on you are. What you doing--trying to kid +me? There, ain't that a splendid plant? I believe I'll take back a +couple shovelfuls this rich wood earth to put in under it. It'll never +know it's not at home." + +"Yes, but, Wes--I wish you'd promise me something." + +"Promise you anything." + +"Then--promise me not to get mad and beat the horses any more or +holler at Unc' Zenas. I don't like it." + +"Annie, you little simp--what's the matter with you? A fellow's got to +let off steam once in a while, and if you'd been pestered like I have +with Unc' Zenas's ornery trifling spells and old Pomp's general +cussedness, you'd wonder that I don't get mad and stay mad every +minute. Don't let's talk any more about it. Say, look there--there's a +scarlet tanager! Ain't it pretty? Shyest bird there is, but up here in +the woods there's a couple pairs 'most every year. Pull that old +newspaper up round the earth a little, so's I can get a better holt of +it. That's the girl. Gee, I never knew what fun it'd be to have a wife +who'd be so darn chummy as you are. How d'you like your husband, Mrs. +Dean? Ain't it about time you said something nice to the poor feller +instead of scolding his lights and liver out of place on a nice +peaceful Sabbath day? You ought to be ashamed of yourself." + +She pushed back the fear devil and answered his smile. + +'No, sir, I'm not going to say anything nice to my husband. I'll tell +you a secret about him--he's awful stuck on himself now." + +"Why shouldn't he be? Look who he picked out to marry." + +Who could stand against such beguiling? Annie looked up at him and saw +his Dean mark give a little mocking twitch as if it rejoiced in her +thwarting. + +But she said no more; and they planted the wild clematis with its +black woods earth beneath at the side of the front door, and Annie +twisted its pliable green stems round one of the posts of the little +benched entrance. + +Her hands moved deftly, and Wes, who had finished firming the earth +about the plant, watched them. + +"Your little paws are gettin' awful brown," he said. "I remember that +first day, in the shop, how white they were--and how quick they moved. +You wrapped up them aprons like somethin' was after you, and I was +trying to get my nerve up to speak to you." + +"Tryin' to get up your nerve! I reckon it wasn't much effort. There, +don't that vine look's if it grew there of itself?" + +"Yeh--it looks fine." He sat down on the bench and pulled her down +beside him, his arm about her. "Annie, baby, are y' happy?" + +She put her cheek against his shoulder and shut her eyes. + +"I'm so happy I wouldn't darst be any happier." + +"You're not sorry you picked up with me so quick? You don't wish't +you'd stayed down in Balt'mer and got you a city beau?" + +"I'd rather be with you--here--than any place in the world. And, +Wes--I think you're the best and kindest man that ever lived. I +wouldn't have you changed, any way, one little bit." + +She defied her fears and that mocking, twitching vein with the words. + +"Same here. Made to order for me, you were. First minute I looked in +those round blue eyes of yours I knew it." + +"It isn't possible," she thought. "It isn't possible that he can get +so mad and be so dreadful. Maybe if I can make him think he's awful +good and kind"--oh, simple subtlety--"believe he is, too, and he'll +stop getting such spells. Oh, if he would always be just like this!" + +But it was only two days later when she called him to help her; there +was a hen that was possessed to brood, and Aunt Dolcey had declared +that it was too late, that summer chickens never thrived. + +"I can't get her out, Wes," said Annie. "She's 'way in under the +stable, and she pecks at me so mean. You got longer arms'n me--you +reach in and grab her." + +He came, smiling. He reached in and grabbed, and the incensed biddy +pecked viciously. + +In a flash his anger was on him. He snatched again, and this time +brought out the creature and dropped her with wrung neck, a mass of +quivering feathers and horribly jerking feet, before Annie. + +"I reckon that'll learn the old crow!" he snarled, and strode away. + +"We might's well have soup for supper," remarked Aunt Dolcey, coming +on the scene a moment later. "Dere, chile, what's a chicken, anyway?" + +"It's not that," said Annie briefly; "but he makes me afraid of him. +If I get too afraid of him I'll stop caring anything about him. I +don't want to do that." + +"Den," answered Aunt Dolcey with equal brevity, "you got think up some +manner er means to dribe his debbil out. Like I done tol' you." + +"Yes, but----" + +Aunt Dolcey paused, holding the carcass of the chicken in her hands, +and faced her. + +"Dishyer ain' nuthin'. Wait tell he gits one his still spells, whenas +he doan' speak ter nobody an' doan' do no work. Why ain' we got no +seed potaters? Marse Wes he took a contrairy spell an' he wouldn't dig +'em, an' he wouldn't let Zenas tech 'em needer. Me, I went out +moonlight nights an' dug some to eat an' hid 'em in de cellar. Miss +Annie, you doan' know nuffin' erbout de Dean temper yit." + +They went silently to the house. Aunt Dolcey stopped in the kitchen +and Annie went on into the living room. There on the walls hung the +pictures of Wes's father and mother, cabinet photographs framed square +in light wood. Annie looked at those pictured faces in accusing +inquiry. Why had they bequeathed Wes such a legacy? In his father's +face, despite the beard that was the fashion of those days, there was +the same unmistakable pride and passion of Wes to-day. And his mother +was a meek woman who could not live and endure the Dean temper. Well, +Annie was not going to be meek. She thought with satisfaction of Aunt +Dolcey and the hot flatiron. The fact that he had never lifted finger +to Aunt Dolcey again proved that if one person could thus conquer him, +so might another. Was she, his wife, to be less resourceful, less +self-respecting than that old Negro woman? Was she to endure what Aunt +Dolcey would not? + +Suddenly she snatched out the little old family album from its place +in the top of the desk secretary, an old-fashioned affair bound in +shabby brown leather with two gilt clasps. Here were more pictures of +the Dean line--his grandfather, more bearded than his father, his Dean +vein even more prominent; his grandmother, another meek woman. + +"Probably the old wretch beat her," thought Annie angrily. + +Another page and here was great-grandfather himself, in middle age, +his picture--a faded daguerreotype--showing him in his Sunday best, +but plainly in no Sunday mood. "Looks like a pirate," was Annie's +comment. There was no picture of great-grandmother. "Probably he +killed her off too young, before she had time to get her picture +taken." And Annie's eyes darted blue fire at the supposed culprit. She +shook her brown little fist at him. "You started all this," she said +aloud. "You began it. If you'd had a wife who'd've stood up to you +you'd never got drunk and killed a man, and you wouldn't have left +your family a nasty old mad vein in the middle of their foreheads, +looking perfectly unChristian. I just wish I had you here, you old +scoundrel! I'll bet I'd tell you something that'd make your ears +smart." + +She banged to the album and put it in its place. + +"Well, not me!" said Annie. "Not me! I'm not going to be bullied and +scared to death by any man with a bad temper, and the very next time +Mister Wes flies off the handle and raises Cain I'm going to raise +Cain, two to his one. I won't be scared! I won't be a little gump and +take such actions off any man. We'll see!" + +It is easy enough to be bold and resolute and threaten a picture. It +is easy enough to plot action either before or after the need for it +arises. But when it comes to raising Cain two to your husband's one, +and that husband has been a long and successful cultivator of that +particular crop--why, that is quite a different thing. + +Besides, as it happened, Annie did not wholly lack sympathy for his +next outburst, which was directed toward a tramp, a bold dirty +creature who appeared one morning at the kitchen door and asked for +food. + +"You two Janes all by your lonesome here?" he asked, stepping in. + +Wes had come into the house for another shirt--he had split the one he +was wearing in a mighty bout with the grubbing hoe--and he entered the +kitchen from the inner door just in time to catch the words. + +He leaped and struck in one movement, and it carried the tramp and +himself outside on the grass of the drying yard. The tramp was a burly +man, and after the surprise of the attack he attempted to fight. He +might as well have battled with a locomotive going full speed. + +"What you doin' way up here, you lousy loafer?" demanded Wes between +blows. "Get to hell out of here before I kill you, like you deserve, +comin' into my house and scarin' women. I've a great mind to get my +gun and blow you full of holes." + +In two minutes the tramp was running full speed toward the road, +followed by Wes, who assisted his flight with kicks whenever he could +reach him. After twenty minutes or so the victor came back. His eyes +were red with rage that possessed him. He did not stop to speak, but +hurried out his rackety little car and was gone. Later they found out +he had overtaken the tramp, fought him again, knocked him out, and +then, roping him, had taken him to the nearest constable and seen him +committed to jail. + +But the encounter left him strange and silent for a week, and his Dean +mark twitched and leaped in triumph. During that time the only notice +he took of Annie was to teach her to use his rifle. + +"Another tramp comes round, shoot him," he commanded. + +"En in de meantime," counselled Aunt Dolcey, "it'll come in mighty +handy fer you to kill off some deseyer chicken hawks what makin' so +free wid our nex' crap br'ilers." + +But beyond the learning how to use the gun Annie had learned something +more: she added it to her knowledge that Aunt Dolcey had once outfaced +that tyrant. It was this--that Wes's rage was the same, whether the +cause of it was real or imaginary. + + * * * * * + +The advancing summer, with its sultriness, its sudden evening storms +shot through with flaming lightning and reverberant with the drums of +thunder, brought to Annie a cessation of her purpose. She was languid, +subject to whimsical desires and appetites, at times a prey to sudden +nervous tears. The household work slipped back into Aunt Dolcey's +faithful hands, save now and then when Annie felt more buoyant and +instinct with life and energy than she had ever felt before. Then she +would weed her garden or churn and print a dozen rolls of butter with +a keen and vivid delight in her activity. + +In the evening she and Wes walked down the long lane and looked at the +wheat, wide level green plains already turning yellow; or at the corn, +regiments of tall soldiers, each shako tipped with a feathery tassel. +Beyond lay the woods--dark, mysterious. Little dim plants of the soil +bloomed and shed faint scent along the pathway in the dewy twilight. +Sometimes they sat under the wild clematis, flowering now, and that, +too, was perfumed, a wild and tangy scent that did not cloy. They did +not talk very much, but he was tender with her, and his fits of anger +seemed forgotten. + +When they did talk it was usually about the crops--the wheat. It was +wonderful heavy wheat. It was the best wheat in all the neighbourhood. +Occasionally they took out the little coffeepot and drove through the +country and looked at other wheat, but there was none so fine as +theirs. + +And with the money it would bring--the golden wheat turned into +gold--they would---- And now came endless dreams. + +"I thought we'd sell the old coffeepot to the junkman and get a +brand-new car, a good one, but now----" This was Wes. + +"I think we ought to save, too. A boy'll need so many things." + +"Girls don't need anything much, I suppose--oh, no!" He touched her +cheek with gentle fingers. + +"It's not going to be a girl." + +"How d'you know?" + +"I know." + +So went their talk, over and over, an endless garland of happy +conjectures, plans, air castles. Cousin Lorena sent little patterns +and thin scraps of material, tiny laces, blue ribbons. + +"I told her blue--blue's for boys," said Annie. And Wes laughed at +her. It was all a blessed interlude of peace and expectancy. + +The wheat was ready for harvest. From her place under the clematis +vine, where she sat with her sewing, Annie could see the fields of +pale gold, ready for the reaper. Wes had taken the coffeepot and gone +down to the valley to see when the threshers would be able to come. In +the morning he would begin to cut. Annie cocked a questioning eye at +the sky, for she had already learned to watch the farmer's greatest +ally and enemy--weather. + +"If this good spell of weather only holds until he gets it all cut!" +She remembered stories he had told her of sudden storms that flattened +the ripe grain to the ground, beyond saving; of long-continued rains +that mildewed it as it stood in the shocks. But if the good weather +held! And there was not a cloud in the sky, nor any of those faint +signs by which changing winds or clouds are forecast. + +She heard the rattle and clack of the returning coffeepot, boiling up +the hill at an unwonted speed. And she waved her hand to Wes as he +came past; but he was bent over the wheel and did not even look round +for her, only banged the little car round to the back furiously. +Something in his attitude warned her, and she felt the old +almost-forgotten devil of her fear leap to clutch her heart. + +Presently he came round the house, and she hardly dared to look at +him; she could not ask. But there was no need. He flung his hat on the +ground before her with a gesture of frantic violence. When he spoke +the words came in a ferment of fury: + +"That skunk of a Harrison says he won't bring the thresher up here +this year; claims the road's too rough and bridges are too weak for +the engine." + +"Oh, Wes--what'll you do?" + +"Do! I'm not going to do anything! I'm not going to haul my wheat down +to him--I'll see him in hell and back again before I will." + +"But our wheat!" + +"The wheat can rot in the fields! I won't be bossed and blackguarded +by any dirty little runt that thinks because he owns the only +threshing outfit in the neighbourhood that he can run my affairs." + +He raged up and down, adding invective, vituperation. + +"But you can't, Wes--you can't let the wheat go to waste." For Annie +had absorbed the sound creed of the country, that to waste foodstuff +is a crime as heinous as murder. + +"Can't I? Well, we'll see about that!" + +She recognized from his tone that she had been wrong to protest; she +had confirmed him in his purpose. She picked up her sewing and tried +with unsteady fingers to go on with it, but she could not see the +stitches for her tears. He couldn't mean it--and yet, what if he +should? She looked up and out toward those still fields of precious +ore, dimming under the purple shadows of twilight, and saw them a +black tangle of wanton desolation. The story Aunt Dolcey had told her +about the potatoes of last year was ominous in her mind. + +He was sitting opposite her now, his head in his hands, brooding, +sullen, the implacable vein in his forehead swollen with triumph, +something brutish and hard dimming his clean and gallant youth. + +"That's the way he's going to look as he gets older," thought Annie +with a touch of prescience. "He's going to change into somebody +else--little by little. This is the worst spell he's ever had. And all +this mean blood's going to live again in my child. It goes on and on +and on." + +She leaned against the porch seat and struggled against the sickness +of it. + +"I might stand it for myself," she thought. "I might stand it for +myself; but I'm not going to stand it for my baby. I'll do +something--I'll take him away." + +Her thoughts ran on hysterically, round and round in a coil that had +no end and no beginning. + +The silent fit was on Wes now. Presently, she knew, he would get up +and stalk away to bed without a word. And in the morning---- + +It was as she expected. Without a word to her he got up and went +inside, and she heard him going up the stairs. She sat then a little +longer, for the night was still and warm and beautiful, the stars very +near, and the soft hush-h of the country solitude comforting to her +distress. + +Then she heard Unc' Zenas and Dolcey talking at the kitchen door, +their voices a faint cadenced murmur; and this reminded her that she +was not quite alone. She slipped round to them. + +"Unc' Zenas, Wes says he's not going to cut the wheat; he'll let it +rot in the fields. Seems Harrison won't send his thresher up this far; +wants us to haul to him instead." + +"Marse Wes say he ain' gwine cut dat good wheat? Oh, no Miss Annie, he +cain' mean dat, sholy, sholy!" + +"He said it. He's got an awful spell this time. Unc' +Zenas--look--couldn't you ride the reaper if he wouldn't? Couldn't +you? Once the wheat gets cut there's some chance." + +"Befo' my God, Miss Annie, wid deseyer wuffless ole han's I cain' +ha'dly hol' one hawss, let alone three. Oh, if I had back my stren'th +lak I useter!" + +The three fell into hopeless silence. + +"Are the bridges so bad? Is it too hard to get the thresher up here?" +asked Annie at last. "Or was that just Harrison's excuse?" + +"No, ma'am; he's got de rights. Dem ole bridges might go down mos' any +time. An' dishyer road up yere, it mighty hard to navigate foh er +grea' big hebby contraption lak er threshin' machine en er engine. +Mos' eve'y year he gits stuck. Las' year tuk er day en er ha'f to git +him out. No'm; he's got de rights." + +"Yes, but, Unc' Zenas, that wheat mustn't be left go to waste." + +Aunt Dolcey spoke up. "Miss Annie, honey, go git your res'--mawnin' +brings light. Maybe Marse Wes'll come to his solid senses een de +mawnin'. You cain' do nuffin' ternight noway." + +"No, that's so." She sighed hopelessly. "Unc' Zenas, maybe we could +hire somebody else to cut the wheat if he won't." + +"Miss Annie, honey, eve'ybody busy wid his own wheat--an', moreover, +Marse Wes ain' gwi' let any stranger come on dis place an' cut his +wheat--you know he ain'." + +There seemed nothing more to say. In the darkness tears were slowly +trickling down Annie's cheeks, and she could not stop them. + +"Well--good-night." + +"Good-night, my lamb, good-night. I gwi' name you en your tribulations +in my prayers dis night." + +She had never felt so abandoned, so alone. She could not even make the +effort to force herself to believe that Wes would not commit this +crime against all Nature; instead, she had a vivid and complete +certainty that he would. She went over it and over it, lying in +stubborn troubled wakefulness. She put it in clear if simple terms. If +Wes persisted in his petty childish anger and wasted this wheat, it +meant that they could not save the money that they had intended for +the child that was coming. They would have, in fact, hardly more than +their bare living left them. The ridiculous futility of it swept her +from one mood to another, from courage to utter hopelessness. She +remembered the first time that she had seen Wes angry, and how she had +lain awake then and wondered, and dreaded. She remembered how, later, +she had planned to manage him, to control him. And she had done +nothing. Now it had come to this, that her child would be born in +needless impoverishment; and, worse, born with the Dean curse full +upon him. She clenched and unclenched her hands. The poverty she might +bear, but the other was beyond her power to endure. Sleep came to her +at last as a blessed anodyne. + +In the first moment of the sunlit morning she forgot her trouble, but +instantly she remembered, and she dressed in an agony of apprehension +and wonder. Wes was gone, as was usual, for he got up before she did, +to feed his cattle. She hurried into her clothes and came down, to +find him stamping in to breakfast, and with the first glance at him +her hope fell like a plummet. + +He did mean it--he did! He did not mean to cut that wheat. She watched +him as he ate, and that fine-spun desperation that comes when courage +alone is not enough, that purpose that does the impossible, took hold +of her. + +When he had finished his silent meal he went leisurely out to the +little front porch and sat down. She followed him. "Wes Dean, you +going to cut that wheat?" she demanded; and she did not know the sound +of her own voice, so high and shrill it was. + +The vein in his forehead leered at her. What was she to pit her +strength against a mood like this? He did not answer, did not even +look at her. + +"Do you mean to say you'd be so wicked--such a fool?" she went on. + +Now he looked up at her with furious, threatening eyes. + +"Shut your mouth and go in!" he said. + +She did not move. "If you ain't going to cut it--then I am!" + +She turned and started through the house, and he leaped up and +followed her. In the kitchen he overtook her. + +"You stay where you are! You don't go out of this house this day!" He +laid a rough, restraining hand on her shoulder. + +At that touch--the first harshness she had ever felt from +him--something hot and flaming leaped through her. She whirled away +from him and caught up Aunt Dolcey's big sharp butcher knife lying on +the table; lifted it. + +"You put your hands on me like that again and I'll kill you!" Her +voice was not high and shrill now; she did not even raise it. "You and +your getting mad! You and your rotten, filthy temper! You'd waste that +wheat because you haven't got enough sense to see what a big fool you +are." + +She dropped the knife and walked past him, out of the kitchen, to the +barn. + +"Unc' Zenas," she called, "you hitch up the horses to the reaper. I'm +going to cut that near field to-day myself." + +"But, Miss Annie----" began the old man. + +"You hitch up that team," she said. "If there ain't any men round this +place, I don't know's it makes so much difference." + +She waited while the three big horses were brought out and hitched to +the reaper, and then she mounted grimly to the seat. She did not even +look around to see if Wes might be watching. She did not answer when +Unc' Zenas offered a word of direction. + +"Let dat nigh horse swing round de cornahs by hisse'f, Miss Annie. He +knows. An' look--here's how you drop de knife. I'll let down de bars +an' foller you." + +Behind her back he made frantic gestures to Dolcey to come to him, +and she ran, shuffling, shaken. Together they followed the little +figure in the blue calico dress, perched high on the rattling, +clacking reaper. Her hair shone in the sun like the wheat. + +The near horse knew the game, knew how to lead the others. That was +Annie's salvation. As she swung into the field she had a struggle with +the knife, but it dropped into place, and the first of the golden +harvest fell before it squarely, cleanly; the stubble was even behind +it. She watched the broad backs of her team, a woman in a dream. She +did not know how she drove them; the lines were heavy in her hands, +dragged at her arms. It was hot, and sweat rolled down her forehead. +She wished vaguely that she had remembered to put on her sunbonnet. + +Behind her came Unc' Zenas and Aunt Dolcey, setting the sheaves into +compact, well-capped stocks, little rough golden castles to dot this +field of amazing conflict. + +And now the reaper had come to the corner. Unc' Zenas straightened +himself and watched anxiously. But his faith in the near horse was +justified--the team turned smoothly, Annie lifted the blade and +dropped it, and they started again, only half visible now across the +tall grain. + +Annie's wrists and back ached unbearably, the sweat got in her eyes, +but she drove on. She thought a little of Wes, and how he had looked +when she picked up that butcher knife. She thought of his heavy hand +on her shoulder, and her flesh burned where he had grasped it. + +"I'm going to cut this wheat if it kills me." she said over and over +to herself in a queer refrain. "I'm going to cut this wheat if it +kills me!" She thought probably it would. But she drove on. + +She made her second corner successfully, and now the sun was at her +back, and that gave her a little ease. This wheat was going to be cut, +and hauled to the thresher, and sold in the market, if she did every +bit of the work herself. She would show Wes Dean! Let him try to stop +her--if he dared! + +And there would be money enough for everything the baby might want or +might need. Her child should not be born to poverty and skimping. If +only the sun didn't beat so hard on the back of her neck! If only her +arms didn't ache so! + +After countless hours of time she overtook Dolcey and Zenas, and the +old woman divined her chief discomfort. She snatched the sunbonnet off +her own head and handed it up to her. + +"Marster in hebben, ef I only had my stren'th!" muttered Zenas as she +went on. + +"Angels b'arin' dat chile up wid deir wings," chanted Aunt Dolcey. +Then, descending to more mundane matters, she added a delighted +chuckle: "I knowed she'd rise en shine one dese days. Holler at Marse +Wes she did, name him names, plenty. Yessuh--laid him out!" + +"What you s'pose he up to now?" asked Zenas, looking over his +shoulder. + +"I dunno--but I bet you he plumb da'nted. Zenas, lak I tol' you--man +may hab plenty debbilment, rip en t'ar, but he'll stan' back whenas a +ooman meks up her min' she stood enough." And Aunt Dolcey had never +heard of Rudyard Kipling's famous line. + +"Dat chile might kill he'se'f." + +"When yo' mad yo' kin 'complish de onpossible, en it doan' hurt yo'," +replied Dolcey, thus going Kipling one better. + +But she watched Annie anxiously. + +The girl held out, though the jolting and shaking racked her +excruciatingly and the pull of the reins seemed to drag the very flesh +from her bones. Now and then the golden field swam dark before her +eyes, the backs of the horses swelled to giant size and blotted out +the sun. But she kept on long after her physical strength was gone; +her endurance held her. Slowly, carefully, the machine went round and +round the field, and the two bent old figures followed. + +And so they came to mid-morning. They had long since ceased to look or +care for any sign of the young master of the land. None of them +noticed him, coming slowly, slowly from the stables, coming slowly, +slowly to the field's edge and standing there, watching with +unbelieving, sullen eyes the progress of the reaper, the wavering arms +that guided the horses, the little shaken blue figure that sat high in +the driver's seat. But he was there. + +It is said of criminals that a confession can often be extracted by +the endless repetition of one question alone; they cannot bear the +pressure of its monotony. Perhaps it was the monotony of the measured +rattle and clack of the machine going on so steadily that finally +impelled Wes Dean, after his long frowning survey of the scene, to +vault the low stone wall and approach it. + +Annie did not check the horses when she saw him; she did not even look +at him. But he looked at her, and in her white face, with the dreary +circles of utter fatigue shadowing her eyes, his defeat was completed. +He put his hand on the bit of the nearest horse and stopped the team. + +Then she looked at him, as one looks at a loathsome stranger. + +"What you want?" she asked coldly. + +He swallowed hard. "Annie--I'll--I'll cut the wheat, le'me lift you +down off there." He held out his arms. + +She did not budge. "You going to cut it all--and haul it down to the +thresher?" + +"Yes--yes, I will. Gee, you look near dead--get down, honey. You go in +the house and lay down--I'm afraid you'll kill yourself. I'm afraid +you'll hurt--him some way." + +Still she did not move. "I'd ruther be dead than live with a man that +acts like you do," she said. "Grown up, and can't handle his temper." + +Something in her quiet, cold scorn struck through to him and cut away +forever his childish satisfaction with himself. A new manhood came +into his face; his twitching, sinister vein was still. Surrender +choked him, but he managed to get it out: + +"I know I acted like a fool. But I can't let you do this. I'll--I'll +try to----" + +The words died on his lips and he leaped forward in time to catch her +as she swayed and fell, fainting. + +An hour later Annie lay on the lounge in the sitting room, still +aching with terrible weariness, but divinely content. Far away she +could hear the steady susurrus of the reaper, driven against the +golden wheat, and the sound was a promise and a song to her ears. She +looked up now and then at the pictured face of Wes's father, frowning +and passionate, and the faint smile of a conqueror curved her tired +mouth. For she had found and proved the strongest thing in the world, +and she would never again know fear. + + + +THE TRIBUTE + +By HARRY ANABLE KNIFFIN + +From _Brief Stories_ + + +The Little Chap reached up a chubby hand to the doorknob. A few +persistent tugs and twists and it turned in his grasp. Slowly pushing +the door open, he stood hesitating on the threshold of the studio. + +The Big Chap looked up from his easel by the window. His gray eyes +kindled into a kindly smile, its welcoming effect offset by an +admonitory headshake. "Not now, Son," he said. "I'm busy." + +"Can't I stay a little while, Daddy?" The sturdy little legs carried +their owner across the floor as he spoke. "I'll be quiet, like--like I +was asleep." + +The Big Chap hesitated, looking first at his canvas and then at the +small replica of himself standing before him. + +"I got on my new pants," the youngster was saying, conversationally +easing the embarrassment of a possible capitulation. "Mummy says I +ought to be proud of them, and because I'm five years old." + +The artist looked gravely down at him. "Proud, Son?" he asked, in the +peculiar way he had of reasoning with the Little Chap. "Have you +reached the age of five because of anything you have done? Or did you +acquire the trousers with money you earned?" + +The Little Chap looked up at him questioningly. He had inherited his +father's wide gray eyes, and at present their expression was troubled. +Then, evidently seeking a more easily comprehended topic, his eyes +left his father's and sought the canvas on which was depicted a court +scene of mediaeval times. "Who is that, Daddy?" His small index finger +pointed to the most prominent figure in the painting. + +His father continued to regard him thoughtfully. "One of England's +proud kings, Son." + +"And what did _he_ do to be proud of?" came quickly from the youthful +inquisitioner. + +A hearty laugh escaped the artist. "Bully for you, Son! That's a +poser! Aside from taxing the poor and having enemies beheaded, I'm +puzzled to know what he really did do to earn his high position." + +The Little Chap squirmed himself between his father's knees and +started to scale the heights to his lap, where he finally settled down +with a sigh of comfort. "Tell me a story about him," he said eagerly. +"A story with castles, 'n' wars, 'n' everything." + +The artist's gaze rested on the kingly figure in the picture, then +wandered away to the window through which he seemed to lose himself in +scenes of a far-distant time. + +"I'll tell you a story, Son," he began, slowly and ruminatingly, "of +how Loyalty and Service stormed the Stronghold of Honour and +Splendour. This proud king you see in the picture lived part of the +time in the great castle of Windsor, and the balance of the year in +Saint James's Palace in London." + +"It must have cost him a lot for rent," wisely interpolated the Little +Chap. + +"No, the people paid the rent, Son. Some of them were glad to do it, +for they looked upon their king as a superior being. Among this class +of loyal subjects was an old hatter, very poor and humble." + +"What was his name?" asked the Little Chap, apparently greatly +interested. + +"He had no name. People in those olden days were known by their trade +or calling. So he was simply called 'the hatter'." + +"And did he make nice hats?" + +"I've no doubt he did, Son. But you mustn't interrupt. Well, the +hatter paid his tithes, or taxes, after which, I dare say, he had +little enough left to live on. But he appeared not to mind. And +whenever the King and Queen rode through the streets in their gilded +coach of state, his cracked old voice would cheer lustily, and his +hoary head would be bared in deepest reverence." + +"Didn't he ever catch cold?" + +"Hush, Son, I'm telling a story! As the hatter grew older he lost his +wits and became quite crazy on the subject of his king. He yearned to +do something to prove his loyalty. And whenever England engaged in a +war, and a proclamation was issued calling for men to fight for King +and country, he would be one of the first to volunteer. But they never +accepted him, of course, because he was so old. + +"With the passing of the years the Queen died, and the King decided to +marry again. Great preparations for the ceremony were begun at +Westminster Abbey, where the wedding was to take place. The old hatter +became greatly excited when he heard the news. His addled wits +presently hit upon a wonderful scheme by which he could both honour +and serve his sovereign: _He would make the King a hat to wear at his +wedding_!" + +"I guess he must 've been a good hatter, after all," the Little Chap +murmured, in a tone of conviction. + +"Perhaps, in his time," his father conceded. "But you must remember he +now was old and foolish. His materials were merely such odds and ends +as he could gather together, and the result was very +disreputable-looking. But in his rheumy old eyes it was the most +wonderful hat ever designed for a monarch. He carefully wrapped it in +a soiled old cloth and started out to present it to the King. At the +palace gates the guards refused him admittance, and cruelly laughed in +his face. He tried every means he could think of to have the hat reach +its destination. Once he stopped the Court Chamberlain on the street, +only to be rebuked for his pains. Another time he waylaid a peer, as +he left the House of Lords, and was threatened with arrest. Foiled in +all his attempts, the cracked-brained old fellow impatiently awaited +the wedding ceremony. At last the great day arrived. All the bells of +old London were ringing blithely as the gilded coach, drawn by ten +white horses, deposited the King at Westminster Abbey. In the +forefront of the vast throng surrounding the entrance stood the +hatter." + +"And did he have the hat with him?" asked the Little Chap. + +"Yes, Son, he had it with him. And when the King entered the portals +of the ancient Abbey, the hatter somehow broke through the line of +guards and ran after him crying 'Your Majesty! Your Majesty! Deign to +accept this token of a loyal subject's regard!' + +"The King turned in surprise And when he saw the ragged old fellow +tending him the ridiculous-looking hat, he flew into a great rage and +cried angrily: 'How comes this varlet here, interrupting his +Sovereign's nuptials and desecrating our Tomb of Kings? Away with him +to prison, and let him repent his insolence as he rots in a dungeon!'" + +"Why did he do that, Daddy?" + +"The Sovereign, Son, was a very proud king, while the hatter was both +poor and humble. And at his words the guards hurried forward and +hustled the old man out of the Abbey, where his presence was an insult +to the Great. In the struggle the hat rolled into the gutter, and one +of the King's white horses put his hoof through it. The hatter cried +like a child when he saw the work of his loving hands thus ruined. But +they carried him off to prison and kept him shut up there until he +died and paid the penalty for his crime of desecrating the Abbey." + +"Oh, the poor old hatter! But is that the end of the story, Daddy?" +The Little Chap's disappointment was markedly pronounced. + +"No, Son, there is a little more to come. I meant to tell you that the +hatter had reared a large family of boys. His sons all married and, in +turn, raised large families. These numerous relatives or kin took the +name of Hatterskin. In course of time that became shortened to +Hatkins, and so remained until the British habit of dropping their H's +reduced it to Atkins. + +"At last the proud King died and was buried with great ceremony in the +Abbey. Year followed year, and century succeeded century. England, +although blessed with a Royal pair both humane and good, was ruled by +an even wiser monarch--the Sovereign People. + +"Then came an August day when the black thunder-cloud of war darkened +her smiling horizon. Four bloody, terrible years the conflict lasted. +And when at last an armistice was signed, the stricken people went +wild with joy." + +The Big Chap's gaze returned to the canvas with its scene of mediaeval +splendour. A mystic light smouldered in his eyes as, unconscious of +his surroundings and his youthful auditor, he continued: "On the +second anniversary of that happy day an unprecedented thing happened. +Before the ancient Abbey a gun carriage, bearing the flag-draped +casket of an unidentified warrior, came to rest on the very spot where +the gilded coach of the proud King once had stopped. Again the square +was crowded, as on that day in the long ago when the poor hatter +foolishly tried to honour his sovereign. The traditions of centuries +toppled when the body of the unknown soldier passed through those +storied portals followed by the King of England as chief mourner. In +the dim, historic chapel the king stood, in advance of princes, prime +ministers, and the famous leaders of both army and navy. Like the +humble hatter of old his royal head was reverently bared as the +nameless hero was laid among the silent company of England's +illustrious dead. 'The Boast of Heraldry and the Pomp of Power' bowed +in silent homage before the remains of a once common soldier. Thus +Loyalty and Service eventually stormed the Stronghold of Honour and +Splendour!" + +For a moment there was an impressive, brooding silence, broken +presently by the Little Chap. "And what was the soldier's name, +Daddy?" + +Recalled from his revery, the father answered: + +"_He was known, Son, as Tommy Atkins_." + +The Little Chap's brow was puckered in thought. At last he laughed +delightedly and clapped his hands. "Was the soldier, Daddy, one of the +hatter's family--the poor old hatter who was thrown out of the Abbey?" + +The Big Chap lifted the child from his lap and placed him on his feet. +Then he picked up a brush and turned to his painting. + +"I like to think so, Son. But only God knows." + + + +THE GETAWAY + +By O.F. LEWIS + +From _Red Book_ + + +Old Man Anderson, the lifer, and Detroit Jim, the best second-story +man east of the Mississippi, lay panting side by side in the +pitch-dark dugout, six feet beneath the surface of the prison yard. +They knew their exact position to be twenty feet south of the north +wall, and, therefore, thirty feet south of the slate sidewalk outside +the north wall. + +It had taken the twain three months and twenty-one days to achieve the +dugout. Although there was always a guard somewhere on the north wall, +the particular spot where the dugout had come into being was sheltered +from the wall-guard's observation by a small tool-house. Also whenever +the pair were able to dig, which was only at intervals, a bunch of +convicts was always perched on the heap of dirt from various +legitimate excavations within the yard, which Fate had piled up at +that precise spot. The earth from the dugout and the earth from these +other diggings mixed admirably. + +Nor, likewise because of the dirt-pile, could any one detect the job +from the south end of the yard. If a guard appeared from around the +mat-shop or coming out of the Principal Keeper's office, the convicts +sunning themselves on the dirt-pile in the free hour of noon, or late +in the afternoon, after the shops had closed, spoke with motionless +lips to the two diggers. Plenty of time was thus afforded to shove a +couple of boards over the aperture, kick dirt over the boards, and +even push a barrow over the dugout's entrance--and there you were! + +One minute before this narrative opens, on July 17th, a third convict +had dropped the boards over the hole into which Old Man Anderson, the +lifer, and Detroit Jim, had crawled. This convict had then frantically +kicked dirt over the boards, had clawed down still more dirt, to make +sure nothing could be seen of the hole--had made the thing look just +like part of the big dirt-pile indeed--and then had legged it to the +ball-game now in progress on this midsummer Saturday afternoon, at the +extreme south end of the yard, behind the mat-shop. + +Dirt trickled down upon the gray hair of Old Man Anderson in the dark +and stuffy hole he shared with his younger companion. But the darkness +and the stuffiness and the filtering dirt were unsensed. Something far +more momentous was in the minds of both. How soon would Slattery, the +prison guard, whom they knew to be lying dead in the alley between the +foundry and the tool-shop, be found? For years Slattery had been a +fairly good friend to Old Man Anderson, but what did that count in the +face of his becoming, for all his friendship, a last-minute and +totally unexpected impediment to the get-away? He had turned into the +alley just when Old Man Anderson and Detroit Jim were crouching for +the final jump to the dugout! A blow--a thud--that was all.... + +Anderson lay now, staring wide-eyed into the black nothing of the +hole. For the second time he had killed a man, and God knew he hadn't +intended to--either time! Fourteen years ago a man had tried to get +his wife away from him, while he was serving a one-year bit in the +county jail. Both men had had guns, and Old Man Anderson had killed +the other or he would have been killed himself. So that was no murder +at all! And as for Slattery--big, heavy, slow-moving, red-faced +Slattery--Old Man Anderson would even have gone out of his way to do +the guard a favour, under ordinary circumstances. But as between +Slattery and the chance to escape--that was different. + +Old Man Anderson rubbed his right hand in the dirt and held it before +his eyes in the blackness. He knew that the moisture on it was +Slattery's blood. The iron pipe in Old Man Anderson's hands had struck +Slattery on the head just once, but once was enough. + +Old Man Anderson burst into hiccoughing sobs. The younger convict +punched him in the ribs, and swore at him in muffled tones. Anderson +stifled his sobs then, but continued to sniffle and shiver. This time +it would absolutely be The Chair for him--if they got him! In a few +minutes they couldn't help discovering Slattery. Anderson never could +give himself up now, however this business of the dugout and the +hoped-for old sewer conduit should finally turn out. In the beginning +he had counted on crawling out, if worst came to worst, and +surrendering. But to crawl out now meant but one thing--The Chair! + +In all his fourteen years behind the walls the vision of The Chair had +terrorized the old man. When they had sent him to prison his first +cell had been in the death-house, separated from The Chair only by a +corridor that, they told him, was about twenty feet long, and took no +more than five seconds to traverse--with the priest. Until they +changed his cell, the gaunt, terrible Thing in the next room edged +every day nearer, nearer, nearer, looming, growing, broadening before +his morbid vision until it seemed to have cut off from his sight +everything else in the world--closer, closer until it was only seven +incredible hours away! Then had come the commutation of his sentence +from death to life! + +The next day Old Man Anderson, gray-haired even then, went out from +the death-house among his gray-clad fellows, but straight into the +prison hospital, where for three months be lay a victim of chair-shock +just as surely as was ever a man shell-shocked on the Flanders front. +And never since had the hands of the man wholly ceased to quiver and +to shake. + +Now he was a murderer for the second time! In the blackness he +stretched out his hand, and ran it over a stack of tin cans. Detroit +Jim had been mighty clever! Canned food from the storehouse, enough to +last perhaps two weeks! Detroit Jim had had a storehouse job. Twice a +day, during the last ten days, the wiry little ferret-faced +second-story man had got away with at least one can from the prison +commissary. Also he had provided matches, candles, and even a cranky +little flashlight. Only chewing tobacco, because you can smell smoke a +long way when you are hunting escaped convicts. And a can of water +half the size of an ash can! + +Despair fastened upon Old Man Anderson, and a wave of sickness swept +over him. All the food in the world wouldn't bring Slattery back to +life. And again that Thing in the death-house rose before his mind's +eyes. Throughout all the years he had carried a kind of dread that +sometime a governor might come along who would put back his sentence +where it had been at first--and then all his good behaviour in these +endless years would count for nothing. Until Detroit Jim had told him +about the long-forgotten sewer conduit, he had never even thought to +disobey the prison rules. + +The old man's teeth chattered. Detroit Jim's thin fingers tugged at +his sleeve. That meant getting busy, and digging with the pick with +the sawed-off handle. So Anderson wriggled into the horizontal +chamber, which was just large enough to permit his body and arms to +function. + +As he hacked away at the damp earth, he could see in the pitch +darkness the dirty sheet of paper, now in Detroit Jim's pocket, upon +which their very life depended. It was a tracing made by a discharged +convict from a dusty leather-covered book in the public library in New +York, sent in by the underground to Jim. The book had contained the +report of some forgotten architect, back in the fifties of the last +century, and the diagram in his report showed the water and sewage +conduit--in use! It ran from the prison building, right down across +the yard, six feet under ground, and out under the north wall, under +the street outside, and finally into the river. Built of brick, four +feet wide, four feet high. A ready-made tunnel to freedom! + +Old Man Anderson could hear Detroit Jim's hoarse whisper now, as he +chopped away at the dirt, which he shoved back under his stomach, to +where Jim's fingers caught it and thrust it farther back. + +"We're only a couple of feet from that old conduit right now. Dig, you +son of a gun, dig! Can the snifflin'! You dig, and then I'll dig!" + +They were saving their matches and candles against necessity. +Mechanically the old man chopped and hacked at the wall of earth in +front of him. Now and then the pick would encounter a stone or some +other hard substance. In the last few days they had come upon frequent +pieces of old brick. Detroit Jim had rejoiced over these signs. For +the old man every falling clod of earth seemed to bring him nearer to +freedom. They also took his mind off Slattery. + +So he chopped away, how long he did not know. Suddenly his pick struck +an obstacle again. He hacked at it. It gave slightly. A third time he +struck it, and it seemed to recede. An odour of mouldy air filled his +nostrils. In that little aperture his pick touched nothing now! He +heard something fall! Then he knew! There was a hollow place in front +of them! The abandoned conduit? He stifled a shout. + +From somewhere, muffled at first, but ultimately faintly strident, +rose a prolonged wail that seemed to issue from the very earth. The +sound rose, and fell, and rose again. Frantically the pick of Old Man +Anderson hacked away at the dirt, and then at whatever was in front of +him. Detroit Jim snapped the feeble flashlight then. It was a +wall--the conduit wall! + +Meantime, the prison siren shrieked out to the countryside the news of +an escape. + +What time it was--whether night or day or what day, neither Jim nor +Old Man Anderson knew. They had slept, of course, and Jim had +forgotten to wind his watch. Had one week or two weeks passed? If two +weeks had slipped by and if the prison officers ran true to form they +would by now have ceased searching inside the prison walls. + +Old Man Anderson and Detroit Jim huddled close to each other in the +darkness of the conduit. A hundred times they had crawled from one end +to the other of their vaultlike trap! In their desperate and fruitless +search for an outlet to the conduit they had burned many matches and +several candles. Besides, Old Man Anderson had required light in which +to fight off his attacks of nerves, and the last of the candles had +gone for that. Now total darkness enveloped them. + +The conduit was blocked! By earth at one end, and by a brick wall at +the other! All along the winding hundred feet of vault they had hacked +out brick after brick only to encounter solid earth behind. Only a few +tins of food remained and the water was wholly gone; the liquid from +the food cans only served to increase their thirst. + +Old Man Anderson had grown to loathe Detroit Jim. Every word he +murmured, every movement he made, intensified the loathing. He had +made up his mind that Jim was planning to desert him the next time he +should fall asleep; perhaps would kill him and leave him there--in the +dark. The two had practically ceased speaking to each other. In his +mental confusion Old Man Anderson kept revolving in his mind, with +satisfaction, a new plan he had evolved. The next time Jim should fall +asleep he would crawl back through the aperture in the conduit wall, +pry up the boards over the opening into the prison yard, wriggle out, +and take his chances in getting over the wall somehow! Better even be +shot by a guard than die like a rat in this unspeakable place, as he +was doing, where he couldn't stand up and dared not lie down on +account of the things that were forever crawling through the place! +His contemplation of his plan was broken in upon by his companion +clutching him spasmodically by the arm. The old man's cry died in his +throat. + +Footsteps! Dull and distant they were, and somewhere above +them--momentarily more distinct--receding--gone! + +Detroit Jim pulled Andersen's head toward him, and whispered: + +"Sidewalk! People going by! We've never sat right here before! We +wouldn't hear them if they weren't walking on stone, or slate, or +something hard!" + +The old man's heart pounded like a trip-hammer. Detroit Jim seized the +pick and began to pry the bricks loose from the arched roof of the +conduit. They worked like mad, picking, hacking, pulling, piling the +bricks softly down on the conduit floor. + +Once, for an instant, Jim stopped working. "How far from the hole we +came in through, do you think we are?" he whispered. + +"'Bout a hundred feet, I guess," answered the old man. "Why?" + +Without replying Detroit Jim resumed his picking, picking, at the +bricks. A hundred feet from where they had entered would not be under +the sidewalk. Finally, he understood. This conduit wound around a good +deal; it would take a hundred winding feet to cover thirty +straightaway. + +Finally, also, Detroit Jim turned the pick over to the old man, who, +feeling in the blackness with his hands, discovered the span as wide +as his outstretched arms, from which Detroit Jim had removed the +bricks. It was a span of yielding earth into which the old man now dug +his pick. As he worked, the loosened dirt fell upon him, upon his +head, into his eyes and nose and ears.... + +Abruptly the old man's pick struck the flagging above them! Detroit +Jim mounted upon the pile of bricks and shoved Anderson aside. + +Jim felt along the edges of the stone clear around. It seemed to +measure about three feet by two, and to be of slate, and probably held +in place only by its contact with other stones, or by cement between +the stones. No light appeared through the crevices. Detroit Jim took +from his pocket a huge pocket-knife and with the longest blade poked +up between the main stone and the one adjoining. The blade met +resistance. + +Ultimately, and abruptly, however, the blade shot through to the hilt +of the knife. Jim drew it back instantly. No light came through the +crevice. + +"I smell good air," he whispered, "but I can't see a thing. It must be +night!" + +They knew now what to do. The flagging must be removed at once, before +any one should go by! The hole would be big enough to let them out! +Old Man Andersen's heart leaped. It was over. They had won. Trust him +to go where they'd never get him for the Slattery business! As for +Detroit Jim, he already knew the next big trick that he would pull +off--out in Cleveland! + +Ultimately, as Detroit Jim worked upon it, the stone began to sag. An +edge caught upon the adjacent flagging. The two men, perched upon the +wobbly bricks, manipulated the stone, working it loose, until, +finally, it came crashing down. + +The stone had made noise enough, it seemed, to wake the dead; yet +above them there was no sound. Swiftly they raised the flagging and +set it securely upon the heap of bricks. When Detroit Jim stood upon +this improvised platform his head was level with the aperture they had +made. He could see no sky, no stars, could feel no wind, discover no +light such as pervades even the darkest night. + +"Good God!" he breathed. His fingers went out over the flagging. His +knife dropped. The tinkle echoed dully down the conduit. He stooped to +where Old Man Anderson stood, breathing hard. + +"It's a--a room!" he whispered. + +"A--a room?" repeated Old Man Anderson dully. + +"Come! After me! Up! I'll pull you up!" + +Detroit Jim, being wiry, swung himself up, and then bent down, groping +for the old man's hands. Winded, panting, exhausted, the two men stood +at last in this new blackness, clutching each other, their ears +strained to catch the slightest sound. + +"For God's sake, don't fall down that hole now!" hissed Detroit Jim. +"Listen. We'll both crawl together till we get to a wall. Then you +feel along one way, and whisper to me what you find, and I'll crawl +the other. Look for a window or a door--some way out! We'll come +together finally. Are you ready?" + +"I'm--I'm afraid," whined the old man. + +Detroit Jim's fingers dug into the other's arm, and he pulled the +latter along. Their groping hands touched a wall--a wall of wood. +Detroit Jim stood up and pulled Anderson beside him. He felt the old +man shiver. He shoved him gently in to the left and himself moved +cautiously to the right, slowly, catlike. + +Finally, Jim came to a door. He could perceive no light through the +chinks in the door. Sensing the increasing uncanniness of a room +without windows, without furniture, with flagging for a floor, he +turned the knob of the door gently, and it gave under his touch. + +Just then there came to him a hoarse whisper from across the room. It +made him jump. "I've--I've found some wires," the old man was saying, +"in a cable running along the floor----" + +"See where they lead!" Detroit Jim was breathless, in anticipation. + +And then, shattering the overwhelming tension of the moment, shrilled, +suddenly, a horrible, prolonged, piercing shriek ending in a gasp and +the sound of a heavy body falling to the floor! What, in God's name, +had happened to the old man? And that yell was enough to awaken the +entire world! + +Detroit Jim groped his way across the room. He could hear now no +further sound from the old man.... Steps outside! He sank upon his +knees, his hands outstretched. He heard a lock turn; then following +upon a click the whole universe went white, and dazzling and +scorching! + +He raised one arm to his blinking, throbbing eyes. A rough voice +shouted: "Hands up!" + +There was a rush of feet, the rough clutch of hands at his +shoulders.... Presently he found himself blinking down upon the +fear-contorted face of Old Man Anderson dirt-streaked, bearded, gaunt, +dead! + +Slowly his eyes crawled beyond the body on the floor.... Before him, +its empty arms stretched toward him, its straps and wires twisting +snakily in front of him, was The Chair! + + + +"AURORE" + +By ETHEL WATTS MUMFORD + +From _Pictorial Review_ + + +"Your name!--_Votre nom_?" Crossman added, for in the North Country +not many of the habitants are bilingual. + +She looked at him and smiled slowly, her teeth white against +cardinal-flower lips. + +"Ma name? Aurore," she answered in a voice as mystically slow as her +smile, while the mystery of her eyes changed and deepened. + +Crossman watched her, fascinated. She was like no woman he had ever +seen, radiating a personality individual and strange. "Aurore," he +repeated. "You're not the dawn, you know; not a bit like it." He did +not expect her to own to any knowledge of the legend of her name, but +she nodded her head understandingly. + +"It was the Cure name' me so," she explained. "But the Cure and me," +she shrugged, "never could--how you say?--see--hear--one the +other--so, I would not be a blonde just for spite to him--I am a very +black dawn, _n'est-ce pas_?" + +"A black dawn," he repeated. Her words unleashed his fancy--her heavy +brows and lashes, her satiny raven hair, her slow voice that seemed +made of silence, her eyes that changed in expression so rapidly that +they dizzied one with a sense of space. "Black Dawn!" He stared at her +long, which in no wise disconcerted her. + +"Will you want, then, Antoine and me?" she asked at length. + +He woke from his dream with a savage realization that, most surely, he +wanted her. "Yes. Of course--you--and Antoine. Wait, _attendez_, don't +go yet." + +"_Why_ not?" she smiled. "I have what I came for." + +Her hand was on the door-latch. The radiance from the opened door of +the square, old-fashioned stove shimmered over her fur cap and +intensified the broad scarlet stripes of her mackinaw. In black +corduroy trousers, full and bagging as a moujik's, she stood at ease, +her feet small and dainty even in the heavy caribou-hide boots. + +"_Bon soir, monsieur_," she said. "In two days we go with you to +camp--me--_and_ Antoine." + +"Wait!" he cried, but she had opened the door. He rose with a start, +and, ignoring the intense cold, followed her till the stinging breath +of the North stabbed him with the recollection of its immutable power. +All about him the night was radiant. Of a sudden the sky was hung with +banners--banners that rippled and folded and unfolded, banners of +rainbows, long, shaking loops of red and silver, ghosts of lost +emeralds and sapphires, oriflammes that fluttered in the heavens, +swaying across the world in mysterious majesty. Immensity, Silence, +Mystery--The Northern Lights! "Aurora!" he called into the night, +"Aurora--Borealis!" + +The Cure of Portage Dernier drove up to the log-cabin office and shook +himself from his blankets; his _soutane_ was rolled up around his +waist and secured with safety-pins; his solid legs were encased in the +heaviest of woollen trousers and innumerable long stockings. His +appearance was singularly divided--clerical above, under the long +wool-lined cape, and "lay" below. Though the thermometer showed a +shockingly depressed figure, the stillness and the warmth of the sun, +busy at diamond-making in the snow, gave the feeling of spring. + +The sky was inconceivably blue. The hard-frozen world was one +immaculate glitter, the giant evergreens standing black against its +brightness. The sonorous ring of axes on wood, the gnawing of saws, +the crunching of runners, the crackling crash of distant trees falling +to the woodsmen's onslaughts--Bijou Falls logging-camp was a vital +centre of joyous activity. + +The Cure grinned and rubbed his mittened hands. "H--Hola!" he called. + +At his desk in the north window Crossman heard the hail, and went to +the door. At sight of the singular padded figure his face lifted in a +grin. "Come in, Father," he exclaimed; "be welcome." + +"Ah," said the Priest, his pink face shining with benevolence, "I +thank you. Where is my friend, that good Jakapa? I am on my monthly +circuit, and I thought to see what happens at the Falls of the Bijou." +He stepped inside the cabin and advanced to the stove with +outstretched hands. "I have not the pleasure," he said tentatively. + +"My name is Crossman," the other answered. "I am new to the North." + +"Ah, so? I am the Cure of Portage Dernier, but, as you see, I must +wander after my lambs--very great goats are they, many of them, and +the winter brings the logging. So I, too, take to the timber. My +team," he waved an introducing hand at the two great cross-bred +sled-dogs that unhooked from their traces had followed him in and now +sat gravely on their haunches, staring at the fire. "You are an +overseer for the company?" suggested the Cure, politely curious--"or +perhaps you cruise?" + +Crossman shook his head. "No, _mon pere_. I came up here to get well." + +"Ah," said the Cure, sympathetically tapping his lung. "In this air of +the evergreens and the new wood, in the clean cold--it is the world's +sanatorium--you will soon be yourself again." + +Crossman smiled painfully. "Perhaps _here_"--he laid a long, slender +finger on his broad chest--"but I heal not easily of the great world +sickness--the War. It has left its mark! The War, the great malady of +the world." + +"You are right." Meditatively the Priest threw aside his cape and +began unfastening the safety-pins that held up his cassock. "You say +well. It strikes at the _heart_." + +Crossman nodded. + +"Yet it passes, my son, and Nature heals; as long as the hurt be in +Nature, Nature will take care. And you have come where Nature and God +work together. In this great living North Country, for sick bodies and +sick souls, the good God has His good sun and His clean winds." He +nodded reassurance, and Crossman's dark face cleared of its brooding. + +"Sit down, Father." He advanced a chair. + +"So," murmured the Cure, continuing his thought as he sank into the +embrace of thong and withe. "So you were in the War, and did you take +hurt there, my son?" + +Crossman nodded. "Trench pneumonia, and then the rat at the lung; but +of shock, something also. But I think it was not concussion, as the +doctors said, but _soul_-shock. It has left me, Father, like +Mohammed's coffin, suspended. I think I have lost my grip on the +world--and not found my hold on another." + +"Shock of the soul," the Priest ruminated. "Your soul is bruised, my +son. We must take care of it." His voice trailed off. There was +silence in the little office broken only by the yawn and snuffle of +the sled-dogs. + +Suddenly the door swung open. In the embrasure stood Aurore in her red +mackinaw and corduroy trousers. A pair of snowshoes hung over her +back, and her hand gripped a short-handled broad axe. Her great eyes +turned from Crossman to the Cure, and across her crimson mouth crept +her slow smile. The Cure sprang to his feet at sight of her, his face +went white, and the lines from nose to lips seemed to draw in. + +"Aurore!" he exclaimed; "Aurore!" + +"_Oui, mon pere_," she drawled. "It is Aurore." She struck a +provocative pose, her hand on her hip, her head thrown back, while her +eyes changed colour as alexandrite in the sun. + +The Cure turned on Crossman. "What is this woman to you?" + +Her eyes defied him. "Tell him," she jeered. "What _am_ I to you?" + +"She is here with Antoine Marceau, the log-brander," Crossman answered +unsteadily. "She takes care of our cabin, Jakapa's and mine." + +"Is that _all_?" the Priest demanded. + +Her eyes challenged him. What, indeed, was she to him? +What _was_ she? From the moment he had followed her into the boreal +night, with its streaming lights of mystery and promise, she had held +his imagination and his thoughts. + +"Is that _all_?" the Priest insisted. + +"You insult both this girl and me," Crossman retorted, stung to sudden +anger. + +"_Dieu merci_!" the Cure made the sign of the cross as he spoke. "As +for this woman, send her away. She is _not_ the wife of Antoine +Marceau; she is not married--she _will_ not be." + +In spite of himself a savage joy burned in Crossman's veins. She was +the wife of no man; she was a free being, whatever else she was. + +"I do not have to marry," she jeered. "That is for the women that only +one man desires--or perhaps two--like some in your parish, _mon +pere_." + +"She is evil," the Priest continued, paying no attention to her +sneering comment. "I know not what she is, nor who. One night, in +autumn, in the dark of the hour before morning, she was brought to me +by some Indians. They had found her, a baby, wrapped in furs, in an +empty canoe, rocking almost under the Grande Falls. But I tell you, +and to my sorrow, I _know_, she is evil. She knows not God, nor God +her. You, whose soul is sick, flee her as you would the devil! Aurore, +the Dawn! I named her, because she came so near the morning. Aurore! +Ah, God! She should be named after the blackest hour of a witch's +Sabbath!" + +She laughed. It was the first time Crossman had heard her laugh--a +deep, slow, far-away sound, more like an eerie echo. + +"_He_ has a better name for me," she said, casting Crossman a look +whose intimacy made his blood run hot within him. "'The Black +Dawn'--_n'est-ce-pas?_ Though I _have_ heard him call me in the +night--by another name," with which equivocal statement she swung the +axe into the curve of her arm, turned on her heel, and softly closed +the door between them. + +The Priest turned on him. "My son," his eyes searched Crossman's, "you +have not lied to me?" + +"No," he answered steadily. "Once I called her the Aurora +Borealis--that is all. To me she seems mysterious and changing, and +coloured, like the Northern Lights." + +"She is mysterious and changing and beautiful, but it is not the +lights of the North and of Heaven. She is the _feu follet_, the +will-o'-the-wisp that hovers over what is rotten, and dead. Send her +away, my son; send her away. Oh, she has left her trail of blood and +hatred and malice in my parish, I know. She has bred feuds; she has +sent strong men to the devil, and broken the hearts of good women. But +_you_ will not believe me. It is to Jakapa I must talk. _Mon Dieu_! +how is it that he let her come! You are a stranger, but he----" + +"Jakapa wished for Antoine, and she was with him," explained Crossman +uneasily, yet resentful of the Priest's vehemence. + +"I can not wait." The Cure rose and began repinning his clerical +garments. "Where is Jakapa? Have you a pair of snowshoes to lend me? +You must forgive my agitation, Monsieur, but you do not +understand--I--which way?" + +"He should be at Mile End, just above the Bijou. Sit still, Father; I +will send for him. The wind sets right. I'll call him in." Slipping on +his beaver jacket, he stepped outside and struck two blows on the +great iron ring, a bent rail, that swung from its gibbet like a +Chinese gong. A singing roar, like a metal bellow, sprang into the +clear, unresisting air, leaped and echoed, kissed the crags of the +Bijou and recoiled again, sending a shiver of sound and vibration +through snow-laden trees, on, till the echoes sighed into silence. +Crossman's over-sensitive ear clung to the last burring whisper as it +answered, going north, north, to the House of Silence, drawn there by +the magnet of Silence, as water seeks the sea. For a moment he had +almost forgotten the reason for the smitten clamour, hypnotized by the +mystery of sound. Then he turned, to see Aurore, a distant figure of +scarlet and black at the edge of the wood road, shuffling northward on +her long snowshoes, northward, as if in pursuit of the sound that had +gone before. She raised a mittened hand to him in ironic salutation. +She seemed to beckon, north--north--into the Silence. Crossman shook +himself. What was this miasma in his heart? He inhaled the vital air +and felt the rush of his blood in answer, realizing the splendour of +this beautiful, intensely living world of white and green, of sparkle +and prismatic brilliance. Its elemental power like the urge of the +world's youth. + +But Aurore? His brain still heard the echo of her laugh. He cursed +savagely under his breath, and turned his back upon the Cure, unable +to face the scrutiny of those kind, troubled eyes. + +"Jakapa will be here presently," he said over his shoulder. "That gong +carries ten miles if there's no wind. One ring, that's for the Boss; +two, call in for the whole gang; three, alarm--good as a telegraph or +the telephone as far as it goes. Meanwhile, if you'll excuse me, I'll +have a look at the larder." + +Without a doubt, he reasoned, Aurore would have left their mid-day +meal ready. She would not return, he knew, until the guest had gone. +In the little overheated cook-house he found the meal set out. All was +in order. Then his eye caught a singular decoration fastened to the +door, a paper silhouette, blackened with charcoal, the shape of a +cassocked priest. The little cut-out paper doll figure was pinned to +the wood by a short, sharp kitchen knife driven viciously deep, and +the handle, quivering with the closing of the door, gave the illusion +that the hand that had delivered the blow must have only at that +instant been withdrawn. + +Crossman shivered. He knew that world-old formula of hate; he knew of +its almost innocent use in many a white caban, but its older, deeper +meaning of demoniacal incantation rushed to his mind, somehow blending +with the wizardry with which he surrounded his thoughts of the strange +woman. + +A step outside crunching in the snow. The door opened, revealing +Antoine Marceau. The huge form of the log-brander towered above him. +He could not read the expression of the eyes behind the square-cupped +snow spectacles. + +"She tell me, Aurore," he rumbled, "that I am to come. We have the +company." + +"Yes, the Cure of Portage Dernier." Crossman watched him narrowly. + +Antoine took off the protecting wooden blinders and thrust them in his +pocket. + +Crossman stood aside, hesitating. Antoine drew off his mittens with +businesslike precision, and placed a huge, capable hand on a pot-lid, +lifted it, and eyed the contents of the saucepan. + +"The Cure, he like ptarmigan," he observed, "but," he added in a +matter-of-fact voice, "the Cure like not Aurore--he have tell you, +_hein_? Ah, well, why not? For him such as Aurore _are_ not--_voila_." + +"The Cure says she is a devil." Crossman marvelled at his temerity, +yet he hung on the answer. + +"Why not? For him, as I have say, she _is_ not--for _me_, for _you_, +ma frien', _that_ is different." Antoine turned on him eyes as +impersonal as those of Fate; where Crossman had expected to see +animosity there was none, only a strange brotherhood of pitying +understanding. + +"For who shall forbid that the dawn she shall break--_hein_?" he +continued. "The Cure? Not mooch. When the Dawn she come, she come; not +with his hand can he hold her back. For me, now comes perhaps the +sunset; perhaps the dawn for you. But what would you? Who can put the +dog-harness on the wind, or put the bit in the teeth of the waterfall +to hold him up?" + +"Or who with his hand can draw the Borealis from heaven?" Crossman cut +in. He spoke unconsciously. He had not wished to say that, he had not +wanted to speak at all, but his subconscious mind had welded the +thought of her so fast to the great mystery of the Northern Lights +that without volition he had voiced it. + +Antoine Marceau nodded quietly. The strangely aloof acknowledgment of +Crossman's possible relation to this woman, _his_ woman, who yet was +not his or any man's, somehow shocked Crossman. His blood flamed at +the thought, and yet he felt her intangible, unreal. He had but to +look into her shifting, glittering eyes, and there were silence and +playing lights. Suddenly his vision of her changed, became human and +vital. He saw before him the sinuous movement of her strong young +body. He realized the living perfume of her, clean and fresh, faintly +aromatic as of pine in the sunlight, and violets in the shadow. + +Antoine Marceau busied himself about the cook-house. He did not speak +of Aurore again, not even when his eye rested on the paper doll +skewered to the door by the deep-driven knife. He frowned, made the +sign of the cross, jerked out the knife, and thrust its point in the +purifying blaze of the charcoal fire. But he made no comment. + +Crossman turned on his heel and entered the office-building. Through +the south window he saw Jakapa snowshoeing swiftly up the short +incline to the door; beside him walked the Cure, pleading and anxious. +He could follow the words as his lips framed them. In the present mood +Crossman did not wish to hear the Cure's denunciation. It was +sufficient to see that the Foreman had, evidently, no intention of +acting on the advice proffered. + +As he softly closed the door between the main office and the living +room at the rear, he heard the men enter on a quick word of reproof in +the Cure's rich bass. + +"She does her work sufficiently well, and I shall not order her from +the camp," Jakapa snapped in reply. "She is with Marceau; if he keeps +her in hand, what do I care? She leave him, that _his_ affair, _mon +Dieu, mon pere_." + +"She has bewitched you, too, Jakapa. She has bewitched that other, the +young man who is here for the healing of his soul. What an irony, to +heal his soul, and she comes to poison it!" + +"Heal his soul?" Jakapa laughed harshly. "He's had the weak lung, +shell-shock, and he's a friend of the owner. _Mon pere_, if he is here +for the good of his soul, that is _your_ province--but me?--I am here +to boss one job, and I boss him, that's all. I hope only you have not +driven the cook away, or the _pot-au-feu_, she will be thin." He tried +to speak the latter part of his sentence lightly, but his voice +betrayed his irritation. + +Crossman opened the door and entered. "Antoine will be here in a +minute," he announced. "Aurore sent him back to feed the animals." He +took down the enamelled tin dishes and cups and set their places. +Jakapa eyed him covertly, with a half-sneering venom he had never +before shown. + +It was a silent meal. The Cure sighed and shook his head at intervals, +and the Boss grumbled a few comments in answer to an occasional +question concerning his lumberjacks. Crossman sat in a dream. Could he +have understood aright when Antoine had spoken of the dawn? + +Jakapa dropped a plate with a curse and a clatter. The sudden sound +ripped the sick man's nerves like an exploding bomb. White to the +lips, he jumped from his chair to meet the Boss's sneering eyes. The +Cure laid a gentle hand on his arm, and he settled back shamefacedly. + +"Your pardon, _mon pere_--my nerves are on edge--excuse me--an +inheritance of the trenches." + +"Emotion is bad for you, my son, and you should not emotion yourself," +said the Priest gently. + +"Do you travel far when you leave us now?" Crossman asked +self-consciously, anxious to change the subject. + +"To the camp at the Chaumiere Noire, a matter of ten kilometres. It is +no hardship, my rounds, not at all, with the ground like a white +tablecloth, and this good sun, to me like to my dogs, it is but play." +He rose from the table, glad of the excuse to hasten his going, and +with scant courtesy Jakapa sped his guest's departure. + +As the sled disappeared among the trees, bearing the queerly bundled +figure of the Priest, the Boss unhooked his snowshoes from the wall. +He seemed to have forgotten Crossman's presence, but as he turned, his +smouldering eyes lighted on him. He straightened with a jerk. "What +did he mean when he say, _she_ have bewitch _you_?" As always, when +excited, his somewhat precise English slipped back into the idiom of +the habitant. "By Gar! Boss or no Boss, I pack you out if I catch you. +We make no jealousies for any one, not where I am. You come here for +your health--_hein?_ Well, better you keep this place healthy for +you." + +As if further to complicate the situation, the door opened to admit +the woman herself. She closed it, leaned against the wall, looking +from one to the other with mocking eyes. + +"Well, do I leave? Am I to pack? Have you wash the hand of me to +please the Cure, yes?" + +Jakapa turned on her brutally. "Get to the cook-house! Wash your dish! +Did I give orders to Antoine to leave hees work? By Gar! I feel like I +take you and break you in two!" He moved his knotted hands with a +gesture of destruction. There was something so sinister in the action +that, involuntarily, Crossman cried out a startled warning. Her laugh +tinkled across it. + +"Bah!" she shrugged. "If you wish to kill, why do you not kill those +who make the interferre? Are you a man? What is it, a cassock, that it +so protect a man? But me, because I do not wear a woman's skirt, you +will break me, hey? _Me!_ Nevair mind, I prefer this man. He at least +make no big talk." She slipped her arm through Crossman's, letting her +fingers play down from his wrist to his finger-tips--and the thrill of +it left him tongue-tied and helpless. + +Jakapa cursed and crouched low. He seemed about to hurl himself upon +the pair before him. Again she laughed, and her tingling, searching +fingers stole slowly over his throbbing pulses. + +She released Crossman's arm with a jerk, and snapped the fingers that +had just caressed him in the face of the furious lumberman. "_Allons!_ +Must I forever have no better revenge but to knife one paper doll? Am +I to be hounded like a beast, and threatened wherever I go? I am tired +of this dead camp. I think I go me down the river." She paused a +moment in her vehemence. Her next words came almost in a whisper: +"_Unless you can cross the trail to Chaumiere Noire--then_, maybe, I +stay with you--I say--maybe." With a single swooping movement of her +strong young arm she swept the door open, and came face to face with +Antoine Marceau. "What, thou?" she said airily. + +He nodded. "Shall I go back, or do you want that I go to the other +side?" he asked the Foreman. + +"Go to the devil!" growled Jakapa, and slinging his snowshoes over his +arm, he stamped out. + +"_Tiens_!" said Antoine. "He is mad, the Boss." + +"I think we are all mad," said Crossman. + +"Maybe," said Antoine. Quietly he gathered together his axe, mittens, +and cap, and shrugging his huge shoulders into his mackinaw, looked +out at the glorious brightness of the stainless world and frowned. +"Come, Aurore," he said quietly. + +A little later, as Crossman rose to replenish the dwindling fire, he +saw him, followed by Aurore, enter the northern end of the timber +limit. Were they leaving, Crossman wondered. Had the silent woodsman +asserted his power over the woman? Crossman took down the +field-glasses from the nail on the wall. They were the sole reminder, +here in the North Country, of his years of war service. He followed +the two figures until the thickening timber hid them. Idly he swept +the horizon of black-green trees, blue shadows, and sparkling snow. A +speck moved--a mackinaw-clad figure passed swiftly across the clearing +above the Little Bijou--only a glimpse--the man took to cover in the +burned timber, where the head-high brush made a tangle of brown above +which the gaunt, white, black-smeared arms of dead trees flung +agonized branches to the sky.--"The short-cut trail to Chaumiere +Noire"--"Shall I forever have no better revenge but to stab one paper +doll?" Her words echoed in his ears. + +_Jakapa was on the short cut to the Chaumiere Noire_! Only Crossman's +accidental use of the field-glasses had betrayed his going. For an +instant Crossman's impulse was to rush out and ring the alarm on the +shrieking steel gong, but the next instant he laughed at himself. Yes, +surely, he was a sick man of many imaginings. The gang boss was gone +about his business. The log-brander had called upon his woman to +accompany him. That was all. Her angry words were mere threats--best +forgotten. + +With nervous haste he bundled into his heavy garments and ran from +himself and his imaginings into the dazzling embrace of the sun. + +He tramped to the gang at work above the Little Bijou Chute, where +they raced the logs to the iron-hard ice of the river's surface far +below. He even took a hand with the axe, was laughed at, and watched +the precision and power of the Jacks as they clove, swung, and lopped. +From the cliff he looked down at the long bunk-house, saw the blue +smoke rising straight, curled at the top like the uncoiling frond of a +new fern-leaf. Saw the Chinese cook, in his wadded coat of blue, +disappear into the snow-covered mound that hid the provision shack, +and watched the bounding pups refusing to be broken into harness by +Siwash George. It was all very simple, very real, and the twists of +his tired mind relaxed; his nervous hands came to rest in the warm +depths of his mackinaw pockets. The peace of sunned spaces and +flowing, clean air soothed his mind and heart. + +The blue shadows lengthened. The gang knocked off work. The last log +was rushed down the satin ice of the chute to leap over its fellows at +the foot. The smell of bacon sifted through the odours of evergreen +branches and new-cut wood. Crossman declined a cordial invitation to +join the gang at chuck. He must be getting back, he explained, "for +chow at the Boss's." + +Whistling, he entered the office, stirred up the fire, and crossed to +the cook-house. It was empty. The charcoal fire was out. Shivering, he +rebuilt it, looked through the larder, and hacked off a ragged slice +of jerked venison. A film of fear rose in his soul. What if they were +_really_ gone? What if Antoine _had_ taken her? It looked like it. His +heart sank. Not to see her again! Not to feel her strange, thrilling +presence! Not to sense that indomitable, insolent soul, throwing its +challenge before it as it walked through the world! + +Crossman came out, returned to the office, busied himself in tidying +the living room and solving the disorder of his desk. The twilight +sifted over wood and hill, crept from under the forest arches, and +spread across the snow of the open. He lit the lamps and waited. The +silence was complete. It seemed as if the night had come and closed +the world, locking it away out of the reach even of God. + +The meal Crossman had bunglingly prepared lay untouched on the table. +Now and then the crash of an avalanche of snow from the overburdened +branches emphasized the stillness. Dreading he knew not what, Crossman +waited--and loneliness is not good for a sick soul. + +Thoughts began crowding, nudging one another; happenings that he had +dismissed as casual took on new and sinister meanings. "Two and two +together" became at once a huge sum, leaping to terrifying +conclusions. Then with the silence and the tense nerve-draw of waiting +came the sense of things finished--done forever. A vast, all-embracing +finality--"_Neant_"--the habitant expression for the uttermost +nothing, the word seemed to push at his lips. He wanted to say it, but +a premonition warned him that to utter it was to make it real. + +Should he call upon the name of the Void, the Void would answer. He +feared it--it meant that She would be swallowed also in the great +gaping hollow of nothingness. He strained his ears for sounds of the +living world--the spit of the fire, the fall of clinkers in the grate, +the whisper of the wind stirring at the door. He tried to analyse his +growing uneasiness. He was sure now that she had followed Antoine's +bidding--forgetting him, if, indeed, her desires had ever reached +toward him. + +Now she seemed the only thing that mattered. He must find her; he must +follow. Wherever she was, there only was the world of reality. Where +she was, was life. And to find her, he must find Antoine--and then, +without warning, the door gaped--and Antoine stood before him, like a +coloured figure pasted on the black ground of the night. Then he +entered, quiet and matter-of-fact. He nodded, closed the door against +the biting cold, pulled off his cap, and stood respectfully. + +"It is no use to wait for the Boss; he will not come," said the +log-brander. "I came to tell Monsieur, before I go on, that le Cure is +safe at Chaumiere Noire. Yes, he is safe, and Monsieur Jakapa have +turn back, when I catch up with him and tell him----" + +"What?" gasped Crossman. + +"It was to do," the giant twisted his cap slowly, "but it was harder +than I think. It was not for jealousy, I beg you to know. That she +would go if she want--to who she want, she can. I have no right to +stop her. But she would have had the Cure knifed to death. She made +the wish, and she put her wish in the heart of a man. If it had not +been this time--then surely some other time. She always find a hand to +do her will--even this of mine--once. I heard her tell to Jakapa. +Therefore, Jakapa he has gone back to watch with her body. I told him +where. Me I go. There are for me no more dawns. You love her, too, +Monsieur, therefore, I come to tell you the end. _Bon soir, +Monsieur_." + +He was gone. Again there was silence. Crossman sat rigid. What had +happened? His mind refused to understand. Then he visioned her, lying +on the white snow, scarlet under her breast, redder than her mackinaw, +redder than her woollen mittens, redder than the cardinal-flower of +her mouth--cardinal no more! "No, no!" he shrieked, springing to his +feet. His words echoed in the empty room. "No--no!--He couldn't kill +her!" He clung to the table. "No--no! No!" he screamed. Then he saw +her eyes; she was looking in through the window--yes, they were her +eyes--changing and glowing, eyes of mystery, of magic, eyes that made +the silence, eyes that called and shifted and glowed. He laughed. +Fools, fools! to think her dead! He staggered to the door and threw it +wide. Hatless, coatless, he plunged headlong into the dark--the Dark? +No! for she was there--on high, wide-flung, the banners of the Aurora +Borealis blazed and swung, banners that rippled and ran, banners of +rainbows, the souls of amethysts and emeralds, they fluttered in the +heavens, they swayed across the world, streamed like amber wine poured +from an unseen chalice, dropped fold on fold, like the fluttering +raiment of the gods. + +In the north a great sapphire curtain trembled as if about to part and +reveal the unknown Beyond; it grew brighter, dazzling, radiant. + +"Aurore!" he called. "Aurore!" The grip of ice clutched his heart. +Cold seized on him with unseen numbing hands. He was struggling, +struggling with his body of lead--for one step--just a step nearer the +great curtain, that now glowed warm--red--red as the ghost of her +cardinal-flower lips--pillars of light, as of the halls of heaven. +"Aurore!--Aurore!" + + + +MR. DOWNEY SITS DOWN + +By L.H. ROBBINS + +From _Everybody's_ + + +I + +Jacob Downey waited in line at the meat shop. A footsore little man +was he. All day long, six days a week for twenty-two years, he had +stood on his feet, trotted on them, climbed on them, in the hardware +department of Wilbram, Prescot & Co., and still they would not +toughen; still they would hurt; still to sustain his spirit after +three o'clock he had to invoke a vision of slippers, a warm radiator, +the _Evening Bee_, and the sympathy of Mrs. Downey and the youngsters. +To the picture this evening he had added pork chops. + +The woman next in line ahead of him named her meat. Said the butcher, +with a side glance at the clock, "A crown roast takes quite a while, +lady. Could I send it in the morning?" + +No, the lady wished to see it prepared. Expressly for that purpose had +she come out in the rain. To-morrow she gave a luncheon. + +"First come first served," thought Jacob Downey, and bode his time in +patience, feeling less pity for his aching feet than for Butcher +Myers. Where was the charity in asking a hurried man at five minutes +to six o'clock to frill up a roast that would not see the inside of +the oven before noon next day? + +Now, crown roasts are one thing to him who waits on fallen arches, and +telephone calls are another. Scarcely had Downey's opening come to +speak for pork chops cut medium when off went the bell and off rushed +Butcher Myers. + +Sharply he warned the unknown that this was Myers's Meat Shop. Blandly +he smiled into the transmitter upon learning that his caller was Mrs. +A. Lincoln Wilbram. + +By the audience in front of the counter the following social +intelligence was presently inferred: + +That Mr. and Mrs. Wilbram had just returned from Florida; that they +had enjoyed themselves ever so much; that they hoped Mr. Myers's +little girl was better; that they were taking their meals at the +Clarendon pending the mobilization of their house-servants; that they +expected to dine with the Mortimer Trevelyans this evening; that food +for the dog may with propriety be brought home from a hotel, but not +from the Mortimer Trevelyans; that there was utterly nothing in the +icebox for poor Mudge's supper; that Mudge was a chow dog purchased by +a friend of Mr. Wilbram's in Hongkong at so much a pound, just as Mr. +Myers purchased live fowls; that Mudge now existed not to become chow, +but to consume chow, and would feel grateful in his dog heart if Mr. +Myers would, at this admittedly late hour, send him two pounds of +bologna and a good bone; and that Mrs. Wilbram would consider herself +under deep and lasting obligation to Mr. Myers for this act of +kindness. + +Mr. Myers assured Mrs. Wilbram that it would mean no trouble at all; +he would send up the order as soon as his boy came back from +delivering a beefsteak to the Mortimer Trevelyans. + +He filled out a slip and stuck it on the hook. + +"Now, Mr. Downey," he said briskly. + +But Jacob Downey gave him one tremendous look and limped out of the +shop. + + +II + +It was evening in the home of Miss Angelina Lance. Twenty-seven hours +had passed since Jacob Downey's exasperated exit from Myers's Meat +Shop. The eyes of Miss Angelina were bright behind her not-unbecoming +spectacles as she watched the face of the solemn young man in the +Morris chair near the reading lamp. + +In his hand the solemn young man held three sheets of school +composition paper. As he read the pencil writing on page one he lost +his gravity. Over page two he smiled broadly. At the end of the last +page he said: + +"D.K.T. couldn't have done better. May I show it to him?" + +In the office of the Ashland (N.J.) _Bee_ the solemn young man was +known as Mr. Sloan. At Miss Lance's he was Sam. The mentioned D.K.T. +conducted the celebrated "Bee-Stings" column on the editorial page of +Mr. Sloan's journal, his levity being offset by the sobriety of Mr. +Sloan, who was assistant city-editor. + +On two evenings a week Mr. Sloan fled the cares of the Fourth Estate +and became Sam in the soul-refreshing presence of Miss Angelina. He +was by no means her only male admirer. In the Sixth Grade at the +Hilldale Public School she had thirty others; among these Willie +Downey, whose name appeared on every page of the composition Mr. Sloan +had read. + +With a host of other sixth-graders throughout the city Willie had +striven that day for a prize of ten dollars in gold offered by the +public-spirited A. Lincoln Wilbram, of Wilbram, Prescott & Co., for +the best schoolboy essay on Moral Principles. + +"Moral principles, gentlemen; that is what we need in Ashland. How +many men do you know who stand up for their convictions--or have any +to stand up for?" + +If the head of a department store is a bit thunderous at times, think +what a Jovian position he occupies. In his cloud-girt, +mahogany-panelled throne-room on the eighth floor he rules over a +thousand mortals, down to the little Jacob Downeys in the basement, +who, if they do not quite weep with delight when he gives them a +smile, tremble, at least, at his frown. When a large body of popular +opinion accords him greatness, were he not undemocratic to affect +humility and speak small? + +"I speak of common men," said Mr. Wilbram (this was at a Chamber of +Commerce banquet); "of men whose living depends upon the pleasure of +their superiors. How few there are with fearless eye!" + +He scarcely heard the laughter from a group of building contractors at +a side table, who had not seen a servile eye among their workmen in +many moons; for a worthy project had popped into his mind at that +instant. How was the moral backbone of our yeomanry to be stiffened +save through education? Why not a prize contest to stimulate the +interest of the rising generation in this obsolete subject? + +In many an Ashland home where bicycles, roller-skates, wireless +outfits, and other such extravagances were strongly desired, the +question had since been asked: "Pa, what are Moral Principles?" While +some of the resulting essays indicated a haziness in paternal minds, +not so the production that Mr. Sloan read in Miss Lance's parlour. + +"But I couldn't let you print it," said Miss Angelina. "I wouldn't +have Willie shamed for anything. He may be weak in grammar, but he is +captain of every athletic team in the school. He has told me in +confidence that he means to spend the prize money for a genuine +horse-hide catching-mitt." + +"If I cross out his name, or give him a _nom de plume_?" + +On that condition Miss Lance consented. + + +III + +At the office next morning Sloan found the essay in his pocket and +looked around the city-room for D.K.T. The staff poet-clown was no +daylight saver; professing to burn the midnight oil in the interest of +his employer, he seldom drifted in before half-past nine. + +"See me. S.S." wrote Sloan, and dropped Willie's manuscript on +D.K.T.'s desk. + +Then he jumped and gasped, and copy-readers and office-boys jumped and +gasped, and the religious editor dashed frantically for the stairs, +outrunning the entire staff down the hall, though he had farther to go +than any other man or woman there. A huge, heart-stopping shock had +rocked the building, set the windows to clattering and the lights to +swinging, and brought down in a cloud the accumulated dust of a +quarter-century. + +Within two minutes by the clock Sloan and five reporters had started +for the scene of the Rutland disaster, fifteen miles away, where +enough giant powder had gone up in one terrific blast to raze +Gibraltar. A thriving town lay in ruins; hundreds of families were +homeless; a steamship was sunk at her dock; a passenger train blown +from the rails. + +At eleven o'clock on the night following that pitiful day Sloan +journeyed homeward to Ashland in an inter-urban trolley-car in company +with a crowd of refugees. A copy of the last edition of the _Bee_ +comforted his weary soul. + +The first page was a triumph. Count on the office to back up its men +in the field! There was the whole story, the whole horror and +heartbreak, finely displayed. There were his photographs of the +wreckage; there, in a "box" was his interview with the superintendent +of the Rutland Company; there was a map of the devastated area. +Perhaps someone had found time even to do an editorial; in that case +the clean-up would be complete. + +Opening the paper to the sixth page, he groaned; for the first thing +that caught his eye was Willie Downey's essay, at the top of D.K.T.'s +column, with Willie's name below the headline. + +MOREL PRINSAPLES + +BY WILLIE DOWNEY + +AGE 12 + +Morel Prinsaples is when you have a nerve to stick up for some thing. + +Like last night my Father went in Mires meet shop & stood in line 15 +or twenty min. wateing his tirn & when his tirn come he says to mr. +Mires Ile have 6 porc chops. + +at that inst. the telaphone wrang & mr. Mires slidd for it like it was +2nd base. + +Hold on Mires says Pa, who got here 1st, me or that bell wringer. +Igscuse me just 1 min. says Mr. mires. + +No I be ding if Ile igscuse you says Pa, 1st come 1st served is the +rool of bizness all over. + +But Mr. mires wyped his hands on his apern & ansered the wring & it +was mrs. Will Brum, she was going to eat out at a frends so she wanted +2 lbs, bolony & a dog bone. + +So then Pa give him hale columbus. + +Here I bin wateing 1/2 an our he said, yet when some lazy lofer of a +woman who has been reading a novvle or a sleep all after noon pfhones +you to rush her up some dog meet in youre Autto with gass 36 cts. & +charge it to her acct. & may be you wont get youre munny for three 4 +munths, wy you run to wate on her while I stand & shovle my feet in +youre saw dust like a ding mexican pea own or some thing. + +What says Pa is there about a cusstamer who takes the trubble to come +for his meet & pay cash for it & deliwers it him self that maiks him +so Meen & Lo that he hass to be pushed one side for some body that has +not got Gumpshun enoughf to order her dog bones before the rush our? + +Do you think that people with a telapfhone's munny is any better than +mine, do you think because I walk in here on my hine leggs that I am a +piker & a cheep skait, becuase if so I will bring along my telapfhone +contract nex time & show you & then may be you will reckonnize me as a +free born amerrican who dont haff to traid where I haff to play 2d +fiddle to a chow pupp. Its agenst my morel prinsaples says Pa. + +With theas wirds he walks out in the rane althogh his feet hurt him +clear down to Washington St. to the nex meet store, but by that time +they were all cloased up so we had prinsaples for supper insted of +porc chops. + +Pa says if he run a store & had a pfhone & no body to anser it & do +nothing else he would ring it's neck, becuase while the telaphone is +the gratest blesing of the aige, but a pfhone with out an opperater is +like a ham ommalet with the ham let out. He says the reazon the Chane +Stores have such a pull with the public is becuase the man behine the +counter is not all the time jilting you in the middle of your order & +chacing off to be sweet to some sosciety dame with a dog 4 miles away. + +Ma says she dont kno why we have a pfhone any how becuase every time +she is youseing it a woman buts in & jiggles the hook & says will you +pleas hang up so I can call a Dr. & when Ma hangs up & then lissens in +to see who is sick, wy this woman calls up a lady f rend & they nock +Ma back & 4th over the wyre for ours & some times they say I bet she +is lisening in on us dont you. + +So as I say let us all stick up for our Morel Prinsaples like my +Father come what may. + + +IV + +Bright were Miss Angelina's eyes but not with mirth. It was +unspeakable, this thing that Mr. Sloan had done. Thrice before bedtime +she called his lodgings. Mr. Sloan was not in. + +Before the last call, she donned her wraps and went out to Plume +Street. Courageously she pulled the bell at Number Nine. Willie's +mother opened the door and cried, surprised, "Why! Miss Lance." + +"Is Willie here? Have you seen the paper? Will you let me tell him how +it happened, and how sorry I am?" + +Willie was not receiving callers this evening. He had been sent to bed +without supper. The explosion at Rutland had been as nothing, it +seemed, to the outburst in the Downey home. + +Slowly the extent of the harm dawned upon Miss Angelina. + +"It was Mrs. A. Lincoln Wilbram wanted the dog bone," said Mrs. Downey +tearfully. "Everybody will recognize her; and what Mr. Wilbram will do +to us we don't need to be told. Poor Jake is so upset he has gone out +to roam in the dark. He couldn't stay in the house." + +New jobs were scarce for men at his time of life, and with his feet. +Dora and Jennie might have to leave high school. + +"I'm sure you meant us no wrong, Miss Lance; I'm sure there was a +mistake. But think how dreadful it is, after twenty-two years of +having Mr. Wilbram's pay, then to turn around and backbite his wife +like that, right out in print!" + +Doubly troubled now, Miss Lance departed. Attracted by a quick +gathering of loiterers in the avenue, she witnessed a controversy that +might easily have become a police matter. + +"You're a liar if you say you said all that to me!" shouted the burly +Butcher Myers. "You never opened your head, you shrimp! Bawling me out +in the papers and losing me my best customers! Whaddye mean?" + +Back came the retort from Jacob Downey with the snarl of a little +creature at bay. + +"If I didn't say it to you then, you big lobster, I say it to you now. +All that the paper says I said I say. What'll you do about it?" + +"Hah! You!" Myers snapped his fingers in Downey's fiery face and +turned away. + +Miss Lance's path to the Hilldale School next morning took her past +three post-boxes. Into the third she dropped a note that she had +carried from home. Mr. Sloan would find her message exceedingly brief, +although (or, perhaps, because) she had spent hours in composing it. + +DEAR SIR: + +I regret to discover that you lack moral principles. + + ANGELINA LANCE. + +Just before the last bell the janitor brought in a prisoner for her +custody. Willie Downey's head was bloody but unbowed; three +seventh-graders he had vanquished in one round. "They guyed me," said +he. "They called me a Nawthour." + +Morning prayer and song waited while teacher and pupil spoke earnestly +of many things; while the teacher's eyes filled with tears, and the +pupil's heart filled with high resolve to bring home the baseball +championship of the Ashland Public School League and lay it at Miss +Angelina's feet, or perish in the attempt. + + +V + +The A. Lincoln Wilbram prize went to a small boy named Aaron Levinsky +whose English was 99 per cent. pure. Little Aaron's essay was printed +as the centre-piece in Wilbram, Prescott & Co.'s page in the _Bee_; +little Aaron invested his gold in thrift-stamps, and the tumult and +the shouting died. + +Miss Angelina Lance sat alone every evening of the week. True, Mr. +Sloan had tried to right the wrong; he had called Miss Angelina on the +telephone, which he should have known was an inadequate thing to do; +he had also sent a ten-dollar bank-note to Willie, in care of Miss +Lance at the Hilldale School, together with his warm felicitations +upon Willie's success as a _litterateur_. Did Willie know that his +fine first effort had been reprinted, with proper credit, in the great +New York _Planet_? + +True, too, the illustrious D.K.T. had written Miss Angelina an abject +apology, most witty and poetic, taking all the blame to himself and +more than exonerating his high-principled friend Mr. Sloan. + +But the bank-note went back to its donor without even a rejection +slip; and D.K.T.'s humour was fatal to his client's cause. Ghastly are +they who jest in the shadow of tragedy. Mr. Sloan and D.K.T. did not +know, of course--Miss Angelina had not thought it of any use to tell +them--of the sword which they had hung up by a thread above the heads +of the Downeys. + +As for Jacob Downey, he limped about amid his hardware in the basement +at Wilbram, Prescott & Co.s, careworn, haunted of eye, expecting the +house to crash about his ears at any moment. One does not with +impunity publish the wife of one's employer as a lazy loafer. + +The A. Lincoln Wilbrams had servants again, and dined at home. To Mr. +Wilbram said Mrs. Wilbram one evening: + +"It is the strangest thing. In the last month I've met scarcely a soul +who hasn't asked me silly questions about Mudge and his diet. Mrs. +Trevelyan and everybody. And they always look so queer." + +Mr. Wilbram was reminded that while coming home that evening with a +package in his hand he had met Trevelyan, and Trevelyan had inquired: +"What's that? A bone for the dog?" + +"To-morrow," said A. Lincoln, "I'll ask him what he was driving at." + +"What was the package?" queried his wife. + +He fetched it from the hall. It had come to him at the store that day +by registered mail. + +"From Hildegarde," said Mrs. Wilbram, noting the Los Angeles postmark. +Hildegarde was honeymooning among the orange groves. Wrote the happy +bride: + +Dear Aunt and Uncle: + +Charles and I see by the paper that Mudge is hungry, so we are sending +him a little present. + +"What can the child mean, Abe?" + +"Don't ask me," he answered. "Undo the present and see." + +They loosened blue ribbons and wrappings of soft paper, and disclosed +a link of bologna sausage. + +Maddening? It might have been, if Hildegarde had not thought to +inclose a page from the _Daily Southern Californian_, upon which, +ringed with pencil marks, was a bit of miscellany headed, "Morel +Prinsaples." + +They read it through to the conclusion: + +So as I say let us all stick up for our Morel Prinsaples like my +Father come what may.--Willie Downey in Ashland (N.J.) _Bee_. + +"Why!--why!--it's--it's me!" cried Mrs. Wilbram. "I did telephone to +Mr. Myers for two pounds of bologna and a dog bone--on the night we +dined at the Trevelyans'!" + +"It comes mighty close to libel," fumed Wilbram. + +"How do they dare! You must see Worthington Oakes about this, Abe." + +"I certainly will," he vowed. + + +VI + +He certainly did, as Mr. Worthington Oakes, the publisher of the +_Bee_, will testify. In the front office on the editorial floor he saw +Mr. Oakes for a bad half-hour, and demanded a public retraction of the +insult. + +At about the same time a dapper stranger who had come up in the +elevator with Mr. Wilbram held speech with Assistant City-Editor Sloan +in the local room at the other end of the hall. + +"Yonder's your bird," said Mr. Sloan, pointing to a poetic-looking +young man at a desk in a corner. + +Crossing to the poet, who was absorbed in his day' poesy and talking +to himself as he versified, the stranger smiled and spoke. + +"Am I addressing the celebrated D.K.T.?" + +"Am, cam, dam, damn, ham, jam, lamb----" + +The far-away look of genius faded out of the poet's eyes. + +"Not buying," said he. "My pay-envelope is mortgaged to you +book-agents for ten years to come. Ma'am, ram, Sam, cram, clam, gram, +slam----" + +"Books are not my line," said the dapper one briskly. "I represent the +Jones-Nonpareil Newspaper Syndicate. In fact, I am Jones. I have a +proposition to make to you, Mr. D.K.T., that may enable you to buy +more books than you can ever read. You know, of course, what the +Jones-Nonpareil service is. We reach the leading dailies of the United +States and Canada----" + +"Have a chair, Mr. Jones." + +"Thank you. We handle some very successful writers. Malcomb Hardy, you +may have heard, takes his little five hundred a week out of us; and +poor Larry Bonner pulled down eleven hundred as long as he had health. +His Chinese-laundryman sketches might be selling yet." + +"Suspense is cruel," spoke D.K.T. eagerly. "Let the glad news come." + +"Some time ago," said the syndicate man, "you printed in your column +an essay in imitation of a schoolboy's. You called it 'Moral +Principles'." + +D.K.T. sank back with a low moan. + +"If you can write six of those a week for a year," continued the +visitor, "you won't ever need to slave any more. You can burn your pen +and devote the rest of your life to golf and good works." + +The poet closed his eyes. "Sham, swam, diagram," he murmured. + +"Does a minimum guarantee of fifteen thousand a year look like +anything to you? There will, of course, be the book rights and the +movie rights in addition." + +"Anagram, epigram, telegram, flimflam--aha!" cried D.K.T. "Siam!" He +wrote it down. + +"That little skit of yours," pursued the caller, "has swept the +country. You have created a nation-wide demand. My ringer is on the +journalistic pulse, and I know. Can you repeat?" + +He drew a paper from his pocketbook. + +"Here is a list of subjects your imaginary Willie Downey might start +with: The Monetary System; the Cost of Living; the League of Nations; +Capital and Labour----" + +Over the stranger's head an office-boy whispered significantly: "Front +office." + +"Excuse me," said the poet, and hurried away. + +With the publisher, in the front office, sat A. Lincoln Wilbram, quite +purple in the cheeks. They had a file of the _Bee_ before them. + +"Diedrick," said Mr. Oakes, "on March eighteenth you printed this +thing"--his finger on Willie's essay--"why did you do it?" + +"What's the matter with it?" replied D.K.T. + +"The matter with it," spoke Mr. Wilbram terribly, "is that it slanders +my wife. It makes her out to eat dog bones. Friends of ours as far +away as California have seen it and recognized her portrait, drawn by +your scurrilous pen. The worst of it is, the slander is founded on +fact. By what right do you air my domestic affairs before the public +in this outrageous fashion?" + +With agonized eyes the funny-man read the essay as far as the fateful +line, "It was Mrs. Will Brum." + +"My gosh!" he cried. + +"How did you come to write such a thing?" Mr. Oakes demanded. + +"Me write that thing? If I only had!" + +The facts were recalled; the sending of Mr. Sloan and many reporters +to Rutland; the need of extra hands at the copy-table that day. + +"I found this contribution on my desk. It looked safe. In the rush of +the morning I sent it up and never gave it another thought." + +"So it is really a boy's essay, and not some of your own fooling?" +asked Oakes. + +"A boy's essay, yes; entered in Mr. Wilbram's prize contest, +eliminated by the boy's teacher and shown by her to Mr. Sloan, who +brought it to the shop. I know now that Sloan meant me to change the +author's name to save the kid from ridicule. If there were actual +persons in it, I'm as amazed as Mrs. Wilbram." + +"I wonder, Oakes," said Wilbram, "that a dignified newspaper like +yours would print such trash, in the first place." + +Worthington Oakes looked down his nose. D.K.T. took up the challenge. + +"Trash, sir? If it's trash, why has the Ashland Telephone asked +permission to reprint it on the front cover of their next directory?" + +"Have they asked that?" + +"They have; they say they will put a little moral principle into the +telephone hogs in this town. And didn't a Fifth Avenue minister preach +a sermon on it last Sunday? Doesn't the _Literary Review_ give it half +a page this week? Hasn't it been scissored by almost every exchange +editor in the land? Isn't there a man in the city-room now offering me +fifteen thousand a year to write a daily screed like it?" + +"You can see, Wilbram," said Mr. Oakes, "that there was no intention +to injure or annoy. We are very sorry; but how can we print an apology +to Mrs. Wilbram without making the matter worse?" + +"Who is this Willie Downey?" demanded Wilbram. "And who is the school +teacher?" + +"I don't believe my moral principles will let me tell you," replied +D.K.T. "I'm positive Mr. Sloan's won't let him. We received the essay +in confidence." + +"Enough said," Mr. Wilbram exclaimed, rising. "Good day to you. I +don't need your help, anyway. I'll find out from the butcher." + + +VII + +It seemed necessary that Mr. Sloan should call at the Lance home that +evening. Whatever Miss Angelina might think of him, it was his duty to +take counsel with her for the welfare of Willie. + +He began with the least important of the grave matters upon his mind. + +"Do you suppose your _protege_ could write some essays like the one we +printed?" + +"Why, Mr. Sloan?" + +If Miss Angelina had responded, "Why, you hyena?" she would not have +cut him more deeply than with her simple, "Why, Mr. Sloan?" + +"A newspaper syndicate," he explained, "has offered D.K.T. a fortune +for a series of them." + +"Poor Willie!" she sighed. "He flunked his English exam, to-day. I'm +afraid I shall have him another year." + +"He is a lucky boy," said Sloan. + +"Do you think so?" + +Clearly her meaning was, "Do you think he is lucky when a powerful +newspaper goes out of its way to crush him?" + +"There is no use approaching him with a literary contract?" + +"Not with the baseball season just opening. His team beat the +Watersides yesterday, sixteen nothing. He has more important business +on hand than writing for newspapers." + +Since Sloan wrote for a newspaper, this was rather a dig. +Nevertheless, he persevered. + +"A. Lincoln Wilbram is on his trail. Do you know that Willie libelled +Mrs. Wilbram?" + +"Oh! Sam. Surely I know about the libel. But is--is Mr. Wilbram +really----Has he discovered?" + +"He came to the office to-day. We gave him no information; but he has +other sources. He is bound to identify his enemy before he quits." + +"I didn't know about the so-called slander at first," said she, "when +I--when you----" + +"When I promised to change Willie's name?" + +"I found out when I went to them, on the night it came out in the +paper. They were woefully frightened. They are frightened still. Mr. +Downey has worked for Mr. Wilbram since he was a boy. They think of +Mr. Wilbram almost as a god. It's--it's a tragedy, Sam, to them." + +"Would it do any good to warn them?" + +"They need no warning," said Miss Angelina. "Don't add to their +terrors." + +"I am more sorry than I can say. May I hope to be forgiven some day?" + +"There's nothing to forgive, Sam. It was an accident. But don't you +see what a dangerous weapon a newspaper is?' + +"Worse than a car or a gun," he agreed. + +As he strolled homeward along a stately avenue, wondering what he +could do to avert the retribution that moved toward the Downeys, and +finding that his assistant city-editor's resourcefulness availed him +naught, he heard the scamper of feet behind him and whirled about with +cane upraised in time to bring a snarling chow dog to a stand. + +"Beat it, you brute!" he growled. + +"Yeowp!" responded the chow dog, and leaped in air. + +"Don't be alarmed," spoke a voice out of the gloom of the nearest +lawn. "When he sees a man with a stick, he wants to play." + +Sloan peered at the speaker's face. "Isn't this Mr. Wilbram? You were +at the _Bee_ office to-day, sir. May I have a word with you about the +Willie Downey matter?" + +"Come in," said Mr. Wilbram. + + +VIII + +On the first pay-day in May the impending sword cut its thread. Said a +messenger to Jacob Downey: "They want you on the eighth floor." Downey +set his jaws and followed. + +In the mahogany-panelled room A. Lincoln Wilbram turned from the +window and transfixed his servitor with eyes that bored like steel +bits. + +"Downey, I understand you have a literary son." + +Jacob held his breath, eyed his accuser steadily, and assured himself +that it would soon be over now. + +"How about it, Downey?" + +"I know what you mean, sir." + +"Did you say the things printed there?" + +The little man wasted no time in examining the newspaper clipping. + +"Yes, sir, I did. If it has come to your lady's ears what I called +her, I beg her pardon. But what I said I'll stick to. If I stand +fifteen minutes in line in a meat store or any other kind of store, +I've got a right to be waited on ahead of anybody that rings up, I +don't give a ding who she is." + +"Good for you, Downey. Let me see, how long have you worked for us?" + +"Twenty-three years next January, sir." + +"Floor salesman all the while?" + +"Since 1900. Before that I was a wrapper." + +"How many men have been promoted over your head?" + +"Three." + +"Four," Wilbram corrected. "First was Miggins." + +"I don't count him, sir. Him and I started together." + +"Miggins was a failure. Then Farisell; now in prison. Next, McCardy; +he ran off to Simonds & Co. the minute they crooked a finger at him. +Last, young Prescott, who is now to come up here with his father. +Could you run the department if you had it?" + +"Between you and I," replied Jacob Downey, sick, dizzy, trembling, "I +been running the department these fifteen years." + +"How'd you like to run it from now as manager? When I find a man with +convictions and courage I advance him. The man who stands up is the +man to sit down. That's evolution. If you could stand up to a big +butcher like Myers and talk Dutch to him the way you did, I guess we +need you at a desk. What do you say?" + +A desk! A chance to rest his feet! Jacob Downey stiffened. + +"Mr. Wilbram, I--I got to tell the truth. I never said those things to +Myers. I just walked out." + +"But you said them. You acknowledge it." + +"I said 'em, yes--after I got home. To the family I said 'em. When I +was in the meat shop I only thought 'em." + +"So Myers has told me," said Jove, smiling. "Downey, my man, you've +got more than moral courage. You've got common sense to go with it. +Tell young Prescott to give you his keys." + + + +THE MARRIAGE IN KAIRWAN + +By WILBUR DANIEL STEELE + +From _Harper's_ + + +Kairwan the Holy lay asleep, pent in its thick walls. The moon had +sunk at midnight, but the chill light seemed scarcely to have +diminished; only the limewashed city had become a marble city, and all +the towers turned fabulous in the fierce, dry, needle rain of the +stars that burn over the desert of mid-Tunisia. + +In the street Bab Djedid the nailed boots of the watch passed from +west to east. When their thin racket had turned out and died in the +dust of the market, Habib ben Habib emerged from the shadow of a door +arch and, putting a foot on the tiled ledge of Bou-Kedj's fry shop, +swung up by cranny and gutter till he stood on the plain of the +housetops. + +Now he looked about him, for on this dim tableland he walked with his +life in his hands. He looked to the west, toward the gate, to the +south, to the northeast through the ghostly wood of minarets. Then, +perceiving nothing that stirred, he went on moving without sound in +the camel-skin slippers he had taken from his father's court. + +In the uncertain light, but for those slippers and the long-tasselled +_chechia_ on his head, one would not have taken him for anything but a +European and a stranger. And one would have been right, almost. In the +city of his birth and rearing, and of the birth and rearing of his +Arab fathers generations dead, Habib ben Habib bel-Kalfate looked upon +himself in the rebellious, romantic light of a prisoner in +exile--exile from the streets of Paris where, in his four years, he +had tasted the strange delights of the Christian--exile from the +university where he had dabbled with his keen, light-ballasted mind in +the learning of the conqueror. + +Sometimes, in the month since he had come home, he had shaken himself +and wondered aloud, "Where am I?" with the least little hint, perhaps, +of melodrama. Sometimes in the French cafe outside the walls, among +the officers of the garrison, a bantering perversity drove him on to +chant the old glories of Islam, the poets of Andalusia, and the +bombastic histories of the saints; and in the midst of it, his face +pink with the Frenchmen's wine and his own bitter, half-frightened +mockery, he would break off suddenly, "_Voila, Messieurs!_ you will +see that I am the best of Mussulmans!" He would laugh then in a key so +high and restless that the commandant, shaking his head, would murmur +to the lieutenant beside him, "One day, Genet, we must be on the alert +for a dagger in that quarter there, eh?" + +And Genet, who knew almost as much of the character of the university +Arab as the commandant himself, would nod his head. + +When Habib had laughed for a moment he would grow silent. Presently he +would go out into the ugly dark of the foreign quarter, followed very +often by Raoul Genet. He had known Raoul most casually in Paris. Here +in the Tunisian _bled_, when Raoul held out his hand to say good-night +under the gate lamp at the Bab Djelladin, the troubled fellow clung to +it. The smell of the African city, coming under the great brick arch, +reached out and closed around him like a hand--a hand bigger than +Raoul's. + +"You are my brother: not they. I am not of these people, Raoul!" + +But then he would go in, under the black arch and the black shade of +the false-pepper trees. In the darkness he felt the trees, centuries +old, and all the blank houses watching him.... + +To-night, stealing across the sleeping roofs, he felt the star-lit +mosque towers watching him in secret, the pale, silent espionage of +them who could wait. The hush of the desert troubled him. Youth +troubled him. His lips were dry. + +He had come to an arbour covered with a vine. Whose it was, on what +house-holder's roof it was reared, he had never known. He entered. + +"She is not here." He moistened his lips with his tongue. + +He sat down on the stone divan to wait, watching toward the west +through the doorway across which hung a loop of vine, like a snake. + +He saw her a long way off, approaching by swift darts and intervals of +immobility, when her whiteness grew a part of the whiteness of the +terrace. It was so he had seen her moving on that first night when, +half tipsy with wine and strangeness, he had pursued, caught her, and +uncovered her face. + +To-night she uncovered it herself. She put back the hooded fold of her +_haik_, showing him her face, her scarlet mouth, her wide eyes, long +at the outer corners, her hair aflame with henna. + +The hush of a thousand empty miles lay over the city. For an hour +nothing lived but the universe, the bright dust in the sky.... + +That hush was disrupted. The single long crash of a human throat! +Rolling down over the plain of the housetops! + +"_La illah il Allah, Mohammed rassoul'lah! Allah Akbar!_ God is +great!" + +One by one the dim towers took it up. The call to prayer rolled +between the stars and the town. It searched the white runways. It +penetrated the vine-bowered arbour. Little by little, tower by tower, +it died. In a _fondouk_ outside the gate a waking camel lifted a +gargling wail. A jackal dog barked in the Oued Zaroud two miles away. +And again the silence of the desert came up over the city walls. + +Under the vine Habib whispered: "No, I don't care anything about thy +name. A name is such a little thing. I'll call thee 'Nedjma,' because +we are under the stars." + +"_Ai, Nedjmetek_--'Thy Star'!" The girl's lips moved drowsily. In the +dark her eyes shone with a dull, steady lustre, unblinking, +unquestioning, always unquestioning. + +That slumberous acquiescence, taken from all her Arab mothers, began +to touch his nerves with the old uneasiness. He took her shoulders +between his hands and shook her roughly, crying in a whisper: + +"Why dost thou do nothing but repeat my words? Talk! Say things to me! +Thou art like the rest; thou wouldst try to make me seem like these +Arab men, who wish for nothing in a woman but the shadow of +themselves. And I am not like that!" + +"No, _sidi_, no." + +"But talk! Tell me things about thyself, thy life, thy world. Talk! In +Paris, now, a man and a woman can talk together--yes--as if they were +two friends met in a coffeehouse. And those women can talk! Ah! in +Paris I have known women--" + +The girl stirred now. Her eyes narrowed; the dark line of her lips +thinned. At last something comprehensible had touched her mind. + +"Thou hast known many women, then, _sidi_! Thou hast come here but to +tell me that? Me, who am of little beauty in a man's eyes!" + +Habib laughed under his breath. He shook her again. He kissed her and +kissed her again on her red lips. + +"Thou art jealous, then! But thou canst not comprehend. Canst thou +comprehend this, that thou art more beautiful by many times than any +other woman I have ever seen? Thou art a heaven of loveliness, and I +cannot live without thee. That is true ... Nedjma. I am going to take +thee for my wife, because I cannot live without thine eyes, thy lips, +the fragrance of thy hair.... Yes, I am going to marry thee, my star. +It is written! It is written!" + +For the first time he could not see her eyes. She had turned them +away. Once again something had come in contact with the smooth, heavy +substance of her mind. He pulled at her. + +"Say! Say, Nedjma!... It is written!" + +"It is not written, _sidi_." The same ungroping acquiescence was in +her whisper. "I have been promised, _sidi_, to another than thee." + +Habib's arms let go; her weight sank away in the dark under the vine. +The silence of the dead night crept in and lay between them. + +"And in the night of thy marriage, then, thy husband--or thy father, +if thou hast a father--will kill thee." + +"_In-cha-'llah_. If it be the will of God." + +Again the silence came and lay heavy between them. A minute and +another minute went away. Habib's wrists were shaking. His breast +began to heave. With a sudden roughness he took her back, to devour +her lips and eyes and hair with the violence of his kisses. + +"No, no! I'll not have it! No! Thou art too beautiful for any other +man than I even to look upon! No, no, no!" + + * * * * * + +Habib ben Habib walked out of the gate Djelladin. The day had come; +the dawn made a crimson flame in the false-pepper trees. The life of +the gate was already at full tide of sound and colour, braying, +gargling, quarrelling--nomads wading in their flocks, Djlass +countrymen, Singalese soldiers, Jewish pack-peddlers, Bedouin women +bent double under their stacks of desert fire-grass streaming inward, +dust white, dust yellow, and all red in the dawn under the red wall. + +The flood ran against him. It tried to suck him back into the maw of +the city. He fought against it with his shoulders and his knees. He +tried now to run. It sucked him back. A wandering _Aissaoua_ plucked +at his sleeve and held under his nose a desert viper that gave off +metallic rose glints in its slow, pained constrictions. + +"To the glory of Sidna Aissa, master, two sous." + +He kept tugging at Habib's sleeve, holding him back, sucking him back +with his twisting reptile into the city of the faithful. + +"In the name of Jesus, master, two copper sous!" + +Habib's nerves snapped. He struck off the holy mendicant with his +fist. "That the devil grill thee!" he chattered. He ran. He bumped +into beasts. He bumped into a blue tunic. He halted, blinked, and +passed a hand over his hot-lidded eyes. He stammered: + +"My friend! I have been looking for you! _Hamdou lillah! El +hamdou'llah_!" + +Raoul Genet, studying the flushed, bright-eyed, unsteady youth, put up +a hand to cover a little smile, half ironic, half pitying. + +"So, Habib ben Habib, you revert! Camel-driver's talk in your mouth +and camel's-hide slippers on your feet. Already you revert! Eh?" + +"No, that is not the truth. But I am in need of a friend." + +"You look like a ghost, Habib." The faint smile still twisted Raoul's +lips. "Or a drunken angel. You have not slept." + +"That's of no importance. I tell you I am in need--" + +"You've not had coffee, Habib. When you've had coffee--" + +"Coffee! My God! Raoul, that you go on talking of coffee when life and +death are in the balance! For I can't live without--Listen, now! +Strictly! I have need to-night--to-morrow night--one night when it is +dark--I have need of the garrison car." + +The other made a blowing sound. "I'm the commandant, am I, overnight? +_Zut_! The garrison car!" Habib took hold of his arm and held it +tight. "If not the car, two horses, then. And I call you my friend." + +"_Two_ horses! Ah! So! I begin to perceive. Youth! Youth!" + +"Don't jibe, Raoul! I have need of two horses--two horses that are +fast and strong." + +"Are the horses in thy father's stable, then, of no swiftness and of +no strength?" + +It was said in the _patois_, the bastard Arabic of the Tunisian +_bled_. A shadow had fallen across them; the voice came from above. +From the height of his crimson saddle Si Habib bel-Kalfate awaited the +answer of his son. His brown, unlined, black-bearded face, shadowed in +the hood of his creamy burnoose, remained serene, benign, urbanely +attendant. But if an Arab knows when to wait, he knows also when not +to wait. And now it was as if nothing had been said before. + +"Greeting, my son. I have been seeking thee. Thy couch was not slept +upon last night." + +Habib's face was sullen to stupidity. "Last night, sire, I slept at +the _caserne_, at the invitation of my friend, Lieutenant Genet, whom +you see beside me." + +The Arab, turning in his saddle, appeared to notice the Christian for +the first time. His lids drooped; his head inclined an inch. + +"Greeting to thee, oh, master!" + +"To thee, greeting!" + +"Thou art in well-being?" + +"There is no ill. And thou?" + +"There is no ill. That the praise be to God, and the prayer!" + +Bel-Kalfate cleared his throat and lifted the reins from the neck of +his mare. + +"Rest in well-being!" he pronounced. + +Raoul shrugged his shoulders a little and murmured: "May God multiply +thy days!... And yours, too," he added to Habib in French. He bowed +and took his leave. + +Bel-Kalfate watched him away through the thinning crowd, sitting his +saddle stolidly, in an attitude of rumination. When the blue cap had +vanished behind the blazing corner of the wool dyers, he threw the +reins to his Sudanese stirrup boy and got down to the ground. He took +his son's hand. So, palm in palm, at a grave pace, they walked back +under the arch into the city. The market-going stream was nearly done. +The tide, against which at its flood Habib had fought and won ground, +carried him down again with its last shallow wash--so easily! + +His nerves had gone slack. He walked in a heavy white dream. The city +drew him deeper into its murmurous heart. The walls pressed closer and +hid him away. The _souks_ swallowed him under their shadowy arcades. +The breath of the bazaar, fetor of offal, stench of raw leather, and +all the creeping perfumes of Barbary, attar of roses, chypre and amber +and musk, clogged his senses like the drug of some abominable +seduction. He was weary, weary, weary. And in a strange, troubling way +he was at rest. + +"_Mektoub_! It is written! It is written in the book of the destiny of +man!" + +With a kind of hypnotic fascination, out of the corners of his eyes, +he took stock of the face beside him, the face of the strange being +that was his father--the broad, moist, unmarked brow; the large eyes, +heavy-lidded, serene; the full-fleshed cheeks from which the beard +sprang soft and rank, and against which a hyacinth, pendent over the +ear, showed with a startling purity of pallor; and the mobile, +deep-coloured, humid lips--the lips of the voluptuary, the eyes of the +dreamer, the brow of the man of never-troubled faith. + +"Am I like that?" And then, "What can that one be to me?" + +As if in answer, bel-Kalfate's gaze came to his son. + +"I love thee," he said, and he kissed Habib's temple with his lips. +"Thou art my son," he went on, "and my eyes were thirsty to drink of +the sight of thee. It is _el jammaa_." [Friday, the Mohammedan +Sabbath.] "It is time we should go to the prayer. We shall go with +Hadji Daoud to-day, for afterward, there at the mosque, I have +rendezvous with his friends, in the matter of the dowry. It is the +day, thou rememberest, that he appointed." + +Habib wanted to stop. He wanted to think. He wanted time. But the +serene, warm pressure of his father's hand carried him on. + +Stammering words fell from his mouth. + +"My mother--I remember--my mother, it is true, said something--but I +did not altogether comprehend--and--Oh! my sire ----" + +"Thou shalt be content. Thou art a man now. The days of thy learning +are accomplished. Thou hast suffered exile; now is thy reward +prepared. And the daughter of the notary, thy betrothed, is as lovely +as a palm tree in the morning and as mild as sweet milk, beauteous as +a pearl, Habib, a milk-white pearl. See!" + +Drawing from his burnoose a sack of Moroccan lambskin, he opened it +and lifted out a pearl. His fingers, even at rest, seemed to caress +it. They slid back among the treasure in the sack, the bargaining +price for the first wife of the only son of a man blessed by God. And +now they brought forth also a red stone, cut in the fashion of Tunis. + +"A milk-white sea pearl, look thou; to wed in a jewel with the +blood-red ruby that is the son of my breast. Ah, Habib, my Habib, but +thou shalt be content!" + +They stood in the sunlight before the green door of a mosque. As the +hand of the city had reached out for Habib through the city gate, so +now the prayer, throbbing like a tide across the pillared mystery of +the court, reached out through the doorway in the blaze.... And he +heard his own voice, strange in his mouth, shallow as a bleat: + +"Why, then, sire--why, oh! why, then, hast thou allowed me to make of +those others the friends of my spirit, the companions of my mind?" + +"They are neither companions nor friends of thine, for God is God!" + +"And why hast thou sent me to learn the teaching of the French?" + +"When thou settest thy horse against an enemy it is well to have two +lances to thy hand--thine own and his. And it is written, Habib, son +of Habib, that thou shalt be content.... Put off thy shoes now and +come. It is time we were at prayer." + +Summer died. Autumn grew. With the approach of winter an obscure +nervousness spread over the land. In the dust of its eight months' +drought, from one day to another, from one glass-dry night to another, +the desert waited for the coming of the rains. The earth cracked. A +cloud sailing lone and high from the coast of Sousse passed under the +moon and everywhere men stirred in their sleep, woke, looked out--from +their tents on the cactus steppes, from _fondouks_ on the camel tracks +of the west, from marble courts of Kairwan.... The cloud passed on and +vanished in the sky. On the plain the earth cracks crept and ramified. +Gaunt beasts tugged at their heel ropes and would not be still. The +jackals came closer to the tents. The city slept again, but in its +sleep it seemed to mutter and twitch.... + +In the serpent-spotted light under the vine on the housetop Habib +muttered, too, and twitched a little. It was as if the arid months had +got in under his skin and peeled off the coverings of his nerves. The +girl's eyes widened with a gradual, phlegmatic wonder of pain under +the pinch of his blue fingers on her arms. His face was the colour of +the moon. + +"Am I a child of three years, that my father should lead me here or +lead me there by the hand? Am I that?" + +"Nay, _sidi_, nay." + +"Am I a sheep between two wells, that the herder's stick should tell +me, 'Here, and not there, thou shalt drink'? Am I a sheep?" + +"Thou art neither child nor sheep, _sidi_, but a lion!" + +"Yes, a lion!" A sudden thin exaltation shook him like a fever chill. +"I am more than a lion, Nedjma, I am a man--just as the _Roumi_" +[Romans--_i.e_., Christians.] "are men--men who decide--men who +undertake--agitate--accomplish ... and now, for the last time, I have +decided. A fate has given thy loveliness to me, and no man shall take +it away from me to enjoy. I will take it away from them instead! From +all the men of this Africa, conquered by the French. Hark! I will come +and take thee away in the night, to the land beyond the sea, where +thou mayest be always near me, and neither God nor man say yes or no!" + +"And there, _sidi_, beyond the sea, I may talk unveiled with other +men? As thou hast told me, in France ----" + +"Yes, yes, as I have told thee, there thou mayest--thou ----" + +He broke off, lost in thought, staring down at the dim oval of her +face. Again he twitched a little. Again his fingers tightened on her +arms. He twisted her around with a kind of violence of confrontation. + +"But wouldst thou rather talk with other men than with me? Dost thou +no longer love me, then?" + +"_Ai_, master, I love thee. I wish to see no other man than thee." + +"Ah, my star, I know!" He drew her close and covered her face with his +kisses. + +And in her ear he whispered: "And when I come for thee in the night, +thou wilt go with me? Say!" + +"I will go, _sidi. In-cha-'llah_! If God will!" + +At that he shook her again, even more roughly than before. + +"Don't say that! Not, 'If God will!' Say to me, 'If _thou_ wilt.'" + +"_Ai--Ai_ ----" + +There was a silence. + +"But let it be quickly," he heard her whispering, after a while. Under +his hand he felt a slow shiver moving over her arms. "_Nekaf_!" she +breathed, so low that he could hardly hear. "I am afraid." + +It was another night when the air was electric and men stirred in +their sleep. Lieutenant Genet turned over in bed and stared at the +moonlight streaming in through the window from the court of the +_caserne_. In the moonlight stood Habib. + +"What do you want?" Genet demanded, gruff with sleep. + +"I came to you because you are my friend." + +The other rubbed his eyes and peered through the window to mark the +Sudanese sentry standing awake beside his box at the gate. + +"How did you get in?" + +"I got in as I shall get out, not only from here, but from Kairwan, +from Africa--because I am a man of decision." + +"You are also, Habib, a skeleton. The moon shows through you. What +have you been doing these weeks, these months, that you should be so +shivery and so thin? Is it Old Africa gnawing at your bones? Or are +you, perhaps, in love?" + +"I am in love. Yes.... _Ai, ai_, Raoul _habiby_, if but thou couldst +see her--the lotus bloom opening at dawn--the palm tree in a land of +streams ----" + +"Talk French!" Genet got his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. +He passed a hand through his hair. "You are in love, then ... and +again I tell, you, for perhaps the twentieth time, Habib, that between +a man and a woman in Islam there is no such thing as love." + +"But I am not in Islam. I am not in anything! And if you could but see +her ----" + +"Lust!" + +"What do you mean by 'lust'?" + +"Lust is the thing you find where you don't find trust. Lust is a +priceless perfume that a man has in a crystal vial, and he is the +miser of its fragrance. He closes the windows when he takes the +stopper out of that bottle to drink its breath, and he puts the +stopper back quickly again, so that it will not evaporate--not too +soon." + +"But that, Raoul, is love! All men know that for love. The priceless +perfume in a crystal beyond price." + +"Yes, love, too, is the perfume in the vial. But the man who has that +vial opens the windows and throws the stopper away, and all the air is +sweet forever. The perfume evaporates, forever. And this, Habib, is +the miracle. The vial is never any emptier than when it began." + +"Yes, yes--I know--perhaps--but to-night I have no time ----" + +The moon _did_ shine through him. He was but a rag blown in the dark +wind. He had been torn to pieces too long. + +"I have no time!" he repeated, with a feverish force. "Listen, Raoul, +my dear friend. To-day the price was paid in the presence of the +_cadi_, Ben Iskhar. Three days from now they lead me to marriage with +the daughter of the notary. What, to me, is the daughter of the +notary? They lead me like a sheep to kill at a tomb.... Raoul, for the +sake of our friendship, give me hold of your hand. To-morrow +night--the car! Or, if you say you haven't the disposal of the car, +bring me horses." And again the shaking of his nerves got the better +of him; again he tumbled back into the country tongue. "For the sake +of God, bring me two horses! By Sidna Aissa! by the Three Hairs from +the Head of the Prophet I swear it! My first-born shall be named for +thee, Raoul. Only bring thou horses! Raoul! Raoul!" + +It was the whine of the beggar of Barbary. Genet lay back, his hands +behind his head, staring into shadows under the ceiling. + +"Better the car. I'll manage it with some lies. To-morrow night at +moonset I'll have the car outside the gate Djedid." After a moment he +added, under his breath, "But I know your kind too well, Habib ben +Habib, and I know that you will not be there." + +Habib was not there. From moonset till half-past three, well over two +hours, Genet waited, sitting on the stone in the shadow of the gate, +prowling the little square inside. He smoked twenty cigarettes. He +yawned three times twenty times. At last he went out got into the car +and drove away. + +As the throb of the engine grew faint a figure in European clothes and +a long-tasselled _chechia_ crept out from the dark of a door arch +along the street. It advanced toward the gate. It started back at a +sound. It rallied again, a figure bedeviled by vacillation. It came as +far as the well in the centre of the little square. + +On the horizon toward the coast of Sousse rested a low black wall of +cloud. Lightning came out of it from time to time and ran up the sky, +soundless, glimmering.... The cry of the morning muezzin rolled down +over the town. The lightning showed the figure sprawled face down on +the cool stone of the coping of the well.... + +The court of the house of bel-Kalfate swam in the glow of candles. A +striped awning shut out the night sky, heavy with clouds, and the +women, crowding for stolen peeps on the flat roof. A confusion of +voices, raillery, laughter, eddied around the arcaded walls, and thin +music bound it together with a monotonous count of notes. + +Through the doorway from the marble _entresol_ where he stood Habib +could see his father, cross-legged on a dais, with the notary. They +sat hand in hand like big children, conversing gravely. With them was +the _caid_ of Kairwan, the _cadi_, ben Iskhar, and a dark-skinned +cousin from the oases of the Djerid in the south. Their garments +shone; there was perfume in their beards. On a rostrum beyond and +above the crowded heads the musicians swayed at their work--_tabouka_ +players with strong, nervous thumbs; an oily, gross lutist; an +organist, watching everything with the lizard eyes of the hashish +taker. Among them, behind a taborette piled with bait of food and +drink, the Jewish dancing woman from Algiers lolled in her cushions, a +drift of white disdain.... + +He saw it all through a kind of mist. It was as if time had halted, +and he was still at the steaming _hammam_ of the afternoon, his spirit +and his flesh undone, and all about him in the perfumed vapour of the +bath the white bodies of his boyhood comrades glimmering luminous and +opalescent. + +His flesh was still asleep, and so was his soul. The hand of his +father city had come closer about him, and for a moment it seemed that +he was too weary, or too lazy, to push it away. For a little while he +drifted with the warm and perfumed cloud of the hours. + +Hands turned him around. It was Houseen Abdelkader, the _caid's_ son, +the comrade of long ago--Houseen in silk of wine and silver, hyacinths +pendent on his cheeks, a light of festival in his eyes. + +"_Es-selam alekoum, ya Habib habiby_!" It was the salutation in the +plural--to Habib, and to the angels that walk, one at either shoulder +of every son of God. And as he spoke he threw a new white burnoose +over Habib's head, so that it hung down straight and covered him like +a bridal veil. + +"_Alekoum selam, ya Seenou_!" It was the name of boyhood, Seenou, the +diminutive, that fell from Habib's lips. And he could not call it +back. + +"Come thou now." He felt the gentle push of Houseen's hands. He found +himself moving toward the door that stood open into the street. The +light of an outer conflagration was in his eyes. The thin music of +lute and tabouka in the court behind him grew thinner; the boom of +drums and voices in the street grew big. He had crossed the threshold. +A hundred candles, carried in horizontal banks on laths by little +boys, came around him on three sides, like footlights. And beyond the +glare, in the flaming mist, he saw the street Dar-el-Bey massed with +men. All their faces were toward him, hot yellow spots in which the +black spots of their mouths gaped and vanished. + +"That the marriage of Habib be blessed! Blessed be the marriage of +Habib!" + +The riot of sound began to take form. It began to emerge in a measure, +a _boom-boom-boom_ of tambours and big goatskin drums. A bamboo fife +struck into a high, quavering note. The singing club of Sidibou-Sa d +joined voice. + +The footlights were moving forward toward the street of the market. +Habib moved with them a few slow paces without effort or will. Again +they had all stopped. It could not be more than two hundred yards to +the house of the notary and his waiting bride, but by the ancient +tradition of Kairwan an hour must be consumed on the way. + +An hour! An eternity! Panic came over Habib. He turned his hooded eyes +for some path of escape. To the right, Houseen! To the left, close at +his shoulder, Mohammed Sherif--Mohammed the laughing and the +well-beloved--Mohammed, with whom in the long, white days he used to +chase lizards by the pool of the Aglabides ... in the long, white, +happy days, while beyond the veil of palms the swaying camel +palanquins of women, like huge bright blooms, went northward up the +Tunis road.... + +What made him think of that? + +"_Boom-boom-boom-boom_!" And around the drums beyond the candles he +heard them singing: + + _On the day of the going away of my Love, + When the litters, carrying the women of the tribe, + Traversed the valley of Dad, like a sea, mirage, + They were like ships, great ships, the work of the children of + Adoul, + Or like the boats of Yamen's sons...._ + +"_Boom-boom_!" The monotonous pulse, the slow minor slide of sixteenth +tones, the stark rests--he felt the hypnotic pulse of the old music +tampering with the pulse of his blood. It gave him a queer creeping +fright. He shut his eyes, as if that would keep it out. And in the +glow of his lids he saw the tents on the naked desert; he saw the +forms of veiled women; he saw the horses of warriors coming like a +breaker over the sand--the horses of the warriors of God! + +He pulled the burnoose over his lids to make them dark. And even in +the dark he could see. He saw two eyes gazing at his, untroubled, +untroubling, out of the desert night. And they were the eyes of any +woman--the eyes of his bride, of his sister, his mother, the eyes of +his mothers a thousand years dead. + +"Master!" they said. + +They were pushing him forward by the elbows, Mohammed and Houseen. He +opened his eyes. The crowd swam before him through the yellow glow. +Something had made an odd breach in his soul, and through the breach +came memories. + +Memories! There at his left was the smoky shelf of blind Moulay's +cafe--black-faced, white-eyed old Moulay. Moulay was dead now many +years, but the men still sat in the same attitudes, holding the same +cups, smoking the same _chibouk_ with the same gulping of bubbles as +in the happy days. And there between the cafe and the _souk_ gate was +the same whitewashed niche where three lads used to sit with their +feet tucked under their little _kashabias_, their _chechias_ awry on +their shaven polls, and their lips pursed to spit after the leather +legs of the infidel conquerors passing by. The _Roumi_, the French +blasphemers, the defilers of the mosque! Spit on the dogs! Spit! + +Behind his reverie the drums boomed, the voices chanted. The lament of +drums and voices beat at the back of his brain--while he remembered +the three lads sitting in the niche, waiting from one white day to +another for the coming of Moulay Saa, the Messiah; watching for the +Holy War to begin. + +"And I shall ride in the front rank of the horsemen, please God!" + +"And I, I shall ride at Moulay Saa's right hand, please God, and I +shall cut the necks of _Roumi_ with my sword, like barley straw!" + +Habib advanced in the spotlight of the candles. Under the burnoose his +face, half shadowed, looked green and white, as if he were sick to his +death. Or, perhaps, as if he were being born again. + +The minutes passed, and they were hours. The music went on, +interminable. + +"_Boom-boom-boom-boom_ ----" But now Habib himself was the instrument, +and now the old song of his race played its will on him. + +Pinkness began to creep over the green-white cheeks. The cadence of +the chanting had changed. It grew ardent, melting, voluptuous. + +_... And conquests I have made among the fair ones, perfume inundated, +Beauties ravishing; that sway in an air of musk and saffron, Bearing +still on their white necks the traces of kisses...._ + +It hung under the pepper trees, drunk with the beauty of flesh, +fainting with passion. Above the trees mute lightning played in the +cloud. Habib ben Habib was born again. Again, after exile, he came +back into the heritage. He saw the heaven of the men of his race. He +saw Paradise in a walking dream. He saw women forever young and +forever lovely in a land of streams, women forever changing, forever +virgin, forever new; strangers intimate and tender. The angels of a +creed of love--or of lust! + +"Lust is the thing you find where you don't find trust." + +A thin echo of the Frenchman's diatribe flickered through his memory, +and he smiled. He smiled because his eyes were open now. He seemed to +see this Christian fellow sitting on his bed, bare-footed, +rumple-haired, talking dogmatically of perfumes and vials and stoppers +thrown away, talking of faith in women. And that was the jest. For he +seemed to see the women, over there in Paris, that the brothers of +that naive fellow trusted--trusted alone with a handsome young +university student from Tunisia. Ha-ha-ha! Now he remembered. He +wanted to laugh out loud at a race of men that could be as simple as +that. He wanted to laugh at the bursting of the iridescent bubble of +faith in the virtue of beautiful women. The Arab knew! + +A colour of health was on his face; his step had grown confident. Of a +sudden, and very quietly, all the mixed past was blotted out. He heard +only the chanting voices and the beating drums. + +_Once I came into the tent of a young beauty on a day of rain.... +Beauty blinding.... Charms that ravished and made drunkards of the +eyes...._ + +His blood ran with the song, pulse and pulse. The mute lightning came +down through the trees and bathed his soul. And, shivering a little, +he let his thoughts go for the first time to the strange and virgin +creature that awaited his coming there, somewhere, behind some blind +house wall, so near. + +"Thou hast suffered exile. Now is thy reward prepared." + +What a fool! What a fool he had been! + +He wanted to run now. The lassitude of months was gone from his limbs. +He wanted to fling aside that clogging crowd, run, leap, arrive. How +long was this hour? Where was he? He tried to see the housetops to +know, but the glow was in his eyes. He felt the hands of his comrades +on his arms. + +But now there was another sound in the air. His ears, strained to the +alert, caught it above the drums and voices--a thin, high ululation. +It came from behind high walls and hung among the leaves of the trees, +a phantom yodeling, the welcoming "_you-you-you-you_" of the women of +Islam. + +Before him he saw that the crowd had vanished. Even the candles went +away. There was a door, and the door was open. + +He entered, and no one followed. He penetrated alone into an empty +house of silence, and all around him the emptiness moved and the +silence rustled. + +He traversed a court and came into a chamber where there was a light. +He saw a negress, a Sudanese duenna, crouching in a corner and staring +at him with white eyes. He turned toward the other side of the room. + +She sat on a high divan, like a throne, her hands palms together, her +legs crossed. In the completeness of her immobility she might have +been a doll or a corpse. After the strict fashion of brides, her +eyebrows were painted in thick black arches, her lips drawn in +scarlet, her cheeks splashed with rose. Her face was a mask, and +jewels in a crust hid the flame of her hair. Under the stiff kohl of +their lids her eyes turned neither to the left nor to the right. She +seemed not to breathe. It is a dishonour for a maid to look or to +breathe in the moment when her naked face suffers for the first time +the gaze of the lord whom she has never seen. + +A minute passed away. + +"This is the thing that is mine!" A blinding exultation ran through +his brain and flesh. "Better this than the 'trust' of fools and +infidels! No question here of 'faith.' _Here I know_! I know that this +thing that is mine has not been bandied about by the eyes of all the +men in the world. I know that this perfume has never been breathed by +the passers in the street. I know that it has been treasured from the +beginning in a secret place--against this moment--for me. This bud has +come to its opening in a hidden garden; no man has ever looked upon +it; no man will ever look upon it. None but I." + +He roused himself. He moved nearer, consumed with the craving and +exquisite curiosity of the new. He stood before the dais and gazed +into the unwavering eyes. As he gazed, as his sight forgot the +grotesque doll painting of the face around those eyes, something queer +began to come over him. A confusion. Something bothering. A kind of +fright. + +"Thou!" he breathed. + +Her icy stillness endured. Not once did her dilated pupils waver from +the straight line. Not once did her bosom lift with breath. + +"_Thou_! It is _thou_, then, O runner on the housetops by night!" + +The fright of his soul grew deeper, and suddenly it went out. And in +its place there came a black calm. The eyes before him remained +transfixed in the space beyond his shoulder. But by and by the painted +lips stirred once. + +"_Nekaf_!... I am afraid!" + +Habib turned away and went out of the house. + +In the house of bel-Kalfate the Jewess danced, still, even in +voluptuous motion, a white drift of disdain. The music eddied under +the rayed awning. Raillery and laughter were magnified. More than a +little _bokha_, the forbidden liquor distilled of figs, had been +consumed in secret. Eyes gleamed; lips hung.... Alone in the thronged +court on the dais, the host and the notary, the _caid_, the _cadi_, +and the cousin from the south continued to converse in measured tones, +holding their coffee cups in their palms. + +"It comes to me, on thought," pronounced bel-Kalfate, inclining his +head toward the notary with an air of courtly deprecation--"it comes +to me that thou hast been defrauded. For what is a trifle of ten +thousand _douros_ of silver as against the rarest jewel (I am certain, +_sidi_) that has ever crowned the sex which thou mayest perhaps +forgive me for mentioning?" + +And in the same tone, with the same gesture, Hadji Daoud replied: +"Nay, master and friend, by the Beard of the Prophet, but I should +repay thee the half. For that is a treasure for a sultan's daughter, +and this _fillette_ of mine (forgive me) is of no great beauty or +worth ----" + +"In saying that, Sidi Hadji, thou sayest a thing which is at odds with +half the truth." + +They were startled at the voice of Habib coming from behind their +backs. + +"For thy daughter, Sidi Hadji, thy Zina, is surely as lovely as the +full moon sinking in the west in the hour before the dawn." + +The words were fair. But bel-Kalfate was looking at his son's face. + +"Where are thy comrades?" he asked, in a low voice. "How hast thou +come?" Then, with a hint of haste: "The dance is admirable. It would +be well that we should remain quiet, Habib, my son." + +But the notary continued to face the young man. He set his cup down +and clasped his hands about his knee. The knuckles were a little +white. + +"May I beg thee, Habib ben Habib, that thou shouldst speak the thing +which is in thy mind?" + +"There is only this, _sidi_, a little thing: When thou hast another +bird to vend in the market of hearts, it would perhaps be well to +examine with care the cage in which thou hast kept that bird. + +"Thy daughter," he added, after a moment of silence--"thy daughter, +Sidi Hadji, is with child." + +That was all that was said. Hadji Daoud lifted his cup and drained it, +sucking politely at the dregs. The _cadi_ coughed. The _cadi_ raised +his eyes to the awning and appeared to listen. Then he observed, +"To-night, _in-cha-'llah_, it will rain." The notary pulled his +burnoose over his shoulders, groped down with his toes for his +slippers, and got to his feet. + +"Rest in well-being!" he said. Then, without haste, he went out. + +Habib followed him tardily as far as the outer door. In the darkness +of the empty street he saw the loom of the man's figure moving off +toward his own house, still without any haste. + +"And in the night of thy marriage thy husband, or thy father, if thou +hast a father ----" + +Habib did not finish with the memory. He turned and walked a few steps +along the street. He could still hear the music and the clank of the +Jewess's silver in his father's court.... + +"_In-cha-'llah_!" she had said, that night. + +And after all, it _had_ been the will of God.... + +A miracle had happened. All the dry pain had gone out of the air. Just +now the months of waiting for the winter rains were done. All about +him the big, cool drops were spattering on the invisible stones. The +rain bathed his face. His soul was washed with the waters of the +merciful God of Arab men. + +For, after all, from the beginning, it had been written. All written! + +"_Mektoub_!" + + + +GRIT + +By TRISTRAM TUPPER + +From _Metropolitan Magazine_ + + +Grit was dead. There was no mistake about that. And on the very day of +his burial temptation came to his widow. + +Grit's widow was "Great" Taylor, whose inadequate first name was +Nell--a young, immaculate creature whose body was splendid even if her +vision and spirit were small. She never had understood Grit. + +Returning from the long, wearisome ride, she climbed the circular iron +staircase--up through parallels of garlic-scented tenement gloom--to +her three-room flat, neat as a pin; but not even then did she give way +to tears. Tears! No man could make Great Taylor weep! + +However, drawing the pins from her straw hat, dyed black for the +occasion, she admitted, "It ain't right." Grit had left her nothing, +absolutely nothing, but an unpleasant memory of himself--his grimy +face and hands, his crooked nose and baggy breeches.... And Great +Taylor was willing that every thought of him should leave her forever. +"Grit's gone," she told herself. "I ain't going to think of him any +more." + +Determinedly Great Taylor put some things to soak and, closing down +the top of the stationary washtubs, went to the window. The view was +not intriguing, and yet she hung there: roofs and more roofs, a +countless number reached out toward infinity, with pebbles and pieces +of broken glass glittering in the sunlight; chimneys sharply outlined +by shadow; and on every roof, except one, clothes-lines, from which +white cotton and linen flapped in the wind at the side of faded +overalls and red woollen shirts. They formed a kind of flag--these +red, white, and blue garments flying in the breeze high above a nation +of toilers. But Great Taylor's only thought was, "It's Monday." + +One roof, unlike the rest, displayed no such flag--a somewhat +notorious "garden" and dance hall just around the corner. + +And adjacent to this house was a vacant lot on which Great Taylor +could see a junk-cart waiting, and perhaps wondering what had become +of its master. + +She turned her eyes away. "I ain't going to think of him." Steadying +her chin in the palms of her hands, elbows on the window-sill, Nell +peered down upon a triangular segment of chaotic street. Massed +humanity overflowed the sidewalks and seemed to bend beneath the +weight of sunlight upon their heads and shoulders. A truck ploughed a +furrow through push-carts that rolled back to the curb like a wave +crested with crude yellow, red, green, and orange merchandise. She +caught the hum of voices, many tongues mingling, while the odours of +vegetables and fruit and human beings came faintly to her nostrils. +She was looking down upon one of the busiest streets of the city that +people sometimes call the Devil's Own. + +Grit had wrested an existence from the debris of this city. Others +have waded ankle-deep in the crowd; but he, a grimy, infinitesimal +molecule, had been at the bottom wholly submerged, where the light of +idealism is not supposed to penetrate. Grit had been a junkman; his +business address--a vacant lot; his only asset--a junk-cart across the +top of which he had strung a belt of jingling, jangling bells that had +called through the cavernous streets more plainly than Grit himself: +"Rags, old iron, bottles, and ra-ags." + +This had been Grit's song; perhaps the only one he had known, for he +had shoved that blest cart of his since a boy of thirteen; he had worn +himself as threadbare as the clothes on his back, and at last the +threads had snapped. He had died of old age--in his thirties. And his +junk-cart, with its bells, stood, silent and unmanned, upon the vacant +lot just around the corner. + +Great Taylor had seen Grit pass along this narrow segment of street, +visible from her window; but his flight had always been swift--pushing +steadily with head bent, never looking up. And so it was not during +his hours of toil that she had known him.... + +Nell closed the window. She was not going to think of him any more. +"Ain't worth a thought." But everything in the room reminded her of +the man. He had furnished it from his junk-pile. The drawer was +missing from the centre table, the door of the kitchen stove was wired +at the hinges; even the black marble clock, with its headless gilt +figure, and the brown tin boxes marked "Coffee," "Bread," and +"Sugar"--all were junk. And these were the things that Grit, not +without a show of pride, had brought home to her! + +Nell sank into a large armchair (with one rung gone) and glowered at +an earthen jug on the shelf. Grit had loved molasses. Every night he +had spilt amber drops of it on the table, and his plate had always +been hard to wash. "Won't have that to do any more," sighed Nell. Back +of the molasses jug, just visible, were the tattered pages of a +coverless book. This had come to Grit together with fifty pounds of +waste paper in gunny-sacks; and though Nell had never undergone the +mental torture of informing herself as to its contents, she had dubbed +the book "Grit's Bible," for he had pawed over it, spelling out the +words, every night for years. It was one thing from which she could +not wash Grit's grimy fingermarks, and so she disliked it even more +than the sticky molasses jug. "Him and his book and his brown molasses +jug!" One was gone forever, and soon she would get rid of the other +two. + +And yet, even as she thought this, her eyes moved slowly to the door, +and she could not help visualizing Grit as he had appeared every +evening at dusk. His baggy breeches had seemed always to precede him +into the room. The rest of him would follow--his thin shoulders, from +which there hung a greenish coat, frayed at the sleeves; above this, +his long, collarless neck, his pointed chin and broken nose, that +leaned toward the hollow and smudges of his cheek. + +He would lock the door quickly and stand there, looking at Nell. + +"Why did he always lock the door?" mused Great Taylor. "Nothing here +to steal! Why'd he stand there like that?" Every night she had +expected him to say something, but he never did. Instead, he would +take a long breath, almost like a sigh, and, after closing his eyes +for a moment, he would move into the room and light the screeching +gas-jet. "Never thought of turning down the gas." This, particularly, +was a sore point with Great Taylor. "Never thought of anything. Just +dropped into the best chair." + +"It's a good chair, Nell," he would say, "only one rung missing." And +he would remain silent, drooping there, wrists crossed in his lap, +palms turned upward, fingers curled, until supper had been placed +before him on the table. "Fingers bent like claws," muttered Great +Taylor, "and doing nothing while I set the table." + +Sometimes he would eat enormously, which irritated Nell; sometimes he +would eat nothing except bread and molasses, which irritated Nell even +more. "A good molasses jug," he would say; "got it for a dime. Once I +set a price I'm a stone wall; never give in." This was his one boast, +his stock phrase. After using it he would look up at his wife for a +word of approval; and as the word of approval was never forthcoming, +he would repeat: "Nell, I'm a stone wall; never give in." + +After supper he would ask what she had been doing all day. A weary, +almost voiceless, man, he had told her nothing. But Great Taylor while +washing the dishes would rattle off everything that had happened since +that morning. She seldom omitted any important detail, for she knew by +experience that Grit would sit there, silent, wrists crossed and palms +turned up, waiting. He had always seemed to know when she had left +anything out, and she always ended by telling him. Then he would take +a long breath, eyes closed, and, after fumbling back of the molasses +jug, would soon be seated again beneath the streaming gas-jet spelling +to himself the words of his coverless book. + +So vivid was the picture, the personality and routine of Grit, that +Great Taylor felt the awe with which he, at times, had inspired her. +She had been afraid of Grit--afraid to do anything she could not tell +him about; afraid not to tell him about everything she had done. But +now she determined: "I'll do what I please." And the first thing it +pleased Great Taylor to do was to get rid of the odious molasses jug. + +She plucked it from the shelf, holding the sticky handle between two +fingers, and dropped it into the peach crate that served as a +waste-basket. The noise when the jug struck the bottom of the crate +startled her. Great Taylor stood there--listening. Someone was slowly +ascending the circular staircase. The woman could hear a footfall on +the iron steps. + +"Grit's gone," she reassured herself. "I'll do what I please." + +She reached for the grimy book, "Grit's Bible," the most offensive +article in the room, and with sudden determination tore the book in +two, and was about to throw the defaced volume into the basket along +with the earthen jug when fear arrested the motion of her hands. Her +lips parted. She was afraid to turn her head. The door back of her had +opened. + +Great Taylor was only ordinarily superstitious. She had buried Grit +that morning. It was still broad daylight--early afternoon. And yet +when she turned, clutching the torn book, she fully expected to see a +pair of baggy breeches preceding a collarless, long-necked man with a +broken nose, and smudges in the hollows of his cheeks. + +Instead, she wheeled to see a pair of fastidiously pressed blue serge +trousers, an immaculate white collar, a straight nose and ruddy +complexion. In fact, the man seemed the exact opposite of Grit. Nell +glanced at the open door, back at the man, exhaled tremulously with +relief, and breathed: "Why didn't you knock?" + +"Sorry if I startled you," puffed the man, entirely winded by the six +flights. "Must have pushed the wrong button in the vestibule. No great +harm done." + +"Who are you? What you want?" + +"Junk. That's one of the things I came to see about--the junk in back +of my place. I suppose it's for sale." He thrust his white hands into +the side pockets of his coat, pulling the coat snugly around his waist +and hips, and smiled amiably at Great Taylor's patent surprise. + +"You!.... Buy Grit's junk business!" What did _he_ want with junk? He +was clean! From head to foot he was clean! His hair was parted. It was +not only parted, it was brushed into a wave, with ends pointing +stiffly up over his temples (a coiffure affected by bartenders of that +day); and Nell even detected the pleasant fragrance of pomade. "You +ain't a junkman." + +The man laughed. "I don't know about that." + +He studied her a moment in silence. Nell was leaning back against the +washtubs, her sleeves rolled up, her head tilted quizzically, lips +parted, while tints of colour ebbed and flowed in her throat and +cheeks. She had attained the ripeness of womanhood and very nearly +animal perfection. The man's attitude might have told her this. One of +his eyes, beneath a permanently cocked eyebrow, blinked like the +shutter of a camera and seemed to take intimate photographs of all +parts of her person. The other eye looked at her steadily from under a +drooping lid. "No," he said, after the pause of a moment, "I'm not +going into the junk business." But he wanted to get the rubbish away +from the back of his place. "I'll buy it and have it carted away. It's +too near the 'Garden.'" He rocked up on his toes and clicked his heels +gently. "I own the house just around the corner." + +"I knew it," Nell murmured fatuously. The man was vaguely familiar, +even though she could not remember having seen him before. + +"Set your price." He turned away, and Nell imagined that his +camera-like eye was taking instantaneous photographs of all the broken +and mended things in the immaculate room. A wave of hot blood made her +back prickle and dyed her throat crimson. + +"I don't like rubbish," said the man. "I don't like junk." + +"Who does?" stammered Great Taylor. + +"You dislike junk, and yet there was your husband, a junkman." He +watched her narrowly from beneath his drooping eyelid. + +Great Taylor was not of the noblesse, nor did she know the meaning of +noblesse oblige; and had she been a man, perhaps she would have denied +her former lord and master--once, twice, or even thrice--it has been +done; but being a woman, she said: "Leave Grit out of it." + +This seemed to please the man from around the corner. "I think we are +going to get on," he said significantly. "But you must remember that +Grit can't take care of you any longer." + +"Grit's gone," assented Nell; "gone for good." + +"Uhm." The man allowed his singular eyes to move over her. "I think we +can arrange something. I've seen you pass my place, looking in; and I +had something in mind when I started up here--something aside from +junk. I could make a place over there--matron or cashier. How would +you like that--cashier at the Garden?" He rocked up on his toes and +clicked his heels quite audibly. + +"I don't know anything about it." + +"You'll soon learn," he was confident. He mentioned the salary, and +that a former cashier was now half owner of an uptown place. And for +half an hour Great Taylor's saturnine mind followed in the wake of his +smoothly flowing words. + +Why couldn't Grit have talked like that? she kept asking herself. Grit +never said anything. Why couldn't he been clean like that, with hair +brushed into a curl that sat up like that? ... The man's words +gradually slipped far beyond her, and only his pleasant voice +accompanied her own thoughts. No reason why she shouldn't be cashier +at the Garden. Only one reason, anyway, and that wasn't any reason at +all.... + +On an afternoon more than a year ago she had gone to the place around +the corner. She had told Grit all about it, and Grit had said in his +weary voice, "Don't never go again, Nell." She had argued with Grit. +The Garden wasn't wicked; nothing the matter with it; other people +went there of an afternoon; she liked the music.... And Grit had +listened, drooping in his chair, wrists crossed and palms turned +upward. Finally, when Nell had finished, he had repeated, "Don't go +again." He had not argued, for Grit never argued; he was always too +weary. But this had been one of his longest speeches. He had ended: +"The Devil himself owns that place. I ought to know, my junkyard's +right back of it." And he had closed his eyes and taken a long, deep +breath. "When I say a thing, Nell, I'm a stone wall. You can't go +there again--now or never." And that had settled it, for Great Taylor +had been afraid of Grit. But now Grit was dead; gone for good. She +would do as she pleased.... + +When she looked up the man had stopped talking. He glanced at the +clock. + +"What time?" murmured Great Taylor. + +"Five," said the man from just around the corner. + +Nell nodded her head and watched as the man's fastidiously pressed +trousers and polished shoes cleared the closing door. Nell immediately +went to the looking-glass--a cracked little mirror that hung by the +mantelpiece--and studied the reflection of herself with newly awakened +interest. She had never seemed so radiant--her smooth hair, her +lineless face, her large gray eyes and perfect throat. "I ain't so bad +looking," she admitted. Grit had never made her feel this way. And +again she asked herself why he could not have been clean like the man +from around the corner. + +She rehearsed all that had been said. She thought of the salary the +man had mentioned, and made calculations. It was more than Grit had +averaged for the two of them to live on. With prodigal fancy she spent +the money and with new-born thrift she placed it in bank. Limited only +by her small knowledge of such things, she revelled in a dream of +affluence and luxury which was only dissipated when gradually she +became conscious that throughout the past hour she had been clinging +to a grimy, coverless book. + +Damp finger-prints were upon the outer leaves, and the pages adhered +to her moistened hand. She loosened her grip, and the book opened to a +particularly soiled page on which a line had been underscored with a +thick red mark. Dully, Great Taylor read the line, spelling out the +words; but it conveyed nothing to her intellect. It was the fighting +phrase of a famous soldier: "_I have drawn the sword and thrown away +the scabbard_." + +"What does that mean?" she mumbled. Her eyes wandered to the top of +the page, where in larger type was the title: "Life of 'STONEWALL' +JACKSON." "Stonewall," repeated Nell. "Stonewall!" The word had the +potency to bring vividly before her Grit's drooping, grimy form. Her +ears rang with his ridiculous boast. His voice seemed no longer low +and weary. "When I say a thing ... stone wall. Can't go there +again--now or never." Great Taylor mumbled disparagingly, "He got it +from a book!" And again she read the fighting phrase of Grit's hero: +"_I have drawn the sword and thrown away the scabbard_." "Can't mean +Grit," she mused. "He never threw away anything...." And she tossed +his desecrated Bible toward the peach crate; but missing its aim, the +book slid along the floor with a slight rustle, almost like a sigh, +and struck the chair-board behind the washtubs, where it lay limp and +forgotten. + +Back of Nell the clock struck the half hour, and she turned quickly, +her heart thumping with the fear of being late. But the hour was only +three thirty. "Plenty time." She gazed at the broken clock. "A good +clock," Grit used to say; "keeps time and only cost a quarter." "Stone +wall!... Humph!..." + +Nell transformed the washtubs into a bath by the removal of the centre +partition, and within an hour was bathed and dressed. Sticking the +pins through her straw hat, dyed black, she took from the bottom +drawer of the cupboard a patent-leather hand-bag with colourful +worsted fruit embroidered upon its shining sides. She thought of the +night Grit had brought it home to her, his pride--he had bought it at +a store. But a glance around the room obliterated this memory, and she +mumbled, "Wish I warn't never, _never_ going to see this place again! +Wait till I get money...." She glared at the broken furniture, each +piece of which brought back some memory of the man. She could see him +drooping in the armchair, with his wrists crossed, fingers curled. She +glared at the shelf and imagined him fumbling for something that was +not there. She started for the door, then, turning back, reached into +the peach crate. "There! Keep your old molasses jug!" she said, in a +dry voice, and, replacing the jug on the shelf, she went out into the +hall. + +Winding down through the tenement-house gloom, Great Taylor was not +without fear. Her footfall on the uncarpeted landings and iron treads +sounded hollow and strangely loud. The odours that in the past had +greeted her familiarly, making known absorbing domestic details of her +neighbours, caused her neither to pause nor to sniff. She reached the +narrow entrance hall, dark and deserted, and, hurrying down its +length, fumbled with the knob and pulled open the street door. +Dazzling sunlight, a blast of warm air and the confused clatter of the +sidewalk engulfed her. She stood vacillating in the doorway, thinly +panoplied for the struggle of existence. Her body was splendid, it is +true, but her spirit was small. Despite the sunlight and warmth she +was trembling. And yet, for years she had gone down into this street +confident of herself, mingling on equal terms with its wayfarers, her +ear catching and translating the sounds that, converging, caused this +babel. Now, suddenly, all of it was meaningless, the peddlers with +whom she had bickered and bargained in a loud voice with gestures, +breast to breast, were strangers and the street an alien land. Many +things seemed to have passed backward out of her life. She was no +longer Grit's wife, no longer the Great Taylor of yesterday. She was +something new-born, free of will; all the old ties had been clipped. +She could do as she pleased. No one could stop her. And she pleased to +become a denizen of a world which, though just around the corner, was +unrelated to the sphere in which she had moved. + +"What's the matter with me?" she asked herself. "Nothing to be afraid +of. He's gone. I'll do as I please." With such assertions she +bolstered her courage, but nevertheless she was trembling.... + +Glossy-haired women jostled her with their baskets. Taller by a head, +Nell pushed her way oblivious of the crowd. At the corner she paused. +"I ain't going to be early." A clock across the avenue, visible +beneath the reverberating ironwork of the elevated, seemed to have +stopped at the half hour. It was four thirty. She watched the long +hand until it moved jerkily. A policeman, half dragging a shrieking +woman and followed by a jostling, silent crowd, swept Great Taylor +aside and put in a call for the wagon. + +She hurriedly rounded the corner and passed a window that displayed a +pyramid of varnished kegs backed by a mirror with a ram's head painted +on it in colours. Beyond was the side entrance. Over the door hung a +glass sign, one word in large red letters: "DANCING." She caught the +odour of cheap wine and stale beer. Again she said, "I ain't going to +be early," and moved away aimlessly. + +Beyond the end of this building was a vacant lot and Great Taylor +moved more swiftly with head averted. She had passed nearly to the +next building before she stopped and wheeled around defiantly. "I +ain't afraid to look," she said to herself and gazed across at Grit's +junk-cart, with its string of bells, partly concealed back against the +fence. It was standing in the shadow, silent, unmanned. She walked on +for a few steps and turned again. The cart was standing as before, +silent, unmanned. She stood there, hands on her hips, trying to +visualize Grit drooping over the handle--his collarless neck, his +grimy face and baggy breeches; but her imagination would not paint the +picture. "Grit's gone for good," she said. "Why couldn't he been clean +like other people, like the man that owns the Garden? No excuse for +being dirty and always tired like that. Anybody could push it and keep +clean, too--half clean, anyway." She slipped a glance at the clock. It +stood at twenty minutes before the hour of her appointment. "A baby +could push it...." + +She picked her way across the vacant lot to the junk-cart and laid her +hand upon the grimy handle. The thing moved. The strings of bells set +up a familiar jingle. "Easy as a baby carriage!" And Great Taylor +laughed. The cart reached the sidewalk, bumped down over the curb and +pulling Great Taylor with it went beyond the centre of the street. She +tried to turn back but a clanging trolley car cut in between her and +the curb, a wheel of the junk-cart caught in the smooth steel track +and skidded as if it were alive with a stupid will of its own. "It +ain't so easy," she admitted. With a wrench she extracted the wheel, +narrowly avoided an elevated post and crashed head on into a +push-cart, laden with green bananas resting on straw. An Italian swore +in two languages and separated the locked wheels. + +Hurriedly Great Taylor shoved away from the fruit man and became +pocketed in the traffic. Two heavy-hoofed horses straining against wet +leather collars crowded her toward the curb and shortly the traffic +became blocked. She looked for a means of escape and had succeeded in +getting one wheel over the curb when a man touched her on the arm. +"Someone is calling from the window up there," he said in a low weary +voice like Grit's. Nell swung around, gasping, but the man had moved +away down the sidewalk and a woman was calling to her from a +second-story window. + +"How much?" called the woman, waving a tin object that glinted in the +sunlight. Great Taylor stared stupidly. "Clothes boiler," yelled the +woman. "Fifty cents.... Just needs soldering." "What?" stammered Nell. +"Fifty cents," shouted the woman in the window. And something prompted +Great Taylor to reply, "Give you a dime." + +"Quarter," insisted the woman. "Dime ... Ten cents," repeated Great +Taylor, somewhat red in the face. "Once I set a price I'm a ..." But +the woman's head had disappeared and her whole angular person soon +slid out through the doorway. Entirely befogged, Great Taylor fumbled +in her patent-leather bag with its worsted fruit, discovered two +nickels, and placed the leaky boiler beside the rusty scales on the +junk-cart. + +"Ain't I got enough junk without that?" she grumbled. But the traffic +of the Devil's Own city was moving again and Great Taylor was moving +with it. She passed a corner where a clock in a drug store told her +the time--ten minutes of the hour. "I got to get back," she told +herself, and heading her cart determinedly for an opening succeeded in +crossing to the opposite side of the congested avenue. There, a child, +attracted by the jingling of the bells, ran out of a house with a +bundle of rags tied in a torn blue apron. The child placed the bundle +on the scales and watched with solemn wide eyes. Great Taylor again +fumbled in the bag and extracted a coin which transformed the little +girl into an India-rubber thing that bounced up and down on one foot +at the side of the junk-cart. "Grit never gave me only a penny a +pound," she cried. + +"Grit is dead," said Great Taylor. + +"Dead!" echoed the child, clinging motionless to the wheel. "_Grit_ is +dead?" She turned suddenly and ran toward the house, calling: "Mamma, +poor old Grit is dead." + +Great Taylor put her weight against the handle of the cart. She pushed +on desperately. Something had taken hold of her throat. "What's the +matter with me?" she choked. "Didn't I know he was dead before this? +Didn't I know it all along? I ain't going to cry over no man ... not +in the street, anyway." She hurriedly shoved her cart around a corner +into a less-congested thoroughfare and there a mammoth gilded clock at +the edge of the sidewalk confronted her. The long hand moved with a +sardonic jerk and indicated the hour--the hour of her appointment. But +Great Taylor turned her eyes away. "Pushing a junk-cart ain't so +easy," she said, and for a moment she stood there huddled over the +handle; then, taking a long, deep breath, like Grit used to do, she +straightened herself and sang out, clear and loud, above the noises of +the cavernous street: "Rags ... old iron ... bottles and ra-ags." + +The city that people call the Devil's Own lost its sharp outline and +melted into neutral tints, gray and blue and lavender, that blended +like an old, old tapestry. It was dusk. Great Taylor strode slowly +with laborious long strides, her breast rising and falling, her body +lengthening against the load, her hands gripping the handle of the +cart, freighted with rusty, twisted, and broken things. At crossings +she paused until the murmuring river of human beings divided to let +her pass. Night settled upon the high roofs and dropped its shadow +into the streets and alleys, and the windows began to glow. Light +leaped out and streaked the sidewalks while at each corner it ran +silently down from high globes like full moons and spattered over the +curb into the gutter and out as far as the glistening car tracks. She +passed blocks solid with human beings and blocks without a human soul. +Cataracts of sound crashed down into the street now and again from +passing elevated trains, and the noise, soon dissipated, left +trembling silence like pools of sinister black water. She passed +through stagnant odours and little eddies of perfume. She lifted her +drooping head and saw a door open--the darkness was cut by a rectangle +of soft yellow light, two figures were silhouetted, then the door +closed. A gasolene torch flared above a fruit stand hard against the +towering black windowless wall of a warehouse and a woman squatted in +the shadow turning a handle. Nell pushed on past a cross street that +glittered and flared from sidewalk to cornice, and at the next corner +a single flickering gas-jet revealed a dingy vestibule with rows of +tarnished speaking tubes.... + +The air became thick with noise and odours and the sidewalks swayed +with people. Great Taylor slowly rounded a familiar corner, slackened +the momentum of the junk-cart, and brought up squarely against the +curb. Dragging the wheels, she gained the sidewalk and, beyond, the +rims of the cart cut into soft earth. She crossed the vacant lot. A +city's supercilious moon alone gave its half-light to the junkyard of +Grit and here the woman unloaded the cart, carrying heavy unyielding +things against her breast. She did not linger. She was trembling from +fatigue and from emotions even more novel to her. She closed the gate +without looking back at the weird crepe-like shadows that draped +themselves among the moonlit piles of twisted things. Nearing the +corner, she glanced with dull eyes at a glaring red sign: "Dancing." +Voices, laughter, and music after a kind came from the doorway, A man +was singing. Great Taylor recognized the voice but did not pause. She +was not to see the man from just around the corner again for many +years. + +Hurrying, without knowing why she hurried, Nell climbed the circular +iron staircase up through parallels of odorous gloom and, entering her +flat, closed the door and quickly locked it against the world +outside--the toil, the bickering, the sneers, the insults and curses +flung from alley gates and down upon her in the traffic of the Devil's +Own city. She closed her eyes and took a long deep breath almost like +a sigh. She was home. It was good to be home, but she lacked the words +and was far too weary to express her emotions. + +Lighting the gas she sank into a chair. What did it matter if the gas +was screeching? She drooped there, hands in her lap, wrists crossed, +palms turned upward and fingers curled stiffly like claws--from +holding to the jarring handle of the junk-cart. + +Presently she raised her eyes and glanced across at the shelf with its +row of tin boxes marked "Bread," "Coffee," "Sugar." On the next shelf +was Grit's molasses jug. She arose and fumbled behind this, but +nothing was there--Grit's Bible was gone. Then she remembered, and +striking a match placed her cheek to the floor and found the grimy +book beneath the stationary washtubs. "Stone wall," she murmured, +"Grit was a stone wall." At the mantelpiece she caught a glimpse of +herself in the cracked little mirror, but she was too weary to care +what she looked like, too weary to notice that her hair was matted, +that grime and smudges made hollows in her cheeks, and that even her +nose seemed crooked. + +She sank again into the chair beneath the screeching gas-jet. "Grit," +she repeated dully, "was a stone wall." And between very honest, +tired, and lonely tears she began slowly to spell out the words of the +coverless book, having gained within the past few hours some +understanding of what it means in the battle of life to draw the sword +and throw away the scabbard. + +There came another afternoon, another evening, another year, and still +another; but this narrative covers merely a part of two days--Great +Taylor's first and last as a junk-woman. The latter came nearly ten +years after the burial of Grit. For almost a decade Nell followed in +his grimy footprints and the polyglot people of the lower East Side, +looking down from their windows as she passed through the congested +streets pushing steadily with head bent, thought of her either as an +infinitesimal molecule at the bottom of the mass where the light of +idealism seldom penetrates or else as a female Colossus striding from +end to end of the Devil's Own city only ankle-deep in the debris from +which she wrested an existence. But to Great Taylor it seemed not to +matter what people thought. She sang her song through the cavernous +streets, the only song she knew: "Rags, old iron, bottles, and +ra-ags." She pounded with a huge, determined fist on alley gates, she +learned expertly to thread the traffic and to laugh at the teamsters, +their oaths, their curses. "They ain't so bad." And, finally, +bickering and bargaining with men of all classes, she came to wonder +why people called this the Devil's Own city. In all those years of +toil she did not once see him in the eyes of men. But there came the +day when she said, "I'm done." + +On this day Great Taylor lifted the end of a huge kitchen range +against two struggling members of the other sex. A pain shot through +her breast, but she carried her part of the dead weight, saying +nothing, and, at high noon, pushed her jingling, jangling cart through +streets sharply outlined with sunlight and shadow to a dilapidated +brick warehouse that, long since, had taken the place of Grit's +junk-yard. + +There, in the interior gloom of the shabby old building, could be seen +piles of broken, twisted, and rusty things--twisted iron rods, broken +cam-shafts, cog wheels with missing teeth, springs that had lost their +elasticity--a miniature mountain of scrap iron each piece of which at +some time had been a part of some smoothly working machine. In another +pile were discarded household utensils--old pots and pans and +burnt-out kettles, old stoves through the linings of which the flames +had eaten and the rust had gnawed. There were other hillocks and +mountains with shadowy valleys between--a mountain of waste paper, +partly baled, partly stuffed into bursting bags of burlap, partly +loose and scattered over the grimy floor; a hill of rags, all colours +fading into sombre shadows.... And in the midst of these mountains and +valleys of junk sat Great Taylor upon her dilapidated throne. + +She drooped there over an old coverless book, spelling out the words +and trying to forget the pain that was no longer confined to her +breast. From shoulder to hip molten slag pulsed slowly through her +veins and great drops of sweat moved from her temples and made +white-bottomed rivulets among the smudges of her cheeks. "I'm done," +she mumbled, closing Grit's book. "I got a right to quit. I got a +right to be idle like other people...." + +Raising her head she appraised the piles that surrounded her. "All +this stuff!" It had to be disposed of. She lifted herself from the +creaking chair and, finding a pot of black paint and a board, laboured +over this latter for a time. "I could get rid of it in a week," she +mused. But she was done--done for good. "I ain't going to lay a hand +on the cart again!" She studied the sign she had painted, and spelled +out the crooked letters: "M A n WAnTeD." It would take a man a month, +maybe more, she reckoned, adding: "Grit could done it in no time." She +moved to the arched door of the warehouse and hung the sign outside in +the sunlight against an iron shutter and for a moment stood there +blinking. Despite the sunlight and warmth she was trembling, the +familiar noises were a babel to her ears; the peddlers with their +carts piled high with fruits and vegetables and colourful merchandise +seemed like strangers; the glossy-haired women with baskets seemed to +be passing backward out of her life, and the street was suddenly an +alien land. "What's the matter with me?" she asked herself. + +Returning to the interior gloom of the warehouse, she looked down upon +the old junk-cart. The string of bells was the only part of it that +had not been renewed twice, thrice, a number of times since Grit had +left it standing on the vacant lot. "Guess I'll save the bells," she +decided. + +The rest she would destroy. Nobody else was going to use it--nobody. +She cast about for an adequate instrument of destruction, an axe or +sledge, and remembering a piece of furnace grate upon the farther pile +of junk, made her way slowly into the deepening shadows. + +There, at the foot of the rusty mountain of scrap iron, Great Taylor +stood irresolute, straining her eyes to pierce the gloom. She had not +seen any one enter; and yet, standing beyond the pile with white hands +stabbing the bottom of his pockets, was a man. She could not remember +having seen him before, and yet he was vaguely familiar. One eye +looked at her steadily from beneath a drooping lid, the other blinked +like the shutter of a camera and seemed to take intimate photographs +of all parts of her grimy person. His sleek hair was curled over his +temples with ends pointing up, and she caught, or imagined, the +fragrance of pomade. + +"What do you want?" she breathed, allowing the heavy piece of iron to +sink slowly to her side. + +"Sit down," said the man. "Let's talk things over." + +Great Taylor sank into a broken armchair, her huge calloused hands +rested in her lap, wrists crossed, palms turned upward, fingers +stiffly curled. "I know who you are," she mumbled, leaning forward and +peering through the half-light. "What do you want?" + +"You hung out a sign...." + +"You ain't the man I expected." + +"No?" He rocked up on his toes and made a gesture that indicated the +piles of junk. "You're done." + +"I'm done," assented Great Taylor. "I ain't going to lay a hand on the +cart again. Ten years...." + +"Uhm. You have a right to the things that other women have. But...." +He glanced around the dingy warehouse. "Is this all you have for your +ten years?" + +Great Taylor made no reply. + +"It isn't much," said the man. + +"It's something," said Great Taylor. + +"Not enough to live on." + +"Not enough to live on," she echoed. "But I can't go on working. I +can't go on alone. The cart's too heavy to push alone. I'm done." She +drooped there. + +"I think we can arrange something." For a moment the man was silent, +his queer eyes moving over her body. "I had something in mind when I +entered--something aside from junk. I could make a place for you. I'll +do better than that. With this rubbish you buy a half share in one of +my places and sit all day with your hands folded. You can make more in +a week than you ever made in a year...." His voice flowed smoothly on +until Great Taylor raised her head. + +"I didn't come ten years ago." + +The man laughed. "Who cares how you make your money? Do you know what +people say when they hear you calling through the streets? They say, +'It's nothing, it's only Great Taylor.' And do you know what they +think when they look down upon you and your junk-cart? They think of +you just as you used to think of Grit...." + +She staggered to her feet. "You leave Grit out of it!" For ten years a +sentence had been pulsing through her mind. "Get out!" she cried, +"_Grit warn't dirty underneath_!" The pain in her breast choked her +and stopped her short as she moved threateningly toward him. The piece +of iron fell heavily to the floor. + +"Who sees underneath?" came the voice of the man. + +"Grit," she moaned, "Grit sees underneath." And she hurled her +tortured body forward, striking at him with her fists. She fell upon +the pile of scrap iron. Each heave of her breast was a sob. She +struggled to her feet and glared around her. But the man was not +there. + +Moaning, she sank into the armchair. "What's the matter with me? There +warn't nobody here! _He_ warn't here. No man could stay the same for +ten years." The piles of junk seemed slowly to revolve around her. +"What's the matter with me?" she asked again. "Ain't I got a +right?..." + +"Of course you have a right to the things you want." From the top of +the hill of rags came his voice. It brought Great Taylor to her feet, +sobbing. But the pain in her side, more fearful than ever, held her +motionless. + +"Wash away the ugly grime of toil," said the voice. "You're less than +forty. You're a woman. You can have the things that other women have." + +"I got more than some women," she cried. "I'm clean--I'm clean +underneath." She stumbled toward him but again sank to the floor. She +tried to spring up. Her will sprang up, for her spirit at last was +splendid even if her body was weak. It dragged her up from the floor. +And now she could see him all around her--on top the hill of rags, on +top the mountain of iron, amid the bursting bags of waste +paper--blinking down as he sat enthroned upon the debris--the twisted, +broken, discarded things of the city that people call the Devil's Own. +"These are mine!" he called. "And you belong to the debris. You are +one of the broken, useless things." From all points he moved toward +her. She could no longer fight him off. There was no escape. "Grit," +she cried, "Grit, you can stop him. You ... you was a stone wall...." + +Stumbling back, her hand struck a familiar object. There was a tinkle +of bells. She wheeled around, and there in the shadows of the +dilapidated old warehouse someone was drooping over the handle of the +junk-cart--a collarless man with baggy breeches and a nose that leaned +toward the smudges and hollows of his cheek. He was striving to move +the cart. "Not alone," cried Great Taylor. "You can't do it alone! But +we can do it together!" She took hold of the handle. The thing moved. +"Easy as a baby carriage," she laughed. "We should always done it +together...." + +Out of the gloom, through the arched doorway into the sunlight moved +the cart with its jingling, jangling bells. Glossy-haired women with +their baskets made way for it and the cart bumped down over the curb. +Teamsters drew aside their heavy-hoofed horses. Peddlers rolled their +push-carts back to the curb. + +"The street opens when we work together," laughed Great Taylor. + +"Who is she talking to?" asked the people. + +"Talking to herself," the ignorant replied. + +"And why is she looking up like that?" + +"Looking for junk." + +"And why does she laugh?" they asked. + +"Who knows? Who knows? Perhaps she's happy." + +A song burst from her throat: "Rags," she sang, "old iron ... bottles, +and ra-ags...." + +People inside their houses heard her song and the bells of her cart. +"It's nothing," they laughed, "it's only Great Taylor." A woman came +to a window and waved an object that glinted in the sunlight. "How +much?" she called down. But Great Taylor seemed not to hear. A child +ran out with a bundle in her arms. "Rags," called the child, then +stepped back out of the way, wondering. Great Taylor was passing on. +An elevated train sent down a cataract of noise, but her song rose +above it: "Rags ... old iron...." And when she reached the avenue a +policeman with a yellow emblematic wheel embroidered on his sleeve +held up his hand and stopped the traffic of the Devil's Own city to +let Great Taylor pass. + +And so, like a female Colossus, she strode slowly across the city, her +head tilted, her eyes looking up from the cavernous streets--up beyond +the lofty roofs of houses, her voice becoming fainter and fainter: +"Rags ... old iron ... bottles and ra-ags ..." until the God of those +who fall fighting in the battle of life reached down and, drawing the +sword, threw away the scabbard. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories +of 1921, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRIZE STORIES OF 1921 *** + +***** This file should be named 11512.txt or 11512.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/5/1/11512/ + +Produced by Stan Goodman, Keith M. 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